March 29th, 2021

March 29, 2021

THE VARSITY The University of Toronto’s Student Newspaper Since 1880

Vol. CXLI, No. 23

A COMPET COMP ETITIVE ITIVE FINALE!

15 candidates UTGSU ELECTIONS 2021 7 races p. 4–5 “Anti-Asian racism is not new”

U of T community in solidarity following Atlanta shootings

Jessica Han Associate News Editor

Content warning: This article includes vulgar descriptions of racism.

U of T’s faculty, administrators, student associations, and students have expressed solidarity and feelings of sadness and anger over the recent shootings in Atlanta, Georgia, where eight people were killed, six of whom were Asian, and seven of whom were women.

On March 16, a shooter targeted three massage parlours and spas. The victims included workers at the businesses and customers. The shooter has been charged with eight counts of murder.

The shootings come after a reported rise in anti-Asian sentiment in Canada and a worldwide increase in xenophobia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Asian communities have been subjected to hate crimes, verbal abuse, and physical attacks, creating a culture of fear within these communities, including ones at U of T. Responses to the Atlanta shootings U of T President Meric Gertler, released a statement regarding the shootings, writing that the university condemns all forms of discrimination and violence against women and the Asian community.

Likewise, Vice-President of U of T and Principal of UTSC Wisdom Tettey and Vice-President of U of T and Principal of UTM Alexandra Gillespie have each shared messages about anti-Asian racism.

In Tettey’s message addressed to the UTSC community, he wrote that the shootings act as “a reminder of why we cannot relent in our commitment and efforts to eradicate the canker of hate, bigotry, and misogyny.”

To the UTM community, Gillespie’s message was written in “a spirit of sympathy and anger,” not-

ing that more than 925 anti-Asian incidents have been reported in Canada since the start of the pandemic, according to Fight COVID Racism.

In an email to The Varsity, Associate Professor Lin Fang, Factor-Inwentash Chair in Children’s Mental Health, expressed that following the shooting, she first felt sadness and anger, which turned into feelings of frustration.

“I was angry and frustrated as these attacks, which have long existed, have been rising to a new level since COVID began, but it did not really generate much public attention and interest, until the Atlanta shooting,” Fang wrote. “Anti-Asian racism is not new, but it took mass murder to justify its existence.”

Kate Shao, a former graduate student from U of T’s Faculty of Law and an employment lawyer who sits on the board of directors for the Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter (CCNCTC), believes that the narrative formed by law enforcement and the media epitomizes the prevalent stereotypes of Asian women.

“Strong attempts to humanize the perpetrator (e.g. interview his family, church, neighbors, he just had a really “bad day” etc) while simultaneously silencing the stories’ [sic] of the victims contributes to this dehumanization and objectification of Asian women,” Shao explained in an email to The Varsity. Shao’s response is in reference to a briefing with reporters, where a Georgia officer said that the shooter was “having a really bad day.”

“It is truly unfortunate that it took the killing of 8 people to get the world to take a hard look at antiAsian racism,” Shao wrote.

Rise in racism, racist attacks during the pandemic Earlier this week, the CCNCTC published an annual report on anti-Asian racism in Canada, which details 1,150 recorded cases of racist attacks between March 10, 2020, and February 28, 2021. A survey conducted by U of T professors and researchers

from other universities in early 2021 found that 35 per cent of respondents, who were all Chinese people in Canada, had experieneced discrimination.

The UTVSA pointed out that racism against Asian communities is not a recent problem, but has been historically disregarded. Anti-Asian racism has long existed in Canada, going back to policies such as the head tax, which required Chinese immigrants to pay $50 to come to Canada in the late 1800s and more in the 1900s.

The group added that the acts of violence against racialized communities are not remote occurrences perpetrated by a “lone wolf.”

Similarly, the rise in anti-Asian attacks during the pandemic did not surprise Shao.

She elaborated that xenophobia has been an ongoing presence, and Asian individuals have been targeted with racial slurs and microaggressions almost every day.

With the increasing anti-Asian sentiment, Fang explained the “profound impact” that racism can have on people, specifically the children and the next generations. “Children may question their sense of belonging and loath their physical appearance,” Fang wrote.

“Moreover, the very fact that one always has to worry about their safety and the possibility of racist encounters can cause prolonged psychological distress.”

Students experience anti-Asian incidents Amid the rise of violence and discrimination against Asian people, students at U of T have experienced anti-Asian incidents themselves.

In an email to The Varsity, University of Toronto Vietnamese Students’ Association (UTVSA) Vice-President External Hanh Tang, Co-President Sarah Tran, and Cultural Coordinator Jessica Pham wrote that “many… UTVSA students have first-hand experienced incidences motivated by

racism at the very heart of Toronto.”

“As an Asian students’ association, students have come to us to share a whole range of emotions regarding the incident, the highlight of which includes feeling physically unsafe going about their normal lives as an Asian person, in their own neighbourhood,” they elaborated.

In a statement to The Varsity, Bonnie Hu, a thirdyear student majoring in linguistics, wrote that she “did not personally experience explicit hate crimes” during her first two decades in Canada. However, since the pandemic began, she has heard of antiAsian violence and has been in “a threatening situation” herself.

While taking an almost-empty TTC subway in June of last year, a seemingly-intoxicated middleaged white man allegedly called her a “dirty fucking immigrant,” “slut,” and other things she did not hear.

“I told a TTC attendant what happened and he walked me home to make sure the man who harassed me couldn’t follow me,” Hu continued.

A first-year engineering student who has asked to remain anonymous due to the personal nature of his experiences recounted two incidents that happened to him during the pandemic.

The first incident occurred on the subway, when a man came up to him and said, “Look, it’s a Chinese guy,” leaving the student unsure of how to react and deciding to ignore the man. Afterward, the student was left alone.

He also described being ignored by several people while asking for directions to a café on King Street. “I approached other people for help, they all continued to ignore me and walk straight forward,” he recounted.

Because of the two incidents, the student is now “discouraged” to go downtown.

More reflections on discrimination: p. 7, 12

Cont’d on p. 3

2

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UTMSU elections 2021: winning BBB slate receives retroactive demerit points for unsolicited campaigning

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Election reforms anticipated following backlash; Zoom voting criticized for inefficiency Hafsa Ahmed UTM Bureau Chief

The University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) has recently received criticism from students surrounding its 2021 elections due to claims that the Build Back Better (BBB) slate violated the UTMSU’s Election Procedure Code (EPC) for unsolicited campaigning.

After advocacy from students, the UTMSU’s Elections and Referenda Committee (ERC) issued eight demerit points to all five members of the BBB slate on March 22 for “Unsolicited Campaigning,” though they remain winners of the election.

The BBB slate denied the allegations, noting that its campaign messages were in line with the EPC and that it did not intend to spam students with messages. The EPC is expected to change for future elections to restrict social media campaigning.

Students have also criticized the virtual election process, which they describe as inefficient, as well as the election as a whole for being uncontested. However, current Vice-President Internal Fahad Dayala, who also serves as Chair of the ERC, noted that the voting method was meant to simulate in-person voting and was the most feasible option given the circumstances.

In this year’s executive elections, four of five positions were uncontested, and all five were won by members of the BBB slate. Based on the unofficial election results released by the UTMSU on March 19, this year’s presidential elections had a voter turnout of 7.5 per cent, almost half of last year’s elections, which had a turnout of 14.7 per cent.

Open letter alleging EPC violations Some students expressed disapproval of the way BBB candidates reached out to students over the course of the campaigning period, claiming that candidates “spammed” potential voters. Two students started a template letter directed to the chief returning officer (CRO), alleging that some candidates’ behaviour in advertising their campaigns violated the EPC. The letter alleged that BBB used “predatory campaigning tactics” and that some of its messages constitute harassment, which would be a violation of the EPC. It also claimed that screenshots of messages show BBB slate members pressuring students to vote, saying things like, “Once you’re done voting please do let me know and I promise I won’t bug you again after this.”

The letter went on to express concern over the mass messages that some candidates have allegedly sent directly to students on social media, which the letter claimed are, “the exact same set of messages, or extremely similar messages, which is an equivalent of spam.”

In an email to The Varsity, Shen Fernando, a coauthor of the letter template and a second-year political science student at UTM, wrote that he felt the campaigning tactics used by the BBB team were “aggressive” and violated the EPC. “When understanding online privacy, we need to take into account that a student’s personal phone number, personal privated Instagram account, etc. is their own private space,” he wrote, noting that students cannot easily escape messages that are sent to their own social media accounts.

In the letter template, Fernando and his co-author wrote that their message is “not meant to be a personal attack towards any of the BBB members,” but is intended to shed light on concerns from UTM students.

Vice-President Internal Dayala wrote in his email that, “similar to in-person elections, candidates are allowed to campaign on social media in accordance with the Elections Procedure Code… Direct messaging through social media allows candidates to have conversations with voters, share ideas and ask questions similar to in-person campaigning.”

In an email to The Varsity, UTMSU CRO Juliana Salsa wrote that direct messaging through social media is “not against the EPC as it stands.”

Tala Al-Ghazali, a first-year environmental management student at UTM, wrote to The Varsity that while she does not mind candidates using social media to advertise their campaigns, she finds can-

All Build Back Better slate members received eight demerit points.

COURTESY OF CANDIDATES

didates direct messaging students through their personal accounts inappropriate. “I felt like I was being spammed. Many different candidates texted me on different PERSONAL social media platforms including Instagram and LinkedIn,” she wrote.

Al-Ghazali wrote that she is “not sure” how candidates found her social media accounts and feels that her privacy was violated. “I don’t think the elections were run in an appropriate manner.”

A second-year student majoring in psychology and biology, Anaum Arif, wrote to The Varsity that she was not persuaded to vote because of the candidates’ credentials, but because they were “[constantly] messaging asking [her] to vote (specifically for them).”

Response from the Build Back Better team In an email to The Varsity, the BBB team wrote that its message box to students was pre-approved by the CRO to ensure it was in line with the EPC. The team also denied further accusations that candidates who are current executives of the UTMSU used the union’s resources to find and contact students.

“Throughout the election, we asked students for their emails to share our platform and important information about the election,” the BBB team wrote.

It shared that it sent three emails in total and “only had 7 people unsubscribe from the list.” The team also noted that the EPC does not restrict any platforms on which online campaigning can take place.

The team wrote that because its members included individuals who had been involved in clubs, student societies, and the UTMSU, they had formed contacts over time. “The same way we reached out to people on social media who we’ve followed throughout the year, we reached out to people via text and phone call.”

The BBB team also wrote that because some volunteers helped, the team “[imagines] that unknowingly volunteers and candidates messaged people multiple times.”

“There was no way for us to track who people are talking to,” wrote the team. “Our honest intention was to reach out to students, share our vision for the upcoming year and ensure that students participate in the electoral process.”

Students successfully appeal to CRO, ERC On March 22, the UTMSU’s ERC issued eight demerit points for “Unsolicited Campaigning” to all five members of the BBB slate. In an email to Fernando, Dayala wrote that the ERC reviewed the appeal that alleged further EPC violations and unanimously decided to uphold the CRO’s ruling of the eight demerit points per candidate.

The ruling did not issue demerit points for harassment, use of UTMSU resources, or soliciting club and academic society endorsements, citing a lack of sufficient evidence.

However, going forward, the CRO has made recommendations to change the EPC, which will be presented to the board for approval.

One major amendment states that candidates can only message students on a social media platform if they are somehow connected on the platform, such as by being a ‘follower,’ ‘connection,’ or ‘friend,’ or if they have consented to receive updates on the campaign.

In response to the updates, Fernando wrote that he is “ecstatic about the fact that we were able to make these changes.” While he believes the CRO and the ERC could have done more than just the eight demerit points per candidate, he wrote that “this is a good first step that provides us with an opening we can use to further increase the accountability and transparency of UTMSU.” “I think this was a great example of how students can participate in the democratic, electoral processes that exist within their students’ union,” Dayala wrote.

“I think it’s a win for students, the candidates and the union.”

UTMSU voting process during COVID-19 Students have also criticized the UTMSU’s voting procedure this year. While a number of student unions use U of T’s voting.utoronto.ca system, which allows students to log in with their UTORid and cast their vote directly online, the UTMSU used an alternative method for their elections this year to simulate an in-person election.

The voting process that the UTMSU undertook for its 2021 elections began with a Zoom link to a virtual polling station. Students were then required to enter the polling station through Zoom and provide the clerks their name and student number.

The clerks then verified that the student was an eligible voter and provided a unique voting code and the link to the voting platform, ElectionBuddy. Student voters were then asked to leave the Zoom call and cast their ballot independently through ElectionBuddy.

Salsa wrote, “In comparison to in-person voting… the only difference was that the polling station was on Zoom instead of on campus and instead of a paper ballot students filled out an ‘online ballot’ through ElectionBuddy.”

However, some students criticized the election process for being inefficient. In a number of Reddit posts, students expressed discontent at the UTMSU’s decision to virtually simulate an in-person voting process rather than using an online voting platform that would allow students to vote directly online.

During its 2018 Annual General Meeting, the UTMSU rejected a motion to adopt online voting in its elections and instead voted to continue using an in-person voting system. In an email to The Varsity, Dayala wrote that the UTMSU’s Elections and Referenda Committee explored various options to make voting accessible while still fulfilling its 2018 mandate.

These included telephone voting platforms and mail-out ballots, both of which were passed over in favour of ElectionBuddy. “Using ElectionBuddy was the most suitable option given these circumstances,” he wrote. Dayala also shared that the voting process took around three minutes and created over 30 jobs for students.

Students also criticized the lack of contested elections. When asked what the UTMSU had done to encourage people to run, especially during the pandemic, Dayala responded that the union began promoting elections on different platforms, including its social media and website, in February 2021 to inform students about elections and encourage people to run.

vrsty.ca/news Cont’d from cover A former U of T student and owner of a small business called inkbymi, Aimi Tran, recently publicly shared her experience with an organizer of the Trinity Bellwoods Flea Market that occurred over a year ago.

The organizer had spelled her business name as “inkbyami” rather than “inkbymi,” in which Mi is Tran’s Vietnamese name. When Tran asked to fix the spelling error, she ended up being removed from the market and was “berated on the phone” by an organizer.

In an email to The Varsity, Tran noted how easy it is for Asian individuals to “internalize the model minority myth,” which is a stereotype of being high-achieving and successful that is often applied to the Asian community.

Tran expressed that she was initially “afraid” to share her story, even going as far as “blaming” herself and “convincing” herself that the organizer could be right.

“In sharing my story, I want to highlight how the hashtag #StopAsianHate can’t adequately capture the range and consequential nuances of systemic racism,” Tran summarized.

Creating more awareness, taking action On an individual level, Fang pointed to a few ways students can help. Fang noted that students can partake in activism against racism and injustices. Students should also know that they are not alone and can join a supportive network to safely share their voices and experiences, she wrote.

Tran noted the importance of sharing one’s story and encouraging individuals to come forward with their own stories. She highlighted that sharing these stories can help people realize that “we’re all in this together to learn and do and be better.” However, she also pointed out that, due to language barriers, some individuals may not have

MARCH 29, 2021 a platform to share their experiences with racism.

On an institutional level, U of T’s Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity Office has collaborated with stakeholders to host educational programming to raise awareness and garner support.

There will also be a community gathering space on March 31, which will consist of collective healing spaces to denounce anti-Asian sentiments and all forms of violence.

In an email to The Varsity, a U of T spokesperson wrote that the university’s administration, including safety units from all three campuses, is staying “highly vigilant” and “working closely together.”

While the UTVSA considers U of T’s statement on anti-Asian racism an initial step in addressing the issue, members of the association expressed that more could have been done to support their “grieving and fearful peers,” as many of them “feel alone.”

According to the UTVSA, students have been taking steps themselves by looking for ways to cope, seeking fundraisers, and doing their research to learn about the model minority myth.

The UTVSA calls for acts of “real change” to address the ongoing issue of anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes.

“Since racism is so embedded in our institutional structures, institutions like UofT have the power and qualifications to influence real change more than any individuals,” the UTVSA members concluded.

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U of T extends UMLAP consultation period to fall 2021 following student union demands Two consultations sessions will be held in March Marta Anielska Associate News Editor

In an email from acting Vice-Provost Students Micah Stickel to student society leaders on Monday, the university has announced that it will be extending its consultation period for the controversial university-mandated absence of leave policy (UMLAP) to fall 2021. When enacted, the UMLAP allows U of T to place a student on leave due to concerns that they may pose risks to themselves or others.

The policy's review was previously scheduled to finish in May. The decision to extend comes after several student unions across all three campuses wrote a letter asking for more time, as reported by The Varsity on March 21. The request came on the grounds that students may not be aware of the review and that there would be no in-person consul-

The Korean Canadian U of T Students Association and the Chinese Undergraduate Association at the University of Toronto did not respond to The Varsity’s requests for comment.

