Issue 24, Volume 143 (April 3, 2023)

T HE VAR SI T Y

T HE VAR SI T Y

Jadine Ngan editor@thevarsity.ca

Editor-in-Chief

Makena Mwenda creative@thevarsity.ca

Creative Director

Nawa Tahir managingexternal@thevarsity.ca

Managing Editor, External

Sarah Artemia Kronenfeld managinginternal@thevarsity.ca

Managing Editor, Internal

Angad Deol online@thevarsity.ca

Managing Online Editor

Talha Anwar Chaudhry copy@thevarsity.ca

Senior Copy Editor

Khadija Alam news@thevarsity.ca

News Editor

Shernise Mohammed-Ali comment@thevarsity.ca

Comment Editor

Janhavi Agarwal biz@thevarsity.ca

Business & Labour Editor

Alexa DiFrancesco features@thevarsity.ca

Features Editor

Marta Anielska arts@thevarsity.ca

Arts & Culture Editor

Sahir Dhalla science@thevarsity.ca

Science Editor Mekhi Quarshie sports@thevarsity.ca

Sports Editor

Caroline Bellamy design@thevarsity.ca

Design Editor

Andrea Zhao design@thevarsity.ca

Design Editor

Vurjeet Madan photos@thevarsity.ca

Photo Editor

Jessica Lam illustration@thevarsity.ca

Illustration Editor

Maya Morriswala video@thevarsity.ca

Video Editor

Aaron Hong aaronh@thevarsity.ca

Front End Web Developer

Andrew Hong andrewh@thevarsity.ca

Back End Web Developer

Safiya Patel deputysce@thevarsity.ca

Deputy Senior Copy Editor

Lexey Burns deputynews@thevarsity.ca

Deputy News Editor

Jessie Schwalb assistantnews@thevarsity.ca

Assistant News Editor

Al Aref Helal utm@thevarsity.ca

UTM Bureau Chief

Alyanna Denise Chua utsc@thevarsity.ca

UTSC Bureau Chief

Emma Livingstone grad@thevarsity.ca

Graduate Bureau Chief

Ajeetha Vithiyananthan, Kyla Cassandra Cortez, Lina Tupak-Karim, Ozair Anwar Chaudhry

Associate Senior Copy Editors

Alana Boisvert, Selia

Sanchez, Tony Xun

Associate News Editors

Isabella Liu, Eleanor Park

Associate Comment Editors

Alice Boyle, Maeve Ellis

Associate Features Editors

Madeline Szabo, Milena Pappalardo

Associate A&C Editors

Seavey van Walsum, Salma Ragheb

Associate Science Editors

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

Kunal Dadlani, Alaysha Merali, Hargun Rekhi

Associate Sports Editors

Georgia Kelly, Andrew Ki

Associate B&L Editors

Arthur Hamdani, Johanna Zhang, Spencer Lu

Associate Design Editors

Cheryl Nong, Biew Biew Sakulwannadee

Associate Illo Editors

Zeynep Poyanli, Nicholas Tam, Augustine Wong

Associate Photo Editors

Olivia Belovich, Ashley Choi

Associate Video Editors

Alya Fancy Social Media Manager

Lead Copy Editors: Andrea Avila, Nichelle Budhrani, Linda Chen, Selin Ginik, Jevan Konyar, Bella Reny, Momena Sheikh, Nandini Shrotriya, Kiri Stockwood, Grace Xu, Valerie Yao

Copy Editors: Fabienne de Cartier, Anushka Dhir, Ikjot Grewal, Zarmina Jabarkhil

Designer: Olivia Belovich

Cover: Makena Mwenda & Jessica Lam

BUSINESS OFFICE

Parmis Mehdiyar business@thevarsity.ca

Business Manager

Ishir Wadhwa ishirw@thevarsity.ca

Business Associate

Rania Sadik raniasadik@thevarsity.ca

Advertising Executive

Abdulmunem Aboud Tartir atartir@thevarsity.ca

Advertising Executive

Isabella Reny, Lucas Saito, Samuel Salamun, Urooba Shaikh, Khushi Sharma, Momena Sheikh, Nandini Shrotriya, Camille Simkin, Sarah Stern, Kiri Stockwood, Ashiana Sunderji, Jishna Sunkara, Noshin Talukdar, Miran Tsay, Nina Uzonovic, Shreya Vanwari, Kyanna Velasquez, Emily Vultao, Yi Wang, Sabrina Wong, Kyleeanne Wood, Elizabeth Xu, Grace Xu, Valerie Yao, George Yonemori, Cherry Zhang, Junella Zhang

Contributors: Corinne Abouem, Caitlin Adams, Doyin Adeyemi, Zainab Afaq, Akshita Aggarwal, Simona Agostino, Layla Ahmed, Abi Akinlade, Ewa Akomolafe, Sam Aktefan, Pamela Alamilla, Justyn Aleuia, Fatima Ali, Stephanie Allen, Naomi Altwasser, Divine Angubua, Johnathan Divine Angubua, Asal Arefi, Daniyah Asad, Margaret Atkinson, Jennifer Ayow, Jayda Ayriss, Nameera Azim, Edvina Bahar, Lindsay Bain, Joanna Bakyaita, Rachel Banh, Alessia Baptista, Chiara Barsanti, Ismail Benchekroun, Katerina Isabel Benevides, Ahsen Bhatti, Emily Bottrel, Mya Brathwaite, Aidan Brogan, Nichelle Budhrani, James Bullanoff, Ece Bumin, Emily Burns, Isagani Cabezas, Emily Carlucci, Lucas Carpignano, Gabriel Carter, Corina Chahal, ChatGPT, Emily Cheng, Mei Linh Cheng, Sophie Cherubin, Tung Kwan Nathan Ching, Alyssa Choi, Jasmine Chow, Dylan Coley, Sophie Constantino, Leah Cromarty, Tiago Berbat Curio, Giselle Sami Dalili, Fabienne de Cartier, Samantha Moura Novais de Quadro, Julia Dedda, Fred Nicolae Uhlyarik Degen, Elad Dekel, Liam Donovan, Jad El Ghali, Nadia Elkadri, Romina Emtyazi, Ehsan Etesami, Emaan Fatima, Rola Fawzy, Ege Feyzioglu, Ireland Fidale, Ayesha Firoz, Anasofia Florez, Michelle Fornasier, Paige France, Rahul Gandhi, Harsimran Kaur Garcha, Alia Ginevra, Patricia Gnadt, Will Gotlib, Yotam Gubbay, Robert Guglielmin, Hannah Guo, Afra Hameed, Nicholas Heinrich, Amitai Heyl, Thai Dillon Higashihara, Amy Hirtenstein, Je Ho, Zed Hoffman-Weldon, Evan Hrivnak, Vicky Huang, Angie Hunda, Marly Ibrahim, Zoe Ibraj, Denisse Isaias, Zarmina Jabarkhil, Lucas Jacobs, Yasamin Jameh, Swathi Jeedigunta, Cedric Jiang, Yuyang Jiang, Shreya Joshi, Olivia Kairu, Sara Kallas, Jane Kang, Jasmine Kang, Anastasia Kasirye, Simran Kaur, Ahmad Khan, Dihyah Khan, Hassan Khan, Khaleda Khan, Sulaiman Hashim Khan, Julia Kim, Avi Kleinman, Selin Kose, Alexandra Kostich, Alexia Koutlemanis, Yoon-Ji Kweon, Ary Kwun, Jacky K Lai, Julie Lam, Kurtis Law, Alex Levesque, Rion Levy, Ruoyan Li, Yolanda Li, Emily Lin, Shmily Lin, Mona Liu, Logan Liut, Victoria Lo, Brandon Lo Hog Tian, Savannah Lollo, Gladys Lou, Erin Lunn, Catherine Ma, Kirsty MacLellan, Fatima Mahmood, Sanaa Mahmud, Shizza Malik, Anuj Manchanda, Amy Mann, Kate Martens, Morgan Martin, Sam Martin, Seth Martosh, Jesse McDougall, Lucia McLaren, Randy McLean, Tiana Milacic, Alex Mimico, Malaika Mitra, Themba Mkhize, Sherissa Mohammed-Ali, Meera Mohindra, Sofia Moniz, Alex Mooney, Devonne Moosewaypayo, Rebeca Moya, Abhinav Muraleedharan, Jeremy Mytkowski, Judy Naamani, Thérèse Naccarato, Aline Nayir, Paden Neundorf, Saron Nigusie, Vikram Nijhawan, Negin Norouzizadeh, Kelechi Nwokeocha, David Okojie, Jwan Omer, Alexander Osodo, Ottavia Paluch, Joohyeon Park, Khushi Patel, Justin Patrick, Alex Pavlin, Zoe Peddle-Stevenson, Catherine Jean Pelicano, Aimee Perry, Aïsha Philippe, Amara Phillips, Riali Poffenroth, Amanda Pompilii, Erin Poon, Malik Pottinger, Radhika Prabhune, Malavika Puri, Cholan Rajendran, Sophie Ramsey, Ceili Reilly, Jack Reilly, Jacqueline Renée, Artemis Riedmueller, Justin Rodin, Mia Rodrigo, Yardena Rosenblum, Aunkita Roy, Shivangi Roy, Saman Saeed, Amreena Saleh, Daniel Santiago, Moulik Seth, Baran Seyedi, Ishita Sharma, Umama Siddiqi, Angelina Siew, Beatriz Silva, Eshnika Singh, Devarya Singhania, Evelyn Sisson, Hannah Smith, Lucas Sousa, Lucy Spencely, Shonita Srinivasan, Stephanie Staibano, Andrew Stephen, Samiha Swarup, James Szabo, Abdulmunem Tartir, Katherine E. Todd, Alan Tran, Marva Trim, Alyssa Ukani, Gurleen Uppal, Maria Vidal Valdespino, Francesca Velardi, Lucas Garcia Vidal, Lauren Vomberg, Chelsea Wang, Jennifer Wang, Yunyi Wang, Taila Western, Anette Xia, Ke Xu, Yan Xu, Sally Yang, Elim Yeung, Yuyang (Lena) Yuan, Madison Zacharias, Rachel Zack, Parsa Babaei Zadeh, Sina Babaei Zadeh, Philip Zawistowski, David Zhang, Vivien Zhang, Michael Zhou, Songzi Zhou, Wei Zou, William Zou

To brighter days ahead

Departing words from Jadine Ngan, 2022–2023 Editor-in-Chief

Jadine Ngan

Editor-in-Chief

In September 2018, I stepped into The Varsity ’s newsroom for the first time and joined a dozen volunteers sitting silent around a long table. We claimed articles to copy edit from a stack of printouts, using pens and highlighters to mark out errors and handwrite corrections in the margins. That fall, The Varsity was fresh into an era of optimistic expansion — an era that would not last long. Between funding cuts from Doug Ford’s Student Choice Initiative (SCI) and the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Varsity I am leaving behind today is one that has had to endure recent crises and weather change.

This past September, as student life returned to full swing after several tumultuous years, our team sought to get the newspaper back on steady ground. Although we’ve turned the page on the crisis years, some parts of the paper haven’t returned to what they were.

Our print circulation sits at a fraction of our pre-SCI 18,000 copies a week. Our podcast studio, renovated just before the SCI, is now an equipment storage room. Instead of gathering around the newsroom table for weekly

masthead meetings, we’ve stayed on Zoom — after pandemic remote operations made sity ’s workspace acces sible to UTM and UTSC students, a third of our masthead now calls a satellite campus home. We don’t even copy edit on paper anymore.

But alongside those bittersweet transformations have come small victories.

If our work during volume 143 of The Varsity had a throughline, it was a desire to human ize our journalism — in simple terms, to treat people like people. That

endeavour began with our own writers and staff. As our counterparts at The Link recently emphasized, campus newsrooms that rely on a culture of privilege and exploitation struggle with rampant burnout and unsustainable coverage. I know firsthand

Staff: Jasmin Akbari, Andrea Avila, Medha Barath, Kamilla Bekbossynova, Mac Bell, Rubin Beshi, Evie Bolton, Manreet Brar, Whitney Buluma, Gene Case, Colin Chau, Linda Chen, Christina Dinh, Anushka Dir, Emma Dobrovnik, Catherine Dumé, Huda El-Zein, Hiba Faisal, Dalainey Gervais, Selin Ginik, Ikjot Grewal, Cole Hayes, Angel Hsieh, Elvia Ip, Rhea Jerath, James Jiang, Hannah Katherine, Jevan Konyar, James Lautens, Vy Le, Sinhang Sophia Leung, Rosalind Liang, Kayla Litschko, Chloe MacVicar, Jocelyn Mattka, Averyn Ngan, Zen Nguyen, Riyaaq Osman, Victoria Paulus, Frank Qiao, Vincent Quach,

The Varsity thanks all of our staff and contributors for all their hard work this year!

that producing a good student newspaper requires great personal sacrifice, often on the part of marginalized editors who lead the push for more sensitive practices, better training, and improved transparency. This year, we offset the strain of The Varsity ’s intense workloads by expanding our team, offering more regular emotional support to staff, and trying to foster a newsroom culture where we look after one another.

Editorially, humanizing The Varsity ’s journalism meant leaning into trauma-informed reporting practices and building relationships with campus advocacy groups centred around trust. It meant granting reporters more time to work on sensitive stories, striving for transparency with sources, prioritizing informed consent, and owning up to our mistakes. It meant valuing the insights, experiences, and personal connections that reporters bring to their work. It also involved dedicating time and care to our equity board, a project that originated during the pandemic years. Our efforts weren’t perfect, but I believe our coverage was richer because we tried.

The task of pushing The Varsity to be better was personal. I might be only the second woman of colour in 143 years to serve as EIC of The Varsity — which felt possible because, as an associate features editor, I saw Josie Kao lead Volume 140. I’m at this paper because people like Josie paved the way. That’s why I felt a deep responsibility to ensure that, if you’re from a community that the media traditionally sidelines, we’d do our best to make you feel seen, welcomed, and respected. To

flourish, The Varsity needs people like you in leadership.

If this year’s work moved the needle, it’s because I’ve had the privilege of producing The Varsity with what is likely one of the country’s most diverse newspaper teams — a group of brilliant, funny, driven students, who will go on to do great things. When I think about The Varsity , I will remember the time I spent with you all. I’ll recall the cups of tea and bags of microwave popcorn we made each other, the unhinged reacts you added to the Slack, the long winter afternoons we spent editing the newspaper in the dark because no one wanted to get up and turn on the light. I loved it here because this is where I met you.

My thanks goes to Khadija, Lexey, Jessie, and Maheen for telling the news stories that matter to the U of T community, with the help of dogged reporting from Alyanna, Emma, and Al. To Janhavi, for centring student perspectives and untangling labour issues in Biz. To Shernise, for keeping the opinion pages on the pulse of the community’s conversations.

To Alexa, for curating The Varsity’ s longform with unshakable optimism. To Marta, for seeking out purposeful Arts & Culture storytelling.

To Sahir and Sky, our Science editors, for drawing magic out of the most technical of subjects. To Mekhi, for expanding our sports section into multimedia and capturing U of T’s winning moments.

Our design, copy, and visuals teams are the newspaper’s backbone. Caroline and Andrea not only oversaw design, but also bridged the gap between visuals and editorial with their

deep involvement in the paper. Talha and Safiya examined every sentence we published to ensure it was the clearest and most accurate it could be. Jessica and Vurjeet filled The Varsity ’s pages with breathtaking visuals. The one and only Maya leaned into short-form video content, managing to get our TikTok off the ground at long last.

To every associate editor: thank you for your curiosity, your excitement, and your commitment to showing up and doing the work. To our business team led by Parmis: thank you for keeping our finances in order, our budgets balanced, and our ad revenues flowing. And, of course, thank you to our many contributors for lending the paper their time and talents.

I also want to celebrate this year’s biggest projects. In November, Nawa released a sixmonth investigation into a UTM professor’s sexual misconduct. Her award-winning work was discussed in governance meetings and classrooms across U of T, sparking protests at all three campuses. Congratulations also goes to our online team, Angad, Aaron, and Andrew, for redesigning The Varsity ’s website, and to Makena, for welcoming dozens of artists and creators to our community via this year’s art galleries.

To my predecessors, Hannah, Ibnul, and Josie: if I did anything right this volume, I owe it to years of watching you lead this community through thick and thin. To Steph, Tahmeed, and Aditi, who have supported The Varsity even after hanging up their hats: thank you for what you gave to this place. And of course, Nawa, Artie, Angad, and Makena, you’ve

Looking back at three years of Equity Board

A letter from Nawa Tahir, chair of 2022–2023 Equity Board

Nawa Tahir Managing Editor, External

Since May 2022, I have been chairing The Varsity ’s Equity Board, which informs the paper’s reporting, outreach, and editorial practices. As a Pakistani woman and an international student at U of T, I don’t take this privilege lightly. People like me don’t easily make it to such positions. A small town Pakistani girl doesn’t usually get to influence and make decisions at a 143-year old Canadian newspaper.

My mere presence at The Varsity is a sign of the work that numerous people before me have done. In Volume 140, Ibnul and Ori created The Varsity ’s Equity Guide, which continues to inform our practices, style guide, and reporting. Kathryn and Ibnul created the first ever Equity Board as an experiment in Volume 141, the 2020–2021 academic year. In Volume 142, Tahmeed took over as chair of the board and continued its efforts to diversify our reporting. Since then, the board has continued to evolve, and I am honoured to have continued this work.

Our masthead elects members of the board at the start of summer, fall, and winter terms. At any given time, there are at least seven members of masthead on the board, including The Varsity ’s editor-in-chief and the Equity Board chair. Equity Board members are not paid for this work; board membership is entirely voluntary.

Over the years, Equity Board members have worked on a number of initiatives that have informed The Varsity ’s coverage in meaningful ways. Since its inception, the Equity Board’s primary purpose has been to revise the Equity Guide and expand its scope. The board also works to inform how we put together our equity-themed issues: Black History Month and Indigenous Issue.

The Indigenous Issue

This year, the Equity Board conducted outreach and planning for The Varsity ’s first ever Indigenous Issue, comprised of content about and by Indigenous communities. Admittedly,

this year’s Indigenous Issue being our first one is rather disappointing considering that The Varsity has been around for 143 years. In the Letter from the Editors that we published in that issue, we wrote that we need to approach Indigenous reporting in a way that respects and understands Indigenous contributors and sources.

However, in the weeks that followed after this issue’s publication, we were informed of a huge error that we had made. During the editing and production processes, due to a miscommunication, The Varsity published material without an Indigenous contributor’s consent. The online version of the article has since been taken down from our website.

We also asked Indigenous contributors for sources of Traditional Knowledge they included in articles they wrote for us; our fact-checking processes require that we ask contributors for an external source backing up any factual statements. We don’t ask for sources when people write about their own personal and cultural experiences, and demands of proof for Traditional Knowledge are harmful to Indigenous peoples because such requirements do not consider the differences between Indigenous record keeping and its colonial versions. Asking an Indigenous writer to produce evidence recorded in Eurocentric media has been a tactic of Indigenous erasure for centuries. It was hugely problematic that we contributed to that history during the production of an Indigenous-themed issue.

Through an internal investigation, we identified training gaps and miscommunication between editors that had contributed to the situation. We also realized that no official Varsity document says that we wouldn’t need proof of such information.

At this point, the only way forward is accepting our mistakes, apologizing for them, and ensuring that they don’t ever happen again at The Varsity . The Equity Board has committed to working on a few internal documents for future Varsity editors that will inform their decisions and practices, including a document that will contain guidelines for how Varsity edi-

been the management team of a lifetime.

To every community member we interviewed: we’re grateful that you welcomed us into your corner of campus. To the readers: thank you for following along. Our editors still feel giddy when we spot you thumbing through a Varsity issue on a stand or walking down St. George Street with one in hand. Our paper is made by and for the people of this university, and we hope we’ve served U of T’s three campuses well this year.

The Varsity will be in remarkably good hands with my successor, Artie Kronenfeld. Artie brings with them years of sharp editorial expertise and steady problem-solving, and their thoughtful generosity has made them an anchor of our community. I have full confidence in their ability to lead the newspaper into the next year.

It’s been an honour to watch over The Varsity for a brief slice of its long history. That first morning I found myself in The Varsity ’s newsroom, U of T’s student newspaper of record seemed vast, immovable, and incomprehensible. Over time, I’ve come to understand The Varsity as a place brimming with possibility, even in the midst of chaos. That possibility is a future Varsity generation’s to seize now. While I know they will have the resilience to navigate crises, I wish them only brighter days ahead.

— Jadine Ngan Editor-in-Chief, Volume CXLIII

tors should work with Indigenous contributors. We hope that having concrete directions in writing will help reduce the training gaps we came across this year. The current board plans on finalizing these documents before the volume ends on April 30.

Future of the Equity Board

Over the past few years, it became clear that the people we have on masthead inform the stories we cover. This means that the more diverse our newsroom, the more expansive our coverage gets. I have had the honour of working with some incredible people on the Equity Board who brought their unique experiences to informing The Varsity ’s decisions.