Students, staff, and faculty are reminded of the various safety programs offered on campus including the TravelSafer program (416-978-SAFE (7233)), and the Community Safety Office (416-978-1485).

tations due to COVID-19.

A U of T spokesperson wrote in an email to The Varsity that the university recognizes the challenges this year has posed to students, and that it shares “[the student unions’] interest in ensuring that students have an opportunity to engage in this review process.”

Stickel noted that the decision, while made through "careful consideration of a variety of factors," was influenced by the request from the student unions.

In addition to an online consultation form and two open consultation sessions planned for March 23 and March 31, the review team will schedule more open sessions for the fall. A cohesive timeline for the review will become available in the near future.

Students, staff, and faculty will be able to register for these sessions through the consultation website.

The Governing Council Chambers in Simcoe Hall.

SAMANTHA YAO/THEVARSITY

In the Spotlight: Riley Yesno

Outstanding Indigenous Student of the Year talks public policy, liberation

Yesno toured Europe speaking on gender equality.

COURTESY OF DELPHINE JI/TEDX UOFT

Marta Anielska Associate News Editor

Riley Yesno, a fourth-year U of T student majoring in political science and Indigenous studies, was one of this year’s recipients of the President’s Award for Outstanding Indigenous Student of the Year at U of T. Yesno is Anishinaabe from Eabametoong First Nation.

Her work as a public speaker and writer has made her a prominent advocate for gender equality and Indigenous justice and liberation. Currently, Yesno is working on a book that she hopes will be completed by the end of 2021. In the book, she will take a look at the post-1997 generation of Indigenous youth, who were the first to not attend residential schools.

Looking forward, Yesno will be pursuing a PhD at U of T with the Department of Political Science starting in the fall, focusing on a similar topic to her book.

The Varsity spoke with Yesno about the Canadian political landscape, storytelling as a means of activism, and her plans for the future.

Institutional reckoning She has been engaged in activism and community building since she served on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Youth Council from January 2017 to January 2019. Originally entranced by party politics, Yesno became disillusioned with mainstream politics through her experience on Trudeau’s council, a group of young people that provides non-partisan advice to the prime minister.

“I got there, and I quickly realized that the political world is not… this ultimate change-making vehicle that we are often told that it is,” Yesno explained. “Especially as a queer Indigenous person, the white supremacy, the violence, the things that we were facing in those rooms… I found [it] to be pretty egregious.”

Yesno began to lean into public speaking as an alternative avenue for change. She was part of the Canadian delegation at the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference and toured Europe speaking on gender equality with a focus on missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Though she had abandoned the hope that institutional avenues could provide meaningful ways of achieving liberation, she has since started to look at policy engagement in a new light.

“Canada is not meant to dismantle Canada — Canada is not going to give me the land back on a silver platter,” Yesno said. “However, I do think that [policy engagement is] important because people who do [government

work] prevent further egregious harms from happening.”

Yesno elaborated that she believes government work allows others — such as storytellers and community organizers — to do the work necessary for liberation.

Liberation and art When asked how she defines liberation, Yesno responded that it means something beyond just equality and security.

“It’s looking at society and people and culture in its entirety,” Yesno explained. “Completely reshaping and rethinking what that is and what that can be. And that entails also a complete elimination of dominance.”

She proposed that Indigenous peoples have realized the limitations of and moved past the vision of reconciliation. She explained that despite having grown up under a narrative of reconciliation, she feels that her generation has really rejected it. From her perspective, Indigenous communities want substantive changes that will return their freedom, such as getting their land back.

Yesno emphasized art and storytelling as mechanisms for bringing about a cultural shift that would lead to substantive change. Aside from their economic value, Yesno argued that stories make us better citizens, thinkers, and “world makers.”

“Storytelling [and] community organizing [are] the stuff that [change] people’s hearts and minds, which is a real fundamental portion of [making change].”

She acknowledged that art, regardless of whether it is Indigenous or not, is not considered very valuable in modern society. Yesno believes that the solution to apathy toward art and, more broadly, social issues as a whole is to restructure how people learn and think of community.

Yesno explained that education should teach what it means to be a good community member and have good relationships with others.

“Once we do that, we can see very clearly that an injustice against one of us is an injustice against all of us,” she added.

Given the profit-driven state of artistic industries, Yesno suggested resisting the corruption of capitalism in little ways every day. She characterized this as “planting seeds” — even if you can’t see the results of your work now, it will benefit future generations.

Intersectionality and anxiety Awareness of intersectionality between Indigenous justice and other social issues is also important to Yesno. In a discussion about community ties, she noted that, for LGBTQ+ Indigenous people, the hurt of being rejected by their family can be incredibly intense.

Precolonization, many Indigenous nations were not contained by the same heteronormative and patriarchal standards as Western societies, and so rejection of LGBTQ+ individuals is another remnant of colonialism. She added that Indigenous traditions have also provided an avenue to escape those norms.

“There are more and more people, especially young folks, who are returning… to our traditional ways of being and understanding the world,” Yesno said. “That does unlock a lot of conversations and reflections around gender and sexuality.”

On the topic of the climate crisis, Yesno said that it’s important to think of environmental justice rather than environmentalism. The goal must be to build an environmentally sustainable lifestyle rather than just saving the planet, and Yesno believes Indigenous justice is key to that.

Specifically, it’s important that societies work to indigenize new technologies and science going forward. “We now recognize that we have been gifted so many beautiful things through science and through innovation and that we can find ways to… make those [line up] with ethics of sustainability and community care.”

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UTGSU Candidate Profiles Academics and Funding Commissioner Divisions 1 & 2 NEWS

THE VARSITY

Lauren Alexander and Ibnul Chowdhury Deputy News Editor and Editor-in-Chief

Dhanela Sivaparan Dhanela Sivaparan is a third-year doctoral student in social justice education at U of T running for re-election.

In an email to The Varsity, Sivaparan wrote

that she has worked for 12 years in various student committees and governance, in which she learned negotiation skills and how to navigate the student union world. Sivaparan has participated in committees that held a wide range of focuses, including anti-racism, equity and social justice, community outreach, and political action.

Sivaparan hopes to combine her experience in student government and as a graduate student to advocate for her peers. She will focus on protecting student rights, making sure students have “the best funding opportunities,” supporting students through the COVID-19 pandemic, and expanding access to funding.

Specifically, she hopes to expand current funding initiatives and create new ones, like a UTGSU emergency funding grant and COVID-19 relief funds; develop a new career internship program on campus; and increase library technology equipment borrowing and book delivery, both curbside and online.

“A vote for me is a vote to act: advocacy, commitment, and trust,” wrote Sivaparan.

Bryan Liceralde Bryan Liceralde is a first-year political science master’s student. He previously ran for the position of University of Toronto Students’ Union president in 2019 and 2020.

“I have a very strong sense of student patriotism,” Liceralde said in a Varsity interview, contrasting himself with the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union’s (UTGSU) prevailing apathy. He is motivated to help students who are “suffering” amid financial and mental health challenges.

Liceralde’s academic platform includes greater exam accommodations for international doctoral students who are living in other time zones during the pandemic, and awarding academic honours to graduates — which he believes will help “launch their professional careers.”

He will advocate for a credit/no credit option of one mandatory full course equivalent that he thinks may otherwise “sink [students’] entire grades.” To demonstrate support for the policy, he intends to conduct a campus-wide referendum.

To address funding issues, Liceralde will create a universal bursary for master’s students in financial need and advocate for an income-based tuition waiver for PhD students. He also promises

news@thevarsity.ca

to improve exposure to scholarship opportunities.

Aside from his immediate commissioner responsibilities, Liceralde will also challenge the union’s “corrupt reputation” — criticizing its insular and opaque nature.

To increase transparency, he will work to livestream board meetings, publicize meeting agendas, hold monthly town halls, and push commissioners to produce monthly social media updates on their initiatives.

Believing himself to be a “force of change,” Liceralde stresses that he can lead students so that they don’t “go through any form of hell.”

Academics and Funding Commissioner Divisions 3 & 4

Isabel Armiento Graduate Bureau Chief

Jesse Velay-Vitow Jesse Velay-Vitow is a third-year physics PhD student and has served on the Policy and Operations Committee. He has been involved in physics student associations at the graduate and undergraduate levels. He lost an executive race last year, after which he and one other candidate filed an unsuccessful appeal to challenge the results, alleging defamation.

In an interview with The Varsity, VelayVitow said that his priority is to offer graduate students the option to opt out of the UTGSU. “Over 90 per cent of the potential voters are not voting,” he said, adding that many students have “expressed frustration with the way the UTGSU is operating.”

“People have a right to express that they’re not satisfied with the institution that they’re a part of,” Velay-Vitow said. “I think that that question has not been asked [of ] graduate students in a very long time.”

According to Velay-Vitow, an opt-out model would allow students to build alternative student unions that might better cover the wide range of graduate student needs.

“I’m using my candidacy to offer [graduate students] an option to say ‘I’m displeased’ and I’d like to be able to communicate that to the UTGSU,” Velay-Vitow said.

Danielle Karakas Danielle Karakas, a second-year master’s student in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, is the current civics and environment commissioner.

If elected, Karakas plans to continue advocating for the U of T emergency food bank and to officialize its partnership with the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU).

“My goal is to… get them more funding, as well as [to] continue to work and acknowledge the systemic issues that cause grad students to be food insecure,” she said in an interview with The Varsity.

Another priority for Karakas is continuing to advocate for affordable student housing at U of T. “Why is rent increasing at U of T but decreasing everywhere else?” she asked.

Karakas strongly supports an initiative started by the current academics and funding commissioner divisions 3 & 4, which posits to increase basic funding packages across the School of Graduate Studies.

Karakas added that if elected, she will be available to help students navigate difficult supervisory

Internal Commissioner

Isabel Armiento Graduate Bureau Chief

Delphine Ji Delphine Ji, a first-year master’s student in the Department of Physiology has previous

Jessica Han Associate News Editor

Lwanga Musisi is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Social Justice Education program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education who is running uncontested for re-election.

In his candidate statement, Musisi expressed that his motivation to run again stems from wanting to continue “advocating for eq-

experience in student politics and governance, having served as co-president of the Human Biology Students’ Union, vice-president social of the Neuroscience Association for Undergraduate Students, and a student representative for the Medical Science Student Union.

In an interview with The Varsity, Ji said that her focus is on graduate student mental health.

“It means a lot to me and I know it means a lot to other graduate students,” Ji said. She currently works as a mentor in the Graduate Peer Support Network.

If elected, Ji plans to increase student engagement across UTGSU social media platforms and host more student events.

“I definitely think communication can be strengthened,” she said. Ji added that she plans to use her background in graphic design and

social media to make information more accessible and clear for students.

Ji said that graduate school at U of T can be “very isolating, speaking from [her] own experience.” Her priority is to create authentic connections and a sense of community across the graduate student body.

Sarah Alam Sarah Alam, a third-year Doctor of Education student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education has served as the internal commissioner since November, during which time she chaired the Policy and Operations Committee.

Before working with the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU), Alam spent eight years working as the senior cultural affairs specialist for the US consulate,

Governance Commissioner

uitable funding, accessibility, inclusion and diversity, student mental health services, and increased accessibility to student services.”

If re-elected, Musisi seeks to carry out several goals next year. One is to initiate a mental health campaign directed toward graduate students, which will focus on “[building] results for students” and the issues raised by them. Musisi will also work on finalizing and continuing to implement the UTGSU Emergency Fund and Reserve Fund.

In addition to his other goals, Musisi seeks “to oppose attempts by the University to infringe on student union autonomy or overrule political decisions made by the UTGSU membership,” as well as administer a campaign that will focus on freezing tuition fees while having a long-term goal to eliminate tuition fees.

Musisi did not respond to The Varsity’s request for an interview.

relationships. “As a science student, I acknowledge [that] peer supervisory relationships can often be problematic,” she said. “I’m there to help.”

where she handled one of the world’s largest exchange programs.

If re-elected, Alam plans to continue filing for not-for-profit status for the UTGSU under the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act, a task which she is currently undertaking with the UTGSU’s legal counsel. She will also continue her work amending and strengthening UTGSU bylaws and policies to be “more equitable and anti-oppressive.”

In an interview with The Varsity, Alam said, “I have always believed in strengthening systems and continuing on institutional history.”

Alam added that she plans to enhance student autonomy and create more safe spaces for students within the union. Additionally, she will work to increase member engagement through activities and programming.

vrsty.ca/news

UTGSU Candidate Profiles External Commissioner

Hannah Carty News Editor

Justin Patrick Justin Patrick is a first-year PhD student in political science who is currently the president of the

International Association for Political Science Students and previously served as the UTGSU’s internal commissioner from January to April 2019.

If elected, he hopes to expand the UTGSU’s partnerships with external organizations, both on a national and international scale, as well as with other campus groups.

“I’m running because I believe that there’s a lot that the UTGSU can do in terms of increasing its influence in advocacy at the international level,” said Patrick in an interview with The Varsity.

In particular, Patrick wants to create a new team entirely focused on external affairs; explore opportunities with organizations like the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations; and “[empower] campus groups to have access to those international opportunities.”

Civics and Environment Commissioner

Marta Anielska, Khatchig Anteblian, Muzna Erum Varsity Staff

An-Noûra Compaoré An-Noûra Compaoré, a Master of Public Policy candidate, has previously worked as the vice-president finance & operations of the Students’ Union Okanagan of the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union’s (UTGSU) finance commissioner, and an executive of the Munk School Black Students Association.

These experiences make her confident that she will be able to advocate for student needs and implement initiatives effectively. If elected, Compaoré would aim to alleviate stress caused by the pandemic

Jacqui Spencer Jacqui Spencer is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education’s Department of Social Justice Education.

She wrote in an email to The Varsity that she wants to “provide leadership that puts students first and [run] again for a UTGSU role to further add to diverse representation within the union.”

Currently, Spencer is the UTGSU’s external commissioner, focusing on equity and advocacy based on UTGSU initiatives and establishing relationships between the UTGSU and external

Tua Hytonen Tua Hytonen is a first-year student in the Master of Urban Innovation program at UTM who has previously served as the social commissioner for the

by implementing the Emergency Relief Fund and creating a discussion forum.

On the discussion forum that Compaoré plans to set up, students could share their experiences, mental health tips, and help each other through the stress and anxiety caused by the pandemic. She will also aim to increase awareness of resources, including for marginalized communities. She also encourages students to approach her with their questions at any time.

Moreover, with the help of student leaders and campus groups, Compaoré will demand that the university divest from fossil fuel companies and that it commits to releasing zero net emissions by 2030.

Compaoré did not respond to The Varsity’s request for an interview. bodies. Spencer wrote that her work as the external commissioner “has given [her an] opportunity to advocate effectively with administration and the graduate community on issues that include student funding initiatives and COVID related impacts.”

Additionally, in the 2020–2021 academic year, Spencer was elected as the executive member to serve on the selection committee for the Black Graduate Student Excellence Bursary, which was formed in partnership with the School of Graduate Studies (SGS) and provides financial support and equitable access to Black students pursuing graduate studies at U of T. If elected, Spencer plans to advocate for COVID-19 safety, writing that she will “encourage clear and transparent communication about measures being implemented that ensure the safety of our graduate community.”

Spencer also wants to build community engagement on issues like food insecurity, housing, and financial support. She wants to ensure that the UTGSU hires an equity officer to promote a more inclusive environment. “When our student community feels a sense of belonging and safety, that will encourage greater engagement and participation in decision making,” wrote Spencer.

University College Literary and Athletic Society and the president for the University of Toronto Big Brothers Big Sisters program after being an executive the year before.

In an interview with The Varsity, Hytonen stressed the importance of building more civic opportunities as the pandemic has caused stress to students. Hytonen’s main goals are equity and accessibility and helping students.

One of her plans is to create more initiatives that encourage sustainability for the SGS and the university.

She also hopes to bring more transparency to students about what the UTGSU’s council does.

She wants to “[make] sure that [the council is] keeping students in the loop, but also talking to one another… to make sure that [it is] creating events and programming that’s relevant,” she said.

He explained that the UTGSU so far has “missed potential” with its advocacy efforts. “I think there’s a lot of things that the UTGSU can do on the external affairs front in terms of mobilizing students” on issues such as lowering tuition with the help of stronger external connections.

Kirthika Shanmugham Kirthika Shanmugham is a second-year Master of Engineering student who has previously been a part of a graduate life committee and is currently the vice-president of the International Students’ Caucus.

In an interview with The Varsity, she said that, being an international student, she was motivated to run for the position after seeing and experiencing the struggles international students face.

Therefore, if elected, she will “[create] funding

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opportunities [that] could really ease the burden of international students.”

She wants to conduct more town hall meetings, ensure professors have more communication with students, and create new work-study positions for marginalized students, particularly international students, who may have difficulty finding work without Canadian work experience.

Lastly, Shanmugham wants to work on transparency, saying that she hopes to “reduce the communication gap” between students and the union “so that… students know what the union has done for them, and [the] union can also communicate with students to address their issues.”

Disclosure: Shanmugham is currently running in the 2021–2022 Varsity Publications Board of Directors elections.

Finance Commissioner

Lauren Alexander, Marta Anielska, Ibnul Chowdhury News Team

Sevgi Arslan Sevgi Arslan is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), and also practises mental health and substance use disorder-based social work. Arslan aims to use “capital as a tool for change” and advocate for “a strong democratic governing culture.”

Arslan intends to focus on financial support for students, including further investment in conference funding, bursaries for marginalized graduate students, and COVID-19 relief funds.

“I have always been passionate about student engagement in governance,” Arslan wrote in her candidate statement.

Arslan touts experiences as general secretary and vice-president academics of the Political Science Student Association, treasurer of the June Li June Li is a fifth-year PhD student in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology. If elected, Li hopes to audit the current budget so that more funds can be allocated toward supporting student groups and providing scholarships.

This past year, as the academics and funding commissioner divisions 3 & 4, Li was a part of a basic funding initiative that she plans to continue pursuing as finance commissioner.

Li and her team have noticed a discrepancy in funding between departments, with some students more at risk.

To alleviate this burden, Li will engage collaboratively with departments and students to audit and renegotiate the funding packages.

She noted that the average funding package at U of T is lower than that of other universities.

“This kind of data-driven advocacy… has actually worked really well in the [Temerty] Faculty of Medicine,” Li said. “They actually raised our basic funding package by 10 per cent.”

Li would also push for the implementation of the Healthy Lab Initiative so labs would need Ali Reza Monfared Ali Reza Monfared is a second-year PhD student in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at U of T. If elected, Monfared will provide more support to students, especially financially, and aims to listen to and lift student voices. Monfared does not have experience in student government but feels that he uniquely understands the struggles that students are dealing with, including physical and mental health and financial concerns.

Ontario Public Interest Research Group, and a sponsorship coordinator for the Centre for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies at OISE — a position in which Arslan claims to have increased funding from both internal and external sponsors.

Arslan did not respond to The Varsity’s request for an interview.

to meet a set of standards to be recognized by the university. Moreover, she would renegotiate the health and dental plan so that it provides students with more mental health support.

Over the past few years, Li has worked with organizations such as the St. Michael’s Hospital Research Student Association and the University Consulting Group U of T chapter.

She hopes to use her experience in funding and finances as finance commissioner.

“We need to prepare a context in which the students’ concern is well listened [to],” said Monfared in an interview with The Varsity.

In general, Monfared said students need more financial assistance in emergency situations. He provided COVID-19 as a good example of this, as he says that students — particularly international students — were not supported as much as they should have been.

Business & Labour

March 29, 2021 vrsty.ca/business biz@thevarsity.ca

“Go after unmet needs”: Moderna co-founder Dr. Derrick Rossi on ethical entrepreneurship Do superb science to make meaningful products, says U of T double alum

Spencer Y. Ki Business & Labour Editor

As a co-founder of Moderna, a retired Harvard University professor, and one of Time’s top 100 influential people of 2011, it’s fair to say that Dr. Derrick Rossi has had an exceptional career.

After graduating from high school in Scarborough, Rossi earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in medical and molecular genetics at U of T. Graduating in 1993, Rossi went on to earn his PhD at the University of Helsinki before performing postdoctoral research at Stanford University and landing a professorship at Harvard.

He commercialized his research in manipulating pluripotent stem cells with modified RNA by founding Moderna in 2010 — the name a contraction of ‘modified RNA.’ Rossi has always been a scientist first and foremost, and his work with the company now supplying 1.3 million COVID-19 vaccines to Canada was firmly related to research instead of revenue. His first chief executive officer (CEO) role was at Convelo Therapeutics, a biotech startup he joined in 2018.

Rossi is now semi-retired, having left Moderna in 2014 and Harvard in 2018 while remaining at Convelo. He spends his time bonding with his three daughters and consulting with the media on fighting COVID-19 misinformation.

The Varsity sat down with Rossi to discuss his academic experiences, hear his thoughts on ethics in ‘Big Pharma,’ and canvas his advice for the next generation of biotech entrepreneurs.

The Varsity: Recalling back to your time at U of T, are there any fond reminiscences that have stuck with you?

Derrick Rossi: Well, I first applied to U of T out of high school — and I actually got admitted to Trinity College — but I ended up going to Western University in London for my first few years of undergrad. So, then I transferred back to U of T for the third year of my undergrad, and I went into Victoria College.

Even though I was a science major — I was in the molecular genetics department — I did a minor in cinema studies. Funny thing for a science major to take away, but my minor in cinema studies was maybe my most fond memory of undergrad.

I do remember also being in the lab. I was really into music and rock and roll at the time, and I remember all the lab members of the Bernstein lab were very, very tolerant of me playing my music all the time — incredibly tolerant. I’d be playing it loud and nobody ever said a peep. It was a testament to the other lab people that they probably were not into what I was listening to, yet they recognized that it was a big part of my identity, and they totally tolerated the sonic hell that I put them through.

You know, you can be a scientist, and you’ve got to be good at your science, but you shouldn’t be restricted. Whenever you box yourself in one field and you don’t take inspiration from other fields, it’s a mistake. Art has always been a big part of my life.

TV: Speaking of your diverse experience, while the companies you’ve been associated with have all roughly been in the biotech umbrella, they cover such a wide range of research. How are you able to apply yourself to so many different areas of medical and biotechnical research?

DR: I would never be adverse to going into anything in biomedical sciences that was of interest to myself or anybody in the

Dr. Derrick Rossi is a U of T alum, co-founder of Moderna, and chief executive officer of Convelo Therapeutics.

COURTESY OF DERRICK ROSSI

lab. I never said, “I’m a molecular biologist, and we only do molecular biology.”

I would have a large pool of money that I got from various grants and various funding agencies, and I never restricted us to working on what we said we were going to work on. Usually, you write a grant, and it’s a five-year grant, and you’re supposed to chart out what you’re going to do in year one, two, three, four, and five. To me, that’s an absurd scientific exercise. You should be doing in year two what the data from year one informed you to do, which might not necessarily be what you wrote in your grant for year two.

So, I never adhere to what I wrote in the grants. Rather, we pursued what we were interested in, what we were passionate about, and where the data led us. Grants are dumb.

TV: Is there any particular field right now you would say to pay the most attention to — not necessarily as an investor, but just as someone really interested in science?

DR: Artificial intelligence (AI) as applied to biological systems. I’ve recently seen some data from the New York Stem Cell Foundation — they got a large robotic array for handling cell-based assays. So they’ve removed all of the noise that comes from human handling the cells — and that’s a lot of noise.

All of that can be eliminated by automation, miniaturization, and robotics. Then, when you’ve cleaned up that noise, now you can bring in AI to analyze the data that you’ve generated. It has the ability to process information at orders of magnitude better than the human eye or the human brain can do it.

You could argue that it takes some of the humans out of it. And you don’t want to take out human creativity by any stretch of the imagination — you absolutely need that. But biological systems are highly susceptible to noise, and if you can get rid of the noise and use sophisticated sys-

tems for analyzing data, you can get to meaningful biological endpoints that we wouldn't have been able to get to prior to that.

TV: As the CEO of a biotech company, could you speak to how you make ethical decisions?

DR: So, first and foremost, I want to only be involved in working on things that address a medical need for which there isn’t a good solution right now. Why waste my time on doing something that there’s already an answer for? Making money is not interesting at all to me.

When a medicine is developed — like a COVID-19 vaccine — it’s made by for-profit companies, and so obviously, they take advance orders from countries that can pay for the research and development and pay for the product. So, firstworld companies and wealthy companies are lining up whereas countries that have less financial resources have not placed orders because they can’t.

For example, Canada — who’s placed an order of massive surplus for vaccines — they made various bets on different technologies. I think there’s like four times the number that they actually need. Well, once everybody in Canada gets vaccinated, they will start donating those vaccines to countries that don’t have the financial ability to purchase their own.

Canada would do that anyhow — because it’s the morally correct thing to do — but you could argue that that would have been the only way to get vaccines to these nations. If you just left it up to the bottom line to dictate that, it wouldn’t have been successful. And it’s necessary: anybody who’s smart enough recognizes that it’s a ‘pandemic’ and that you have to stamp it out globally or it’s going to persist.

I’ve heard the argument that it’s not moral, that the rich countries are lining up, and they purchase their vaccines at the expense of countries with less resources. I actually would argue

that it’s going to work out, and it is the only way it would have worked out because otherwise, how do those nations that don’t have the financial resources pay for a product from for-profit companies to vaccinate their people?

TV: If you were fresh out of your PhD — or earlier — and looking to found a biotech company to make a difference in the world, what would you do? What would you advise people in that situation to do these days?

DR: It’s two things in biomedicine. It always starts with the science — the science has to be superb and unequivocal. I’ve seen multibilliondollar companies in biotech start with nothing but money and people, and I think that’s a terrible idea. Success is making products that are meaningful for patient health — in biotech, that’s the only measure of success. I don’t care how much money the initial public offering makes.

People are important, people that have ‘seen the movie before.’ Back to cinema again: if you’ve seen the movie before, you know what scene is coming next and so you can prepare for that.

If you haven’t seen the movie before, when the scene changes all of a sudden, there’s a plot twist to your business. Mentorship experience is really important.

To tie it back to your moral question: go after unmet needs, because there are unmet needs and people are suffering. So if you make a solution there, you can help patients, which is the real objective of this whole thing.

Those are the things I would say. Whatever you’re starting with, it’s got to be a great concept.

It’s got to reach an unmet need and hopefully address that in a significant way. And gather people around you that have seen the movie before, who can help you navigate your way through it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Comment

March 29, 2021 vrsty.ca/comment comment@thevarsity.ca

On anti-Asian hate, U of T must move from statement to action Recent hate crimes fit within the larger historical pattern of white supremacy

Yixuan Li Varsity Staff

On March 16, a racially motivated shooting in Atlanta killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women. This was a painful reminder of the racial discrimination Asian communities face on a daily basis. This same racial discrimination is also very much present at U of T. The ongoing pandemic has affected the world for more than a year, and the anti-Chinese sentiment that followed has been getting worse, leading to real-life danger for Chinese people. Anti-Chinese discrimination has also been rapidly generalized to Asians everywhere.

While social media’s role cannot be ruled out as a culprit, it’s not the only source of this rhetoric — former US President Donald Trump publicly used the pandemic as a means to gain right-wing political support, constantly highlighting the “China virus” and “Kung Flu” on various occasions, which has kept the trend of hatred alive to this day.

However, anti-Asian hate is not unique to the United States. It fits within the larger historical context of white supremacy in both the US and Canada. From the implementation of the “head tax” in 1885 to the treatment of Chinese indentured labourers while building the Canadian Pacific Railway, to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923, it is evident that historical bills associate Chinese people with being dirty, dangerous, and alien.

These tags not only devalued the labour provided

by Chinese immigrants, but also resembled the same discrimination that other ethnic groups face as a result of white supremacy today. It is true that anti-Asian racism may have been intensified by the

current pandemic, but it originates from a long historical pattern of racism.

On March 19, a few days after the shooting in Atlanta, U of T President Meric Gertler published a letter to the University of Toronto to “express solidarity with Asian community.” This letter was sincere and powerful, but it is not enough to address the historically biased culture toward Asian people, Black people, and other minoritized communities in this school.

One of the only institutions at U of T that has addressed issues of bias has been the Anti-Racism & Cultural Diversity Office, which wrote on its website that its mission is to “[engage] collaboratively with stakeholders on campus to enable the University’s academic mission through the integration of its commitment to equity, diversity and inclusivity.”

Furthermore, the office wrote that the goal will be realized through “education programming,” “complaint resolution supports,” “strategic initiatives,” and “community outreach and engagement.”

However, when we reflect on recent reports of oncampus discrimination, such as the reported racist environment at Trinity College, the office is obviously limited in its effects.

After all, anti-Asian racism manifests in its own unique ways at university, such as the model minority myth, a racist perception that all Asians adhere to stereotypes such as being “good at math.” At first glance, these may seem like harmless compliments, but they have detrimental effects on Asian lives as they turn a diverse group of people into a monolith devoid of real struggle and hardship. The myth is also too often used to minimize the lived realities of other minority groups facing oppression.

Institutions like U of T must provide their support in the form of action, not just solidarity.

RACHEL CHEN/THEVARSITY

Furthermore, the recent Atlanta attack has sparked discussion on the oversexualization of Asian women, which directly contributed to this tragedy. The compounding realities of the model minority myth, the criminalization of sex work, and racism must also all be addressed in order to ensure a similar tragedy doesn’t occur elsewhere. However, these realities were nowhere to be seen in U of T’s solidarity statement.

It is vital that the university recognize these truths and be proactive in taking action. Solidary statements won’t support these communities, but the university could offer all students an anti-racism course at the beginning of each academic year. The

university could also regularly train faculty members in anti-racism efforts and support student activism by providing correct information and proper resources for activism.

If the tragedy in Atlanta has taught us anything, it must be that the discrimination toward different ethnic groups was established under white supremacy. While students and groups who suffer from these tragedies must unite, institutions like U of T must also provide their support in the form of action, not just solidarity.

Yixuan Li is a third-year economics and public policy student at New College.

Public Editor: Balancing breaking news and consent at The Varsity How can student journalists report urgent stories accurately and responsibly?

Padmaja Rengamannar Public Editor

Oftentimes, journalists serendipitously discover new information that may serve the public interest, and then, the reporter dealing with that information determines whether it constitutes breaking news.

Breaking news refers to anything that is valuable to the public’s interest and embodies a sense of immediacy — something that the public must know now.

In Nikki Usher’s words, from her book Making News at The New York Times, “immediacy is, indeed, an emergent and contested value of online journalism.” Immediacy as a news value is vigorously debated because it poses the challenge of publishing stories as soon as possible while maintaining accuracy in their coverage.

This past March, The Varsity reached out to the UTSU elections candidates to invite them to their executive candidates’ forum on March 17, which was later cancelled. Deputy News Editor Lauren Alexander contacted the candidate running for vicepresident public & university affairs, Micah Kalisch, via email on March 10 for confirmation that they would be attending the forum.

However, due to a lack of response, Alexander then reached out to Kalisch on Facebook on March 11. At the time of that conversation, Kalisch was on a break during a 12-hour work shift, when they mentioned that they would be pulling out of the elections and hence may not attend the forum.

When I reached out to Alexander and the editorin-chief, Ibnul Chowdhury, they expressed that this new information about Kalisch’s “intentions to drop out” of the elections was seen “as warranting a breaking news story.”

Later on March 11, The Varsity published a breaking news story online. Readers shared their concerns about the story for lacking the “consent” of the can-

didate to publish their comments as an official statement.

Here is what happened. During their conversation, Alexander communicated to Kalisch that she would like to report this information in a breaking news story and requested them for a brief phone call.

However, Kalisch was not in the capacity to provide an official statement due to time constraints from work and informed Alexander that they would get back to her the next day.

Despite this, a breaking article was published, and this is where the issue of consent arises. Chowdhury explained that Kalisch was “taking an action that [was] going to be in the public interest of the U of T community,” which is why The Varsity adopted an approach where “she can give her statement later, she can provide further information later, but the fact that she’s dropping out, that in itself warrants a breaking story.”

Chowdhury also conveyed that in the communication between Alexander and Kalisch, the latter “made a pretty definitive indication that she was going to be dropping out” and that if the “wording was just even slightly softer, like she’s thinking about dropping out or she is contemplating dropping out, then maybe we wouldn’t have even pursued this.”

Kalisch requested The Varsity to remove the article within hours of it being published since they did not offer comments as an on-the-record statement.

However, articles at The Varsity are only removed if they are inaccurate and don’t serve the public’s interest, or if they pose safety concerns for the community. Instead, the news editor reached out to Kalisch for an official comment to make corrections to the online breaking.

The public also shared concerns about the amount of time it took to correct the article. Chowdhury explained that it took time to amend the article because Kalisch “never gave a clear update or statements for

several days.” He said, “We needed to know that further information in order to update the article accurately and also transparently tell the readers what happened in the editor’s note.”

On March 14, after receiving further comments from Kalisch, the online article was amended “to proportionately reflect new information and perspective on the elections.” The breaking article in its entirety was corrected, shifting the focus away from Kalisch’s potential departure to other issues such as the lack of participation in the UTSU elections this year. The Varsity corrected the headline and subheading, and changed the photo of the article. Later, this amended article was provided in print on March 15, and on March 16, a second breaking article confirming Kalisch’s official departure from the elections was published online.