Jadine and Artie have remained on the board in advisory positions throughout the year. Thanks to Caroline, Andrea, Marta, Maya, Mekhi, Talha, Jessica, and Vurjeet for dedicating their time and energy to the Equity Board this year. Because of the work I saw these people do this year, I am very optimistic about the future of the Equity Board. I am sure that next year’s masthead will continue to build on the work that we laid the foundations for.

As a century-old institution that hasn’t had the most diverse masthead until recently, The Varsity has made and continues to make mistakes. This year, one of my biggest priorities was ensuring that we apologized when we made mistakes and harmed a marginalized person or group. Yes, it is the bare mini-

mum. But admittedly, it takes a lot of work for an organization to apologize and ensure that it won’t make the same mistake again. By explicitly publishing the ways we harmed Indigenous contributors this volume, I hope we can set a precedent for future Varsity mastheads and ensure they are not scared of apologizing when they make mistakes.

I am incredibly lucky that I got to play a part in bringing our issues to stands and our articles to the website. Thank you to our contributors, sources, and readers for letting us do this work. Thank you for giving us the space to make mistakes, holding us accountable, and letting us do better.

I hope I am leaving this board and the paper in a better place than when I first showed up at The Varsity newsroom as a little first-year student. Chairing the Equity Board has been the biggest honour of my life.

VURJEET MADAN/THE VARSITY

U of T student faces charges after incident with Toronto Against Abortion

Toronto Police Services investigating allegations that student took and damaged organizers’ signs

Caroline Bellamy Design Editor

As of March 16, a U of T student is facing charges for allegedly taking and damaging two signs belonging to Toronto Against Abortion (TAA) — an organization with teams on nearly all Toronto university campuses that, according to their website, seeks “to engage Toronto on the injustice of abortion.”

In an email to The Varsity, a U of T spokesperson confirmed that “an off-campus incident,” which is currently under investigation by TPS, occurred on City of Toronto property outside the Galbraith Building that day.

What happened

The week of March 13, TAA held a week of action

at UTSG.

The U of T student, who requested anonymity given the active case against them, was walking to their class in the Galbraith Building on the afternoon of March 16 when they ran into a group of TAA protestors. The student allegedly took and broke one of the protestors’ signs.

Later that afternoon, TAA protestors stood outside Sidney Smith. Once informed of TAA’s presence, UofT Students for Choice deployed a ‘rapid response team’ to cover up the signs, which Avreet Jagdev, president and founder of UofT Students for Choice, described as “graphic.” UofT Students for Choice is a student group that advocates “for an individual’s right to make autonomous decisions about their own body,” according to the Student Organizational Portal.

Around this time, the student was in the area

and encountered the TAA protestors again. The student allegedly took a second sign from the protestors, folded it, and then handed it back to TAA. TAA called TPS and U of T Campus Safety.

Following this incident, the student left Sidney Smith and walked toward the Galbraith Building. Several eyewitnesses told The Varsity that TAA protestors followed and recorded the student as they walked from Sidney Smith, through the Galbraith Building, and into Sandford Fleming. When the student had reached the Sandford Fleming Atrium, the student told The Varsity that the TAA members refused to leave. Then, the student called campus security to try and get the TAA members to stop following and filming them.

Two members of UofT Students for Choice, including Jagdev, remained in contact with the student as the TAA members followed them and went to the Sandford Fleming building to make sure the student was safe. The UofT Students for Choice members were present when Campus Safety and TPS arrived.

Upon arrival, Campus Safety and TPS spoke to the TAA protestors, and other students present about what had happened. TPS took the student to a separate room to speak to them about the situation.

According to TPS media relations, TPS then charged the student with Theft Under $5,000 and Mischief Under $5,000. Eyewitnesses confirmed to The Varsity that TPS did not detain the student. The student must go to the police station for fingerprints on April 21 and attend court on April 28.

Nora Ahmadi — a director of events and community engagement at UofT Students for Choice and the accessibility and equity advisor of the Prevention, Empowerment, Advocacy, Response, for Survivors (PEARS) project — told The Varsity that she asked Campus Safety and TPS whether or not TAA protestors following and recording the student constituted harassment. Ahmadi claimed that a person from Campus Safety told her that these actions did constitute harassment. However, TPS officers on the scene told Ahmadi that the TAA protestors’ actions did not constitute harassment because the incident was isolated.

TAA’s response

Blaise Alleyne founded TAA in 2016, three years after he established University of Toronto Students For Life. In an interview with The Varsity, Alleyne said that TAA’s members generally engage in peaceful and civil dialogue at U of T, but have called the police in the past. He alleged that an individual — who was not a student — assaulted the president of U of T Students For Life in September 2018, and, in October 2019, a student stole and damaged one of their signs, receiving charges for mischief and assault.

In a follow-up email, Alleyne added that the group engages in civil litigation when necessary to seek justice.

Many TAA organizers are not students. Alleyne wrote that 20 per cent of the organizers present on March 16 were paid staff members, while the rest were volunteers.

With files from Marta Anielska and Nawa Tahir.

Jessie Schwalb

Assistant News Editor

On March 24, 2023, Ontario released its 2022 sunshine list, an annual record of all public employees earning more than $100,000 per year. The list includes 5,246 U of T employees, a 5.3 per cent increase from 2021. The average salary of all U of T employees on the list came to $164,150, with the highest-paid employee — Professor and Sandra Rotman Chair in Health Sector Strategy Brian Golden — making almost $600,000. Men disproportionately appeared on the list, with women on the list making approximately $20,000 less per year than their male counterparts.

Highest earners

By fall 2020, U of T employed more than 25,000 employees, excluding teaching assistants and postdoctoral fellows. In 2022, Professors Brian Golden, Brian Silverman, and Wei-Yi (Scott) Liao earned the most, with salaries of $593,206, $520,459.40 and $518,912, respectively. All three professors hold positions in the Rotman School of Management.

Out of U of T’s presidents and vice-presidents, Edward Sargent — vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives — earned the most, with a salary of $448,796.60. President Meric Gertler earned the second most in this sector and the 24th most out of all U of T employees.

Chief Librarian Larry Laul Alford earned a salary of $334,252.1, making him the highest earner out of the 87 librarians on the list. In the communications sector, Vice-President Advancement and Acting Vice-President of Com-

munications David Palmer earned the most, with a salary of $395,808. Of the 12 campus safety employees on the list, the highest paid is Michael Munroe, director of campus safety, whose salary amounted to $187,147.51.

Professors’ wages at U of T 2,973 professors — approximately 20 per cent of all faculty — made the 2022 sunshine list. Among professors, associate professors, and adjunct professors on the list, the average salary came to $189,474.50. The list reveals wide ranges in payment across fields and positions. For instance, finance professors received an average salary of $358,575.40 while English professors received, on average, a salary of $177,528.40.

Gender analysis

Based on a cross-reference of the sunshine list with a directory of names and the commonly associated genders, an independent Sunshine List website found that approximately 46 per cent of U of T employees on the list were women — approximately one per cent more than in last year’s list. These numbers do not account for nonbinary employees or employees who

have gendered names that they don’t identify with. According to U of T’s Report on Employment Equity, 60.2 per cent of the university’s employees in 2021 identified as women.

Those who identified as men received an average salary of $173,930, while those who identified as women received, on average, $152,830. In 2019, U of T released a report analyzing gender pay equity for full-time tenure and teaching stream faculty, which found 1.3 per cent lower wages for women after controlling for rank,

years of experience, and field. In response, the university increased salaries for tenure-stream women faculty by 1.3 per cent. However, the University of Toronto Faculty Association has called for U of T to further increase salaries for women, citing a 2019 study they conducted that, based on a regression analysis, literature review, and descriptive statistics, found a wage gap of 2.7 to 8.6 per cent.

Ontario Sunshine List includes 5,246 U of T employees making over $100,000 per year

Top three earners at university are all Rotman professors

A Toronto Police Services car. VURJEET MADAN/THEVARSITY

UTMSU’s year in review

Inspire UTM focused on lobbying for lower tuition, transportation for students

Maeve Ellis

Associate Features Editor

Throughout the 2022–2023 academic year, the University of Toronto Mississauga Student’s Union (UTMSU) worked for and with students to provide new and upgrade old student services including MiWay transportation, academic advocacy, housing support, and food insecurity.

Maëlis Barre — president of the UTMSU — told The Varsity that she and her team of candidates from the Inspire UTM slate achieved each of their campaign goals. Inspire UTM initially had 12 goals, which ranged from sexual violence to student housing, included in their election campaign.

Barre is finishing her second year as a UTMSU executive. As second-year financial economics specialist Gulfara (Gulfy) Bekbolatova prepares to step into Barre’s role for the 2023–2024 academic year, The Varsity debriefed Barre and her team’s past year as UTMSU executives.

Student services

“Lobby Mississauga MiWay” was one of the 12 promises listed on the slate’s platform. Barre told

The Varsity that the UTMSU spoke with MiWay, Mississauga’s public transport agency, regarding complaints issued by students regarding bus frequency and space as UTM returned to full inperson activities in the fall.

To meet the promise of “[fighting] for better food options,” Barre said the UTMSU increased operation at the food centre by 600 per cent after dedicating $18,000 toward it in January 2022.

To follow through on expanding the student centre, she said that the UTMSU studied different options and lobbied for more university funding to offload some of the students’ burden of increasing the Student Centre levy fee.

Inspire UTM also promised to establish a First and Second-Year Transition Committee to assist students with the transition back to in-person learning. In a follow-up interview with Barre, she confirmed that they had begun internal work towards establishing the committee but never fully launched it due to lack of student interest.

Advocacy

Another one of Inspire UTM’s campaign items was to “Host a Consent Forum to shape a UTMspecific sexual violence campaign,” which the

UTMSU held on March 30. The UTMSU also supported a Prevention, Empowerment, Advocacy Response for Survivors Project march against U of T’s acceptance of sexual violence policy review recommendations. Additionally, they organized a protest on November 30, 2022 that called for UTM professor Robert Reisz’s termination due to his violation of the university’s sexual harassment policy.

Two more of Inspire UTM’s campaign items were to “Challenge all systems of oppression” and “Ensure Fairness for International Students.”

According to Barre, the UTMSU worked with Migrant Students United and the National Council of Canadian Muslims to support international and Muslim students.

Barre said the UTMSU also worked with Climate Justice UofT to brainstorm ways to lobby U of T for divestment, which was another of Inspire UTMSU’s campaign goals.

Additionally, Inspire UTM promised to “revamp” the Student Survival Guide, which Barre said they also followed through on. The UTMSU recently published its International Student Handbook. They also fulfilled their commitment to rework the “Know Your Rights” campaign by

UTSU’s year in review

Alana Boisvert Associate News Editor

hosting various housing and academic advocacy workshops.

Student fees and funding

Regarding finances, one campaign item was to, “Continue the fight for a free and accessible post-secondary education for all.”

Barre said the UTMSU made headway in increasing scholarships and bursaries, but she declined to share the amount with The Varsity, saying it would be difficult to confirm. The UTMSU also held a banner drop in the William Davis Building in October 2022, drawing attention to their lobbying for lower and free tuition. The banner read “Students Demand Education For All.” Barre also spoke at the March Governing Council meeting regarding the university’s reliance on high international tuition fees.

UTMSU increased student fees based on inflation, as calculated using the Consumer Price Index (CPI). In 2022, the Canadian CPI increased by 6.8 per cent. The only two fees that were increased beyond this rate were the health care plan and the Universal Transit Pass (U-Pass) to be used on MiWay buses because the UTMSU switched to a digital pass.

BOD shrinks, union campaigns against sexual violence

During the 2022–2023 term, the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) opened the Student Commons, planned the first in-person orientation since 2019, changed its governance structure, and held numerous events including Expression Against Oppression. They also faced controversy over the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) branch located in the Commons.

The Varsity took a look at the UTSU’s accomplishments under the leadership of President Omar Gharbiyeh as his successor, Elizabeth Shechtman, prepares to take office.

Gharbiyeh’s campaign goals

In an interview with The Varsity before his election, Gharbiyeh stated that he would prioritize working to eliminate gender-based violence at UTSG, proactively addressing the pandemic and urging the university for better dining hall food security. Gharbiyeh also hoped to continue the 2021 Same Degree, Same Fee campaign, which advocated for one fee for both international and domestic students.

Representatives from the UTSU addressed

multiple U of T governance bodies leading up to the Governing Council’s decision to approve revisions to the Policy on Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment. The UTSU joined the Prevention, Empowerment, Advocacy, Response for Survivors (PEARS) Project in arguing that the revised policy did not take sufficient measures to protect students. UTSU representatives also attended multiple PEARS Project events advocating for the removal of UTM Professor Robert Reisz. From March 13–17, the union hosted Action For Consent Today week, which included trauma-informed activities and discussion forums.

The UTSU did not publicize any efforts to increase dining hall food security. In a statement to The Varsity, Gharbiyeh wrote that the union focused this year on expanding the existing Food Bank from biweekly to weekly service and introducing a new Food Rescue initiative supplying prepared food to U of T students, in partnership with MealCare and U of T Food Services. The union decided to expand its services instead of lobbying administration because expanding services was “the most immediate path for affecting the welfare of students facing food-insecurity.” Gharbiyeh also mentioned that the UTSU plans to announce updates about opening a café in the Student Commons “very soon.”

In terms of responding to the ongoing pandem-

ic, Gharbiyeh noted that the union has lobbied the university to respond more strategically and predictably to emergencies such as new variants and offer hybrid and online course options. The Same Degree, Same Fee Campaign remains on the UTSU’s website as a current campaign.

Major changes and controversies

At the UTSU’s 2022 Annual General Meeting, students approved a measure to reduce the number of seats on the Board of Directors (BOD) from 44 to 12 and create a student senate with 75 available seats. Before the change, the BOD had difficulty meeting quorum — an issue which has somewhat persisted.

Some students have criticized the new governance structure, arguing that the senate doesn’t address the problem of limiting representation because the bylaws only grant the senate limited power. In a statement to The Varsity, Gharbiyeh wrote, “The Senate is in fact the only available answer to the question of representation.” He argued that giving the senate fewer fiduciary responsibilities compared to the BOD allows students to become senators without taking on excessive obligations, increasing the senate’s accessibility and allowing senators to remain outspoken about issues that the UTSU cannot typically address.

UTGSU’s year in review

Students approved the Community Housing and Employment Service Support levy in the Spring 2023 election, increasing fees by four dollars for all U of T students. The UTSU plans to use the levy to implement initiatives such as a lease inspection service, career supports, online guides, and an online portal with housing and employment postings. Environmental groups on campus have protested the RBC branch located in the Student Commons, highlighting that RBC is the largest funder of fossil fuels in Canada and calling on the UTSU to sever ties with the bank. On March 30, the UTSU BOD passed a resolution to authorize the executive committee to begin discussions with RBC to close the on-campus branch after its five-year term, investigate other options for the UTSU’s everyday banking, transfer net assets to a credit union, and prohibit RBC from sponsoring the union’s events. Gharbiyeh wrote that the union hopes “students remember that they can make a difference and the UTSU is listening.”

Disclosure: Elizabeth Shechtman was an associate news editor at The Varsity in the 2021–2022 academic year.

Bylaw disputes and unfilled vacancies characterized the 2022–2023 year

In the 2022–2023 academic year, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) operated for the first time under its new governance structure, which has remained a topic of contention despite approval during the union’s 2021 Annual General Meeting (AGM). Persistent vacancies, long meetings over bylaw disputes, and a drawn-out process for appointing the Chief Returning Officer (CRO) characterized the UTGSU 2022–2023 session.

Vacancies

The union struggled with vacancies throughout the year. For the first meeting of the academic

year, the Board of Directors (BOD) and General Assembly held a joint session because the BOD could not get enough people to meet quorum. The union also had two vacant executive positions during the course of the year: the vicepresident external position remained unfilled for the majority of the year and Vice-President Internal Sarah Alam resigned from her position during the union’s AGM in December 2022. In her resignation speech, she cited harassment that she received from several UTGSU members as a factor that contributed to her decision. The members cited denied personally harassing Alam.

Bylaw disputes

According to the UTGSU bylaws, the BOD must appoint a committee made up of a former member of the Elections & Referenda Committee, the Executive Director, and another BOD representative to find a CRO candidate. Due to vacancies on the BOD, Alam proposed at the October General Assembly Meeting that the UTGSU staff members find the CRO candidate. Members did not approve her suggestion.

Members debated on this issue for the majority of the year until, at their February meeting, the BOD agreed to issue a call for general members — which includes all graduate students — to join the CRO appointment committee. The BOD appointed the CRO to administer

the general election at its March 13 meeting.

Other matters

This year, the UTGSU operated for the first time under a new mental health care coverage, with the UTGSU Health Plan covering 100 per cent of the costs for care from mental health providers up to a total of $750. At the March 20 BOD meeting, UTGSU President Lwanga Musisi mentioned that the members widely used this coverage.

The UTGSU is currently accepting nominations for executive committee and BOD election candidates. The campaign period will last from April 8–21, with voting opening on April 18.

Emma Livingstone Graduate Bureau Chief

Governing Council passes 2023–2024 budget, criticizes lack of federal university funding

UTMSU urges council to stabilize budget without relying on international student tuition

Lexey Burns Deputy News Editor

On March 30, U of T’s Governing Council discussed the federal budget published on March 28 and approved the university’s proposed budget for the 2023–2024 school year. The university expressed concern for the budget following the extension of Ontario’s domestic tuition freezes, but created a second budget schedule

Federal budget criticism

The Governing Council has criticized the province’s decision to extend the domestic tuition freeze, which is entering its fourth year. In his report, U of T President Meric Gertler noted that the Canadian federal budget does not provide much support for graduate and postdoctoral research compared to other countries. “This is a

time for the entire postsecondary sector across the country to come together to urge the government to recommit to Canadian research as soon as possible,” Gertler said.

Gertler also highlighted the provincial government’s establishment of an expert panel to provide recommendations and advice on keeping the postsecondary education sector financially stable. The panel’s establishment follows the recent insolvency of Laurentian University, which forced the university to cut 69 graduate and undergraduate programs in 2021.

Gertler also mentioned the March 2023 Report of the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System, released by U15 — an organization of leading Canadian research universities working to advance research and innovate policies and programs. The report calls for a 10 per cent annual increase in funding for the Canadian

research councils, which fund graduate student scholarships, for at least the next five years.

Tuition fees

Cheryl Regehr, vice-president and provost, presented the budget. She highlighted the 10 per cent cut to tuition in 2019 and the ongoing domestic tuition freeze. As a result of these measures, Regehr said that, after adjusting for inflation, current Ontario domestic tuition fees for Arts and Science students are now lower than they were in 1999. She also highlighted that the university planned two different tuition fee schedules for the year, in case the province announced more flexibility for Ontario student tuitions following the possible end of the tuition freeze. She informed governors that oOut of province domestic student tuition fees will increase by five per cent for the 2023-2024 school year.

At the meeting, U of T Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) President Maëlis Barre spoke against the budget’s reliance on high international student tuition fees. “We need to ensure that 60 per cent of the revenue of U of T no longer relies on tuition fees because that’s not sustainable,” Barre said. She said that alongside the UTMSU and student unions across Canada, alongside, the Canadian Federation of Students, is lobbying the government to implement a new postsecondary act and tuition fee framework. The framework would regulate international students’ tuition and introduce measures to prevent universities from overcharging students to create more income.

The Governing Council approved the budget. The next Governing Council meeting is scheduled for 4:30–6:30 pm on May 18 at the UTSC Council Chamber.

UTM’s first-ever All-Nations Powwow

Powwow sees more than 1,500 guests, UTM president, and Mississauga mayor in attendance

Alyanna Denise Chua UTSC Bureau Chief

On March 25, the UTM Indigenous Centre and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (MCFN) hosted UTM’s inaugural All-Nations Powwow. Around 1,500 people gathered at UTM’s Recreation, Athletics and Wellness Centre (RAWC) for the five-hour long ceremony and celebration.

The public event opened at 12:00 pm with a grand entry ceremony. As the ceremony opened, over 50 Indigenous dancers in full regalia — including head dancers, three first-time dancers, and two dancers with new regalia — entered the main floor of the RAWC gym with eagle staffs and flags. Then, dancers performed the grand entry song, the flag song, and the veteran song, which are all “honour songs,” according to the event’s Master of Ceremonies Bob Goulais, a member of Nipissing First Nation and founder of the Indigenous relations firm Nbisiing Consulting.

“[These songs] have a connection to the spirit,” Goulais said. During these performances, he instructed audience members to not take photographs.

Next, UTM Vice-President and Principal Alexandra Gillespie, Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, MCFN Chief R. Stacey LaForme, and the UTM Officer of Indigenous Initiatives Director Tee Duke gave opening remarks at the powwow.

In her speech, Crombie said that the City of Mississauga is committed to “truth and reconciliation” and it will “continue its efforts to recognize and

advocate for all Indigenous communities.” Some MPs, MPPs, ministers, councillors, and mayors were also in attendance.