The point is that The Varsity should formally establish an explicit form of consent to publish comments at the beginning of every communication between its reporters and sources. I asked an assistant professor of media studies at UTSC, David Nieborg, about how student journalists could ethically and accurately cover breaking news stories.

“You want to be super careful about protecting, essentially, people who might be a bit more vulnerable, your fellow students. As a reporter, you are in a different position of power… because you have a broader platform,” said Nieborg.

In a public statement on Facebook, Kalisch wrote, “I feel uncomfortable remaining in this election given my own consent in the article was stripped away… I believe the article undermined my credibility to run and gave many people the wrong impression that I am not dedicated to the role.” Kalisch’s comments demonstrate the importance of forming consent to publish comments given the public attention that the newspaper attracts.

I also asked Jeffrey Dvorkin, the former om-

budsman of National Public Radio and the former program director of journalism at UTSC, how student journalists should cover breaking news stories.

Dvorkin shed light on the fact that in journalism, the relationship between sources and reporters is a twoway street.

Dvorkin said, “The source must make it clear from the beginning of the interview that what he or she is about to say is off the record.” It also “obliges the reporter to say, ‘Hi, I’m here as a reporter for The Varsity. So everything we’re talking about is now on the record, right?’ ” Dvorkin added. Sources, especially those running for elections, automatically attract more attention from the community, so it is safe to practise mentioning whether something cannot be quoted.

The Varsity’s sharp-eyed editors certainly spotted an important story to inform its readers. Nieborg claimed, “It’s a good instinct to want to get the story out. So, that in itself is a good trait as a journalist.” The Varsity has also maintained transparency throughout by offering editor’s comments explaining the corrections made in the article and upon receiving further official comment from Kalisch, they thoroughly revised the article to reflect the story accurately and offer new perspectives from other spokespeople.

This case serves as a reminder for The Varsity to revisit the third section on fairness in its code of ethics. It states, “(9) Journalists must be forthright in communicating the normal practice of journalism surrounding ‘on the record’ and ‘off the record’ statements with sources and subjects, bearing in mind that some individuals may have little or no experience dealing with journalists.” Practising consent is crucial for building trust between reporters and their sources.

Padmaja Rengamannar is Public Editor at The Varsity and can be reached at publiceditor@thevarsity.ca.

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vrsty.ca/comment

How U of T should restructure its mental health support On the limits of the UMLAP, improving accessibility

Andrea Zhao Varsity Staff

The University of Toronto may be known for its academic rigour, but its infamous reputation for widespread stress and unhappiness is sadly not undeserved, and its ongoing student mental health crisis remains unresolved.

In order to address this complex and urgent issue, many changes need to be made to the university’s educational framework, with an immediate focus on policies regarding individuals in crisis and on long-term, studentcentred projects that rewrite course structures and programming.

Immediate changes with regard to students in crisis A cursory glance at how U of T has handled students experiencing mental health crises — those at serious risk of harm to themselves or others — already reveals glaring issues with how the university has been treating its students.

Those in crisis seeking help have often been criminalized and dehumanized for their struggles; there have been too many instances of students being publicly handcuffed and escorted into police cars, then taken to hospitals where they are forced to remain without being consulted or informed of treatment plans.

Struggling students have also been subject to the controversial university-mandated leave of absence policy (UMLAP), which forces them to leave school, seemingly for the benefit of their mental health, even though this may not be the best course of action in every individual case. The policy will be up for review in the fall of this year.

The university should take responsibility in ensuring that students seeking help for their mental health are treated in a compassionate and empathetic manner, and urgent revisions to procedure are necessary to ensure that nobody is stripped of their agency, authority, or basic humanity when they are in crisis. Additionally, the university administration should

offer full support to students as they make plans for their health care and future schooling.

My concern with the UMLAP is that it presents itself as a catch-all solution to students in crisis when it is actually a means to get them out of the way so the university no longer has to deal with them. In reality, leaving the university altogether may not prove to be productive to their recovery process, and without the structure and social interactions offered by university life, some students may even find themselves spiralling further.

Instead of forcing students in crisis to leave U of T, the university should work with each individual student to determine the most logical course of action for them, which may instead be a reduced course load or improved accommodations and support within the school.

Long-term responsibilities and revisions Looking to the long term, the university needs to take on the responsibility to ensure that students can access timely and appropriate care for their mental health, as failure to provide support for at-risk individuals can lead to rapid deterioration of their well-being.

For some students, long-term care is often inaccessible and inadequate, with waitlists of up to several months for first-time consultation appointments.

The school should direct resources and funding to help students access continuous and effective care in a timely manner. This could mean additional programming within health and wellness or additional insurance coverage for those seeking external treatment.

For many students, academic concerns make up the main source of stress in their lives, as their performance in school directly impacts other aspects of their lives, including

demic — the university is a highly diverse comm u n i t y where students of different demographics FIONA TUNG/THE VARSITY may be particularly affected by certain concerns.

Daunting financial chalfunding for the future and prospects for fur- lenges, systemic and societal discrimination ther education and employment. of all forms, and compounding disabilities Those who are already struggling — espe- may all contribute to poor mental health in cially nowadays, during a pandemic when we students of various groups, and the university are all subject to additional uncertainty and should consider these factors when revising anxiety — should not have to take on this ex- its frameworks and policies. tra burden when extended deadlines and alGiving students the power to stand up for ternative projects or testing options could be themselves and others on such an important directly coordinated with teaching staff. and pressing issue will allow us all to create The university should look to restructure more relevant, comprehensive, and empacourses to create smaller, more manageable thetic policies and systems. class sections so that students and instrucIn addition, the success of a student-led tors have the opportunity to connect and movement for change regarding education work out individual plans, and more flex- and mental health would not only lay out ibility within syllabi should be encouraged to a clearer path for other campus advocacy reduce stress for everyone involved. groups to make their voices heard, but would also empower them to work collectively with Role of student advocacy the university to make large-scale, lasting While shifting and reshaping the educa- progress at U of T and beyond. tional framework to take into account both short- and long-term considerations, stu- All of us have to take action now dents should have the ability to voice their In the future, we will continue to face comconcerns and ideas so that they can help plex challenges when trying to rethink our make concrete contributions to positive, sus- educational systems and policies, and it is tainable change. Any changes made to the critical that we all take an active role in this educational system will affect students first process. Although we may not have the final and foremost, so they should have a say in say in university policy or course structure, how the university decides to proceed from there are still many ways in which students now on. can and must advocate for change on this isGiving the student body an opportunity sue. to share their lived experiences should be a We can encourage our student governpriority for the university administration, so ments to make mental health a priority, orthat they can better understand what issues ganize events designed to raise awareness to focus on. A high volume of input from and support students in need, contact our inrepresentative groups across the student body structors to make them aware of our concerns would be useful in creating more nuanced and challenges, and write letters and petitions and detailed guidelines to deal with students’ to our administration demanding them to do mental health. better — not tomorrow, but today.

Although most youth tend to be affected by similar issues — economic instability, the Andrea Zhao is a f irst-year life sciences student climate crisis, and most recently, the pan- at Victoria College.

8

THE VARSITY

COMMENT

comment@thevarsity.ca

Professors respond to Professor Robinson’s defence of U of T climate policy

Letters to the editor re: “How U of T is focusing investments on a climate-secure future” On March 15, The Varsity published an op-ed titled “How U of T is focusing investments on a climate-secure future” by Professor John Robinson at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and at the School of the Environment, who also serves as the presidential advisor on the environment, climate change, and sustainability for the University of Toronto.

Below are responses to Robinson’s op-ed from three other U of T professors.

Clockwise from the left: Paul Downes, Matthew Hoffmann, and Gavin Smith.

COURTESY OF THE PROFESSORS

Matthew Hoffmann: We can have sustainable investment while we divest Robinson touts the University of Toronto’s leadership on climate action. Robinson’s celebration centres on the university’s turn to ESG-based investment strategies and participation in enlightened investor groups like the U of T-led “Investing to Address Climate Change” charter.

This investment strategy includes goals to reduce the carbon intensity of its investments, and the administration claims that ESGbased strategy will reduce emissions “more than three times greater than the effect of immediate divestment from fossil fuel companies alone.” The university administration is also clearly proud of how it is taking on the climate crisis through revitalizing the campus building environment.

To be clear, it is a good thing that the university administration wants to be active on

the climate crisis. That is to be encouraged.

But let’s not confuse what they are currently doing with climate leadership.

Some of these measures are long overdue.

Adopting an ESG-oriented investment strategy would have been visionary leadership in 2005. It is closer to embarrassing than to leadership that it took the university until 2016 to adopt this strategy.

Similarly, working toward a lower carbon campus was innovative leadership back in 2011 when Robinson helped the University of British Columbia realize the construction of “North America’s Greenest Building.” Today, the kind of actions outlined in the op-ed should be taken for granted as the baseline, not a source of self-congratulation from the administration.

Some of these measures are misguided. In-

tensity targets for investments aim to lower the ratio of carbon emissions to dollars invested, not necessarily to reduce carbon emissions.

Is that what we want?

Further, no one that is serious about the climate crisis is advocating for divestment alone.

Working toward a fossil-fuel-free endowment and pension fund should be part of a comprehensive approach to investing that is aligned with a just transition to a low-carbon future. Why be so adamant that the University of Toronto avoid fossil fuel divestment when lowering the carbon footprint of the portfolios is its stated goal?

The climate crisis will only continue to intensify and so must our actions. Our understanding of leadership must certainly evolve beyond what counted 10–15 years ago.

Robinson’s op-ed seems to imply that if those in the U of T community who are pas-

sionate about the climate crisis and critical of the administration just knew better about what the administration was doing, they’d celebrate rather than criticize it. But perhaps the critics do not suffer from an information deficit; perhaps, they suffer from a leadership deficit.

We can do more. We can do better. We can divest and pursue a just transition. Robinson should consider updating his understanding of what counts as leadership, and as the presidential advisor on the environment, climate change, and sustainability, he should advise U of T President Meric Gertler to do so as well.

Matthew Hoffmann is an associate professor of political science at UTSC, as well as the co-director of the Environmental Governance Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.

Paul Downes: U of T deserves more than propaganda Robinson, the presidential advisor on the environment, climate change, and sustainability, makes a number of misleading claims about the university’s response to the climate crisis. “The university’s target,” wrote Robinson, “is a 40 per cent reduction in the carbon intensity of its long-term investment portfolios by 2030.”

But he tellingly fails to explain what “carbon intensity” means or why U of T has adopted this way of measuring its carbon footprint. Carbon intensity does not measure the absolute carbon dioxide emissions associated with the companies that U of T invests in; it measures carbon dioxide emissions per million dollars invested. This is a very important distinction.

At a Governing Council meeting on December 17, which Robinson and I attended, President Gertler acknowledged that using the metric of carbon intensity to measure the portfolio’s carbon footprint could give a very misleading picture of the extent of carbon emissions reductions.

Consequently, Gertler ordered the University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation (UTAM) to include a measure of absolute emissions reductions associated with the university’s investment portfolio. This absolute emissions metric reveals a 50 per cent smaller reduction in the portfolio’s carbon footprint over the past two years — a 10 per cent reduction as opposed to the 21.5 per cent reduction claimed by the UTAM in its carbon footprint report.

Nevertheless, Robinson seemed to continue to champion the intensity metric because it gives an inflated sense of U of T’s goals and achievements. Given that “intensity” is a measure of emissions per million dollars invested, and given that the dollar size of the university’s portfolio grows annually, it is quite possible for emissions associated with the portfolio to grow even as intensity drops.

Considering his position as presidential advisor, Robinson should know this, and yet he peddles this greenwashing metric to students

while telling them that “we as a university” share students’ “passion and commitment to change.”

Who, then, is included in his definition of “we” if not the students he refers to?

As if this were not bad enough, the article went on to declare that instead of divesting from the fossil fuel industry, the university’s asset managers can achieve better success in combatting the global climate disaster by “[looking] at the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) sources of risk in the university’s portfolios.”

Who ever said that this was an either/or option? Why on earth would anyone who claims to be committed to addressing the climate crisis not consider divestment alongside other efforts to reduce emissions? And what exactly was meant by “looking at” ESG risks in the portfolio? Is the serious suggestion here that the University of Toronto is addressing the climate crisis by having the UTAM “look” at things?

Robinson addressed his remarks to “student

leaders,” but his primary goal seemed to be to echo the party line emanating from President Gertler and the asset managers at the UTAM. Students who have given their time and attention to this enormously important issue are tired of being fed corporate nonsense such as this.

Local sustainability initiatives are all very well and good, and they certainly make for good public relations. But if Robinson really cared about the climate crisis, he would be combining his work on sustainability at U of T with a powerful call for President Gertler to announce a timetable for complete divestment from the fossil fuel industry.

Paul Downes is a professor in the Department of English at UTSG. He is also a member of Divestment and Beyond, a coalition of faculty, students, and staff that is dedicated to fossil fuel divestment and aims to achieve climate justice at the University of Toronto by encouraging the U of T administration and working with the U of T community. He is also an elected member of the Academic Board.

Gavin Smith: Listen to the voices within our community Robinson makes several claims, which, taken together, amount to an apology for the investment practices of the UTAM in respect of “a climate-secure future.” I will comment on just two.

As a member of the university, I object to Robinson’s use of the expressions “We as a university” and “The university believes.”

The expressions are used in an article that refers to “student leaders” and “the call… from within our community” who, he notes, scrutinize and critique the university’s actions, speaking as though he is the university community.

This apparently small stylistic problem would not be worth highlighting were it not for the fact that President Gertler and that vague group, “the administration,” frequently use the same expression and often when speaking to an audience beyond the campus.

The ‘passionate advocates’ and ‘voices within our community’ to which Robinson refers are indeed critical of the UTAM’s refusal to divest from fossil fuel companies, but he employs sleight of hand when he writes, “ultimately, we can achieve a carbon footprint reduction that is more than three times greater than the effect of immediate divest-

ment from fossil fuel companies alone.” Nobody among his adversaries is proposing divestment from fossil fuels alone.

A misconception held by many is that investments like UTAM’s in fossil fuels are declining. But, in fact, overall investments in fossil fuels companies are on an upward trend. Indeed the finance provided by banks in 2020 was higher than in 2016 or 2017.

Canadian banks, along with their US counterparts, account for almost half of those investments. One of them is Toronto Dominion, whose asset management company is among the managers used by the UTAM.

It is disappointing to read an article by a professor at this university that resembles more an infomercial for a product than an objective piece of writing.

Gavin Smith is a professor emeritus from the Department of Anthropology. He is also a member of Divestment and Beyond, a coalition of faculty, students, and staff that is dedicated to fossil fuel divestment and aims to achieve climate justice at the University of Toronto by encouraging the U of T administration and working with the U of T community.

10

THE VARSITY

FEATURES

Active allyship, n teachings from John Croutch, I

How his U of T w “a continuous proc Author: Toryanse Blanchard Illustrator: Darren Cheng

For some U of T students, the start of the term brought an opportunity to learn more about Indigenous cultures and histories in Canada and how to actively tackle reconciliation as a current solvable issue.

John Croutch, U of T’s Indigenous training coordinator with the Office of Indigenous Initiatives, offers workshops on Indigenous cultural competency to U of T faculty, staff, and students. As a man with Ojibwe and German-Canadian ancestry, deepening the collective understanding of Indigeneity is especially important to him.

He is currently offering three workshops, available through CLNx: “Reconciliation: Walking the Path of Indigenous Allyship,” “Reflecting on Indigenous Land Acknowledgements,” and “Speaking Our Truths: The Journey Towards Reconciliation,” the last of which is held in two parts. Students can register online for his workshops, which offer a holistic exploration of Indigenous histories and cultures, and discuss topics such as how reconciliation impacts the world today.

However, Croutch’s workshops are not just history lessons. For several students from the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy who were able to take these training sessions in early January, the workshops presented an opportunity to critically examine personal interpretations of Indigenous policies and representation in Canada.

Jessica Macdonald, a first-year graduate student in the public policy program at the Munk School, found that the two-part reconciliation workshop she took in January reiterated how important it is to be an active ally for Indigenous communities in the reconciliation process.

Being an ally is a task easier said than done. “[It] is more correct to say that one can only aspire to be an ally as allyship is a continuous process of selfreflexivity, learning and acting in a way that decentres whiteness,” Croutch wrote in an email to The Varsity.

Understanding active allyship There are usually two reactions from people who attend Croutch’s workshops: denial and shame. Macdonald recalled Croutch explaining this during a workshop, and him explaining that while shame is an understandable response, it can be passive.

Instead, the workshop emphasized how to respond actively. Rather than only thinking about how shameful and embarrassing our education system’s curriculum has been on issues affecting Indigenous peoples, Croutch wants people to ask themselves: what am I going to do about that?

For Macdonald, some ways to avoid being a performative ally are paying attention to the activists she follows on social media and making the effort to read as many readily available resources as there are. Going to this workshop was the first step in her journey toward understanding and mobilization. She decided that one of the next steps for her is to read the entire Truth and Reconciliation Report.