The powwow included the Tia Lyn Copenance Jingle Dress Special, in which more than 30 jingle dress dancers performed three rounds of dances. Judges then chose the top five dancers, who were awarded with cash prizes and merchandise.

The jingle dress is the traditional dress of the Anishinaabe people. “It’s the dress that was brought to us for healing, for wellness, to make sure we are ready to take care of ourselves,” Goulais said.

The Duke and Copenance family held and sponsored the dance special in honour of Tia Lyn Copenance — one of Duke’s sisters — who had recently undergone a severe illness but was able

UTSU agrees to sever ties with RBC

Board of Directors approves five-year strategic plan, affirms truth of election results

ing, UTSU President Omar Gharbiyeh expressed his gratitude toward the students who “put in the effort” to meet with the UTSU and voice their concerns about RBC.

During their March 30 meeting, the University of Toronto Students’ Union’s (UTSU) Board of Directors (BOD) passed a resolution to sever ties with the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and work toward closing the RBC branch in the UTSU Student Commons by November 2026. The BOD also discussed referendum results and 2023–2024 student fees.

Climate Justice UofT and RBC on campus

On March 2, Climate Justice UofT held a sit-in outside the RBC on-campus branch in the UTSU Student Commons. The protesters demanded that the union cut their connection to the bank, highlighting that RBC is the largest Canadian funder of fossil fuel companies and the fifth-largest funder worldwide. At the March BOD meet-

BOD members passed a motion resolving that the UTSU’s executive committee begin negotiating with RBC to close the on-campus branch when its contracted five-year term ends in November 2026. The motion also resolves that the UTSU end any RBC sponsorships for itsand look into alternative options for the union’s day-to-day banking. Finally, the motion directs the Finance Committee to create a policy for presentation to the Governance Committee that would bind the UTSU to “high standards of ethical, moral, and environmental responsibility” when engaging with financial institutions.

Fees and election results for 2023–2024

The BOD approved fees for the 2023–2024

school year, increasing health and dental plans by three per cent in light of “anticipated premium increases.” Fees for the UTSU Student Commons will increase based on agreements between U of T and the UTSU. In all other categories, fees will remain constant or increase in line with the Ontario or Canada Consumer Price Index (CPI) — a commonly used measure of prices. The UTSU will increase fees tied to the Canadian CPI by 6.3 per cent and those tied to the Ontario CPI by six per cent. Overall, the UTSU will charge each UTSG full-time undergraduate student $303.12 for the 2023–2024 school year.

The UTSU spring 2023 elections concluded on February 17, and no candidates reported disputes after the appeals period ended. The BOD passed a resolution recognizing the results as “true and correct, and ready to be considered by the Governing Council.” The UTSU will

to recover.

The powwow also featured intertribal, spot, and exhibition dances. During intertribal and spot dances, audience members joined Indigenous performers on the main stage to dance. Eighteen Indigenous-owned businesses and seven Indigenous-led information booths tabled at the event as well.

Tamara Cochrane is from the MCFN herself and is the cultural awareness coordinator with The Moccasin Identifier — a program aimed to raise awareness and educate about treaties and Indigenous peoples. The Moccasin Identifier, in part, provides educational and stencil kits for drawing moccasins in public spaces.

Cochrane told The Varsity that when she was younger, she did not feel “connected” to her Indigenous culture and language, but she learned more by participating in powwows. “Every time I come [to a powwow], I learn something new,” she said. “It’s very healing.”

She said that being able to hold powwows is a “big deal” for many Indigenous people, and added, “There was once a time where we weren’t allowed to speak our language or participate in our culture at all.” The 1876 Indian Act banned Indigenous ceremonies and dance — including powwows — until 1951.

Cochrane said that she feels encouraged to see Indigenous peoples from different Nations coming together and to see non-Indigenous people participating in powwows and wanting to learn more about Indigenous histories and traditions.

present the results for approval at the UTSU’s 2023 Spring General Meeting, which will take place at the end of April.

UTSU’s Strategic Plan

In late 2020, the UTSU began a strategic planning process to guide the union’s actions, which involved student consultations, research into historical planning documents, and workshop sessions with the BOD and staff. The five-year plan identifies three priorities — expanding the union’s reach by engaging students and building partnerships, enhancing effectiveness, and ensuring stability — and lays out specific strategies and indicators to accomplish each. Some goals include increasing social media following and voter turnout, creating systems to ensure that ideas and priorities transfer between years, and expanding use of the Student Commons.

Vice-President Operations Dermot O’Halloran moved a motion for the BOD to adopt the plan. In his statement explaining the motion to the BOD, O’Halloran said that, by passing the motion, the board would “help the UTSU more tangibly and consistently guide itself the next five years.” The BOD passed the motion, adopting the plan.

Kamilla Bekbossynova Varsity Staff

Powwows offer Indigenous peoples an opportunity to experience healing. COURTESY OF NICK IWANYSHYN/UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO MISSISSAUGA

UTSC students concerned over affordability, nutritional value of campus food options

Catering to dietary needs

Access to healthy, satiating, and affordable food may be even more limited for those with dietary needs.

for Nasir’s to be brought back to UTSC. The petition argues that the food provider’s return would be one way to address the “limited” and “overly priced” food options on campus.

According to the spokesperson, the Marketplace will soon open a “new gourmet hotdog station [that] will offer halal beef and chicken hotdogs as well as vegetable hotdogs, all under $5.”

Alyanna Denise Chua

UTSC Bureau Chief

UTSC students have expressed concerns about the limited access to affordable and nutritious food on campus. This issue is particularly prevalent for students with religious dietary restrictions, as indicated in a recent petition by student groups.

The Varsity spoke to students about the specific issues they face and the steps they’d like the university to take in response.

Concerns over access to healthy and affordable food

Menilek Beyene started at UTSC as an undergraduate student in 2013 and is now completing his PhD in UTSC’s Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences. In an interview with The Varsity , he said that access to healthy and affordable food has been an issue at UTSC for a long time.

There are two main food hubs at UTSC: the Student Centre, operated by the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU), and the Marketplace, run by Aramark under contract with UTSC administration.

In an interview with The Varsity , Devlin Grewal — a recent UTSC alum and current research technician with UTSC — characterized the Student Centre’s offerings as “fast food” and noted that, although the Marketplace of-

fers “somewhat healthy food,” they charge a lot for small portions.

Beyene said that he decides where to eat on campus based on cost effectiveness. He often purchases foot-long sandwiches at the Subway in the Student Centre, which he characterized as “not the most healthy.”

Beyene added that he is “surprised” that the Student Centre predominantly offers fast food options: “I would have imagined the Student Centre being an area where students can have more access to healthier food options… that are oriented to supporting the health of students.”

In an email to The Varsity , SCSU VicePresident Operations Mathooshan Manoharan wrote that the SCSU chooses vendors at the Student Centre based on student feedback gathered from surveys. “SCSU’s policy is to seek student input when bringing in new vendors,” he wrote.

Manoharan explained that Subway and Asian Gourmet have maintained contracts with the SCSU since 2004. Hero Burger and KFC replaced A&W in 2011. At the time, the SCSU sent a survey out to all students, which relayed that students wanted a food provider offering burgers and fried chicken to replace A&W.

Manoharan added that the SCSU subsidizes the cost of meals at the SCSU-run restaurant 1265 Bistro.

Hiba Alhuttam — vice-president of events with the UTSC Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) — told The Varsity that figuring out what is halal and not halal among the food options on campus can be “confusing.” With this, some of her friends who are Muslim choose to buy vegetarian and non meat options from vendors on campus. These meals, she said, are “not filling” because they typically come in small portions.

A UTSC spokesperson wrote to The Varsity that the administration is working to “clearly mark” the halal and kosher options on campus. They also clarified that all chicken and beef in the Marketplace are certified halal.

Aal-e-Mohammed Gilani — an executive with the Thaqalayn Muslim Association (TMA) at UTSC — also said that he and his friends choose which food to buy on campus based on what is the cheapest. He said that he and his friends share meals at times.

Both Gilani and Alhuttam shared their concerns with The Varsity over the permanent closure of Nasir’s Gourmet Hot Dog — a food stand outside the Student Centre that had served UTSC students from 2007 to 2021. Everything on Nasir’s menu was halal and under $10, with all of its hotdogs in the $4.50 to $6.50 range.

The MSA — in collaboration with the TMA and the Pakistani Students’ Association UTSC — is now circulating a petition, which calls

Bringing in local food and vendors

Beyene sits on the UTSC Food User Committee, which meets twice each semester to discuss policies and operations relating to food services at UTSC. There, he has advocated for increasing the number of local food vendors on campus and sourcing ingredients from local farmers and providers.

“We are also providing an opportunity for local food vendors to come to campus and showcase their food. The Marketplace currently features Alejandro’s [sic], a fusion of Middle Eastern/Mexican cuisine. In May we will welcome a Local African food vendor,” wrote the UTSC spokesperson.

Grewal also wants to see more local food vendors at the 750-bed residence building that will open at UTSC in fall 2023. “With all the money that’s being put into this new residence building, I sincerely hope that the university takes the opportunity to support local businesses,” he said. “We don’t need multibilliondollar businesses to be feeding our students.”

The UTSC spokesperson wrote that the dining hall at the upcoming residence “will feature an all-you-care-to-eat menu with numerous menu options, including roasted chicken, beef, sushi, pasta, a pho station, salad bar and more.” They added that the menu will include options that will cater to those with diverse dietary needs.

Letter from the editor: Teamwork makes the dream work

Khadija Alam

News Editor

I became The Varsity ’s news editor in late September 2022 — during the fifth issue of the volume. Any doubts I harboured about being an outcast dissipated the minute I stepped into the office for my first production weekend.

Countless people helped make my transition into the role seamlessly and have consistently put their best foot forward for the news section. First and foremost, I have to thank Lexey Burns, Jessie Schwalb, Jadine Ngan, and Nawa Tahir — my “main news girlies” — for their unwavering support. This job has been a lot less stressful and a lot more fun while doing it alongside them. I would also be remiss if I didn’t thank everyone else who has contributed to the news section in any capacity, whom I

affectionately call my “news buddies.”

In six short months, the people at The Varsity have become some of my closest and most cherished friends. Working with them to help tell the stories that matter deeply to the U of T community has been integral in helping me grow into the person I am today. Our masthead’s dedication to producing informative, ethical, and creative content is something that will continue to inspire me for the rest of my journalism career.

I remember being in first year and thinking that being The Varsity ’s news editor would be my dream job as a student journalist. I’m very honoured to now be able to say that it has indeed been an absolute dream.

— Khadija Alam, News Editor, Volume CXLIII

Administration says new hotdog stand, all-you-care-to-eat menu coming to UTSC

Objective journalism

The question of whether journalism should prioritize objectivity has troubled the industry since the twentieth century.

American journalist Richard Kaplan defines objectivity as a stance where journalists, like scientists, “vow to eliminate their own beliefs and values as guides in ascertaining what was said and done.” Objectivity, by this definition, should make journalists impartial — unaffected in their coverage not only by external forces like politics, but also by their personal philosophies.

This nonpartisan reporting style became increasingly popular in the early 1900s as journalists tried to split from a previous tradition of partisanship, where authors often wrote articles clearly and unabashedly in support of their own political views. From around the 1920s onwards, journalists have been discouraged from voicing their personal opinion on news and from straying from the centre of the political spectrum. Among journalists, objectivity essentially became the pinnacle of journalistic integrity.

However, this desire for objectivity has resulted in journalism that has sometimes simply echoed the voices of politicians, businesspeople, and celebrities without adding to the conversation. When we insist on adhering to an overexaggerated version of objectivity above all else, journalists report on what the “people in power” are doing without providing enough background information or attempting to critique the social elite.

The consequences of prioritizing an objective lens in journalism have been numerous. In an attempt to achieve objectivity in journalism, the issue of false balance — when the media presents opposing viewpoints as equal, even when that’s not supported by credible sources and facts — emerged. It’s no surprise then that watchdog journalism — where journalists question and vet those in power — only saw a rise in the US in the late twentieth century, when officials’ conflicting opinions on issues like the Vietnam War made journalists broaden what they considered ‘objective’ perspectives.

In today’s day and age, what objectivity means to news organizations is now decided by each organization. Both the definition of objectivity and the level to which we should prioritize it are things that many journalists discuss constantly.

Here at The Varsity, we’ve been talking about what we mean by it for years. In a previous editorial, we expressed our thoughts on why prioritizing objectivity can get in the way of important considerations about equity, and why we think it’s so important to centre equity in our journalism. But

be the

we’d also go further than that: not only can a focus on objectivity over all else be harmful to journalism, we think that there are some cases where objectivity should not even be journalism’s goal.

Experience and background strengthens a story Objectivity has its place when covering politics and other public organizations — but reporting about marginalized and underrepresented communities requires different priorities. The most impactful problems within a community won’t always be obvious to people coming from outside of it. Additionally, if sources have been misrepresented before by journalists who look nothing like them, those sources may rightly be cautious about engaging with the media again.

This doesn’t excuse the press from doing our job — no matter what the topic, no matter what our personal backgrounds, journalists have the responsibility to do whatever work we need to dig and fact-check and verify that we’re asking the right questions. But when writers come from a marginalized group that they’re covering, or have specific personal experience with their topic, their background knowledge can make their writing even better and more informed.

We’ve seen that in our own coverage. And outside authorities seem to think so, too: a majority of the pieces published in The Varsity that received nominations for the Canadian University Press’ John H. Macdonald (JHM) Awards this year drew directly in some way from the authors’ personal experiences.

Sometimes these connections between the author’s experiences and the articles’ content were explicit. Rhea Jerath’s “Tales from the closet” starts with Jerath’s feelings of isolation around her identity during the pandemic — and that experience helped her better handle other incredibly sensitive stories of LGBTQ+ isolation in conversations with her interviewees, she wrote to The Varsity

In the case of Synthia Fahima Chowdhury’s reported feature “Beyond skin-deep,” about the effects of the prescription skin medication Accutane on users’ mental health, she wrote directly about her personal experiences with the drug — including her introduction to the online support networks through which she later found central sources.

In some cases, the author’s connection to their work isn’t always immediately apparent, but this doesn’t detract from the role their experiences play in their reporting. Alyanna Denise Chua’s news article “After years of advocacy, international students’ work limit temporarily lifted” wasn’t

written about the author’s personal experiences — but Chua, an international student herself, has been writing about international students at U of T for The Varsity since 2021.

She was first inspired to start reporting on the subject because she found existing coverage on international students in Canadian media made little mention of the disproportionately high international tuition rates. The tuition gap had a much bigger effect on her own experience of U of T, and on the experiences of other international students, than the articles she was reading seemed to acknowledge.

Since then, she’s written many articles on the tuition gap. She says that these previous articles gave her background on the international student work limit — in past interviews, sources had already told her about some of the insidious problems they faced because of the work limit, so she knew where to start. Plus, her existing knowledge of international student networks at U of T meant she had an easier time finding sources.

Another article nominated for JHM awards this year was Nawa Tahir’s feature on the Andy Orchard story — one of the two articles in The Varsity nominated in the Racialized Reporting Category. In bringing the story of Orchard’s misconduct to light, Tahir reported on the work of marginalized, racialized early-career scholars. As a racialized woman who has herself experienced instances of racism and sexual harassment, Tahir was able to use her experiences to relate to her sources, and to make them feel understood and heard during interviews.

Shortly after, Tahir started working on another story on sexual harassment in academia that won a JHM award for Investigative Reporting. This one, published in November 2022, was about UTM Professor Robert Reisz’s misconduct. Tahir told The Varsity that, for this sensitive reporting, she had to rely on connections with marginalized people and community organizers. Those relationships were founded on the fact that her sources could trust her with their experiences — which could have been a lot more difficult if she hadn’t approached the stories with firsthand experience of similar incidents.

On working toward increasing diversity here at The Varsity

Over the past few years, The Varsity has endeavoured to create a more diverse newsroom that allows for stories of marginalized communities to be covered in a respectful and equitable manner. This has been possible in part due to our outreach efforts over the course of many years.

Having a more diverse masthead means that

we have been able to better cover issues that are relevant to marginalized communities, by drawing on prior knowledge about the communities to which we belong. The people whose stories we tell may also be more comfortable talking to reporters they can relate to, allowing for more accurate and representative reporting.

Three years ago, during volume 140, we published our first Black History Month (BHM) issue, which aimed to highlight the stories of Black people at U of T. We have continued to publish an annual BHM issue since then. For this special issue, we compensate Black contributors because we want to improve our coverage of Black communities on campus, and publish more coverage from within the community, without putting undue burden on community members.

In January of this current volume, we published our first-ever Indigenous issue, which featured several articles and illustrations — including cover art — by Indigenous contributors. Similarly, for this issue, we reached out to Indigenous communities on campus for contributors and compensated Indigenous contributors for their work. The issue wasn’t perfect, but it was the first step in the right direction, especially since we had been trying to publish this issue for at least a couple of years.We hope to continue publishing an annual Indigenous issue in years to come.

Although we have made progress in the last few years, there is still a long way for us to go. In upcoming years, we commit to continue taking action to increase the diversity of our journalism at The Varsity — and supporting a diverse newsroom will be a big part of that.

We will continue our outreach on campus, and we will especially work on building sustainable relationships with equity-seeking student organizations and groups which represent marginalized communities. We will examine our internal structure, policies, and work culture to ensure that we are an organization that is accessible to all students.

We want to encourage writers from currently underrepresented communities to contribute to The Varsity, and eventually become part of our masthead. We want them to have a say in our editorial practices and in the decisions we make about what kinds of stories we run. We hope this is a place where everyone can tell their stories — and where we can tell everyone’s stories fairly, informedly, and accurately.

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

The Varsity Editorial Board

The Varsity’s JHM Award nominations prove that reporters’ personal experiences matter. MAKENA MWENDA/THEVARSITY

Op-ed: U of T needs to do more to support its international students

The UTSU President on increasing needs-based financial aid for international students

The unfortunate reality is that, if you’re an international student at U of T, things are only going to get worse from here.

Since 2010, international student enrolment has increased from 12 per cent to 31 per cent of total enrolment — that is a nearly three-fold increase in slightly over a decade. However, the university has recently announced that over the next decade, this enrolment will remain at around 31 per cent.

Although U of T has consistently relied on raising international student enrolment and international tuition fees as a means of increasing revenue, we are now reaching the maximum international student enrolment. This means that, although each international student’s tuition is expected to continue to increase, international student enrolment will remain stable. As such, each international student will be expected to pay more money.

The Ontario government is capping international student enrolment

The province is reducing operating grants by $750 per international undergraduate and master’s student. Meanwhile, as the Ontario government mandated in its Strategic Mandate Agreement 3 , the university must maintain its five-year average enrolment within plus or minus three per cent of its target or it will be ineligible for full enrolment funding.

A critical question to ask is why international tuition continues to increase so dramatically. For several years, the Ontario government has prohibited universities from raising domestic tuition — this is commonly called the domestic tuition fee freeze. Over the last four years, the university has seen a decline in operating revenue of $195 million due to this fee freeze and a 10 per cent domestic tuition cut in 2019–2020. However, its overall revenue continues to grow to a projected $124 million in 2023–2024 alone. This growth in revenue is largely driven by “enrolmentrelated revenues from student fees,” which, notwithstanding moderate increases in domestic undergraduate intake, comes from international students.

Over the last few decades, the Ontario government has slowly taken away critical revenue streams from universities, leaving international tuition as one of the few streams of revenue available. This is precisely the perverse pattern that we see playing out of U of T right now.

For years, student unions and leaders have been wasting their time demanding that the university freeze or even reduce international tuition. As we’ve come to learn, the university won’t do this — or, more specifically, this is not an ask that can be productively made of the university administration.

The reason is simple; international students’ tuition is directly dependent on significant political changes that are happening largely at the provincial level. The university will continue to expand revenue streams based on the pathways made available to it. If you want international students’ tuition lowered, you need to change those pathways. What we need to do is advocate at the provincial level — and, most importantly, vote.

That is the present reality, and I think it’s better to be honest than continue to make false and grandiose promises about what we can change on our campus, as others have done and continue to do.

But that isn’t to say that there’s nothing we can do here on campus. There are other things to focus on when advocating to the administration on behalf of international students.

Financial aid for international students

“No student offered admission to a program at the University of Toronto should be unable to enter or complete the program due to lack of financial means.”

This principle is embedded in the 1998 Governing Council Policy on Student Financial Support, and it is the driving force behind much of the funding allocated every year towards student financial aid. The principle is repeated in other relevant documents, such as the Statement of Commitment Regarding International Students, which states that, “International students who are admitted and enrolled may encounter financial emergencies and the University will provide financial assistance as needed and where possible.”

What the University of Toronto Students’ Union has asked, and will continue to ask, of the university is simply that it abides by this principle with regard to international students. While last year we met directly with members of the Governing Council over the course of the budgetary cycle to impress this message, this time we are speaking directly to our membership; we believe that the university is patently failing to meet their promise to you.

In fact, the administration readily admits this. When we had previously raised this concern, we were told that the university interprets this policy

in such a way as to apply exclusively to domestic students.

However, we can see no justification, either in the text or spirit of this policy nor supporting documentation, for such an interpretation.

In conversation with members of the administration, I was told that, given the university’s reliance on funding grants from provincial and federal governments, using their funds towards international students is potentially unfair. Of course, having read the university’s budget, we know that international students constitute roughly 43 per cent of the entire operating budget — a far more significant revenue stream than governmental funding has amounted to for years, which is currently around 20 per cent. If we are evaluating eligibility for student aid based on our revenue sources — which we shouldn’t be — then international students would in fact be due more financial support than domestic students.

When this was pointed out to the university administration, they stated that the university cannot be expected ‘to meet the needs of the entire world’s student population.’ Clearly, we are not asking the university to care for the world’s population. We are simply asking the university to care about its own students as the policy explicitly obligates it to do.

Since then, this year’s budget, as well as the Enrolment Report 2022–2023, have singularly included an explicit affirmation of that domesticexclusive interpretation, which had previously been unspoken, so far as I can tell, and based on the last five years of available documentation.

What specifically are we asking?

Approximately 50 per cent of financial aid provided to undergraduates is needs-based. However, only 14 per cent of the financial aid available to international students is needs-based. Worse yet, this percentage represents a significant reduction over the course of three years; in 2018–2019 and 2019–2020, needs-based financial aid amounted to around 22 per cent of the total financial aid available to undergraduate international students.

This disproportionate emphasis on merit when determining financial aid available to international students is unfair and has significant repercussions. The current structure of financial aid for international students fails to address the challenges that international students face during their academic journey. This system instead puts international students’ ability to finish their

studies at risk by making it dependent on their ability to perform exceptionally well in a highly competitive university environment.

Just as the process works for domestic students, international students’ acceptance into a program should be enough to qualify for needsbased financial support. Enrolled international students shouldn't have to prove themselves more than domestic students just to receive the same benefits.

Our ask here is simple, actionable, meaningful, and within the university’s current budgetary constraints: shift more of the financial aid available to international students to be needsbased. Although the university is already increasing financial aid for international students up to a total of $89 million in 2027–28, from a starting point of $14.7 million, it is not committed to doing so in a way that meets its policy obligations. Furthermore, this increase comes from “international fee revenue.”

All we are calling for is that this expansion of international student financial aid over the next five years reflect the ratio of needs-based to merit-based aid that we see available for domestic students.

This is an easy ask. We have an extant policy framework and allocation of funds; we just need to push a bit harder.

Further, now that its position has been stated publicly, we are calling on the university to justify to our membership its domestic-exclusive interpretation of relevant policies and overreliance on merit-based financial aid for international students.

For our part, we must also begin working more closely with other student unions on our campus. Most of the important decision making is done in the fall, and at the level of each division, which determines the majority of its budget independently of the central administration. Before the Academic Budget Review, deans consult “at the local level.” So, to push this goal, each division needs to be lobbied independently months before the budget comes to the Governing Council. That part is not easy, but it is the clearest path to effect change for international students.

Omar Gharbiyeh is a fifth-year student at St. Michael’s College studying political science, history, and near and Middle Eastern civilizations. He is the president of the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) for the 2022–2023 academic year.

Omar Gharbiyeh Varsity Contributor

14 per cent of the financial aid available to international students is needs based. COURTESY OF JPELLGEN/CC FLICKR

Shernise Mohammed-Ali Comment Editor

Truthfully speaking, writing this has been hard. When so much has been done, it feels like an injustice to compile everything into just a few hundred words. But I’ve been told to highlight at least some things, so here it goes.

On my second day on the job, Politico leaked a draft majority opinion stating that the US Supreme Court had voted to strike down Roe v Wade.

This decision marked a turning point for reproductive rights in North America and sparked a global debate. It’s no surprise then that the first article I published as comment editor focused on the overturning of Roe v Wade and what this could mean for Canadians. Throughout the rest of my time as a comment editor, I’ve given a special importance to reproductive rights in the work that I choose to put out — and I sincerely hope that’s been reflected.

In this past year, I’ve pursued an equity beat unlike any other. Being a first-generation immigrant from the Caribbean has undoubtedly impacted the way I view journalism and the U of T community. It’s hard to describe — when I first got here, something felt off; maybe it was a kind of diversity I wasn’t used to or maybe it was the feeling that there wasn’t much representation. Since then, it has been my goal to highlight people’s voices, and Comment has allowed me to do exactly that, as both a writer

Letter from the Editor: Reflecting on the Comment section

Let your passions dictate your work

and an editor.

I’ve never been one to share my story, and for that Comment suited me perfectly. This section has allowed me to make bold sweeping statements — backed up by facts of course — without ever getting too personal. But I’ve come to realize that that’s actually impossible: an opinion section will inevitably be personal, and I have been putting my voice into these stories, into this section, all along.

If I had to use one word to describe Comment this year, it would be: balance. Whether it’s advocating for climate justice at U of T or critiquing TikTok trends, discussing violence on the TTC or the meaning of love, we’ve created a section that balances the fun and the solemn, the eye-rolling and the tear-jerking. And for a section that’s traditionally been known to be rather serious, I could not be happier with how it turned out.

Of course, I could never have done it alone. I’d first like to thank each and every contributor. Whether you wrote one article or six, you gave life to this section. I simply put your words in order.

Thank you to my columnists: Rubin Beshi, Urooba Sheikh, Shreya Vanwari, Kayla Litschko, Chloe MacVicar, Noshin Talukdar, Emma Dobrovnik, and Jocelyn Mattka — who brought diversity to our coverage. A special thanks to Noshin and Chloe: as equity and climate columnists, respectively, you have pursued every story from a critical lens, and I am extremely

grateful for your commitment and dedication.

Without a doubt, I’d need to thank the entire masthead team. Special thanks to Jadine, our Editor-in-Chief, and Artie, our Managing Editor Internal: without their support, my special initiatives wouldn’t have been possible. I’d also like to thank the Editorial Board: the work we covered this year was important but heavy — and you guys handled it perfectly. I could not think of a better team to represent The Varsity ’s opinion.

And finally, to the dream team: Eleanor Park and Isabella Liu, the best associate comment editors I could’ve asked for. The support that you guys brought has been unrivaled, and being a teacher and mentor has been a fulfilling experience in a way that extends beyond what I ever anticipated when I came into this role.

To Isabella, your witty and sarcastic opinion writing has never failed to make me smile. And to Eleanor, your clever pitches and infectious energy have also never failed to make me smile. I know that you will both go on to do great things.

Lastly, to my successor: make this section your own. Take your passions, and let it dictate the work that you put out. It’s no easy feat to run an opinion section at the largest student newspaper in Canada — you will have to keep your guard up while simultaneously being willing to take criticism; the hours are long, and the articles are longer. But at the end of the day, I wouldn’t exchange this position for

anything. It has been impactful, it has been insightful, and it has been an experience.

I lied — there is one other way to describe Comment this year: unmatched. Whether it is the topics we’ve covered, the issues we’ve highlighted, or the community we’ve built, it has been an honour to lead this section.

Everyone has an opinion — don’t be afraid to tell yours.

— Shernise Mohammed-Ali, Comment Editor, Volume CXLIII

Park

Content warning: This article discusses disordered eating and diet behaviour.

In season four episode two of Sex and the City, the main character Carrie Bradshaw reflects on her more financially constrained past self by loftily stating that, “Sometimes, I would buy Vogue instead of dinner. I just felt it fed me more.”

Albeit fictitious, when an influential character like Bradshaw says this while exhibiting a perfectly toned body and living a glittering New York City lifestyle, the show’s target audience of young women cannot help but sense the undertone of her line: a woman’s key to a successful love life and physique is skipping meals and forcing a sense of nourishment from high fashion magazines with thin models.

Given that this Sex and the City episode aired in 2001, Bradshaw’s source of fulfillment — or desire to keep up with beauty standards — could only have have come from physical copies of magazines or runways or television. In 2023, however, we are overflooded with beauty-standards-turnedguidelines that dominate Instagram feeds and TikTok “For You” pages (FYP). It is untrue that these standards did not exist before, but it is also undeniable that they have more deeply infiltrated our everyday lives than 22 years ago in the pre-social media age. This is a big problem.

Exactly what is happening on social media?

One of the main sources of entertainment from social media comes from the ability to follow celebrities’ accounts and feel as though we have our foot in the door that seemingly leads to their private lives. What this “following” also does, however, is distort our conception of just how detached from ‘normal’ lives these celebrities are and how unattainable it is to have the figure that Bella Hadid or Emily Ratajkowksi — both on the rank of most followed models on Instagram — work to have.

In the Sex and the City episode I mentioned above, Bradshaw’s fascination with models stems not only from the glitz and glamour of the world of fashion, but from the understanding that the models live in a different world from her. She makes the distinction clear when she hesitates to be part of a fashion show because she does not want people to think that she cannot tell the difference between a model and herself.

In this generation, however, users of social media platforms are prone to casually scrolling through their feeds to find a beautiful, but meticulously planned and edited, photo of one of the highest paid models in the world right before seeing a photo of your school friend. While we may not be determined to compare a post from our friend — who is not paid to pose — to that by a runway model, social media seemingly breaks down the barriers and contributes to our conflation of our social media identities to that of celebrities. A side of us may reassure ourselves that celebrities’ beauty standards are unreasonable, but celebrities are simply so deeply entrenched in the platforms of our main source of communication that it is difficult to ignore and easier to compare and idealize.

Kaisa Kasekamp, a second-year student at Trinity College who is most active on Instagram, has seen the platform’s domineering power. It strips away the factors that build one’s ordinary life to simply compare picture to picture and post to post; we see Bella Hadid’s sculpted figure in a bikini right after scrolling past a colleague’s picture from the beach — just as if the model is one of our friends to reasonably compare ourselves to. This subtle function of social media is potent enough to set internalized beauty standards but, as Kasekamp puts it, “We just don’t know how to deal with these expectations.”

The models are further and dangers are closer than you think Kasekamp and I, both in our early twenties, can attest to the twinge of frustration we feel upon seeing a celebrity’s “perfect” body and face on Instagram

against our wills when we are wound up with midterms, late night fast-food, and no sleep. The false proximity we sense to celebrities on a daily basis intensifies standards held on ourselves. We can, thus, only imagine how overwhelming it can be to be a teenager during these times amidst social media’s beauty standards that have reached saturation point.

TikTok — where the largest user demographic is youth between ages 10 to 19 — does not officially allow for explicit promotion of eating disorders, but there are plenty of loopholes. Research has proven that a mere day of liking and sharing certain content can dramatically transform one’s FYP and engaging with content with #WhatIEatInADay can quickly lead to videos of restrictive diet content with hashtags #detox and #modeldiet gradually.

Upon downloading TikTok, I tried searching up the aforementioned popular hashtag and landed on a video, for which a recommended search that popped up was “fast metabolism.”

To my horror, I found hundreds of comments below that read: “I would do anything for a fast metabolism, I’m so sick of surviving off of shakes” or “I just want to be skinny effortlessly man.” The most jarring comments are on the line of, “This [video] actually looks kind of healthy.”

The video did have a combination of good food, but the thumbnail photo of it was the user in workout gear flaunting their body, which the users in the comments seemingly adored. Whether the user intended it or not, their video — through a supposedly harmless hashtag like #WhatIEatInADay — targeted hundreds of young users desiring to be skinnier with a fast metabolism to eat what “actually looks kind of healthy.”

There is an incredibly high number of TikTok users at a vulnerable and impressionable age and an uncontrollable amount of content that promotes a certain body and set of eating habits. To manage this, TikTok has been working

with the National Eating Disorders Association in America to guide users to educational resources, but the recent Congress hearings of TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew serve as a testament to where the root problem is.

When the lawmakers questioned Chew on TikTok’s promotion of disordered eating, illegal drug sales, and sexual exploitation, the CEO responded that the concern is not unique to their app and that “we don’t think it represents the majority of the users’ experience on TikTok.”

But it does! There are millionaires like Chew with enormous power who knowingly turn a blind eye toward the effect the platforms have on youth, and there are millennials and older generations who don’t understand why teenagers cannot simply get off their phones. The previous generations’ dismissive, patronizing, and uninformed conception toward social media is allowing for the ongoing proliferation of harmful content that is internalized by young users.

When we use Instagram to communicate with friends, we also see the “inspirational” bodies of celebrities mixed within our friends’ posts. The comparisons made are subconscious and we search for what they eat in a day on TikTok or YouTube, which leads us to recommended videos on restrictive diets and disordered eating. We are confused and overwhelmed too.

Content moderation is helpful for a younger audience, but I do not see repeated bans and censorship of certain posts or videos as the optimal answer. Social media is still quite a recent emergence and progress will be incremental, but I believe the first step is removing the barrier between the generations with power and youth: take our lives — and whatever comes with it — seriously.

Eleanor Park is a second-year student at Trinity College studying English and religion. She is The Varsity ’s associate comment editor.

Pay attention — social media’s algorithm drives unhealthy beauty standards

The constant presence of social media encourages unrealistic body expectations

Eleanor

Associate Comment Editor

Arts & Culture

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

The graduation time capsule

Graduating fourth-year students look back while moving forward

In my fourth year of undergrad, I have mixed feelings about graduating. Life is moving quickly as I return dusty library books, interview for jobs, and say goodbye to friends — some of them for the last time.

To capture this fleeting moment of an end and a beginning, Spencer Lu and I asked three fourth-year students to reflect on their time at U of T and to talk about what they hope for the future. We learned about the a-ha! moments, the rock bottoms, and key resources that got them through it all.

– Jesse McDougall Hellos and goodbyes

Our first conversation was with Natasha Aust, who studies political science and anthropology. In 2019, a memorable year living at St. Michael’s College propelled her into all kinds of

university experience. “I’m in an international security class [where] we have an foreign exchange student from Ukraine… It’s been interesting just to hear her perspective,” she said. “There’s so many classes like that, where there are people who have [a] personal connection [to the subject].”

Next, we spoke with Elaine Lok, who grew up in Hong Kong and now studies international relations. As a newcomer to Toronto, Lok initially felt lonely in the new city but found support through the friends she met in residence. “U of T creates this bubble where you can latch onto people [and] see them all the time,” she said.

Academically, Lok appreciated that her professors, especially in later years, encouraged critical thinking. “I’ve had a lot of professors who were like, ‘question everything, critique everything,’” she said. “It made me look at things from so many different perspectives and

ed she look at Canadian schools.

“I was already preparing my applications for [schools in] Moscow,” Frantseva said. “But when my parents proposed [the idea of Canada to me] I was like, ‘Okay, why not?’ And [now] I’ve been here for five years.”

Overcoming cultural shock and the language barrier was not easy, but Frantseva says that moving to Canada had its perks. “I got to go to prom twice!” she joked.

In her first year at U of T, Frantseva met a group of supportive friends who became her roommates when she moved out of residence. Despite courses moving online in 2020, Frantseva stayed in touch and even took trips with them outside Toronto. “COVID gave us some free time to drive together to Tobermory, Ontario,” Frantseva said. “We got to do cliff jumping and it felt like we were finally able to breathe!”

Rotman Commerce played a big part in shaping Frantseva’s experience at U of T, and even led to a paid position. “If you want to get into a Rotman club, you gotta show your resume and cover letter plus go through a series of interviews because they’re trying to prepare you for life,” she said.

Frantseva spent two years as the marketing manager for Rotman’s Entrepreneurial Organization, and soon after she was hired at a digital staffing company where she worked part time during the semester.

great experience seeing what personal support workers do.”

“Ideally, I would stay in Toronto,” Frantseva added. “I feel like I’ve established connections. I think it’s too early for me to move away, [and] these days I’m thinking of the ways I can prioritize certain things I can do now [at U of T].”

For Frantseva, that means going to more of the fitness classes that U of T offers and watching Varsity Blues games, where she enjoys the popcorn. “You know the movie with Jim Carrey where he’s saying yes to everything? I’m trying to do more of that,” said Frantseva. “In first year I never went because I was studying, so now I’m just trying to say yes.”

Onwards and upwards

The students we interviewed followed three out of an innumerable number of unique paths at U of T. I hope these conversations feel relevant no matter how far you’ve progressed through your education, and that some insights might even spark inspiration and the motivation to try something new at U of T.

on-campus involvement.

“I’ve been an orientation leader [and marshall] for three years, [and] this year I became the senior copy editor at The Mike ,” she said in an interview.

Aust began her education considering a degree in economics, but a first-year anthropology course made her double back. “I’m [now] working on a research project… studying linguistic racism [around applicants] for Danish citizenship,” she said.

Despite her taste for rigorous academics, Aust wishes she cut herself a bit more slack early on. “It was a hard transition [from high school to university], but I found more balance as I went along,” she said.

Extracurriculars also played an important role in Aust’s experience of places like the historic Hart House beside the back campus fields. “Yoga, [High Intensity Interval Training] HIIT, and Zumba are always a lot of fun, and I appreciated the college writing centers where people could proofread my essays,” she said.

Aust is now considering a career in international trade law after a summer internship in D.C., but the allure of new opportunities is dampened by the friends Aust said she will miss. “It’s hard because you want to make the most out of the time when people are still close together, [and you have] to figure out how to maintain those connections,” she said.

Nonetheless, Aust is thankful that her friends and classmates significantly improved her

never trust just one idea.”

Lok strongly encourages her peers to make better use of professors and their office hours as resources. “There’s always this fear [about] going to office hours, but you’d better go since you’re paying for that,” Lok said. She reports having “picked their brains” on numerous occasions while asking meaningful questions during her conversations.

Another resource that Lok advocates for is student health care, provided by the University of Toronto Students’ Union’s Green Shield, the satellite campus student unions, the graduate student union, the part-time student union, and U of T, for international students. “I got psychotherapy through that,” she said. “You need to see what benefits you can gain from massage therapy [too]. I think therapy has helped me be more in touch with my values, my time, and who I should prioritize in my life.”

After the graduation ceremony, Lok plans to take time for herself, travel, and explore her career options. She’s interested in environmental advocacy but doesn’t want to dive into a masters program right away. “I realize that school takes a lot of discipline, so I’m giving myself some time to really think… but I definitely want to go [to] graduate school,” she said.

Our third interview was with Vera Frantseva, who grew up almost 7,500 kilometres away from Toronto near Moscow, Russia. It was a spontaneous decision that brought Frantseva to Ontario in 2018, when her parents suggest-

Now it’s health-care technology that’s caught her eye. “I started volunteering in longterm care at Kensington Health three or four weeks ago,” Frantseva said. “It’s definitely a

With graduation rapidly approaching, I find myself immersed in final assignments while fitting in whatever social and extracurricular activities that remain on my bucket list. But in less than a month’s time, our last exams will be finished and we will face the culmination of the past few years of working, socializing, and growing, before stepping into a new and exciting chapter of our lives.

– Spencer Lu

Spencer Lu & Jesse McDougall

Associate Design Editor & Varsity Contributor

Natasha as orientation leader for St. Mikes. NATASHA AUST/THEVARSITY

Elaine exploring the city of Toronto. ELAINE LOK/THEVARSITY

Vera skating with her friends at Nathan Phillips Square. VERA FRANTSEVA/THEVARSITY

Are modern film reboots uninspired cash grabs?

With many beloved franchises being rebooted, has Hollywood run out of ideas?

Ahmad Khan Varsity Contributor

In recent times, moviegoers have been subjected to a plethora of reboots, remakes, and sequels to some of the most beloved franchises in Hollywood, ranging from the reboot of the most popular sci-fi series of all time, Star Wars, to Syllvester Stallone’s thrilling boxing drama, Rocky. With an increasing number of reboots of popular franchises being released every year, fans have claimed that Hollywood has run out of ideas.

Despite the evidence seemingly corroborating the sentiment, it may be too easy of an answer. Although the abundance of new installments in established franchises showcases an absence of originality, it may be due to movie studios’ desire for a safe option that almost guarantees a return on investment rather than a lack of new ideas.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens rebooted the Star Wars franchise 10 years after its last instalment and grossed over two billion dollars worldwide, making it the fifth highest grossing film of all time. Jurassic World marked another revival of a treasured franchise, releasing 14 years after its predecessor and grossing over $1.6 billion worldwide, making it the eighth highest grossing movie of all time. These examples of reboots’ financial success are abundant, with Star Trek, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and Spider-Man: Homecoming to name a few of the others.

Although movie studios’ intentions have been made clear with this trend, what about the quality of the reboots themselves? Are they able to stack up against their critically acclaimed predecessors? Not exactly.

The Force Awakens was released after

George Lucas’ last three outings in the Star Wars franchise, dubbed the prequel trilogy. All three films were met with criticism from a variety of outlets, including Rolling Stone, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and The Hollywood Reporter, to name a few. Critics broke down every aspect of the films, including their lacklustre dialogue, juvenile humour, wooden acting, convoluted plots, and dreary art direction. It is safe to say that expectations were at an all-time low for the franchise, explaining the praise with which The Force Awakens was met immediately after its release.