Croutch’s workshops also directly tackled the complications of performance-based allyship. “Reflecting on Indigenous Land Acknowledgements” examines how effective land acknowledgements are in achieving rec-

onciliation. When they are not not combined with an understanding of their purpose, land acknowledgements can be performative and actually diminish their original purpose.

Macdonald learned that while land acknowledgements “should be habitual… sometimes you get into a habit of saying things and then it loses its meaning,” she said. “We have to actually reflect on what we’re saying.”

Liam Caldwell, a first-year graduate student at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, noted that the workshops he attended with Croutch made the performative nature of land acknowledgements evident.

“The land acknowledgements should be a way of recognizing the wealth that has been accrued by the acquisition of indigenous land, but it should also serve as a reminder that indigenous people live, work, and play on these territories to this day, and are not just part of some by-gone era,” Caldwell wrote in an email to The Varsity.

Examining Indigenous histories Because the stories of residential schooling and Indigenous oppression are often difficult to digest, apprehension built up around learning about these unsettling topics can become a barrier to learning and understanding.

“Some of the information is very disturbing,” said Pavlina Faltynek, a second-year student at the Munk School. “It’s meant to be disturbing, and it’s the truth. You do a disservice by diminishing the truth or trying to manipulate the truth in a way to make it more palatable for people.”

The students said that because the information was shared in a constructive and holistic manner, it was easier to grow from the discomfort that the information invoked instead of shutting down. “John has so much to share and shares it in a very accepting space for people to learn things that they may not have known before,” said Macdonald.

Macdonald noted that Croutch included personal anecdotes in the workshops, which helped demonstrate how history is linked to the present day. “Part of what I think was so effective in this discussion of what had happened was [Croutch’s] willingness to share what that meant for him in terms of his own personal story,” Macdonald said.

“It wasn’t necessarily the focus of the workshop, but he sprinkled in a bit of his own personal journey in his own identity and embracing his identity as an Indigenous man, which really made it a lot more personal than just hearing stories.”

Faltynek also noted how encouraging Croutch was with students, telling them not to be afraid to ask the important questions, like how people choose to identify or how to pronounce somebody’s name. This openness encouraged students to discuss the ideas that they were unsure of and opened up the opportunity for more understanding.

Caldwell emphasized that not only did Croutch offer a workshop that was “absolutely comprehensive,” but

he was also a “fantastic speaker and super engaging.”

Caldwell described Croutch’s style in a spoken interview with The Varsity as a “very non-confrontational way of dealing with really complex, awful subjects. He takes you through everything and he’s open to all perspectives.

Whatever you have to bring to the table, he’s willing to meet with you where you’re at.”

Centring Indigenous experiences According to Croutch, a crucial aspect of “Speaking our Truths: The

Journey Towards Reconciliation” is to take learning about Indigenous cultures and the histories of treaties involving Indigenous peoples, and ask participants to “shift their focus from the differences of Indigenous peoples, to how ones’ [sic] own beliefs, practices and histories have impacted the health and wellness, self-esteem, and the socio-economic wellbeing of Indigenous Peoples.”

For Macdonald, Faltynek, and Caldwell, this personal approach to learning about the modern effects of

features@thevarsity.ca

not passive shame: Indigenous cultural competency

workshops encourage cess of self-reflexivity” colonial history made the sessions more impactful and further encouraged them to consider how they can use their own experiences to help elevate Indigenous voices.

Faltynek reflected that one way to avoid becoming a performance-based ally is to bring the issues of Indigenous experiences to the public.

She be-

lieves that voting is a huge part of being an active ally. She noted that many Indigenous peoples experience geographical barriers to voting, and that, as a result, it’s the responsibility of In-

digenous and non-Indigenous people who can vote to support politicians who will prioritize issues affecting Indigenous peoples.

A key part of reaching reconciliation in Canada is to increase the amount of education surrounding Indigenous peoples and cultures, and to emphasize reconciliation as a current event. Faltynek emphasized the importance of integrating this knowledge into classrooms and courses. “Make it mandatory,” she said about education on Indigenous histories. “Just formalize it… a little bit more [and expand] it from a single workshop into a course or a program.”

The formalization of education on issues affecting Indigenous peoples has already had some successful applications in other faculties. In one of Caldwell’s classes, Indigenous knowledge systems were integrated into the study of architecture.

Caldwell explained how the studio featured guest instructor Amos Key Jr., a member of the Mohawk Nation and Brock University’s first vice-provost Indigenous engagement, and his brother Alfred Keye, a Faith Keeper and author. They gave a presentation on the Haudenosaunee creation story and spiritual worldviews, and Croutch also held workshops as part of the introduction to the course.

Caldwell and the other students in

the studio then had to design a museum room around Haudenosaunee objects, which came from the Woodland Cultural Centre and the Mohawk Institute Residential School. Caldwell emphasized that this integration of Indigenous knowledge systems and learning is the “way forward for architecture,” which he noted still had a “long way to go.”

He explained that while this process was exciting and new, “it’s really hard to move forward without completely unpacking everything about how the practice [of architecture] is situated.” Much of the discipline is rooted in Westernized and Eurocentric knowledge, and it has remained that way for a long time.

However, for Caldwell, although the process of unlearning was difficult, it was not impossible. Given the right resources and the breadth of knowledge that instructors like Croutch can provide, centring Indigenous experiences in our education just takes active participation and dedication.

A necessary wake-up call Indigeneity and its histories are often described as ‘complicated.’ This notion seems to be one of the largest barriers to learning about Indigenous histories, cultures, and current affairs in Canada. But the truth is, the more education and understanding you obtain about the differences, the similarities, and the ways that Indigenous worldviews can be integrated with even the most Westernized disciplines, the more solvable these seemingly unsolvable issues can be.

“It was a really good reminder that reconciliation is a two-way street,” Macdonald said about the necessity of active engagement over issues affecting Indigenous peoples from those who do not belong to Indigenous cultures. She referred to it as a wake-up call about how a lot of her understanding of reconciliation was framed in a Western perspective.

“Without being able to appreciate, understand, and celebrate the differences and different understandings of what reconciliation might look like to another culture and to people who have a different way of knowing, there’s no way we’re going to be successful,” she said.

“Just because it’s complicated isn’t a good enough reason to say that it’s too hard.”

Faltynek believes that although many people understand issues affecting Indigenous peoples as being an overwhelming problem to address, learning more about them showed her that, while they’re nuanced, it is very possible to engage with them.

“It has the same solutions that… we’ve used for other populations,” she said. “It’s the same playbook. We just need to do it, and just having an awareness… and knowing that we can do something about this — hopefully that brings people the comfort to sandwich or bookend any aversion or intrinsic guilt or whatever negative emotions they might experience when they learn about what’s happened.”

There is no singular way to become more of an active ally and participant in Indigenous reconciliation. However, talking with Croutch and these three students revealed some concrete steps to check off along the way.

Firstly, seek awareness and encourage your own curiosity. Attend workshops such as Croutch’s. Take two hours of your day that you would normally spend watching Netflix to attend the workshop. Pay attention to who you are following on social media. Demand more from the education system. Altering curricula is difficult but clearly not impossible.

Secondly, consider how your current experiences relate to Indigenous experiences. As Faltynek suggested, ask your professors or yourself about how a topic you are studying impacts Indigenous peoples.

Finally, see every learning experience as another step toward resolving a completely solvable situation. Vote for parties that prioritize Indigenous peoples. Disseminate knowledge about issues affecting Indigenous peoples to others. After all, there is a long avenue to reconciliation, but many of the steps along the way are simple — they can be as easy as listening to others or asking a question.

Arts & Culture

March 29, 2021 vrsty.ca/arts arts@thevarsity.ca

“We’re human”: four U of T students reflect on anti-Asian racism In light of the Atlanta spa shootings, rise in hate crimes

Jasmin Akbari, Vanessa Lai, Rebecca Skoll, Ines Wong Varsity Staff

Vanessa Lai: The “model minority” is not real — and it is definitely not a compliment As anti-Asian hate crimes have surged since the start of COVID-19, media coverage and surrounding conversations have given many different takes on anti-Asian violence with one recurring phrase: the “model minority.”

This myth does not lift up Asians in North America. It’s a term that was coined in 1966 by William Petersen, a white sociologist, to divide racialized communities — ranking them based on Caucasian standards.

The ‘model minority’ is a backhanded compliment used to dismiss anti-Asian racism. It is reinforced when, for example, I’m told I should be good at math because “all Asians are,” or when Hollywood only pushes media that shows Asian Americans living the ‘American dream’: going to Ivy League universities and having high-income jobs.

Statistics used in support of the concept often neglect how these numbers fluctuate between varying Asian demographics. Since Japanese and Chinese Americans are among the select few that are highly educated with high income, these numbers are falsely used to represent the entire Asian American community.

According to a study released last year, the Southeast Asian American community alone has approximately 460,000 people living in poverty and over one million in low-income households.

Hmong Americans rank the lowest of all racialized groups in the US across different measures of income.

Of all employed Asian Americans, 25 per cent work in service, retail, and hospitality jobs, and Asian American women — who work many of those jobs — ranked highest in unemployment during the pandemic.

Dismissing anti-Asian racism based on biased data perpetuating the model minority myth is not only dismissive to Asian suffering; it also promotes anti-Black and anti-Indigenous sentiments, showing them as “lesser” racialized communities, as their statistics show low rates of education and earnings.

It is crucial to highlight that activism in support of Asians does not aim to diminish the struggle of other minoritized groups; different racialized communities face violence simultaneously. Seeking reasons to minimize anti-Asian racism is harmful.

Speak out, get informed, and support your Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) peers. There are many resources out there that you can use to educate yourself and support AAPI communities

through tangible action.

Anti-Asian racism doesn’t have a curfew, so neither does the endless cycle of consuming news, resources, and call-to-action posts. While activism is important, sacrificing mental health is neither healthy nor sustainable.

In the midst of trauma, grief, and heightened distress, allocating time every day to step back and focus on your own mental well-being is not selfish; it is necessary. Foster open conversations and support.

Take care of yourselves and each other.

Rebecca Skoll: “Asian, but not too Asian” — solving the puzzle of my Asian-Canadian identity Growing up with a Chinese mother and a white father, I never had just one label, but three: Chinese, white, and Canadian. I never felt the need to pick just one until I realized that people are not satisfied with ambiguity.

The need for clear-cut labels is especially obvious when I reflect on my experiences being in public with either my mother or my father, which were quite different. I never knew why until I accepted the key racial difference between my parents that people could not see past.

When I am with my father, people assume that we are not biologically related. In one notable incident, my dad, my two sisters, and I were in line to buy bus tickets in Toronto; my mother was looking at the map on the other side of the station.

The vendor simply would not believe that we were really my dad’s daughters.

After minutes of the vendor ‘jokingly’ questioning my dad, my mother came back. The vendor quickly put the pieces together, and we got our tickets. Being nine years old at the time, I did not understand why my dad was seen so differently from my mother, my sisters, and myself.

My experiences with my mother are drastically different. When people see me with her, it makes sense. My mother has experienced endless microaggressions, from people complimenting her English to calling her slurs. However, her role as my biological parent has not once been questioned.

Confusion and commentary on my ethnicity were not limited to when I was with my parents. A white friend once complimented my eyes for being “Asian, but not too Asian.” I was praised for being exotic — but not too exotic.

Similarly, my Chinese family had a game of comparing which one of my sisters and I looked the most white. My ethnicity became a puzzle for people to try and solve — a puzzle that I could not even solve myself.

This limbo made accepting my Asian identity that much more difficult since I was constantly being praised for the white-leaning aspects of myself. I remember staring into the mirror and

trying to decide if the person staring back was Chinese or white. I did not see myself as Chinese, and, conversely, I did not see myself as white.

In all honesty, I have not yet solved the puzzle of my ethnic identity, and I don’t know if I ever will. I feel that I will always be between labels. However, as I’ve endured microaggressions surrounding my ethnicity, I have learned that there is no such thing as being “too Asian” — because being Asian is not a fault.

Jasmin Akbari: Self-policing in public spaces — hiding parts of my identity to avoid conflict On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. It did not take long for people to begin posting comments, videos, and pictures depicting Chinese people as filthy, disgusting, and bringers of disease.

In the midst of the political and social climate that we are in, I knew that something terrible would happen. When the shooting in Atlanta occurred, I was not shocked. I also was not shocked when hours after the attack, police officers blatantly said that the shooter had a “bad day.”

This was not the first instance of anti-Asian violence, and it was only a matter of time before people started to notice these crimes have been occurring.

Despite growing up identifying proudly with my Chinese heritage, I have nonetheless been subject to hearing nursery rhymes surrounding the shape of Asian eyes, being told I eat everything from dogs to grass, and having people give me nasty looks when I speak Mandarin with my mother.

When the pandemic was declared, I knew things would only get worse, and for the first few months, I was worried for my mother’s safety. While she has always been a strong woman who is not afraid to push back, I recognized that with the current social and political climate, there would be some who would feel entitled to act and behave a certain way toward Asian Canadians.

In addition to being fearful for my mother, I have also self-policed in public spaces to avoid conflict, including by avoiding speaking Mandarin. The lack of understanding about the complexity of this virus has resulted in the immediate scapegoating of the Asian community as the cause of the pandemic.

As an example, from my experience, I have learned that some people will be okay with using the term ‘China virus’ outwardly and they will immediately feel uncomfortable in the presence of someone who is Asian.

I self-police aspects of my Chinese identity that I’m proud of because there is always a possibility that someone will do or say something terrible.

The shootings in Atlanta, as well as a recent report

FIONA TUNG/THEVARSITY

detailing more than 1,000 racist attacks on Asian Canadians this past year, show that this is already a reality.

Ines Wong: It was convenient to ignore us; now it’s convenient to scapegoat us It happened on a Friday night. We were heading out to dinner in Québec City; there were eight of us, and we were in a good mood, enjoying the highs of finishing exams.

Then we passed by an open-patio restaurant, and a group of partygoers took our presence as an invitation.

“Ayyy!” they shouted. The partygoers stood and clasped their hands together, bowing at us again and again. Two of them pulled on their eyes to narrow them unnaturally and leered at us. “Welcome to Canada!”

My friends and I are all Chinese Canadian. We all grew up in Canada. We ignored those partygoers, but I still remember the shock of it even though it was years ago.

“Welcome to Canada,” they said.

“You don’t belong here,” they implied. “We think you’re an outsider.”

On the same trip, a taxi driver echoed this sentiment. “Where are you from?” he asked us. When we told him that we’re from Toronto, he frowned.

“But where are you really from?”

I grew up in a predominantly East-Asian community. My friends and I would frequent the Chinese bakery across from our school; for special occasions, my family would ‘yum cha,’ go for Korean barbecue, or order sushi. However, I also grew up reading books like Harry Potter and watching Marvel films. The media we were exposed to had little to no Asian representation — and that impacted me.

The first time I tried my hand at creative writing, I was eight. I tried to give my protagonist my last name, Wong. It felt weird. Odd. I erased it and wrote a white name instead.

For years, it almost felt like I wasn’t allowed to write any Asian characters. They were barely represented in the media; if they existed, they were often portrayed as a stereotype — see Harry Potter’s Cho Chang. Usually, they were sidelined or killed and easily forgotten. And that’s exactly what has been happening in the real world.

Look at the shootings in Atlanta, which police refuse to label as a racist hate crime. Look at the recent spikes in anti-Asian racism. Our perceived lack of significance, combined with the spread of racist fear-mongering, has alienated us and painted a target on our backs.

We shouldn’t have to suffer through this. We belong here. Stop erasing us or singling us out. We aren’t the enemy. We aren’t strange alien beings.

We’re human.

vrsty.ca/arts

MARCH 29, 2021

“I lived with his art”: remembering U of T professor David Buller 20 years after his murder Karyn Sandlos reflects on her uncle’s legacy

Alexa DiFrancesco UTSC Bureau Chief

Traditionally, revelers witness the coming of a new calendar year, hoping for it to bestow new opportunities and fortune. Just months ago, however, as clocks struck midnight, public sentiments loomed differently; accompanying the clean slate of a new year was the reminder to reflect.

Many would observe a year since the commencement of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I would be celebrating my 20th birthday.

Karyn Sandlos would grieve the 20-year commemoration of her uncle’s death — the day when former U of T fine arts professor, David Buller, was found dead in his office at U of T’s 1 Spadina Crescent.

The night before, Buller had missed an evening

lecture; concerned, his students knocked on his door, unaware that his body, stabbed seven times, lay on the other side. This horrific event occurred on January 18, 2001; Buller’s killer remains unknown to this day.

When I told Sandlos my age, she said, “That is so awesome that you realize you weren’t even born when this happened. That is so powerful to me because it means David isn’t being forgotten. The next generation at University of Toronto is going to have [the] chance to know about this, and that’s so important.”