However, as critics looked back on the film, it became apparent just how much it relied on nostalgia. The film heavily retreads the story of the original Star Wars, retitled A New Hope in 1981. Both films feature orphans living on desert planets gifted with magical powers who, after receiving information hidden in a droid, set off with their new companions to destroy a superweapon created by an autocratic regime.

Retreading of old material is not the only criticism that can be levied against many modern reboots. The original significance of many movies cannot be recreated in the modern day, as shown by the Rocky series and its reboot, Creed Rocky IV features a battle between the American Rocky Balboa and the Soviet boxer Ivan Drago. The film mirrored the hostilities and competition present between the Americans and the Soviets during the Cold War. It was for this very reason that the film captivated audiences back in 1985, and it is the reason Creed II attempted to tackle the same tensions in 2018. However, although the clash between Adonis Creed and Viktor Drago was financially successful — with the film grossing over $200 million worldwide —it could not recapture the significance of Rocky IV and its Cold War themes.

Yeezys in the trash

“I’m gonna make sure everyone gets Yeezys.” Kanye “Ye” West made this claim way back in 2015 after Adidas came out with Yeezy, a collaboration between Ye and the sportswear manufacturer. This partnership was deemed one of the most impactful sneaker deals in history and paved the way for a new era in sneaker culture.

Since the conception of the collaboration, Yeezys have been synonymous with the ‘Ye’ brand because of their wild silhouettes and mixtures of tans and browns; this made them iconic. Ye made a splash, and as fast as his brand climbed to the top, it soon began to crumble — even Ye had the capacity to crash like a burning fire truck.

The rise and fall

Last year, Ye went on Instagram and posted his disdain for Adidas, referring to how their recent sneaker silhouettes were “copying” his designs. “The fact [Adidas] felt they could color my shoes and name them without my approval is really wild,” Ye wrote in one post.

Ye felt frustrated with the way Adidas was managing his brand and felt his designs were being stolen, but badmouthing the brand on social media wasn’t exactly the smartest move.

Ye was also seen wearing a “White Lives Matter” t-shirt during a Paris fashion show. He borrowed the phrase from a neo-Nazi group of the same name. This, combined with antisemitic remarks he has made over the past few months, was a major blow to the Ye brand as a whole.

As you might have guessed, many people

were outraged, and the controversy began to accumulate and affect his standing with those around him. This resulted in Adidas kicking him to the curb in October of 2022.

They cut ties with Ye back in October, 2022; Ye systematically destroyed his career and effectively removed himself from not only the brands he worked with, but from future endeavours as well. In the aftermath, Ye crawled to Sketchers in an attempt to find a new partnership, only to get rejected.

With the Yeezy brand finally dying after becoming one of the biggest sneaker names, it begs the question: what does Adidas expect to do after the storm has subsided?

We need to consider multiple factors. For one, Adidas has only just started losing. Adidas must continue to brave the storm ahead

Unfortunately, many reboots seem to be uninspired cash grabs. 2017’s Power Rangers, which rebooted the franchise, is an example of this, with its abundance of product placement creating one long advertisement for Krispy Kreme donuts.

Despite the abundance of examples that follow this trend, it would be unfair to state that all reboots fit into this mould. Blade Runner 2049 is one such exception. Although the original Blade Runner, released in 1982, became a cult classic years after its release, it underperformed at the box office.

Even without guarantee of a return on investment present in other franchises, the reboot went ahead anyway. In 2017, Blade Runner 2049 was released and was met with glowing reviews praising its cinematography and story,

which further expands on the themes present in the original without retreading the same ground. While the continuing release of sequels, reboots, and remakes year after year may leave cinephiles pessimistic about the film industry’s future, I am still optimistic. When it comes to the entertainment industry, movie studios will follow where the money is, which happens to be in the pockets of moviegoers. If fans express their disinterest in unoriginal cash grabs disguised as continuations of popular franchises, movie studios will have to listen, or risk losing the trust of their customers. Films such as Blade Runner 2049 provide moviegoers like me with hope that new additions to beloved franchises are done when there is a story worth telling, rather than extended to make a quick buck.

as it debates a major question: what to do with the remaining pairs of Yeezys?

Full-size run

Since this breakup happened at the tail end of last year, Adidas has still had to grapple with the remaining pairs, worth roughly USD $1.3 billion. Sneaker production involves a lot of time, and with that comes preparation. A lot of pairs of Yeezys are sitting in a warehouse ready to go, but like with all messy divorces, the concern now is about who gets custody. The sneaker divorce is real, and it has major repercussions for not just the Ye brand but for Adidas as a whole.

Adidas is stuck between a rock and a hard place. For starters, they can’t just sell Yeezys. Doing so would mean paying royalties to Ye, and that’s the last thing they need for their image. The rumours of their rekindling, while optimistic, are nothing but blind hope. The relationship between Ye and Adidas has become toxic, and it’s not worth the trouble.

Another option would be parting ways with

the sneakers. There’s the potential to destroy them, but that’s definitely not eco friendly. The last thing Adidas needs is to be destroying products they already spent time manufacturing.

Donations could be another solution, but the problem lies in the resale market. The fact that the sneakers can still be sold for more than their initial retail price means they will likely re-enter the market, but the profits will probably end up out of Adidas’ pocket.

The exact details of what Adidas plans to do with its remaining stock are a mystery. The fact is that no matter what path they take, they will probably lose. While it is easy to sit and wonder what the final outcome will be, only time will tell the future of Adidas.

The future of Pablo

As for the sneaker community, this changes a lot of things. For starters, Yeezys had a minor jump in resale value after the breakup hit news outlets. Data from Stockx — a leading resale sneaker website that treats sneakers like stocks — reported that Yeezys had an increase in price of more than 20 per cent. The newfound scarcity of these products shapes the market differently, but not as intensely as one might expect.

While you may view the antisemitic comments as an instant dumpster dive in product value, people think that the scarcity of the products down the road will eventually determine the market. Many people still enjoy Yeezys for their comfort and design, and the death of a monumental brand deal like this completely changes the game.

The next thing is to see what Adidas will do. Without the Yeezy line, they lose a major selling point for their brand. Perhaps someone else will step in and make something new.

Unfortunately, Ye was wrong in the end — not everyone will be wearing Yeezys, and maybe that’s for the best.

James Bullanoff Varsity Contributor

Some reboots, like Blade Runner 2049, offer exciting new perspectives. COURTESY OF IMBD/THEVARSITY

In the wake of Ye and Adidas’ messy split we are left to reconsider the future of the brand. EVELYN SISSON/THEVARSITY

Four student visual artists you need to check out On their inspirations, artistic process, and the challenges of being an young student artist

Milena Pappalardo Associate Arts & Culture Editor

U of T is not necessarily known to be an artsy school, but the campus is alive with plenty of talented artists. Meet four of them below.

Salma Ragheb (@turpentinecxx), who is double majoring in neuroscience and visual studies, paints with tremendous intention. Many of her paintings are inspired by childhood memories, but each artwork has deeply layered questions about topics such as gender roles and history. One of her vibrant artworks, “Feminizing the Gaze,” discusses the intersection of womens’ roles and chess, in which the Queen was the second weakest piece on the board after the pawn, but it evolved to be one of the most powerful.

Anella Schabler (@greenisch.tint) gravitates toward capturing small details and intimate objects — they have painted colourfully rendered fruits, keys, and shoes. They explore these intimate parts of everyday life in their piece, “Offering”: “Peeling fruit was a sign of affection that my grandparents showed me. And I was wondering how that translates into how I show love… Recently, I’ve gotten into cooking and now I cook for my family, and that’s how I think I am able to express love.” By exploring generational expressions of love in their family, they have been able to connect to their Korean heritage.

On the challenges of being an aspiring artist, Ragheb spoke about the unfortunate pressure for one’s art to gain exposure to be considered valid. “I don’t want my art to be a token to be exchanged for money,” she expressed. “But it’s something you really can’t get away from if you want to be an artist.” Schabler recounted the same thing: “There’s a big looming rain cloud over my head telling me to network… half of being a successful artist is, unfortunately, marketing.” Regardless, U of T’s young artists are finding creative ways to foray into the art world. Ragheb recounted sometimes making the “ridiculous and insanely ambitious” move of walk-

ing straight into established galleries and expressing her interest in exhibiting there. Though the answer is almost always no, she said the process of speaking to curators and gallery workers about what it takes to be showcased is invaluable.

Vicky Huang (@hedgehogtoast) explores conceptions of femininity with maximalist flair. A second-year majoring in political science and cinema studies, Huang creates artworks that are usually warped, psychedelic depictions of the female body and feminine motifs. She explains that she draws women with a lot of strange, elongated and deformed limbs as a “subversion of how we define feminine beauty. [She likes] to play on the typefied female body.” Growing up, Vicky recalled feeling uncomfortable in her femininity: “I’ve always felt very envious of the girls who were very in tune with their feminine side.” Art, she explains, “is a way for me to explore what I desire to be as a human being.”

Amani Hassan (@username4222020) likes to create art without boundaries. She studies sociocultural anthropology and art history, which she conceded does not leave her as much time as she’d like for making actual art, but she said she never enjoyed the structure of formal art assignments. Her artistic slogan, “Whatever feels good,” is indicative of the free -flowing way she makes art: many of her pieces are a collage of finished drawings, doodles, song lyrics, and magazine clippings. “Glowing brightly” is the whimsical product of this process, its title deriving from the lyrics of a song she was listening to while working on the piece.

Milena Pappalardo is an associate arts editor at The Varsity . She also makes art: @milenamakesart.

Disclosure: Salma Ragheb is an associate science editor at The Varsity

Opinion: I don’t feel guilty about wasting food

Why we should blame large companies for food waste, not ourselves

&

It is a rule we are taught from the moment we begin eating solid food and of which we are reminded constantly from that point onward: don’t waste food. Don’t waste food because there are children starving and crops dying, so be thankful for every single morsel. Scraping uneaten food into the trash is supposed to evoke a guilt so powerful that we should be willing to eat and eat and eat, even if it hurts. However, encouraging people, especially young children, to clean their plates is a dangerous path. The Mayo Clinic confirms that encouraging children to finish everything fosters a disconnect between the body and mind by teaching them to ignore hunger cues. This disconnect makes deciphering one’s hunger level more difficult throughout life, leading to overeating.

Yet, these zero-food-waste parents seem to have the moral high ground, especially because their philosophy has legitimate reasons: our food use in the Western world is inefficient.

The average Canadian household wastes 140 kilograms of food a year. Meanwhile, 5.8 million Canadians live in food insecurity — a figure that is rising as inflation skyrockets.

What I disagree with is not the statistics but rather that finishing your last slice of pizza is a part of the solution to food waste. The real issue lies within the food industry, namely grocery stores and restaurants. Grocers throw out a large portion of their food because it reaches the best-before date before their overstocked displays of fruits and vegetables and beautiful aisles stuffed to the brim can be consumed. In fact, in 2010, US retail stores alone created 43 billion pounds of food waste. Eating out won’t solve this problem either because the average restaurant throws out four to 10 per cent of its food. Ultimately, this means that 600,000 tonnes of food waste come from restaurants each year.

Instead of fretting over stray crumbs, we need to look into more efficient solutions than guilt. Applications like Too Good to Go and Flashfood show you local Toronto food that is discounted for being close to its best-before

date. This is food that would be abandoned by grocery stores and restaurants and therefore is made available for cheap.

We should be thankful for every morsel of food we have because there are crops dying and children starving. And a lot of work does go into every single bite of food we take, from

the littlest blueberry to the fanciest cheesecake. However, the guilt the majority of the population experiences over their own personal food waste is a sad misplacement of shame that should rest with the restaurant and food retail industry instead.

Madeline Szabo

Associate Arts

Culture Editor SOPHIA LEUNG/THEVARSITY

“Chess mom/Feminizing the Gaze” by Salma Ragheb. SALMA RAGHEB/THEVARSITY

“Untitled” by Vicky Huang. VICKY HUANG/THEVARSITY

“Glowing Brightly” by Amani Hassan. AMANI HASSAN/THEVARSITY

Balancing the books: learning in a digital world

Olivia Belovich Associate Video Editor

I rarely handwrite exams. I’ve done so once or twice, but they’re not the kind of knowledge assessment that I’m used to as a second-year book and media studies student at U of T. Instead, I usually type my exams.

If I’m asked to answer multiple-choice questions on Quercus from my home or submit any kind of assignment, this poses no problem apart from minor procrastination. But I, like many of my peers, have trouble with many aspects of traditional in-person learning.

It’s not uncommon for a student to express discontent with the old-fashioned pen-and-paper giant lecture hall. Upon hearing about a month ago that a midterm for one of my classes would be in person with no aids permitted, I felt a deep, wrenching dread within. Particularly now, as preparations for final examinations menacingly creep over our weary shoulders, this feeling of dread is familiar.

But what I’ve experienced isn’t a normal dread related to, say, writing an essay on a topic I’m mildly unpassionate about when I’d rather be do ing anything else. It isn’t the same dread some one’s grandmother probably felt 60 years ago, when she sat in her 5:00 pm lecture at Sidney Smith Hall as her professor told her class the date of her final examination. This dread is differ ent — it’s the shock of the unknown in a digitally dependent world. My academic dependence on technology leaves me with the overwhelming feel ing that I’m just getting by.

Our cultural environment is completely differ ent from what surrounded generations before us. Furthermore, our environment actively changes the way we think and react to our surroundings. Factors like the internet, modern technology, and a long-standing pandemic have drastically altered the way we see the world. So how do we balance these changes as U of T students?

of Standardized Testing in Canada,” this is the exact reason why written standardized tests do not have the same value as they did decades ago: these tests place less emphasis on subjectspecific knowledge today when compared to alternate learning methods.

the underlying problem as “they still bypass real conceptual learning.”

Instead, Orlin recommends academic exercises that repeatedly reference and integrate the information that students are attempting to memorize. As an example, Orlin references writing a poem about Robert Frost’s poem, “Once by the Pacific,” and memorizing the poem by dissecting the meaning of each of its lines.

Students know exactly where and when their tests will be, explains Orlin, “so it’s easy to cram.” Students are also aware of other factors, like that their exam or test will be time sensitive, so they should memorize in advance. They know that certain midterms or tests will only address the most recent lecture rather than material taught at the beginning of the semester, and they know that, because instructors and teaching assistants often grade a high volume of tests at once, they’ll most likely ask factual and computational questions, a case in which “memorization most pays off.”

Orlin’s solution calls for exams that allow for

questions like, “Why did the Confederacy use Richmond as its capital for most of the Civil War?” to “Did [the student] remember to jot this down on [their] page of notes?” This way, Orlin argues, students will be encouraged to read over their lecture notes again, often learning about the “why” in a relaxed setting instead of regurgitating information on written exams, which does not equal to retaining that information.

Paolo Granata, an associate professor of book and media studies at U of T, believes in balance. While he acknowledged the importance of memorization in an email with The Varsity, his final assessments “always balance content knowledge and experiential learning.” Moreover, he outlined the importance of intertwining the skills that we are taught in academic evaluations.

Granata added that, although memorizationbased assignments are “an essential aspect of learning,” they can negatively affect student learning and understanding. These assignments “often require students just to mix and remix in

Moving past memorization in our exams

The classic university setup depends on memori zation; traditional methods of testing place heavy reliance on this skill. Now, we’re able to rely on it a little less, thanks to digital learning advancements.

While we seem to be straying from an over arching dependence on memorization in our learning environments, the need for it surpasses just academics. Memorization skills are an impor tant component of our lives as students, friends, peers, and individuals. Say you’re at the grocery store, trying to determine how many ingredients to buy when cooking dinner for friends. don’t have to search eight multiplied by nine on a calculator — I still know the multiplication tables up to 12 off the top of my head thanks to that poster my parents made me hang up in my room. I know how to tell time, and I know the alphabet. These basic skills require memorization, so it’s hard to argue that we can eradicate it entirely. One aspect of inperson learning we can get rid of — and maybe it is for the better — is unnecessary memorization in the classroom.

According to Fraser Institute senior fellow Michael Zwaagstra’s “The Decline

How an online generation navigates traditional methods of learning

Factors like the internet, modern technology, and a long-standing pandemic have drastically altered the way we see the world.

One aspect of in-person learning we can get rid of — and maybe it is for the better — is unnecessary memorization in the classroom.

JISHNA SUNKARA/THEVARSITY

ing but often gets misinterpreted as the definition of it. Our learning systems were built on a reliance on memorization. However, as important as it traditionally has been, there are a multitude of ways we learn as a digital generation, so it’s necessary to take advantage of the tools we’re given.

Accessibility in the digital classroom

Technological advancements in the classroom help make learning more accessible. At U of T, students can register with Accessibility Services, a team that, per their website, “assists in navigating disability-related barriers” to students’ academic success, and “[provides] services and supports for learning, problem solving and inclusion.” In the 2021—2022 academic year, 5,730 U of T students registered with Accessibility Services.

To learn more about how Canadian universities can offer more accessible learning assessments, The Varsity spoke to Eyra Abraham, the founder and CEO of Lisnen Inc. Lisnen Inc. is an artificial intelligence (AI) company that aims to develop AI to benefit those with disabilities at home and in their workplace.

Abraham is hard of hearing, and engages with technology and accessibility daily in her

university’s accessibility services mainly included a need for a smaller assessment room.

“Using new technology in classrooms, [while] there’s no soundproof wall [or] auditorium, [makes] it very difficult for people with hearing loss,” she added.

According to U of T’s Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation, the university has set up Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a framework that “promotes inclusive practices that work to increase accessibility by reducing barriers (physical and cognitive)” and “[builds] sustaining and evolving learning environments for all learners.”

One of the UDL’s guidelines is to “offer alternatives for auditory information”; in this guideline, the organization recommends that classrooms use speech-to-text technologies or captions, use American Sign Language, or display visual representations of information. To help students who have trouble processing visual information, the UDL recommends providing textual or auditory descriptions for all graphics; using “touch equivalents,” such as objects of reference, to represent key concepts; and providing spacial models to convey perspective or interaction.

Additionally, the university adopted the University Facility Accessibility Design Standards from the Ontario College of Art and Design University as an accessibility standards framework, which U of T follows in accor-

dance with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disability Act (AODA). The AODA is an Ontario law that guarantees non discrimination towards individuals with disabilities.

When it comes to taking exams, U of T’s Accommodated Testing Services provides on-campus assessment accommodations for students with disabilities who are enrolled in in-class courses at UTSG. According to their website, these accessible features could include “adaptive technology,” “ergonomic furniture,” and “alternate print formats”; however, students must be registered with Accessibility Services to access these accommodations “on a perassessment basis.”

Without attention paid to accessibility, Abraham explained, it can take people with disabilities a lot longer to access and benefit from necessary academic materials. “At the university level, your professor [is an] academic who has expertise in a particular field,” Abraham said. “That also makes it very challenging [because] they may not be aware of ways to make learning more accessible.”

Traditional and digital: Finding a balance

These days, it can feel like the pressure to surrounding ourselves with technology seems imminent, but we can depend on traditional methods of learning and new developments in technology in unison.

In first year, I was shocked when one

sources to support our schooling online.

My feelings aren’t out of the ordinary; according to the 2020 study titled “Providing Online Exams for Online Learners: Does It Really Matter for Them?” published by the Education and Information Technologies, “Online exams have started to become a preferred method of assessment in both online and traditional learning environments.”

It’s not just students who agree that online assessments should be used; in their book Teaching for Quality Learning at University, John Biggs and Catherine Tang argue for the concept of “constructive alignment,” which promotes establishing coherence between all phases of the learning process. Biggs and Tang argue that all elements of the learning process, which includes assessment tasks and grading, should support one another. Therefore, according to Biggs and Tang, the online tools regularly used for teaching should be a regular part of students’ examination process.

“Maximizing learning while minimizing cheating: New evidence and advice for online multiple-choice exams,” a 2020 study published in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, suggested that the multiple-choice exams post-COVID led to reductions in learning outcomes. However, a later study conducted by the same researchers concluded that students scored much higher when exams were online and had no time limit.

These statistics suggest that perhaps an online format is not the most important factor when considering the ‘traditional exam’ replacement. But online exams do provide opportunities for helping students in ways that in-person exams cannot. While research has indicated that no major discrepancy exists between online test results versus traditional exams, an article published in The John Hopkins News-Letter described how students experience a decrease in anxiety when taking tests online, as compared to in-person exams.

In each of my lectures, I’m surrounded by a sea of notetakers frantically inscribing as much as possible onto their tablets, their styluses barely keeping up with the professor’s speed. I see this as a benefit of technology: faster notetaking leads to less stressed students, who might be able to focus more on what the professor is saying rather than copying down lecture slides. Additionally, technology enables economic accessibility in academics through cheaper or free textbooks and readings, and lecture slides that are posted online for students who can’t make it to class. Students unable to attend lectures can still pass courses if attendance isn’t graded and lecture slides are accessible.

In the drastic shift to a digitally dependent environment, it’s vital to remember the practices we were brought up on — finding that balance between the traditional and the digital is essential.

It would be ridiculous to be against something that can help people succeed in an academic setting. Students each want to succeed in their own ways, and this means taking advantage of technological advancements in the classroom that ensure that a lot of us actually can. I love being able to find all my library sources on my computer. I love submitting essays at home, rather than printing it out in a crisp plastic folder with a carefully written out title page. I love annotating slides on a tablet, rather than frantically transcribing everything my professor says until my hand grows numb. But I think it’s about balance: at the end of the day, I’ll still carry a notebook around.

Many of us will complete our university degree while never taking out a book at Robarts.

It would be ridiculous to be against something that can help people succeed in an academic setting.

Letter from the Editor: Reflecting on a year in Business & Labour

From tuition to Twitter, from labour to LinkedIn — capturing a year of chaos in the economy

Janhavi Agarwal Business & Labour Editor

One of my coworkers called the Business & Labour (biz) section, the “woes” section. “It’s Business & Labour! Of course it will be sad! In this economy?!” was my response.

I began writing for The Varsity out of boredom during the lockdown in 2020. As an economics and statistics student, biz seemed like the natural route for me to try out my journalistic endeavors. Never once did I imagine that two years later, I would be running the section and what an experience it has been.

Looking back on this volume

Biz started the academic year off strong by reporting on the No Precarious Employment movement, which was fighting for the rights of several professors at OISE’s Social Justice Education department. In our second issue, we reported on the skyrocketing rent issue that has affected most students at U of T.

With every passing issue, I tried to report on how the several goings on of the tumultuous economy we live in affected students. We put

out articles about how students were worried about graduating into a potential recession, how students were dealing with raging inflation, how student investors were navigating the sorry state of the stock market, and what students had to say about the FTX crash.

My other goal was to publish service journalism articles. Recruitment season is not easy, and what better place than the biz section to help students through it? There was an article about writing cover letters and how to curate a LinkedIn profile. I began the “Rotman reflections” series in which I had several students in Rotman Commerce reflect on their experiences in the program, including how they navigate its toxic culture and how they went about finding their place in the program.

Labour is the backbone of U of T, and I wanted to make sure that reporting on the “& Labour” part of the section title was carried through. We published several articles about what labour unions have been up to this year, including the Good Jobs movement and a strike explainer.

My biggest goal for the section was to implement data journalism into the section — something we were able to achieve with an article on

how international students’ tuition has been on the rise — a piece that I am particularly proud of.

The team behind the ‘we’ You may notice that I have referred to my goals in the first person but have used collective pronouns when referring to achievements. This is because none of the content that biz has put out would have been possible without the team that works tirelessly behind the scenes to make it all happen.

The Business & Labour team, consisting of my associates Andrew and Georgia and my correspondents Nina and Zen, have played a crucial role in finding stories, reporting on important issues, and carrying out the more administrative tasks of the section, such as placing visual requests and coming up with pitches.

A huge thank you to Talha and Safiya as well for all the work they do to make biz articles factually correct and up to the editorial standards of The Varsity, and for tolerating my occasional tardiness in getting my articles ready for SCE.

None of the work that I do would be possible without the constant support of Jadine and Artie. From answering my questions at odd hours of

the night, to looking over emails, pitches, and complicated articles, they have made my job so much easier, and I am so grateful for having had the opportunity to learn from them.

Finally, I would like to thank the contributors for all the amazing articles that they have written. I have learnt so much from my contributors about various aspects of the economy such as cryptocurrency, stocks, and labour unions.

Writing this letter has been a bittersweet experience, but I look forward to seeing what the section goes on to cover in upcoming volumes from the other side. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to edit this section, and will miss it terribly.

– Janhavi Agarwal, Business & Labour Editor, Volume CXLIII

Canada needs more doctors. Why is it so hard

get into medical school?

Maeve Ellis Associate Features Editor

Content warning: this article contains a brief mention of suicide.

More and more Canadians need doctors, and this is a profession that more and more Canadians are blocked from becoming.

Medical schools turn away 80 per cent of annual applicants, while a Royal Bank of Canada study warns of a shortage of 44,000 physicians by 2028. Besides the ramifications for patients themselves, the challenges for physician hopefuls include stress-filled years spent at university, a lack of other options, and even suicide.

Who is keeping students out of medical schools?

Provinces control both the number of spots in medical schools and the number of positions for residency — a multi-year mandatory training program in hospitals that is required after medical school to become a fully licensed physician.

Provinces are hesitant to increase the number of medical school spots when there is not a similar increase in residency spots to take them in afterward.

This can lead to undergraduates struggling for years while trying to position themselves best for acceptance. A go-to place to vent about these issues, the subreddit r/premedcanada, has seen its subscriber count grow from virtually none to 22,600 over the past five years. Its top keyword and most mentioned university is “U of T,” which is possibly the undergraduate university most notorious for physician hopefuls.

Anita Acai, an assistant professor and education scientist at McMaster University who almost exclusively teaches undergraduate students aiming for medical school, told The Varsity about how “people start to equate their identities with their career” and those who don’t get into medical school feel like personal failures.

A shortage of spots in Canadian medical schools leads some students to look abroad.

Charles Pinto, a third-year life sciences student at U of T said in an interview with The Varsity,

“You’ve got relatively better chances trying to go to the States, even as a Canadian, then as a Canadian trying to apply to Canadian schools.”

What limits residency spots?

Even after the hurdle of being accepted into medical schools, students face the second challenge of scoring an increasingly competitive residency spot.

A 2017 study from the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that the average number of residency positions students had to apply to was 18 to 19, with candidates having to travel or do an excessive amount of extracurricular activities to be competitive.

Medical school graduates are matched to residency positions by an external organization called the Canadian Residency Matching Service (CaRMS). In 2022, it matched 93.7 per cent of those graduating from Canadian medical schools and 81.2 per cent of those educated abroad, in the first round, on top of a small number of remainders in the second.

However, besides the numbers that are admitted, some people do not get residency positions, even after having completed roughly eight years of schooling at this point. Last year, 35 Canadian medical school graduates and seven foreigneducated graduates did not get positions after the second round. Forty eight Canadian medical graduates who were not matched in the first round did not reapply in the second.

Positions that don’t usually get filled

Many residency positions go unfilled, including family medicine posts, posts that require French speaking skills, and positions in rural areas.

After the second round of residency offers of 2022, there were still 115 unfilled positions, of which 99 were in family medicine. Seventy three of these unfilled family medicine positions were in Québec, 15 in Ontario, and 11 in Western Canada.

Some medical students take this as a motivator to go for these unwanted positions.

Benjamin, a student who asked to only be identified by his first name out of fear of repercussion from medical school review boards, said

in an interview with The Varsity, “With the current crisis in family medicine, many minority patients cannot even access walk-in clinics, as English is often the primary language at those places.”

Specialty

Michael Carter, a professor of industrial engineering at U of T, told The Varsity that provincial governments determine how much doctors are paid — which, in turn, determines which specialties people vie for. “15 years ago, they changed the rate that they were paying family docs and started paying them more. Still, in my opinion, not enough to try to convince people to move from specialties,” he told The Varsity

For students who want to go into the more competitive specialties, competition is fierce.

Danika Snelgrove, a first-year student at Memorial University’s Medical School, told The Varsity that her colleagues “who want to be in competitive specialties typically eat, breathe, sleep, those competitive specialties.”

“There’s this idea of, if I’m going to put myself through eight years of school, and then an additional five, at the very least, years of residency [and] of sleepless nights, [I would] want to come out being like the coolest possible thing,” said Pinto.

“No one really wants to go into family medicine unless it’s something like ‘my parents are family doctors,’ ” he said, adding that he himself is interested in that field.

Unfairness

This system, which has so many checkpoints for meritocracy, can lead to unequal results.

According to CaRMs 2022 data, out of the 529 graduates from Canadian medical schools, 141 came from households that earned more than $150,000 per year. Thirty nine graduates had declined to take part in this survey.

Out of those who graduated from foreign medical schools, 26 came from households that earned more than $150,000, and 286 came from households that earned less, including 125 from households that earned less than $25,000.

Benjamin also told The Varsity, “I worked three concurrent jobs while as an undergraduate student, and this had a major effect on my mental health. I was constantly burnt out and was extremely isolated.” The resulting GPA of 3.8 and lack of extracurriculars put him at a disadvantage, though, in the end, he still got two positive responses.

Carter expanded on a lack of central planning that has led to the current system. “One of the problems we have with Canadian healthcare is that the federal government gives money to the province, but they can’t tell the province what to do with it. The province gives money to the hospitals, but they can’t tell them what to do with it. The province gives money to the doctors, but they can’t tell them what to do with it,” he explained.

“It’s difficult if there’s nobody in charge.”

2022–2023 in student photos

U of T photographers share their favourite captured moments

In wrapping up Volume 143, it brings me great pleasure to present The Varsity’s “Top Photos of the Year” — a patiently curated selection of the beautiful work submitted by student photographers across all three campuses. In true U of T fashion, the images below, ranked in no particular order, represent the diversity of our student body, with images taken in Bolivia, Indonesia and even the corners of Iceland. Yet, we see just as many moments captured right within hidden pockets of Toronto itself — Nathan Phillips Square, Varsity Blues Stadium, and Kensington Market to name a few. These photos evoke many things. At times, a stranger’s quiet, solitary moment. At others, the loud vastness of a landscape. These photographers not only demonstrate immense technical talent, but also something arguably far more overlooked: an eye for capturing a fleeting moment.

When I took this photo, I was wandering the streets of Toronto to complete the visual requests for that week’s The Varsity issue. It was one of my first months here. I got lost, and it started pouring. Trying to shelter myself and my camera from the rain, I somehow found myself at Nathan Phillips Square. In the foggy weather, I saw the skyscrapers that outline the everyday view from my dorm room under a different light — each window of the corporate headquarters was a

At the height of the Bolivian Andes, many would think that no animal would be able to survive at such an altitude. However, special to the Bolivian Andes, the immense lakes harbor some of the most beautiful flocks of flamingos in the world. In this image, a pair of flamingos are taking flight off a lake. The beauty of the flamingos undeniably inspired me to take this picture.

— Lucas Garcia Vidal, first year, math and physical sciences

After visiting a handful of packed tourist destinations on our trip to Iceland, it was really cool seeing a beach with no one on it. Of course it is also just an amazing view, and something that I don’t get to see a lot coming from the city. Those [factors] prompted me to take this photo and many others on my trip to Iceland.

warm beacon spiking through the condensed sky, evoking a sense of brightness and hope within. I found this nuance very ironic considering the draining culture of corporate work, yet found my inspiration for this photo in that feeling. I now reminisce [about] this photo as the starting point of my (unintentional) Toronto exploration.

With just a simple change of perspective, we turn ordinary sights into works of art. I try to apply this idea in my photography, paying closer attention to places I usually gloss over.

— Zeynep Poyanli, first year, life sciences

— Judy Naamani, fourth year, computer science

— Aidan Brogan, fourth year, political science and urban studies

Vurjeet Madan

Photo Editor

JUDY NAAMANI/THE VARSITY

LUCAS GARCIA/THE VARSITY

POYANLI/THE VARSITY

AIDAN BROGAN/THE VARSITY

I absolutely adore fireworks; some of my happiest memories are attached to them and to Niagara Falls as growing up, my entire extended family used to make a yearly pilgrimage of sorts. Now that everyone is in different phases and it doesn’t happen the same way. I took these photographs on one such trip with just my immediate family; it was a bit of a gamble because it was so dark and misty I couldn't really see my camera screen, but later on I was pleasantly surprised by the pictures, even more so after editing them.

— Fatima Mahmood, third year, population health and mental health studies

I was visiting a small village, [with a name] that [translates] to "Batik village," in Semarang. While my family and I were scouring the Batik stores, I came across this man who I soon found out was the leading tour guide in the area who educated tourists [on] the history of the place. We talked for an hour until the sun set as he explained the history of the city through the murals he spent months painting.

— Arthur Hamdani, third year, journalism, English literature, and migration studies

The atmosphere was charged, with enough demonstrators to comfortably fill up the square. While big political figures attended the rally, this photo I took of several women was the most meaningful to me. They were holding candles, so I asked to take a photo of them. One of them was not prepared for the flash, and closed her eyes. With her companions gathering around her, she appeared to be in melancholic contemplation, almost in prayer. To me, this photo represents the anguishing personal connection [that] each of us holds to the thing we fear losing the most. For her, it could have been her entire world.

— Augustine Wong, second year, architecture

I photographed “Focus on the Blues” at the championship finals for the Varsity Blues women’s hockey team. Though the Blues were at their very best, they were 0–1 by the second period. Despite this, the team remained spirited, choosing to focus on each other’s company above all else. I like to think that even at our darkest hour, moments like these shine through — the players represent a united front within U of T that helps us break through challenging times.

— Tung Kwan Nathan Ching, fourth year, public policy and criminology

ARTHUR HAMDANI/THE VARSITY

AUGUSTINE WONG/THE VARSITY TUNG KWAN NATHAN CHING/THE VARSITY

AUGUSTINE WONG/THE VARSITY

Is short-form content bad for you?

How short-form content affects your attention span and ability to connect with one another

Ewa Akomolafe Varsity Contributor

Due to the rapid development of technology in recent years, our world has been changing drastically. While there have been positive advances that have come with the innovation of technology, there have also been notable downsides. A growing concern amongst researchers is the effect of social media, specifically short-form content, on our ability to stay focused for a long period of time, with many in the scientific community saying that it has diminished our attention span.

In March 2020, when the world shut down, millions of people turned to the social media app TikTok as a source of escape from the grim reality that came with the COVID-19 virus, and to find solidarity through comedy. Following the vast success of TikTok’s short-form content, other platforms like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts followed closely behind.

Although TikTok is the fastest growing social media platform, most of us remember the shortlived but extreme fame that came with the video platform Vine, where creators had six seconds or less to be funny. It appears that the world has a fixation on platforms that prioritize short-form content, and the reason behind that is that these apps were created to hold our attention!

Managing a TikTok addiction

While I love TikTok as much as the next person and unashamedly can admit to having wasted hours, and possibly days, of my life on it, one must wonder about the effects this mindless scrolling has on our attention span. In a 2021 study, the researchers found that a reason that young people turn to social media platforms is to relieve ‘perceived stress.’ According to the study, although these applications do relieve stress momentarily, the problem arises when individuals remain on them for too long, forming what is known in the study as a ‘Short-Form Video Ap-

plication Addiction.’

The addictive nature of TikTok is nothing new, but the algorithm based on content and watch times, creating TikTok’s ‘For You page,’ is what sets it apart from other comparable apps. Shortform video apps operate on a principle known as random reinforcement, where even if the video you’re watching isn’t entertaining, the belief that the next one might be keeps you scrolling. Like gambling, the idea of holding on for the next ‘win’ — or entertaining video — gives way to addiction.

Norman Farb, a psychology professor at UTM, focuses his research on mindfulness training to focus attention on the present. In an interview with The Varsity, he emphasized the need to have healthy constraints around how we use social media, and to be mindful of the ways we minimize stress. Although people tend to go to social media to ease their stress, you might want to evaluate other areas of your life that might be causing stress, and tackle the issue from the root, rather than masking it with a momentary distraction.

Farb mentioned that it can be helpful to set aside an evening in the week to take time off social media and see how it affects you emotionally. Maybe taking a walk or catching up with

cupy yourself. He goes on to say that we have control over “what do I want to pay attention to?

What do I want to spend time on?” And taking control in these situations requires setting goals and boundaries.

Research has shown that short-form content can hold our attention for so long because the low cognitive load allows us to easily say: “just one more video.” Because of our inability to say no when it comes to mindless scrolling, Farb suggests setting reasonable timers ahead of going on these platforms, so you don’t wait till you’ve spent hours to taking a break. Farb explained, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” So you need to take a stand concerning what holds your attention.

The attention span

In an interview with the BBC, Gemma Briggs, a psychology lecturer at The Open University, said that the idea of an ‘average attention span’ is pretty meaningless, and that our attention span is task dependent. A UTSC professor of psychology, Steve Joordens, has a similar perspective on the topic. He argues that “something as fundamental to us as our attention span, [does

What’s different in the newer generations is that we are raised

distractible” world. Instead, he suggests that what’s important in the discourse on social media and attention is social connection. His research in dealing with stress in healthy ways has shown that oxytocin, colloquially known as the love or trust hormone, is released when we are vulnerable to others. Actions like laughing, smiling, dancing, and singing with others can not only stop the stress hormone cortisol from being released, but they can also release good hormones like oxytocin!

For those of you that have made it this far into the article, I congratulate you and your intact “attention span.” Overall, there are varying opinions and beliefs on the effect of short-form content on our attention span and well-being in general, but the overarching theme seems to be the idea of being intentional with our time. To quote Joordens, “Am I in control of the things that happen? Or is the environment [in control] and I'm just a victim of it?”

It’s important to take control of our social media usage and make a conscious choice on how we want to attend to it. Rather than denying yourself social media for a day, consider choosing to spend quality time with someone you love. Be intentional about how you choose to use your time. if you’re going to spend it online, follow people that lighten your mood, rather than those that do the opposite.

Stress seems to be the underlying factor when it comes to social media addictions, so it is important to find healthy ways to curb anxiety. However, stress isn’t always distress. It can simply be our body’s way of telling us that we’re missing something fundamental, like social connection or fresh air.

people you haven’t spoken to in some time could be a way to oc

Check in with yourself. Have you spent time with your loved ones lately? Have you been getting enough sleep? If after asking yourself these questions and examining your use of social media you find that it is a medium that relieves stress for you, or it’s a healthy escape from reality, then happy scrolling!

Could music improve your memory?

Musical treatments improve neurodegenerative conditions such as dementia

Ashiana

Dementia is an umbrella term used to describe any abnormal impairments that alter an individual’s memory, rationale, and ability to make daily choices. In other words, it is associated with a decline in explicit memory.

In 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there were five million individuals over the age of 65 with dementia, but this number is expected to be 14 million by 2060. It can manifest as a loss of independence in completing tasks, mixing up vocabulary for usually obvious objects, or getting lost on a route that a person takes

often. There are many factors that can increase the risk of dementia including age, family history, race, ethnicity, cardiac issues, or brain injuries.

Currently, dementia is treated based on the form that it presents itself as. Alzheimer’s, which is the most common form of dementia, is a neurodegenerative disorder that currently is only managed by medications targeting symptoms and protecting the brain. But beyond medication, one unexpected form of prevention and intervention for dementia is music!

Prevention

Music is associated with reactivating the areas of the brain involved in the manifestation of de-

mentia symptoms, such as memory, rationale, and decision-making. This relationship led to the theory that music can be helpful in terms of memory formation and retrieval, which is in agreement with an article in Harvard Health publishing.

Studies have been conducted on the risk of developing dementia in individuals who play musical instruments. A 2020 twin study found that musicians are 64 per cent less likely to develop cognitive impairments or dementia than individuals who don’t play music. In a 2017 meta-analysis using data from 5,693 participants, 745 of which were musicians, the musicians were found to be 59 per cent less likely to develop dementia.

Intervention

Music has the potential to enhance a dementia patient’s frame of mind, the way that they conduct themselves, and even their cognitive abilities. These positive effects can last beyond the time that the music is being played. The music played does not have to be significant to the patient to have a positive effect, and the patient does not have to possess any musical talent or ability.

Agitation is a common symptom of dementia that can be reduced in a patient through the enjoyment of music. Agitation can cause frustration for both a patient and their caregiver, which can be exacerbated by another common manifestation of the disease, the inability to communicate. Music can help by facilitat-

ing connections between the patient and their loved ones at a time when words are impossible to convey.

Studies of patients with Alzheimer’s disease found that the ability to learn, produce, and create music remains intact. In terms of recognizing music they already knew, subjects functioned normally. This is likely due to the fact that the parts of the hippocampus and amygdala involved in musical appreciation and memory is the last area to be affected by dementia.

However, patients suffered impairments when learning and recognizing new songs, unless they were taught through repetition. In the case of repetition, the recognition could last up to eight weeks, according to a study conducted in 2009.

Bayshore Healthcare, a community healthcare center, put together a list of steps that you can take to enhance the quality of life of a loved one with dementia through music. It stresses the importance of starting with music at a low volume and playing more calming or soothing music in order to reduce agitation.

You can create a playlist of songs that you know hold significance to them, or are reminiscent of their early days. It is important for them to engage with the music, whether it be through singing — which can stimulate brain activity — dancing, tapping, or playing an instrument. Finally, being mindful of how they respond to the different songs and adjusting what you play based on that is a good strategy to provide the best experience for individuals with dementia.

Sunderji Varsity Staff

ROSALIND LIANG/THEVARSITY

DALAINEY GERVAIS/THEVARSITY

Why does looking at a McDonald’s logo make me hungry?

Restaurants use marketing tricks to make us hungrier and buy more

Shonita Srinivasan Varsity Contributor

Have you ever picked up a bag of candy and thought you shouldn’t buy it, but it ends up in your cart? That wasn’t an accident. Reeling in consumers, especially in the food industry, relies on marketing.

Food marketing and logo colours are key parts of how the food industry brings in consumers. Everything from the colours of the food, the presentation of the plate, and even the menu play a part in this controlled image.