Sandlos, a U of T graduate herself, informed me that sharing her uncle’s legacy is what inspired her to reach out to The Varsity. Over a Zoom call, Sandlos explained that, following the recent release of an Unsolved Mysteries episode about her uncle’s murder, Sandlos had wanted to “call on [her] network” in the Toronto art scene.

“This case affected so many people: David’s

friends, the university — I still hear from his former students,” Sandlos shared. “Many people would like to know the answer to what happened to David Buller, and we’re just going to keep working on this until we get that answered.”

Reflecting on January 18, 2001 Sandlos’ current search for answers is one that echoes the original plea for help she made on behalf of her family following Buller’s death.

“As soon as we realized that the police didn’t have DNA evidence in this case, we were going to need to rely on someone coming forward,” she recalled. “Either somebody who knew something or the person who actually murdered David. I really felt like a public appeal from the family [would] have more impact, say, than the police making a public appeal.”

Although Sandlos has been a relentless advocate for her uncle’s murderer to come forward, she described her initial reaction to his death as numbness. She recalls sharing a cab ride with her roommate immediately after the murder, during which she’d passed Buller’s office.

“I started hearing about the case on the radio.

And I said to the cab driver, ‘Have you heard yet whether they caught somebody? Do they know who murdered the professor?’ — almost like it was happening to somebody else, not me. And he said, ‘No, no, no, they haven’t caught anyone yet.’ That was the conversation as we passed what was essentially the crime scene.”

Buller’s teachings “History counsels patience: / tyrants come, like plagues, but none / can rule the roost for ever.”

These lines are from W. H. Auden’s poem “Loneliness,” a work that Sandlos claimed inspired Buller’s final painting. She explained that her uncle embedded some of Auden’s words in his piece, which he titled “History Counsels Patience.”

“I go back to those lines; I have them on a card above my desk. I look at them every day, multiple times a day,” Sandlos reflected. “It almost feels like a communication from David. How is it that in his

Buller is still remembered by the U of T community.

COURTESY OF KARYN SANDLOS

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final painting, he had something he wanted to communicate to the world about patience and about time?”

When asked if her uncle often explained his paintings to her, Sandlos said that Buller did not often give lectures. Rather, he was “always interested” in the lives of his nieces and nephew. Buller’s curiosity is a characteristic Sandlos vividly remembered from having once watched a recording of one of his lectures.

“He was always researching and visiting art exhibitions so that he could be current in what he was teaching,” Sandlos mentioned.

“He was somebody who particularly [LGBTQ+] students gravitated toward because he was openly gay, and he was someone who would support research in queer histories that a lot of students would be interested in, but they wouldn’t necessarily undertake that research without support from a faculty member.”

Sandlos, now an associate professor at the Art Institute of Chicago, claimed that her uncle’s attentive approach to teaching has impacted how she interacts with her students.

“We always think of teaching as being about giving information, knowledge… What’s equally as important — maybe more important — in teaching is listening: being curious about somebody else, helping somebody formulate what they’re about, as an artist and a person.”

Buller’s influence as an uncle Though she was unable to discuss art with her uncle before his death, Sandlos remembered regularly being inspired by Buller’s talent.

“David’s mother had two ginormous abstract canvases of David’s up in her dining room, and they were facing each other on opposite walls, so they kind of framed the room,” Sandlos described.

“I just thought they were so different from anything else I’d seen anywhere else; they were full of colour and movement and emotion,” Sandlos remembered.

“Eventually, I made the connection like, ‘Oh, my funny uncle makes this really interesting abstract art that is saying things about the world and about him… but not in a literal way, not in a representational way.’ ” Most importantly, Sandlos attributed Buller’s art to “shaping [her] worldview” by teaching her that art consists of indirect expression.

“We can communicate through abstraction — sometimes more powerfully than through language or through more direct means.”

Post-apocalypse 101: how to live in a world that wants to wipe you off its face

This Place: 150 Years Retold sheds light on Indigenous survival, resistance

Rebecca Chan Varsity Contributor

Have you ever wondered, should it occur in your lifetime, what would happen if you survived Armageddon? As the Earth crumbles at your feet, death is nigh and doom imminent — yet you somehow live to tell the tale. What then?

I had never been inclined toward such contemplations until I read the words of Alicia Elliot, who, in the foreword of This Place: 150 Years

Retold, writes: “As Indigenous people, we all live in a post-apocalyptic world. The world as we knew it ended the moment colonialism started to creep across these lands.”

Indeed, there exist people who have survived, people who had their world irrevocably altered and have had to live life in the aftermath — the Indigenous peoples of Canada.

This particular notion of a life after doomsday gripped my mind and accompanied me through every multichromatic page of this work. The book constantly reminded me of how insurmountable the situation for Indigenous peoples was and how they fought to overcome it regardless.

This Place: 150 Years Retold is a graphic novel collection of 10 works, written and illustrated by 21 contributors, that aims to shed light on the Indigenous tales eclipsed by the history written by ‘victorious’ colonials.

Spanning 150 years and nearly 300 pages, this collective work of art tells the stories of wise chiefs, strong women, brave children, and even supernatural beings, each of whom played a part in shaping Indigenous history. This Place illustrates — both figuratively and literally — the efforts of a people to carve out their identities in a nation so determined to erase them, and to fight for equal rights in a land that is rightfully theirs.

What I have just described might sound familiar to many, given how history is rife with accounts of oppression and subsequent insurgence. However, after having experienced this

anthology for myself, I can assure you that the graphic novel as a medium adds a unique, threedimensional flavour that beckons one to not just read but live.

The Métis woman who horsewhipped the man who disrespected her fellow sisters, the Wasauksing soldier who fought nobly for a country that did nothing to repay him, and even the young girl who witnessed the murder of her friend at the hands of his colonial foster parents — all of these are stories that so vividly illustrate palpable emotion and absolute injustice.

Be that as it may, this anthology is not the story of victims; it is the account of homegrown heroes who refused to sit back and be told what to do — the people who survived the end of their world. It powerfully depicts how, with great patience, grace, and far more tolerance than can be said of the settlers who invaded their lands, these Indigenous communities emerged as triumphant victors where common history would have you see them as conquests.

In a way, this graphic novel is the antithesis of Indigenous peoples’ suffering.

Colonials aimed to dehumanize, force assimilation, and pervert age-old traditions; however, this work illuminates Indigenous peoples’ humanity, sets them apart, and celebrates their culture.

So, if you ever find yourself wondering how to navigate a post-apocalyptic world, look no further than This

Place: 150 Years Retold, and be inspired by the grit, strength, and solidarity of the Indigenous peoples of this country in their efforts to uphold their identity and stake claim to their rightful inheritance.

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ARTS & CULTURE

arts@thevarsity.ca

Cutting off all my hair: a non-binary Indigenous person isn’t necessarily Two-Spirit On navigating identity, internalized racism, lateral violence Ava Truthwaite Varsity Contributor

I was eight years old the first time I thought about cutting all of my hair off. I stood in front of the waterspeckled bathroom mirror with a hairbrush in one hand, the other securing the dark tumbleweed in a messy pile atop my head. I shoved the rat’s nest into a hat, stuffing the longer pieces in at the sides and tugging at the shorter ones in the front, trying to arrange it into a messy boy’s hair cut.

I felt a twinge of excitement when I saw the kid staring back at me in the mirror. Someone who looked like the picture of myself I had in my head.

My head snapped to the bathroom door as my mom called my name from down the hall. I looked back at the person in the mirror and, with a deep sigh, pulled the hat from my head and let my hair tumble down onto my broad shoulders.

It took 13 more years to finally see my true self reflected in the mirror. The pandemic shut me inside my house with nothing to do but look inward at the many things about myself that I kept locked away for so long.

Among those many things were my feelings about gender. Thoughts about gender have always been unsettling for me. I would never let myself think too long about the discomfort I’d feel when someone called me ‘miss’ or ‘girl.’

It took me two years of therapy before I was finally able to tell my therapist that I didn’t feel like a boy, but I also didn’t feel like a girl. I told her, tears dropping from my cheeks, that I felt stupid and like I was making it up.

Telling my therapist was an awakening for me.

The tears and the discomfort I felt when I looked at myself in the mirror hadn’t been enough to make me understand that something about the way my body looked didn’t match up with how I felt. Two weeks after that therapy session, I cut all of my hair off.

Personally, exploring my gender has been inextri-

FIONA TUNG/THEVARSITY

cably tied to exploring my Indigeneity. Early on in my gender navigation, I told my girlfriend that I felt that ‘non-binary’ was the right way to describe my experience of gender.

With my permission, my girlfriend disclosed to her own therapist that I’m non-binary and that she’d be using they/them pronouns when talking about me from then on. Knowing that I am Indigenous, my girlfriend’s therapist didn’t hesitate to assume that I was Two-Spirit. When my girlfriend told me this, I felt something in the pit of my stomach drop.

Reflecting on this moment now, I realize that my confusion and anger with being called Two-Spirit by a non-Indigenous racialized person was rooted in internalized racism, which is very much like the three-headed Hydra from Greek mythology. You cut one head off, and three more grow back in its place. As soon as I started to feel like I was finding my footing in my Indigeneity, uncertainty, frustration, and confusion reared their heads.

Though it wasn’t the therapist’s intention, having this label placed on me without my input or consent was a form of lateral violence — inherently rooted in the colonialist ideology and rhetoric that all Indigenous peoples look and act a certain way.

There are plenty of Indigenous people, such as Canada’s Drag Race contestant Ilona Verley and Indigenous activist Geo Neptune, who feel connected to Two-Spirit identity. As Geo Neptune said, “[Two-Spirit is] an umbrella term that bridges Indigenous and Western understandings of gender and sexuality.”

There is not one definition of what it means to be Two-Spirit. Many of these definitions and understandings vary by nation. Crucially, Two-Spirit does not necessarily mean a non-binary Indigenous person. Though an Indigenous non-binary person can also identify as Two-Spirit, one does not preclude the other.

For some, being Two-Spirit involves honouring their gender identity or identities with respect to

their sexual orientation. For others, it’s about honouring the masculine and feminine parts of themselves and the spirit of each that they embody. Historically, Two-Spirit people held specific roles and responsibilities within Indigenous communities.

In Geo Neptune’s words, “Two-Spirit is not a poetic way for non-native LGBTQ people to express themselves.” It is not for one to haphazardly apply to any gender non-conforming Indigenous person whom they come across. It is deeply spiritual, meaningful, and multifaceted.

Julia Hutlet: how beadwork connects her to Métis identity Law student, artist on the meld of First Nations beading, European embroidery

Kate Haberl Varsity Staff

Vancouver sunsets, and California beaches are all among Julia Hutlet’s sources of inspiration for her beaded earrings.

I first met Hutlet when we were both delegates at Equal Voice’s 2021 Daughters of the Vote (DOTV) program, which I later reviewed. I was struck by how passionately she spoke of Indigenous issues and how beautiful her beaded creations were. After interviewing Hutlet for the DOTV piece, I wanted to highlight her incredible creations, and she was kind enough to agree to a written interview with me.

“When I learned how to bead… I really felt like I belonged to the [Métis] community and was not just someone claiming an identity because it was in my genetics,” Hutlet wrote to The Varsity.

For the Métis people, beading is a significant cultural practice. According to Hutlet, Métis beadwork is a meld of First Nations beading and European embroidery.

The art of beading Hutlet first learned to bead through her employment at Riel House, a national historic site that used to be home to Louis Riel’s mother. The site pays homage to Riel, who was executed for leading the Métis people in the Northwest Resistance against the Canadian government, which was encroaching on their way of life. Located in Hutlet’s hometown of Winnipeg, Riel House allows visitors to learn about and experience Métis culture.

Initially learning on flat felt, Hutlet began learning how to bead with the two-needle method, taught by Louise Gordey and Janelle Poiron, before moving to the one-needle method, taught by Teresa Byrne. In the two-needle method, two needles and two pieces of thread are used simultaneously. One needle is used

to string the beads while the other is used to tack down each individual bead.

The one-needle method is similar, but uses only one needle — as the name would suggest. Hutlet favours the one-needle method because she beads in small increments.

After perfecting her craft on flat felt, Hutlet taught herself to bead earrings, which she now makes and sells while attending law school at the University of British Columbia.

Making a typical pair of earrings is an involved process, taking anywhere between two to four hours to complete. Hutlet begins with a brick stitch, creating a triangle on which the finding — the hook part you put in your ear — will hang. Hutlet reinforces the stitch before starting on the fringe, counting beads, and matching their sizes.

She threads through the brick stitch, carefully maintaining the right tension to ensure that the earrings will sway but still look polished, with the string hidden. Next, to ensure that the earrings are secure, Hutlet burns the string after weaving it through the brick stitch. Then, she attaches the findings with pliers.

Connection, medicine, joy Although creating the earrings is a physical process, it is also inseparably tied to Hutlet’s culture and identity as a Métis woman.

“Métis women would ‘decorate’ their men in beadwork vests, hats, gauntlets… so that when the men went to trade with First Nations or European settlers, they looked very wealthy and important,” Hutlet wrote.

Some particular designs are also symbolically linked to the Métis, who are known as the “flower beadwork people.” Métis beaded flowers always have an odd number of petals and one vine connecting all of the flowers. The vine was traditionally white, but it

is now green in much of modern Métis beadworking.

Hutlet considers beading to be a form of medicine.

“With earrings, you are able to carry that medicine with you everywhere you go,” Hutlet wrote.

Bringing joy to people who wear her creations is one of Hutlet’s main motivations for selling and giving away what she beads. Moreover, Hutlet enjoys beading and only does so when she is in a positive frame of mind to ensure that her creations never hold bad energy.

Beading Métis identity, community As beading is a cultural practice, in Hutlet’s view, it would be cultural appropriation for settler Canadians to use Indigeneity to sell products or to profit off of Indigenous beading methods. It is, however, encouraged to support Indigenous artists like Hutlet by purchasing and wearing their creations.

For Hutlet, beading is particularly important to her identity as a Métis woman. Hutlet didn’t know that she was Métis until she was nearly an adult, which is a common story for many Métis people whose families could often pass as white and chose to do so in the face of colonialism and racism.

As Hutlet wrote, “nobody tells you how to begin” when you find out that you are Métis.

Finding out that you are Indigenous when you thought you were white is a shock. Hutlet was accused of seeking attention when trying to discover her Indigenous culture and heritage.

It wasn’t until she started university that Hutlet felt comfortable fully exploring her Indigeneity, and it was a summer job at the Riel House that led her to beading. Beadwork made Hutlet feel truly connected to her community, partly because of its significance to the Métis people, and partly because Riel House was a supportive

You can find Hutlet’s work on Instagram, @beadworkbyjulia.

COURTESY OF JULIA HUTLET

environment in which Hutlet met close Métis friends. Hutlet craved cultural support, and she found it through beading.

If you would like to support Hutlet’s beading, you can find her work on Instagram, @beadworkbyjulia.

Science

March 29, 2021 vrsty.ca/science science@thevarsity.ca

The ethics of science research: reviewing U of T’s funding from Huawei

Recipient Gennady Pekhimenko: “we’re going to be curious; we’re going to learn things anyway” Elisha Kelman Varsity Contributor

Tech research requires funding — but there are often ethical concerns regarding how that funding is used, especially when it comes from corporate pockets. Last year, a U of T study found that many prominent artificial intelligence researchers fund their projects with support from large tech firms, whose products have been criticized for military and surveillance applications.

One company that has received particular scrutiny for its research partnerships is the China-based telecommunications giant, Huawei.

Amid these concerns, The Varsity examined the scale of Huawei-funded research at U of T. The arguments made for Huawei-funded research, from both the university and a researcher, form a case study for how ethical concerns over research partnerships with the company are handled in Canada.

Security and ethical concerns surround Huawei Researchers at the University of Toronto maintain a number of strategic partnerships to share research funding, expertise, and facilities. These partnerships can be formed with corporate entities, other universities, or even other governments. The university has one such partnership with Huawei.

According to a university spokesperson, University of Toronto researchers have collected an average of $2 million per year since 2016 from Huawei through the strategic partnership. In addition to the money received directly from Huawei, U of T researchers have also received more than $400,000 from Huawei-sponsored grants through the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) in the 2019–2020 fiscal year, and more than $1.5 million from the same source since 2014.

In February, the federal government announced a new agreement between the NSERC and Huawei that would increase the availability of Huawei grants for Canadian researchers.

Critics of the decision cited security concerns around Huawei’s involvement in Canadian research.

A number of prominent research universities in the United States — including the University of California Berkeley and Stanford University — have ended their research partnerships with Huawei over similar concerns and allegations of intellectual property theft from

the corporate giant. The University of Oxford has also suspended funding from Huawei, citing “public concerns.”