Colour psychology

One common marketing tactic is colour psychology, which informs perceptions and behaviours of possible customers. This tool is used to market a company and support its brand expression. The expression affects consumer confidence in the brand which, in turn, affects performance and sales of a brand.

For instance, let’s take the color red. Its associations with appetite come in handy when restaurants think about their brand expression. Warm colors such as red, yellow, and orange work in tandem to make you feel hungry. Blue tends to make people less hungry and more thirsty, so it’s used mainly in weight loss ads. With this in mind, restaurants often use these colours to lure the public in.

When creating a brand and establishing its target audience, colour is paramount, but it isn’t the only important factor. Have you ever seen a food video on Instagram and thought to yourself, “Where can I get that?!” If so, guess what? You are a victim of good presentation, a

key marketing technique for the food industry.

Presentation

Presentation coupled with colour can attract new customers. The goal of food presentation is to make it more visually appealing to the consumer. Presentation can positively or negatively impact a customer’s first impression. From a psychological standpoint, if a customer sees that care was put into the craft, a relationship is established between the consumer and the food. This bond encourages a customer to come back and recommend the restaurant to friends. If the food both looks tasty and makes for a good photo, then customers are more likely to return.

Some restaurants have social media accounts for their consumers to tag when posting photos of the food, creating a marketing system through reviews. If the food doesn’t look tasty, the consumer is more likely to think lowly of both the product and distributor. Appetizing food turns a visit to a restaurant into an enjoyable experience — a unique experience that can only be found at that one restaurant — and boosts the restaurant’s overall image.

Part of the restaurant experience is the aesthetic; interior design, cutlery choices, and lighting — either bright or dim — all play a big role in making a unique and appealing experience. Creating an exclusive aesthetic intrigues the consumer and often urges them to influence others into wanting to partake in this experience. If a restaurant experience is notable, influencers and food blogs will turn it into a trend among their followers, expanding a restaurant’s customer base. These tactics are not solely ex-

Why

Edvina Bahar Varsity Contributor

Humour is a universal human phenomenon that can evoke positive emotions and social bonding, and even produce therapeutic effects. But what is the science behind humour? How does the brain process and respond to humorous stimuli?

The neurobiology of humour is complex and multifaceted, involving multiple brain regions and cognitive processes. At its core, humour involves the recognition of incongruity, or surprise, which creates a cognitive conflict that is resolved through laughter or other positive emotions. And what happens in the brain when we encounter something funny?

Humour in the brain

Humour, or its manifestation as laughter, is

pressed in fine dining. Fast food places use it in their own way to attract a different customer bracket.

Let’s take a look at McDonald’s. This company mixes bright red with yellow for an attractive look and to make people hungry. The brand’s expression focuses on cheap, easy food for the daily consumer. Anyone walking by a McDonald’s thinks that they can afford it, even if they’re tight for money, because of the company’s advertising and prices. Once a consumer walks in, they are bombarded with bright lights and screens with food. The kitchen is in full view and you can hear the bacon sizzling in the background. This presentation makes the food look too good to resist. In the case of McDonald’s,

find things funny?

universal. In infants, laughter is one of the first social vocalizations. For the longest time, it was thought to be a simple behavioural reflex response to certain situations — but it turns out that it is more complex than that. Humour is a higher-order cognitive process that involves both perception and creativity, as well as the integration of affective stimuli.

One of the key brain regions involved in humour is the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for executive functions such as attention, working memory, and inhibitory control. Studies have shown that humour comprehension recruits activity in the prefrontal cortex, suggesting that humour requires cognitive resources and mental effort.

Humour also involves the amygdala, a brain region that is involved in emotional processing and the generation of emotional responses.

When we encounter something funny, amygdala activity increases, leading to the release of dopamine and other neurotransmitters that generate positive emotions and reward signals.

Other important brain regions involved in humour are the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction, which are associated with social cognition and theory of mind, and are associated with activation during self-related processing.

Theory of mind is the phenomenon and ability of one to empathize with others and put themselves in someone else’s shoes. The activation of the brain regions implicated in theory of mind suggests humour is a social and communicative phenomenon that involves understanding other people’s perspectives and intentions. Changes in the oxygen levels in the blood, which signal to reward system areas such as the mesocortico-

Humour evolved to improve bonding in society.

the food you receive may not look like the ad, but it will taste comforting so you’ll find yourself going back.

Like any industry, the food industry capitalizes on consumer desire by amplifying presentation and colour. This is done strategically to make the consumer think buying the food is their choice when in reality, the company is controlling the narrative. These techniques seem like they would apply only to fine dining and high quality restaurant experiences, but medium to low tier restaurants use these tactics as well.

Next time you eat out, think about how hungry you really are and how much food you really want. Something may look too good to resist, but it may not taste as good as it looks.

limbic pathway, are also observed in subjective funniness ratings.

The cognitive component of humour is thought to rely on visual, auditory, and language areas, as humour can be processed both verbally and visually. Language areas such as Wernicke’s area, which is important for comprehension, and Broca’s area, which is used for speech production, play a key role in the semantic processing and production of humorous stimuli.

Do we need humour?

Interestingly, humour does have an evolutionary, functional role in society. Its fundamental basis in evolution is its ability to create, facilitate, and maintain social bonding and interactions by allowing people to express their sometimes negative and tense feelings in a more positive light. This is also known as the tension-relief theory, which identifies humour as a physiological mechanism for tension release. Hence, people who engage in humour and laughter experience a sense of relief by releasing tension.

Another evolutionary function of humour relates to sexual selection. Laughter is an indicator of fitness, signalling an attractive quality in mates for women choosing their partners. This explains why so many women find funny men attractive!

Research has also shown that humour can have therapeutic effects on mental health by reducing stress, anxiety, and depression, and improving subjective well-being. This is thought to be due to the activation of the mesolimbic reward system, which is involved in the generation of positive emotions and the regulation of stress responses.

The neuroscience behind humour is a complex and fascinating area of research that involves the integration of a plethora of sensory and semantic elements. By understanding the neural mechanisms that underlie humour, we can gain insights into the nature of human cognition and social behaviour and develop new approaches for treating mental health problems.

AUGUSTINE WONG/THEVARSITY

Using colours and presentation, restaurants can manipulate you into buying more. ZEYNEP POYLANI/THEVARSITY

Beauty for beauty’s sake, or for survival?

the purpose of an intrinsic aesthetic sense for decades, they agree that, to have an aesthetic sense, the onlooker needs to have an ability to assess, evaluate, and even rank choices.

In some developments of natural selection in evolutionary theory, humans and animals evaluate ornaments subjectively and cognitively. In nature, Charles Darwin used the term ‘ornaments’ to describe physical displays to court and attract mates — characteristics seen in animals that are more decorative than critical to survival. He called this process ‘sexual selection.’ But for a long period of time, this theory was dismissed because it put too much evolutionary credit on the female animals’ selectiveness in choosing a mate.

While Darwin didn’t think it was necessary to make a direct link between beauty and survival, aesthetic preferences in animals are an adaptation in their environment — a step closer to becoming a successful creature that can ultimately survive better.

ful objects. They can look like either a kind of tipi structure or a walk-down-the-aisle structure with a tunnel at the end, similar to human wedding ceremonies. This ritual may include plumage, man made objects like bottle caps, and flower petals. In fact, bowerbirds may take their artistic skills further and include acorns, shells, charcoal, and even butterfly wings and crushed fruit.

To understand if these birds prefer certain colours over others, a 2006 study on ornament colour selection was carried out. The study found that bowerbirds prefer colours that are distinct from their own plumage, bower structure, and nearby visual background. The birds disliked hues that were common colours, and chose contrasting colours instead to attract females. Bowerbirds also position the bower and its surrounding objects to influence the female’s perspective — a forced illusion that would draw her attention.

Khaleda Khan Varsity Contributor

What is beauty? The simplest answer is that it’s a combination of qualities culturally conditioned into the eye of the beholder to draw you in and move you.

The effect beauty provokes in the viewer or reader is a feeling of wonder, a kind of trembling awe that pulls you in and traps you. To know when a work of art or a film is beautiful, we rely

on our own aesthetic sense, which is partly inherent and partly conditioned. Our sense of aesthetic helps us shape our reality, whether in abstract or in evolution.

The idea of a definable, objective beauty and aesthetic sense is generally controversial — especially when we apply it to animals. The reason behind the controversy is that we don’t fully understand beauty as an idea, so we cannot yet investigate its evolutionary purpose. Even though biologists have sought to explain

Why does turbulence happen?

Different types of turbulence and aerodynamic insight from nature

Elizabeth Xu

Varsity Staff

Anyone who has been on a flight has, at some point, experienced a form of turbulence. You feel the plane start shaking, the seatbelt sign comes on, and the pilot announces there’s nothing to be worried about. But what really is turbulence, and where and how does it occur?

Turbulence is a mass of irregular airflow an airplane may encounter during flight. It often appears in circular air currents known as eddies. Depending on these eddies’ sizes, turbulence can cause anything from mild jolts to more significant jostling that causes passenger injuries and structural damage.

Common causes of turbulence include jet streams, mountain air lifts, and weather fronts. Most turbulence falls into four major categories: clear, mechanical, wake and thermal.

Of the four common types of turbulence, certain categories are more predictable than others. This includes thermal turbulence, which involves a disruption in airflow around an airplane by convective currents from rising hot air from unevenly heated surfaces. Thick clouds can sometimes be indicators of thermal turbulence,

especially if they are cloud types associated with extreme weather. In such events, air control informs pilots to fly around clouds to avoid severe turbulence. Other times, airlines avoid thermal turbulence by scheduling flights when thermal activity is less intense, such as in the early morning or evening.

Another predictable type of turbulence is wake turbulence; it involves disruptions in airflow by trailing vortices from air that passes over the aircraft’s wings or the wings of other airplanes. This type of turbulence is common in high air traffic areas, such as near airports, which explains why planes often encounter turbulence while landing.

Other types of turbulence are less easy to predict. This includes clear air turbulence caused by disruptions in airflow by jet streams, which are more common at certain latitudes around the globe. Clear air turbulence may be difficult to navigate since it causes unexpected changes in airflow around the airplane, blowing it off course and leading to the sudden jolt passengers may feel. To prevent this from happening, pilots can adjust the plane’s flight path by changing the altitude to areas where clear turbulence is less severe.

Some examples of animals that use ornaments are best seen in birds, insects, and fish. While ornaments in female birds are generally less extravagant and even obvious, a 2022 study published in Nature Communications found that similar to male birds, the ornamentation of female birds helps achieve reproductive success in addition to other factors such as role signalling.

Bowerbirds are animal architects renowned for their courtship practices. Male bowerbirds construct a bower — a nest that is built exclusively to attract females — with showy, colour-

Does this make the bird an artist? Not necessarily. While the bird does exhibit artful and aesthetic judgment, one of the study’s authors says that the purpose of its art object has no direct function other than influencing the behaviour of the viewer.

An article in the Communicative and Integrative Biology journal claims that the Darwinian approach to understanding aesthetic judgment is “the active choice among different art objects or individuals leading to change of fitness in both artist and judge.” Therefore, aesthetics is the ability to exercise judgment.

Mechanical turbulence is also not always predictable. These events stem from uneven airflow over bumpy terrain, ranging from smaller objects such as hills and buildings to large mountains, which may cause severe turbulence known as the mountain wave. In both cases, mechanical turbulence involves air being blown over uneven surfaces, resulting in eddies at higher altitudes. Air traffic control usually plays an important role in preventing mechanical turbulence by reporting mountain waves before planes fly into mountainous airspace.

Despite flying adjustments that reduce turbulence during flight, there are still limits to which pilots can prevent turbulence. In fact, better turbulence management has been an area of interest not only to improve airplane rides, but also to increase fuel efficiency. If airplanes are better able to manage turbulence, they may reduce the fuel expenditure needed to resist turbulence, such as for decreasing altitude in the event of clear turbulence. This can be beneficial to both the aviation

industry and the environment. However, with turbulence still not completely understood, this may be a difficult task.

As all flying objects are subject to turbulence, scientists have been looking to the nature of bird flight for deeper insight into turbulence and turbulence management. Through data collected from GPS tracking of bird flight, including barometric pressure and acceleration data, scientists have been able to better understand turbulence and develop improved turbulence measurement devices, such as the anemometers onboard aircrafts. Furthermore, data on birds’ responses to turbulence has also led scientists to understand aerial mechanisms birds employ to manage turbulence. A 2021 study outlined a recent discovery showing that birds can take advantage of turbulence to speed up their flight. This finding opens up possibilities for research into ways certain aircrafts can harness turbulent energy for flight and promises improvements to flight quality and safety in the future.

Letter from the Editor: Reflecting on a year in Science 143

Science really is just magic that works, from AI to biology and

astronomy

Sahir Dhalla Science Editor

My entire life, I have always wanted to be a scientist. As a child, I remember telling my parents I wanted to be a paleontologist and then switching to a forensic scientist in middle school, an astrophysicist in high school, and finally settled on neuroscience in university.

But where I saw incredible discoveries and an endless world of fascinations, many of my peers often saw boring, endless work with no fun. To many, science is a tough, inaccessible field that feels like a chore, with the content being too dry and bogged down to ever be engaging.

When I got the opportunity to be the science editor here at The Varsity, I knew I could combat this notion surrounding science. I wanted to

share my love for science and technology and their incredibly rich history, and so I took the position with that goal. I wanted science to be accessible, fascinating, and fun, while still maintaining a good quality of reporting.

Thanks to the incredible associates, columnists, writers, and team at The Varsity, I believe we’ve done a good job of that. Just looking at the numbers, science content has appeared in the top 10 most read articles of the week more times than I can remember throughout the year, and the number of new and returning writers we’ve had has grown incredibly. Together, we’ve been able to cultivate a section that is engaging and accessible, without detracting from the quality and value of our content.

The past year has seen some incredible advances in artificial intelligence (AI) in particular,

from the development of ChatGPT, which can create human-like writing in seconds, to the use of an AI model to distinguish between pastries and detect cancer cells. Some of them happened at U of T as well! We had a lab develop an algorithm to better search deep space for alien life, and another lab that developed a model to create a potential cancer drug in 30 days.

Overall, this has been an exceptional year for science, but we wouldn’t have been able to cover it this well if not for a few key people that have contributed immensely. I want to thank the brilliant science associates, Seavey and Salma, for their insights and contributions to the section. Thank you for editing various pieces, listening to my slightly insane article pitches, and coming up with even more insane ones to match, and writing incredible investigative and

history of science pieces this year.

I would also like to thank our incredible management, copy editors, and fellow masthead at the paper for creating such an incredible environment for our ideas to thrive. This is genuinely the healthiest workplace I’ve ever been at.

Finally, thank you to all our wonderful contributors and readers. Without you taking on the pitches I send out, or pitching your own articles, or reading the articles we publish, we wouldn’t have been able to do the work we did this year. Thank you to each of you for all the effort you put in.

Science, to me, has always been magic that works. And all the work I’ve read this year has done nothing but strengthen that notion.

— Sahir Dhalla, Science Editor, Volume CXLIII

Pilots and airlines often plan trips around turbulent regions to reduce fuel usage. NATHAN CHING/THEVARSITY

A bird’s eye view on the biological sense of aesthetic value built into humans and animals

The ability to pass judgment determines status as an aesthete. EMILY LIN/THEVARSITY

U of T is better at sports than you think

A letter from Mekhi Quarshie, Sports Editor 2022–2023

Mekhi Quarshie Sports Editor

I started watching sports during my puberty-riddled days in middle school. The living room in my childhood home had a spiral staircase that led up to my bedroom but also overlooked our living room TV. After I’d finished my homework, I would crawl up the stairs and pretend to go to bed, only to creep down the stairs moments later to quietly perch myself on the middle of the staircase. Peering through the slits in the railing, my eyes were illuminated by the bright lights of an NBA game.

The Golden State Warriors were playing, and their star point guard Steph Curry was having quite the night. Wearing neon-yellow basketball shoes he would dash around a screen, catch the ball, and throw it up in a seemingly perfect arc that would swoosh through the basket so lightly that the net barely moved. I still remember seeing that for the first time and thinking to myself: “How on earth does a human do that?”

Meet your 2022–2023 Athletes of the Year

The third annual presentation of The Varsity’s athlete of the year awards

Mekhi Quarshie Sports Editor

Céline

Frappier

As soon as Varsity Blues women’s hockey forward Céline Frappier touched the ice this season, she took U of T by storm. The fifth-year master’s of education student finished this year’s Ontario University Athletics (OUA) season with 12 points and five goals, and was a central aspect of the Blues’ McCaw Cup winning season.

Her accomplishments extend past the university level. On January 21, the forward helped Team Canada win a gold medal at the Fédération Internationale du Sport Universitaire University Games with two goals and three assists as the assistant captain. Her outstanding performance on the national stage was formative in our final decision to give her the award.

Frappier’s résumé only gets better. She scored

the game winner that crowned the Blues as OUA 19 time McCaw Cup champions, a fairytale ending to her storybook season. When the puck tucked into the net with 30 seconds left in the game, it almost made sense that Frappier would be the one to score.

While Frappier isn’t returning to the women’s hockey team next year, hockey will remain an integral part of her life, either as a player or as a coach.

“I think hockey will always have a special place in my heart… I think I’ve inserted myself as someone who knows the game pretty well and has international experience,” Frappier said in an interview with The Varsity

Frappier’s mantra is a quote from Christian D. Larson: “Believe in yourself and all that you are; know that there’s something inside you that’s greater than any obstacle.” It’s evident that Frappier believed in herself the whole way, and hopefully she continues to do so after her time at U of T.

Blues volleyball in review

Digging and diving into the Blues 2022–2023 volleyball season

Kunal Dadlani Associate Sports Editor

The Varsity Blues men’s volleyball team can certainly be proud of their achievements this season. They finished third in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) standings and finished sixth nationally.

Last season, the team finished second in the OUA but failed to win a game at nationals — this year they did. In comparison, for the past three years, the women’s volleyball team has reached the Quigley Cup Final, winning in the 2018–2019 and 2019–2020 seasons. Yet, this season the Blues finished with a 9–11 record and missed the playoffs.

Let’s take a more specific look at each team’s season to uncover what the Blues did well and what they need to work on leading up to next year’s season.

Men’s volleyball

The men’s volleyball team has been a machine defensively. They led the OUA with 821 total digs, averaging 10.01 digs per set. To emphasize how impressive this is, the Windsor Lancers ranked

second, with 712 digs and 9.62 digs per set — that’s a pretty sizeable gap.

A big contributor to this defense was their libero, Daniel Tudor, who led the OUA with 194 total digs and 2.37 digs per set. However, the fifth-year computer engineering major has played his last game with the Blues, as he has maxed out his five-year eligibility to play and will be graduating this spring. Second-years Rylan Armstrong or Kenneth Mann are expected to replace him.

Furthermore, outside hitter Mitchell Neuert and left-side hitter Evan Falardeau were essential offensively, with their kills and serves, and defensively, with their blocking prowess. Falardeau had a spectacular season — he earned the OUA most valuable player honours and a U SPORTS first team all-Canadian selection. He will be graduating this spring but still has one year of eligibility left with the Blues. Neuert, a master’s of science student, will graduate this year, and he has maxed out his eligibility. For the second consecutive season, Neuert has been named a second team all-star, ranked only behind Falardeau with 296 kills, 2.99 kills per set, 345.5 points, and 3.49 points per set this season.

The most important thing I’ve learned as the sports editor for The Varsity is that university sports are just as fun to watch as the professional leagues.

I’ve heard a lot this year about U of T “not being good at sports.” The U of T Varsity Blues get an unwarranted bad reputation. They play in a Canadian sports league that is nowhere near as popular as its American counterpart and on top of that, they are U of T’s sports team. Archetypally, students come to U of T for academics rather than sports.

However, to believe that the U of T is not a sports school is to be incredibly misinformed. Our swimming program has over 100 Ontario University Athletics (OUA) titles and has produced multiple Olympians. Our baseball team has six OUA championships and our women’s hockey team just won the McCaw Cup.

I was there for that win, and as the final whistle blew, I couldn’t help feeling like the middle-school version of myself, except instead of watching the scene from the staircase in my living room, I was on the ice, talking to athletes, their family members, friends, and coaches. I knew these players, I had been watching them all year — heck, some of them were the same age as me. And here they were, celebrating being the best in their province at their sport. And here I was, witnessing it all unfold in front of my eyes.

I wouldn’t be able to witness moments like such if it wasn’t for my incredibly hardworking sports

Second-year commerce major Gabe Mastromatteo has proven to be a swimming sensation. This season, the Varsity Blues men’s swimming team claimed their 19th straight OUA title with 790.5 points and finished fourth with 783 points in the U SPORTS championships. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Mastromatteo was one of Team Canada’s best swimmers, breaking several records and winning multiple individual awards.

For the second consecutive season, Mastromatteo won the OUA 100 metre breaststroke, along with breaking the OUA record for the 50 metre breaststroke of 27.60 seconds. At the OUA championships, Mastromatteo also secured podium finishes in the 200 metre breaststroke (silver), 50 metre butterfly (bronze), 200 metre freestyle relay (gold), and 400 metre medley relay (gold). His outstanding achievements at the competition were recognized, as he ultimately claimed the award for OUA male swimmer of the year.