Since U of T signed the strategic partnership agreements, numerous corporate and ethical concerns have surrounded Huawei.

The company is facing charges in the United States for theft of intellectual property (IP), and numerous concerns have been raised by countries that share intelligence with Canada about the potential security risks of allowing Huawei to operate in their countries, citing Huawei’s close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

Additionally, reporting from The Globe and Mail and The New York Times suggest that Huawei has been providing technological infrastructure that underpins the sustained human rights abuses against the minoritized Uyghur people in northwestern China. Documents obtained by The Washington Post and corroborated

by Huawei officials in late 2020 show that Huawei built facial recognition software to identify Uyghur people and report their movements to the authorities in 2018.

These concerns informed many people’s criticism of the new NSERC-Huawei partnership that was announced earlier this year.

University responds In an email to The Varsity, a university spokesperson wrote that corporate research partnerships “can help take discoveries to the global marketplace sooner and provide researchers and trainees with access to cutting-edge technology, resources, and data.”

“When we create IP in collaboration with industry partners, U of T always retains perpetual rights to use the technologies in our research and education programs,” the spokesperson added. The particular stipulations in the agreement that would govern Huawei’s ability to access and use the IP were not disclosed.

Finally, the spokesperson identified the Huawei partnership as being in line with present federal government guidelines. “The University of Toronto looks to the Canadian federal government for actionable direction and guidance on this matter. There has been no change in the government advice with respect to Huawei Canada. In the event there are changes to government guidance, we would of course respond and comply.”

The Varsity looked at publicly available data which shows that, in the 2019–2020 fiscal year, the Huawei-NSERC grants have gone to four

The Bahen Centre for Information Technology houses the lab of Gennady Pekhimenko, who spoke to The Varsity about his research funded by Huawei.

REBECCA CHAN/THEVARSITY

IRIS DENG/THEVARSITY

different research teams in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

One of these researchers is Ted Sargent, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation (VPRI). The office of the VPRI administers U of T’s IP, and, as its head, Sargent is ultimately responsible for university-wide research strategy, research ethics, and drafting and negotiating all research agreements with corporate partners.

Sargent simultaneously heads the eponymous Sargent Group — a group of eight U of T labs — that has received $642,100 from Huawei-NSERC grants since 2015, which is more than a third of the total Huawei-NSERC grants received by U of T researchers in that time period.

Sargent, along with two other recipients, did not agree to be interviewed for this story.

However, The Varsity was able to speak with Gennady Pekhimenko, who heads the EcoSystem research lab at U of T and has been a recipient of Huawei funding since early in his career.

A researcher responds According to Pekhimenko, this new reality is a boon for Canadian researchers. “There was definitely a boomerang effect when they [got] kicked out of [the United States]. Obviously, they [have] way more money right now to spend on Europe and Canada,” he said in an interview with The Varsity.

Pekhimenko’s lab focuses on improving the efficiency of deep learning systems that can support a number of technologies that can be found in your phone, a university lab, or a security and surveillance system. The lab received its first Huawei-NSERC grant last year, for $93,989. Huawei’s prior funding of Pekhimenko’s research was not through the NSERC and The Varsity was not able to independently verify its total.

Pekhimenko wasn’t concerned about IP theft from Huawei, noting that U of T’s central offices are responsible for making sure the contracts are in order. He argued that “there are a lot of other companies that can be attacked in the same manner. In terms of whether I worry about that or not, I [really don’t] because everything I do with them, I just make it all in the public domain. We publish immediately, so there’s nothing to steal.”

And while he is aware of accusations leveled against Huawei, Pekhimenko is not convinced that such concerns should affect decisions about academic research. “I buy the concern but in that spirit, you should limit pretty much anything you shouldn’t do,” he said.

“I mean, refrigerators [and] TVs were invented for the military purpose first; a lot of major inventions were done that way. There are other harsher cases like nuclear weapons, right?

All of that can be used in a good way or [a] bad way. Should we just delay science just because of that? No, we’re going to be curious; we’re going to learn things anyway.”

Is there a need for a stricter policy?

Formulating a university policy on working with Huawei is a very politically charged issue.

Lynette Ong, an associate professor of political science with a cross-appointment at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy’s Asian Institute, addressed some of the complicating factors in an interview with The Varsity.

Regarding the potential risk of IP theft or other security risks, Ong expressed confidence in the government’s ability to make the correct decision. “I think the federal government has [Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents] with [the expertise] to make a proper assessment.”

Ong was also skeptical that decision makers at U of T could reach a different conclusion, saying “I don’t think they have the level of expertise to make a proper assessment, a superior assessment, than the federal government.”

She believes the onus should be on government agencies to weigh the factors and decide on a strategy by which the universities can abide. The federal government says it has created working groups to develop strategies that deal with security risks, but without details Ong and others are left perplexed.

Christopher Parsons, a researcher at the Citizen Lab at the Munk School, authored a lengthy report on Canadian strategy regarding Huawei. In an email to The Varsity, he made clear that he doesn’t have any particular insight into U of T’s relationship with Huawei, but reiterated a conclusion from one of his reports: government policies that affect universities must be based on public flow of information.

Parsons’ report also stressed the need for a national comprehensive set of guiding principles codified in policies. “Canada does not need a Huawei policy per se but, instead, needs a principle-driven set of integrated industrial, cybersecurity, and foreign policy strategies,” he wrote.

“These strategies must be operationalized at the policy level so as to mitigate… the risks linked with all vendors’ 5G networking appliances, and they must broadly seek to address risks, threats, and opportunities facing Canada.”

Will any of these concerns ultimately affect the types of research being done in Canada?

Recent developments indicate that they might.

Earlier this week, the Office of the Innovation Minister issued new guidelines for reviewing foreign research investments, including the types of research Huawei funds. Universities are also advised to revisit their risk assessments of research projects funded by international partners.

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SCIENCE

science@thevarsity.ca

Is mathematics discovered or invented?

U of T philosopher James Brown on the rules of the study

Khatchig Anteblian Associate News Editor

Love it or hate it, no one can deny the usefulness of mathematics. It has been used to do everything from keeping track of sheep, to building pyramids, to landing a robot on Mars, millions of kilometres away.

While none of those are exercises of pure math — counting objects, engineering, and spaceflight are all activities in the physical world — they suggest that mathematical concepts and methodologies have a place in physical reality and are effective in describing the universe around us.

The difference between mathematics and physical sciences lies in math’s lack of an empirical component. For instance, a mathematician cannot observe the tangent function’s derivative like the biologist can observe and study cell division or the physicist can observe planetary orbits.

The dichotomy between the abstractness of math and its use in describing reality raises the question of whether math is something humans discover or create. Trying to find the answer to this centuries-old debate might tell us more about ourselves than the origin of math.

Math might not actually exist To the delight of many students around the world wishing on stars during particularly gruelling homework assignments, mathematical truth may not be as true as it seems, and math might not actually be real.

This does not mean, however, that one is equal to two or that we can divide by zero and everything instantly collapses. Instead, those who hold this view treat mathematics as a kind of fiction — or, as James Brown, a professor emeritus of philosophy at U of T, put it during a conversation we had about the topic, “Mathematics is a game.

It’s something that we have created.”

According to this ‘fictionalist’ view, all mathematical truths and ideas that we know and love — parabolas, the square root of negative one, pi — are not really true in an objective sense, but are parts of the story or the game of math. Consequently, Brown said that, in this view, the rules of math “have the same status as a rule of chess,

such as ‘Bishops move diagonally,’ and that’s not an objective truth; it’s simply a tradition of playing chess.”

Therefore, ‘four times two is eight’ is as true a statement as ‘Bishop takes g5, checkmate.’ Within the framework of the game, the rules make perfect sense, but outside of the game, four, two, eight, the bishop, g5, and the checkmate aren’t actually real.

An interesting consequence of this view is that the rules of math can be changed, regardless of whether the game becomes better or worse for it. Math operates on sets of basic rules, called axioms, upon which all other mathematical theorems are built. If these rules change, math changes with them.

This leads to the conclusion that all math is based on an arbitrary set of rules, invented to fit our needs. But what does it mean to invent mathematical rules?

The sums are, in fact, getting closer to two or three as well, but you know their final result is going to be one. Since you can endlessly divide the distance in half, your calculations tell you that adding infinitely many such increments results in one.

This idea seems ridiculous at first — you can’t possibly add infinitely many numbers — but you don’t let that stop you because you’re an eager mathematician who has just stumbled upon something promising. You set out to formalize what you just found, and you define the notion of approaching a number. Then, you define an infinite sum so that it equals the value its partial sums are approaching.

Through this process, you invented some new math to make sense of what the universe was showing you. It never felt like you were making things up out of nowhere; it felt more like a discovery.

Inventing math Mathematicians invent math all the time, formalizing observations they make about the mathematical world into rules. To understand what that might be like, take for example the famous paradox of infinite sums first proposed by the Greek philosopher Zeno.

Say you’re sitting at your desk and contemplating the nature of distances between objects, and you notice that no matter how close you bring two objects together, there always seems to be more distance to go. You set these objects at two points on a number line, labelled zero and one, and you start thinking about what it means to cover the distance between them.

You can imagine that a person walking from zero to one must, at one point, pass through the point halfway between them. Then, you notice that the same applies when going between that halfway point and one, and so on.

If you start keeping track of the points visited on the way to one — a half, then a half plus a quarter, then a half plus a quarter plus an eighth, and so on — then you notice that the sums are approaching one. This makes sense because your imaginary person is walking toward the number one.

Existence, truth, and Harry Potter The view that many philosophers and working mathematicians hold is that mathematical concepts and ideas exist independently of humans.

The idea is inspired by Plato’s abstract ideals and is called ‘Platonism.’

Platonists argue that mathematical objects exist, just as you and I, a table, or the Robarts Library exist; however, mathematical objects are abstract, existing in some other corner of reality we can’t physically interact with, similar to Plato’s idea of abstract forms.

Brown thinks of it as an analogy. He said that trying to describe an observed structure or a pattern in the world is akin to “[pointing] to something in Plato’s heaven and [saying], ‘That mathematical structure [is the same] as this bit of physical structure, so it works.’ ” He also noted that this process is not infallible and requires lots of iteration to get it right.

While this idea is all well and good and lets mathematicians get on with their lives, it moves the debate one step along to the question of what it means for something to exist.

If we’re taking the claim that abstract objects exist at face value, then things need not be observable for them to be true. For instance, Harry

Potter is a fictional character and just as abstract as the idea of a number. Just like with math, the story of Harry Potter exists in our collective consciousness and has a set of properties and characteristics that everyone agrees upon.

The creation of new math, then, becomes a kind of fan fiction — working with established rules and patterns to create or discover new stories. Just as characters in a story have established patterns of behaviour, functions or formulas behave in certain ways that, when put into new situations, lead to new discoveries.

Infinity and the library of everything A consequence of Platonism is that there are more mathematical concepts and ideas waiting to be discovered beyond the math we currently know, some of which — for whatever reason — may never be discovered.

A similar idea is encapsulated in the short story by the Argentinian author, Jorge Luis Borges, called “The Library of Babel,” in which the narrator lives in a library of hexagonal rooms that contain every combination of every possible thing that can be written using 25 basic characters.

The narrator describes the joy of the initial discovery that they and everyone else in the library are in the possession of any and all knowledge; all they need to do is to find the book in which that knowledge is written. That joy is quickly diminished, however, since for every piece of legible text, the library contains millions of pages of utter nonsense.

The sheer improbability of stumbling upon a 300-page book of random letters arranged, by chance, into something legible, let alone coherent, drives the narrator into despair. Even with a vast world of undiscovered mathematical truths out there, the work of finding and formalizing these ideas can be a long and difficult process filled with many dead ends.

Humans might try endlessly to discover all that is possible to discover, but there may always be an elusive thought or an idea just out of reach.

And until we find it, there’s no sure way to know whether it exists or not. After all, if a tree falls in a forest but there’s no one there to see it, did it really happen?

vrsty.ca/science

MARCH 29, 2021

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How programmers innovated in a COVID-19 hackathon season From preserving African culture to helping freelancers receive fair pay

Adam A. Lam Varsity Contributor

Can you develop a software application to help freelancers receive fair pay, preserve the cultural transmission of Africa cultures, and help people safely socialize during COVID-19? Hackathon participants across Canada — including a score of University of Toronto students — accepted the challenge to create these solutions in a physically distant world overa tight timeline of just a few days.

Before the pandemic, most hackathons were overnight, in-person events where programmers developed software solutions to solve societal problems. Now, hackathons based in Toronto have been run online to respect physical distancing measures.

Award-winning programmers across U of T-affiliated hackathons spoke with The Varsity about their successes in finding ‘hacks’ to problems during the pandemic. These developers participated in NSBEHacks UofT 2021, a U of T student-facilitated hackathon affiliated with the National Society of Black Engineers’ (NSBE) U of T chapter that ran from February 6–7, and UofTHacks VIII, one of the largest hackathons at U of T, which ran from February 19–21.

NSBEHacks: “Reigniting African culture” with Bonfire Bonfire, which helps preserve African cultural traditions over time, was an overall winner at NSBEHacks UofT 2021.

Bonfire co-developer Rishabh Saini — a second-year computer engineering student at U of T — explained in a video interview with The Varsity that the team’s goal was to create “a platform where people could sustain the Black Indigenous culture” that they belong to, even after emigrating from their home country.

He continued to explain that cultural knowledge is often “never written down” and disappears over generations. As a solution, the team decided to develop a “social media platform” that could be used by people from younger generations to learn cultural traditions from past generations. Saini also described the capabilities of the platform as a place to exchange skills between these community members across borders.

Explaining how the team differentiated itself from competitors, Saini noted that the team — which included co-developers Keyon Jerome, Abubakar Bello, and Chinemerem Chigbo — “[was] able to bring a lot of different technologies and… combine them in a very seamless fashion,” including the Google Maps Platform API, with a “minimalist design” that was easy for users to interact with.

Reflecting on NSBEHacks 2021 as a whole, Saini said: “I would say this was by far one of the best hackathons I’ve attended” due to the virtual conferencing platform of Gather Town. He also praised the availability of mentors at the event who could “help you if you were stuck,” along with the opportunities to speak with company representatives to find opportunities for future internships and work.

NSBEHacks: improving food security FoodForAll — a mobile app that aims to reduce food waste — was also an overall winner at NSBEHacks UofT 2021, and was, additionally, the recipient of the “Google Challenge: Best Use of Google Cloud” award.

“FoodForAll connects people facing food insecurity with good food that would have been wasted otherwise,” wrote Darren Butler, a computer science undergraduate student at Philander Smith College in Arkansas, in an email to The Varsity. “While restaurants may try to produce the exact amount of food they would sell every day, it’s near impossible to be totally accurate 100% of the time.”

Butler explained that the team was inspired by a video on Twitter that appears to show

The Varsity spoke with the winners of the NSBEHacks UofT and UofTHacks VIII hackathons.

STEVE LI/THEVARSITY

restaurant workers filling a garbage can with uneaten donuts at the end of a workday. He continued: “There’s gonna be a surplus, so rather than just throw away the surplus that can’t be profited from, it makes more sense to give it away and support the community.”

Asked how the team differentiated itself, Butler wrote that the team — which also included Andrew Chen, Chetachi Ugwu-Ojobe, and Munachi Ernest-Eze — “had a diverse skillset,” including skills in developing and presenting the program.

UofTHacks VIII: helping design freelancers charge fair rates Bossify — a mobile app for helping freelancers identify fair rates of pay — won first place at UofTHacks VIII and aims to help freelancers with “the business aspect of freelancing,” explained Bossify co-developer Lori Chan, a first-year master of information student concentrating in user experience design at U of T. “Many people (me included) don’t fully consider… things like what [percentage of ] profit do I want to make?” Chan wrote. She explained that freelancers can also feel uncertainty about overcharging or undercharging their clients.

On the winning app’s inspiration, co-developer Janice Chen — also a first-year master of information student at U of T concentrating on user experience design — wrote: “Our inspiration came from Chris Do, the CEO and founder of ‘The Futur’… an online education platform for the creative community.” Chen explained how Do’s videos — including those on pricing design work and cost estimation —

focused “on how creative work is undervalued and underpaid,” and suggest solutions for designers to charge fairly.

“Designers (and as a designer myself ) are often dreamers and perfectionists who live in this ideal utopia world,” wrote Chen. “We don’t like to talk about money, but it is important to learn that business aspect to justify and allow the value of design to shine.”

On the client side, Chen explained that Bossify provides “a portal for the [designer] clients” that is pleasant to use, with a feature “to review/rate the freelancer based on their work.”

Ratings are one of the factors “considered by the algorithm when it calculates the design fee for the freelancer.”

On the freelancer’s side, Chan explained that “Bossify helps to calculate this fair pay and encourages freelancers that their work is valuable.” She continued by noting that “Freelancers simply have to input a couple factors and the algorithm will generate everything else.”

“The intention behind this review system is to foster a positive feedback loop to ensure quality work for clients — but of course, a more rigid feedback system needs to be explored and defined to ensure fair use of the system,” reflected Chen.

For both Chan and Chen, this was their first virtual hackathon. “The only thing, if any, that we struggled (or panicked) a little [with] was how notifications/announcements were all delivered via Discord. We figured [out] that we were listed as finalists at the very last minute and very much panicked,” recalled Chen.

JULIEN BALBONTIN/THEVARSITY

UofTHacks: helping students, employees collaborate Rewind — a software tool that helps users by tracking changes across whiteboard discussions — won fourth place overall and the “Major League Hacking – Best Use of Google Cloud” award at UofTHacks VIII. The program aims to improve discussions between students about problems solved with a whiteboard.

“The idea for Rewind basically came from brainstorming about painpoints about pandemic life. During virtual meetings I’ve constantly found myself looking for a way to draw exactly what I’m thinking to better share my ideas,” wrote Rewind co-developer and thirdyear engineering science student Benjamin Cheng to The Varsity.

Rewind co-developer Jim Gao, a thirdyear computer science specialist at U of T, explained to The Varsity that it is easy for students and employees in meetings to lose track of previous discussions when collaborating on a virtual whiteboard while physically distanced.

“Rewind allows students and employees to ‘go back in time’ and locate key parts of the meeting based on the topic discussed (which is automatically summarized by Rewind),” he wrote. On the win, he wrote that he believes the team differentiated itself by creating “a complete working solution that could be deployed and implemented in practice.”

Reflecting on his experience with the virtualized hackathon, Gao opined that the lack of an in-person element lessened the opportunity to get to know other hackers. However, the virtualization did result in higher productivity for his team, which included teammates Jason Liu and Kevin Wen. “Attending a hackathon virtually allows us to focus more closely on our project and hence we were able to take on larger workloads,” Gao wrote.

UofTHacks: helping ease a lack of socialization Friendle — a mobile app designed to help people make friends with similar interests — won second place at UofTHacks VIII, along with the “Telus – Leverage technology to manage/improve any mental health issue” award.

Reflecting on Friendle’s inspiration, the app’s co-developer Andrew Choi, a second-year master’s student in computer science at U of T, wrote to The Varsity: “We thought that existing matching apps had a high rate of ‘ghosting.’ So we developed Friendle for users to share personalized activities together without having to exchange awkward greetings.”

Rachel Pun, a third-year design student in the York University and Sheridan College joint program, reflected on the team’s belief of their solution’s feasibility. She wrote to The Varsity that the team’s direction was “to create a solution that connects people all around the world based on compatibility, and subsequently generate a hangout session for them.”

On the team’s win, Jacob Nishimura, Friendle co-developer and a first-year electrical and computer engineering master’s student at the University of Iowa, wrote to The Varsity that he believed one of their strengths was the team’s balance of members between the front end and back end of software development.

“In time-constrained hackathons, it can be tough to tie together frontends and backends in time.”

Nishimura added: “As an American, it was fun to interact with and learn about other participants and the Canadian sponsors. In-person hackathons usually don’t see the same amount of international participation.”

Disclosure: Adam A. Lam served as The Varsity’s Volume 140 Science Editor. Munachi Ernest-Eze currently serves as The Varsity’s Front End Web Developer.

Sports

March 29, 2021 vrsty.ca/sports sports@thevarsity.ca

Out of Left Field: Why we love basketball, from Toronto to the Philippines Two writers define their connection to the global sport Guiller Lorenzo Cenizal, Kartik Rudra Varsity Staff

Kartik Rudra: A love letter to the sport and its impact on Toronto Growing up in Toronto’s west end, there was no shortage of ice rinks available to play hockey. However, I didn’t use them. While many of my friends didn’t use them out of a dislike for hockey, I, like so many other fans, couldn’t afford to. Hockey equipment was expensive, and none of us knew anyone who played hockey enough to justify playing it.

Instead, we spent the remaining seasons of the year pounding the pavement playing basketball behind our elementary school. Even in the snow, we’d try to run ball games. We’d run different games and pretend to play as some of our favourite players, such as Kobe Bryant, Chris Bosh, and, yes, even Andrea Bargnani.

For myself and so many others in Toronto, basketball wasn’t just a sport. It was a social connector.

It didn’t matter what religion, race, or ethnicity you were, nor did it matter how good or bad you were at the sport. It was about having fun with your friends and bonding over the game you loved.

Simply put, ‘ball’ was life. And it still is.

For years, basketball was an afterthought in a hockey-crazed city. Hockey was considered the national pastime, a ‘man’s game,’ and a hallmark of our city’s culture. After all, the Toronto Maple Leafs hold a legendary status in sports. Even when they’re not winning, their influence held this city hostage.

Basketball rarely received any respect within media coverage, with television networks opting to report on the most obscure hockey news before turning their attention to basketball.

Despite all of that, basketball was slowly tightening its grip over Toronto. The ever-changing demographics of the city began to think differently about the sport. A fusion of different cultures, races, and ethnicities, in addition to the sport’s ability to capture the minds of young people and the number of hoopers balling out on pavement courts across the city, helped to skyrocket its popularity.

It was an inclusive sport. It was a sport meant for everybody.

While Vince Carter put basketball on the map during his time in Toronto, the sport took off by 2014, culminating in a first Toronto Raptors playoff appearance in six years and the beginning of the “We The North” movement. By their 2019 NBA Championship, the Raptors had managed to unite everyone in this entire city like never seen before.

Everyone, from the most passionate ballers to the casual ones who knew almost nothing about the sport, were united.

The Raptors and the sport of basketball began to represent something greater. They represented a collective identity — an identity that was forged from being ‘outsiders.’ It didn’t matter where you came from. It didn’t matter who you identified as.

When you came to Toronto, you were no longer an outsider. You were in the most diverse city in the world, and you were embraced as one of our own.

For a team that was considered an ‘outsider’ in an all-American league, and for a sport that, for most of its history in this city, was merely thought of as a side-show, it was a match made in heaven.

Toronto became a basketball city, first and foremost.

When reporters following the Raptors’ historic championship run asked Raptors President Masai Ujiri about the diverse makeup of the Raptors fanbase, he managed to sum up the meaning of this team and sport within a singular quote: “That’s something we’re really proud of. It identifies with what Toronto is, diversity.”

Guiller Lorenzo Cenizal: The Philippines and basketball — a respite for the weary and weathered Time and time again, when my father regaled me with the follies of his rash and impetuous youth, a basketball court infallibly snuck its way into the stories. Walking the mean streets of Manila, Philippines, he’d see seven hoops varying in size and shape down a single city block. Likewise, I’ve loved the sport for as long as I could remember.

As I sit here writing this piece, I’m incessantly glancing at my phone for tonight’s scores. Heck, if we weren’t in a pandemic, I could go to my local court or the University of Toronto Athletic Centre to experience it firsthand.

Yet, as I began to draft this piece, I was hit with a startling realization. I left the Philippines at the tender age of five, and while I know that basketball is the sport that defines my home country, I can’t comfortably claim to know the reasons why.

It would be arrogant to assume an entire nation I spent so little time in felt the same way as I did.

Instead of writing a passion piece on just a feeling and whim, maybe I could learn something myself. So, against my initial instinct, I consulted external sources.

An infant form of basketball found itself in the Philippines by way of Christian missionaries after Spain ceded the country to the United States in 1898. The locals were said to have learned the basics from stationed American soldiers who were on break, shooting hoops instead of rifles.

Within two decades, basketball was introduced in the Philippine education system, which resulted in early forms of intercollegiate tournaments.

As time wore on, we established a national team that did well enough to place fifth in the 1936 Olympics. In 1975, the Philippine Basketball Association became Asia’s first basketball league. Then came the era of my dad, the one where you couldn’t walk a city block without catching a glimpse of a game. It wasn’t so different from the one Sopan Deb from The New York Times observes today, as being on every street corner, “from the churches to the jails to the slums.”

I suppose that falling in love with the sport that grew concurrently with your national identity is instinctive. However, more empirically proven, Lou Antolihao, who wrote Rooting for the Underdog Spectatorship and Subalternity in Philippine Basketball, summed up basketball’s prominence in Filipino culture as a reflection of self — a game for the masses that embodies the ideals and sentiments of millions of low-income and marginalized Filipinos.

In 2013, the Philippines made headlines when basketball courts were the first things rebuilt in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Haiyan. Keeping with Antolihao’s summary, I have a working theory as to why that is. Basketball, to me, is a perfect allegory for Filipino values. It’s a game of runs, ups, and downs.

As such, poise and togetherness are paramount. It’s a game in which anything can happen — where Goliath can be felled by David and opportunity can present itself at any moment.

In a nation historically steeped in poverty and struggle, these aspects are necessary for survival — characteristics to strive toward.

That is why what began as a fun subversion that the foreigners brought for locals has matured into the respite of a nation in dire need of one.

FIONA TUNG/THEVARSITY

vrsty.ca/sports

MARCH 29, 2021

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Reflecting on the cultural appropriation of Indigenous peoples in sports From mascots to team names, it’s still happening Angad Deol Associate Sports Editor

What do Atlanta, Cleveland, Chicago, Kansas City, and Washington, D.C. all have in common?

Is it their shared success in North America’s major sports? To me and many sports fans, it’s actually their use of Indigenous imagery — in the form of mascots and names — as nothing more than cheap fanservice.

Although Cleveland and Washington have begun to scale back from their problematic pasts, Indigenous cultures are still being appropriated in sports, and it’s time to discuss it.

Prior to the nameless limbo that the Washington Football Team is currently stuck in, they used to proudly stomp onto the field night-in and night-out with a slur emblazoned on jerseys, helmets, and fan merchandise. They continued this tradition for 87 years until 2020 when the team finally decided to drop the title and review future options.

Cleveland’s Major League Baseball franchise has a similar history — with a wildly offensive mascot known as “Chief Wahoo,” characterized by bright red skin and exaggerated facial features being the unfortunate face of the franchise.

They also decided to drop the moniker in 2020 following this year’s season, after hav-

CHANTEL TENG/THEVARSITY

ing finally cut the mascot in 2019.

In the same league, the Atlanta Braves have chosen not to change their name despite many calls to do so. In the past, they faced backlash for the offensive mascot “Chief Noc-a-Homa” and their “Tomahawk Chop” fan chant during games.

In addition to the Atlanta Braves, the Chicago Blackhawks have also declined to change their name, arguing that it honours “Chief Black Hawk” as a historical figure of Illinois’ Indigenous culture, and pledging to continue raising awareness of Indigenous cultures — presumably by continuing their tradition of highlighting Indigenous histories with performances

and ovations during games. Despite pleas from activist groups, it seems that, for the foreseeable future, Chicago will continue to skate past backlash.

The Kansas City Chiefs, named after a former mayor nicknamed ‘The Chief,’ have not shied away from potential association with Indigenous imageries — with fans also celebrating moments with a ‘tomahawk chop’ and Indigenous headdresses being a huge part of fan culture prior to the team discouraging such behaviour.

That’s only a brief summary of an otherwise lengthy, traumatic, and disgusting history of the abuse of Indigenous cultures in sports. Every time I tune into the coverage of sports highlights, I cringe at the continued appropriation of Indigenous cultures. Indigenous communities continue to endure such a vile misuse and misrepresentation of their cultures while the owners of these teams rake in profits from ticket sales and merchandise.

If all the leagues want to plaster anti-racism as a focal point of their messaging, it is time to address the ongoing cultural appropriation of Indigenous peoples and to let Indigenous voices be heard.

Opinion: NCAA March Madness 2021 — women athletes deserve better

Canadian university athletics must be a part of the conversation Audrey Miatello Varsity Contributor

As the name implies, March Madness is anything but predictable. Fans might watch their favourite teams get knocked out early on, and they might see underdogs make it further in the competition than they expected. In fact, none of the millions of public brackets predicted the 2021 Sweet 16 exactly.

But this year’s tournament got off to an unpredictable start for completely different reasons than usual.

Pictures and videos started circulating on social media of the shocking discrepancies between the women’s and men’s gym equipment, meals, and tournament merchandise provided by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for March Madness.

Stanford University Sports Performance Coach Ali Kershner posted a photo on Instagram comparing the women’s gym — made up of a small rack of dumbbells and yoga mats — and the men’s gym, which boasts impressive weights and machinery.

The images were all the more disheartening because they started circulating online so soon after International Women’s Day and during Women’s History Month.

The NCAA came out with a statement shortly

after addressing the situation, recognizing that it “fell short this year” in its preparations. However, this situation is really a wake-up call about an overarching problem, as this is, unfortunately, not the only place in sports where women face barriers.

When women started to participate in sports in Canada at the end of the nineteenth century, they were mocked and put down for enjoying an activity that was, at the time, dominated by men.

Obviously, we live in a different time now than we did then. But are things much better nowadays?

Several studies have shown that, unfortunately, the answer is no. The Rally Report, published by Canadian Women & Sport and Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities, discovered that fewer university-aged women between the ages of 19 and 23 were playing sports at only 25 per cent, compared to university-aged men, at 49 per cent.

Why do women stop playing sports? Many women drop out during their teenage years for a number of complex and multifaceted reasons. The most common ones, though — cited by one in every three girls — were “low confidence,” “negative body image,” “perceived lack of skill,” or “feeling unwelcome.”

The inequality persists not just for athletes but for coaches too. For example, a report conducted by the International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics found that 84 per cent of head coaches registered with U SPORTS — the governing body for

Canadian university sports — in the 2016–2017 season were men. Meanwhile, at the time of the study, the number of women head coaches had never risen higher than when it reached 19 per cent in 2010–2011.

What’s more, The Rally Report found that, between U SPORTS and the Canadian Collegiate Athletics Association together, 97 per cent of allmen sports teams had men head coaches, whereas all-women sports teams had women coaches only 26 per cent of the time.

Going forward, universities everywhere should encourage more women to both play on and coach their sports teams. On a larger scale, women’s professional sports around the world must be made more accessible and more readily available on major streaming services and television channels to empower young women athletes.

Organizations and teams should also continue to provide more opportunities for women. We have begun to see some of this already, such as the recent all-women broadcast of the Toronto Raptors game against the Denver Nuggets game and the first woman referee in the history of the Super Bowl.

Seeing women succeed in the sports industry is inspiring to women athletes, referees, coaches, and sports fans in general. Clearly, there is a long way to go. But hopefully, someday soon, we will achieve gender equality in sports.

Going forward, universities everywhere should encourage more women to both play on and coach their sports teams.

SAMANTHA YAO VIA TIKTOK

Testing UTrain: Yoga 09 Do the workouts really work?

Alex Waddell Varsity Staff

I have never been very into yoga, which is why it took me all year to try out U of T’s virtual yoga class. Last year, I tried out a few in-person yoga classes that were either boring or way too difficult.

With the gift of the beautiful weather we had last week, I finally got back into running, and my body was feeling it.

My roommate had asked if I wanted to do yoga with her and I thought this was the perfect moment to try out the yoga classes offered by Hart House.

We ended up choosing the “Hart House Fitness ONLINE Yoga 09” video from the YouTube playlist. We chose the video because we were a bit limited on time, and this class was 45 minutes as opposed to the “Yoga - 01” video, which was an hour. As a piece of advice going forward, I would recommend starting with the “Yoga - 01” class, as it was clear that the second video was done later in the semester and was not an introductory class.

Amanda instructed the class, which was re-

corded from the Hart House studio, meaning that it was more of a seminar style such that Amanda could not see the participants. She introduced the class and mentioned that we would be building on poses learned in previous sessions with a focus on hip opening and balancing poses. My hips were excited for some stretches after getting back into running.

We would not need any props, so to prepare for the workout, my roommate and I set up our personal yoga studio with our yoga mats next to the couch in the living room. It wasn’t exactly the zen I expected from this class, but nothing about this class was what I had expected.

We began with a downward facing dog pose sequence, interspersed with planks and up-dogs.

We worked through traditional yoga moves like warrior poses, lunges, side angles, and half-moon poses. Halfway through the class, my roommate and I both attempted and failed to do a crow pose.

Amanda, on screen, was balancing all of her body weight on her arms, with her knees positioned on the back of her arms. Back in our home yoga studio, each time we took our feet off the

Nothing about this class was what I had expected.

MAHIKA JAIN/THEVARSITY

ground, we fell back. Other difficult moves had us holding our legs out to the side, wrapped up like a pretzel, and in a full bridge. The full bridge was the only move I could do thanks to my gymnastics background.

Overall, the class was much more difficult than

I had expected, but it still had me feeling stretched and excited about the possibility of improving. I will definitely be working on my crow pose this week. The weather was still beautiful, and we did the class with the doors and windows open, which along with the class, elevated my mood.

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MARCH 29, 2021

Issue 22 crossword answers

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