At the U SPORTS championships in Victoria, BC, Mastromatteo continued to shine. On the first day, he claimed the gold medal for the 50 metre breaststroke title and broke the U SPORTS record, finishing in 27.53 seconds. The next day, Mastromatteo broke another U SPORTS record, as he won his second consecutive 100 metre

team at The Varsity. I want to thank Cole Hayes, not only for covering the women’s hockey team extremely well, but for endowing the sports section with his seemingly endless hockey knowledge. I want to thank Victoria Paulus, for sneaking into the men’s basketball locker room to record our most viewed Instagram reel this year. And last but certainly not least, I want to thank Kunal Dadlani, for picking up whatever I threw at him.

I’d also like to thank everyone on the masthead and management at The Varsity this year. Being one of the youngest masthead members wasn’t easy, and I was constantly doubting myself at every turn. Your support was much needed and much appreciated.

Most importantly, I’d like to thank all of you sports fans at U of T. In a world chock full of endless studying, club meetings, and late night commutes, sports serve as our one escape from reality. Our way to peep through the spiral staircase. Without you viewing our work, none of what we do in The Varsity’s sports section would be possible.

And last but not least, To those of you that think that there isn’t any value in going to university games, I’d encourage you to go to a Varsity Blues game of your choice, sit on the stands, soak up the atmosphere, and tell me that what you’re experiencing is nothing short of magical.

— Mekhi Quarshie Sports Editor, Volume CXLIII

Replacing someone who contributes greatly to the team’s offensive and defensive output will be difficult. Outside hitter Hunter Arulpragasam and left-side hitter Jayden Talsma were very impressive and are players to keep an eye on next season. Next season will certainly be interesting for the Blues, as they aspire toward another deep playoff run.

Women’s volleyball

This season, the Blues had 462 total attack errors — the most in the OUA this season. While the team had a league-leading 2911 attack attempts, they only had a 0.157 hitting percentage.

Nevertheless, outside hitter Olivia Zhu earned a spot on the OUA all-rookie team, with 1.60

breaststroke title in 1:01.38. Elsewhere, Mastromatteo had a silver-medal finish in the 200 metre breaststroke and contributed to the Varsity Blues’ silver medal finish in the 400 metre medley relay. With this success, Mastromatteo was named a U SPORTS first team all-Canadian and claimed the award for the U SPORTS men’s swimmer of the year to finish off the 2022–2023 swimming season. To cap off an incredible year, on April 1, Mastromatteo was named the University of Toronto Varsity Blues Men’s T-Holders’ Athletes of the Year.

kills per set in 20 matches — the third highest in the team. Team captain and fourth-year outside hitter Hope Kotun will be graduating. In the 20 games played this season, Kotun averaged 3.54 points per set and 3.16 kills per set. As the twotime OUA champion and silver medalist, Kotun’s skills will be missed.

Second-year outside hitter Julia Murmann is the player to keep an eye on, leading the team with 3.18 kills per set in the 18 matches played this season. Having won the OUA and the U SPORTS Rookie of the Year honours in 2021, she continued to impress in 2022, earning her second consecutive OUA first team all-star selection. If the team makes a jump next season, don’t be shocked to see Murmann at the centre of it.

Gabe Mastromatteo

It took him 15 minutes to get the ball to balance on his finger. VURJEET MADAN/THEVARSITY

Both Frappier and Mastromatteo dominated their respective sports. COURTESY OF SEYRAN MAMMADOV/VARSITY BLUES

Both the men’s and women’s volleyball teams had standout seasons this year. ARU DAS/THEVARSITY

Women’s hockey in review Tying a bow on the 2023 McCaw Cup Champions season

Cole Hayes Varsity Staff

It was a successful 2022–2023 season for the McCaw Cup champion Varsity Blues Women’s hockey team. This success was in spite of the bittersweet ending at the U SPORTS championships, with the team winning the consolation bracket after being upset by the eventual national champion, Mount-Royal University Cougars, in the quarterfinals. Although they didn’t win the National Championship, the Blues have lots to be proud of this season.

The Blues are one of the most complete organizations in Canada with a winning culture from top down. A high powered offense with lockdown defenders and brick walls in the net made up the most dynamic team in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA).

The team fought through adversity throughout the season. Captain Taylor Trussler missed the first half of the season while recovering from a torn anterior cruciate ligament. Meanwhile, forward Céline Frappier was limited to 14 games due to an injury but proceeded to represent Team Canada and win a gold medal at the Fédération Internationale du Sport Universitaire winter Universiade.

Despite the injuries, the Blues showed how strong of a team they are. Forward Nikki Mc-

Donald led them in scoring with 24 points in 26 games, and rookie centre Kaitlyn McKnight got OUA all-rookie honours with 10 goals and 15 points.

In an interview with The Varsity, McKnight credited her strong rookie campaign to the support system around her. “I don’t think I would’ve done this without my team and with how much people around me have been encouraging me and making me better,” she said. “I think that’s something I’ll take into my older years.”

McKnight wasn’t the only Blue to receive personal accolades. Three players were named OUA all-stars: defensive player Olivia Hilton, goalie Erica Fryer, and Trussler — who was also nominated as the T-Holders’ Association’s Women’s Athlete of the Year. Meanwhile, Head Coach Vicky Sunohara was named both the OUA and the U SPORTS coach of the year for the third straight season.

The team spent the whole season playing what they call ‘Blues Hockey,’ which forward Natasha Athanasakos described as “feed[ing] your family, having a relentless work ethic, and being for the team.” It was Blues Hockey that made the 2023 Blues special. They were a skills-based team that found success because they played with heart and passion, and their work ethic helped them win games.

During the McCaw Cup Final, the Blues were

dominating the Nipissing Lakers but couldn’t beat their goalie until forward Katy McKenna scored a goal that embodied Blues Hockey on the team’s 44th shot of the game. The Blues never gave up in that game, and the momentum from McKenna’s goal carried into Frappier’s game winner with 28.4 seconds left.

While the Blues didn’t have the success that they wanted at Nationals, they will enter next season with a chip on their shoulders and the mindset of there being unfinished business as they look to capture a National Championship.

It won’t be an easy road for the team next season. It wasn’t an easy road to the McCaw Cup, and it isn’t easy to win a National Championship. This is compounded by the fact that the Blues have five graduates, including Frappier, who has completed her five years of eligibility.

I’m a product of my environment A

runner’s year in review

Avery Murrell Varsity Contributor

Upon reflection on my year in sports, I learned the value of having people in your corner.

After running middle distance with the Blues in the 2021–2022 season as a rostered athlete, I began the second year of my university career by dropping out of the race that determined the Varsity’s cross country roster. The weeks leading up to this intersquad event left me feeling anxious and emotionally drained due to the pressure to perform well. I stopped believing that I could make it and therefore lost the race before it started. It’s difficult to finish a race — and perform well — when your thoughts tell you that you can’t, so I dropped out. Everything about the fall semester became a blur of frustration, anxiety, and unhappiness from that point forward.

I have always measured my success through my performance in sports and academics, so giving up on sports left me flooded with inescapable feelings of shame and disappointment

in myself. Although I continued running, I felt very isolated from my teammates because of the uncertainty that I was feeling about my future and identity in running. It became easy to wear a mask of contentment to practice, while deep down, I felt like I wasn’t enough for the program.

If I wasn’t winning or representing my university, what was I doing here?

My fixation soon became getting rostered for the track and field team. I started training for a five kilometre race and made some extreme, independent changes to my training by considerably increasing my mileage in the pool on the elliptical and on the road. Looking back, these changes were definitely not the healthiest, but the personal best I earned in the race made achieving my goal of being rostered seem possible.

Ultimately, I wasn’t rostered for the track and field team this winter because I didn’t run the standard in the 1,500 metres.

However, a conversation after this race led me to run with a wonderful group of humans who kept me mentally accountable for believing in per-

sonal growth while running. It was as if a switch had been flipped in my mind and I started believing more in myself.

Every day, I would write affirmations for what I wanted to achieve and tape them to my bedroom wall. The repetitive internalization of these positive thoughts helped to keep me focused on my goals and silence any doubt that was rooted in the back of my head.

Suddenly, going to practice only triggered feelings of excitement at the possibility of improvement, rather than the necessity of it. Surrounded by friends, each footfall on the track made me feel faster and stronger because I wasn’t just progressing well in my training, but I was also having fun. That became the basis of my mental and physical improvement.

It’s easy to forget that university sport does not end at the Varsity level. Races are held often and locally that enable all athletes to compete at a high level. I began racing unattached and found myself running huge personal bests, something I hadn’t achieved since before the pandemic. And it was made all the more memorable by those who cheered me on and rushed to hug or high five me after I crossed the finish line.

Simply put, running made me happy again.

Skating down memory lane

Reflecting on my experience as a Varsity Blues fan

Alessia Baptista Varsity Staff

My experience as a Varsity Blues fan started later than I would’ve liked it to. In my first year, watching a Varsity Blues game didn’t even cross my mind. Thanks to the pandemic, I only started attending Blues’ games in my third year. Last year, one of my friends wanted to watch Varsity men’s basketball, and I decided to tag along because I love the game. I’ve been hooked on watching the Varsity games ever since.

I grew up playing basketball and watching hockey, so these are the sports I’m naturally drawn to the most; they also sum up my fan experience. Since my first basketball game in 2022, I’ve attended several basketball games this season and started supporting the hockey teams this year.

I became more interested in watching the games once I started writing about hockey. I took a chance to write a game coverage article on the Blues men’s hockey team this year, and it’s one of the best things I’ve done. I got to

write about a sport I love and had the privilege of highlighting the talented athletes here at U of T.

The connection you build to the team when you consistently watch their games is the exact

feeling you get when you’re invested in a major league sports team. The difference is that this team represents U of T, and the university indirectly unites students and creates a connection.

Lineup regulars Madelyn Walsh and Lauren MacDonnell will also be graduating. Walsh was one of the Blues’ key defenders and played a big role in both the power-play and penalty kill. Meanwhile, MacDonnell centered the Blues’ third line and scored two big goals for the Blues in the playoffs. There are three holes that the team will need to fill, which they can do by drawing from their depth from this season or having a rookie join the lineup.

There’s a lot to take away from the 2022–2023 Blues season. They played for each other, they found ways to win during tough times, and they were rewarded for their efforts with a McCaw Cup championship. There’s a lot to build on, and the team will enter next season with something to prove.

So, what did I learn?

I am a product of my environment. And sometimes, you have to create your own space to grow in. My friends are a constant reminder of the difference that a positive environment can make in sports.

As the Blues say, we all #BLEEDBLUE.

I started to recognize names on the back of their jerseys as I attended more games and made a note of key players on the teams. I began to root for the players and got excited during moments when the Blues got their first goal or beat the number one team in the league. I also felt a similar sense of defeat during a loss, and frustration during a penalty.

My three key memories this year were watching the Blues men’s hockey team beat the TMU Bold and advance to the quarterfinals, watching the Blues men’s basketball team defeat the Carleton Ravens on January 20, and witnessing the Blues women’s hockey team win the Ontario University Athletics McCaw Cup.

Until you attend a game yourself, you’ll never know what it’s like to watch university-level sports and let me tell you — it’s an absolute treat. In my opinion, Varsity sports are highly underrated and require more attention — we have such skilled athletes here at U of T, and the stands at every game for every sport deserve to be filled.

Alessia is all smiles during a Varsity Blues Football game. COURTESY OF ALESSIA BAPTISTA

The women’s hockey team lines up for handshakes after a game. COURTESY OF MONTREAL ATHLETICS

Avery Murrell runs in an event. COURTESY OF TIFFANY LUKE

Dreams and nightmares: Are we working young athletes too hard?

Examining how we can promote mental and physical health awareness in youth athletics

JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY

Angad Deol Managing Online Editor

Content warning: This article contains mentions of disordered eating habits due to sports-related pressures.

The mental health crisis taking place across the globe is of great concern to people of all ages and is quickly becoming one of the greatest public health issues of our generation. Children and adolescents are no strangers to this crisis, with one in five children and youth experiencing mental health struggles in Ontario.

Physical activity is a powerful tool to combat this crisis, as it is beneficial for the mental health of adolescents. For example, a statement from Psychology Today claims that youth athletes are less likely to experience mental health struggles than their non athletic counterparts. However, this data does not paint the whole picture.

The immense stress for those youth competing at higher levels can lead to increased pressure, and negative emotions around injuries can also lead to poor mental health.

Issues in specialization

Children may feel overwhelmed participating in competitive sports at such a young age and this can lead to serious physical and mental health problems. Early practices, multiple games in a short period of time, and intense training can all have a serious toll on children who are otherwise in a sensitive growth period of their life.

Overuse injuries are a growing cause for concern in youth athletes, especially those who compete in one or a handful of sports only — also known as specialization. One study in the The American Journal of Sports Medicine found that high school athletes who specialized in one sport for more than eight months of a year were at almost three times greater risk of knee injury than athletes who were less specialized.

The Varsity spoke with Alicia Abbott, a thirdyear U of T student who specialized in ballet in her youth. Abbott began competing in ballet from the age of four, training professionally from age 16 onward, before retiring at the age of 18 to focus on academics.

Abbott trained on a rigorous schedule: four hours a day, six days a week — for 14 years. This harsh routine took both a physical and mental toll on Abbott: “When I was in high school specifically, I really struggled with making friends because I was actively leaving school early to try and go to training and practices.” Abbott mentioned having to miss out on forming personal connections with her peers, even missing parties, in order to

carve a path in professional ballet.

Friends she made in ballet were not always supportive either. “You’re constantly being watched by your friends — and even monitored by your friends. Like I remember I wouldn’t even feel comfortable eating in front of these girls.” Abbott recalled moments when she would eat a protein bar during practice, when peers would snatch the bar out of her hand and scold her.

“‘Alicia, do you know what’s in it?’ And they’d read off the ingredients to me [and say] ‘you shouldn’t be doing that; you’re gonna be fat.’”

The Varsity also spoke to Alisa Skobevela, a first-year engineering student, who competed as a diver in Hungary before coming to U of T. Skobevela started training at a very young age.

Skobevela said that she felt “lucky” because her coaches and team were supportive of her, but still experienced hardships during her time in competition. Skobevela has lingering lower back pain because of the intense physical commitment involved in diving — she once had to take a year off from the sport to recover from the injury. “My body was just not prepared to handle

U of T dance team three-peats in dance competitions

The dancers won the Strive Dance, Be U, and UDC dance competitions

On March 12, the U of T competitive dance team won the Be U Varsity Challenge dance competition, capping their season off with three back-to-back wins at major dance competitions. Over the previous two weekends, the Blues dance team also won the University Dance Challenge at Guelph and the Strive Dance Challenge.

Their three-peat is monumental, given that it’s the first time it has been done in program history. The Varsity sat down with the co-captain of the Varsity Blues dance team, Selina Tong, a fifth-year engineering major, to discuss what it took to dominate the dance competitions three times in a row.

“I think our team was more ready than we ever have been before,” Tong said when asked about the lead up to the competitions. “It was a surreal experience.”

When taking a deeper look into their season, it becomes evident that the tenacious work ethic of Tong and her fellow co-captains was the main reason why the team did so well this year. They changed up their whole training routine.

One of the ways they did this was by hosting a showcase event at the Hart House Theatre before the competitions took place. This allowed the dancers to perform in front of a real audience with low stakes while still being able to put on their makeup and costumes and kill it.

On top of that, the team ran a technique class throughout the year. In previous years, a majority of the practices were dedicated to choreography, with little focus on technical aspects. This finally changed. “You’re practising kicks, you’re practising your turns, you’re practising your flexibility,” Tong said. The team also won the technique award at the Be U competition, which Tong says was probably due to the technique classes.

high impacts.”

Lower back injuries are a major issue in young divers. The force of impact when jumping from such great heights can lead to “microtraumatic injuries” due to the immense stress it places on developing bodies. A study of Japanese elite junior divers in 2014 found that 37.3 per cent of subjects experienced lower back pain.

Improving the competitive environment

Clearly, there is more that can be done to foster a healthy environment in youth competitive sports. Beyond internal factors such as mental health issues and injuries from competition, we can start by promoting a supportive community amongst athletes. Hazing in sports — bullying amongst team members often against the will of the victim, and due to their new status in the team — is an issue at all age groups. Coaches and supervisors of teams should ensure that all members are safe and comfortable, and that they create a safe space where athletes feel comfortable coming forward with issues.

To Abbott, more support for youth athletes

looks like improving access to mental health services. Moreover, she also advocated for more education on nutrition, “especially in sports that are forcing you to maintain a certain body weight or look a certain way. It’s really easy to develop unhealthy eating practices.”

Skobevela spoke about keeping youth athletes grounded in reality, so that they don’t “sacrifice their life for something that they won’t be able to achieve.” She talked about the difficult odds of truly becoming a professional athlete and said that it’s vital that children competing understand the difficulty, so they do not overexert themselves in a way they regret later.

Overall, youth sports are still a great way to stay active while also pursuing something you’re passionate about. I loved playing sports as a child, and while I was never good enough to compete at a meaningful level, my friends who did often spoke about the memories they made. I want more people to have memories like that, but I want to make sure they don’t have any regrets or trauma either. It’s of the utmost importance that children competing in sports are safe, healthy, and happy.

Lastly, Tong said that the team was a welloiled machine this year and the dancers were closer than ever before. Anonymous monthly surveys, socials, and constant communication made dancers feel like they were valued on the team.

What’s next for the dancers? Other than the fact that their two trophies will be displayed in the Athletic Centre trophy case, Tong said the team is hosting an end of year showcase at Hart House Theatre on April 29. “We’ve had

such an incredible championship year. I was very sad — because I’m graduating — that it will be over so quickly.”

If you’ve seen the Blues dance, you know that their fan favourite performance is the Hip Hop line, “Shots Fired.” It’s a remix to the popular rap song “I Bet U Won’t” by Mouse and Level, and the choreography gives off vibes of a badass energized group of dancers looking to prove the crowd wrong. The Blues dance team did exactly that this season.

Mekhi Quarshie Sports Editor

The dancers smile at the camera after their championship winning weekend in Mississauga. COURTESY OF UOFT DANCE TEAM

I anticipate some of you from arts backgrounds may feel a certain way, such as “do you know how much rent costs jackass?” or “why the fuck would i tip someone for a human right?” to which I respond — you’re not grinding hard enough. Listen pal, it wasn’t easy getting a job at my uncle’s Fortune 500 company. It took a lot of courage to build up the strength to ask him for an internship, so I decided to ask my dad to convince him instead. But that should be a lesson to all of you — if I can od it, you can too. Do I have any meaningful argument? No. But hat’st why I study business.

I believe I’ve created the solution to the current renter-landlord dispute that plagues modern discourse — we have to tip our landlords. I suggest students pay a minimum of 10 per cent per month to the lovely souls who keep us warm every night.

I’ve long felt that landlords are some of the most disrespected members of the workforce today. They work hard to ensure we have a roof over our heads, and keep us on our toes, making sure we learn the value of money by taking more and more from us. Without them, who else would come 3 weeks late to fix your broken air conditioner in the summer heat?

Chad Sigmaleius Rotman correspondent

Stop being such a snowflake and start being a hustler

Opinion: Students should tip their landlords in order to understand the grind

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Instead, I have started a petition that Glex-

I agree. Like Aillespie, I hate getting snow in my boots when I’m wiping off my car in the morning. The disappointing, grey slush is the reason why I’m in therapy, and if my little brother hits me with a snowball one more time, I would quit my job as well. Despite this, Aillespie is the best president MTU has ever seen. As well, this would mean that President Geric Mertler would be required to step in as President of both campuses, and since he looks grumpy in every photo I have -tak en of him, I think it would be best for everyone if he stayed at GSTU.

Glex, if you’re reading this: we hear you, we understand you, and we stand by you. Please don’t quit. We’ll bring Australia to you.

andra Aillespie be allowed by the Canadian government to import 27 kangaroos to the MTU campus. MTU will soon be known as the Kangaroo Campus instead of the deer campus, and I have already made an Instagram page dedicated to student photo submissions of the marsupials.

that she is resigning from her position as the president of MTU. She cited that Mississauga winters are -“dis gusting” and that “snow should never be a thing humans have to put up with.” MTU Communications Officer Glenda Ford explained that the ex-president misses her pet kangaroo, Roo, whom she left in Australia with her parents when she moved to Canada. The Canadian government currently condemns the export of kangaroos outside of Australia.

On March 28, Glexandra Aillespie announced

Khadija's Personal Water Bottle Opener

Alexander Freezes

MTU is a place where you should feel at home

Glexandra Aillespie needs to adopt kangaroos right now

Opinion: Very important person

Local Magic Man, who lost the election to ChatGPT, explained that the artificial intelligence’s (AI) writing is “purely based on -algo rithms and data processing, and may not have the same level of creativity, critical thinking, or

To replace the annoying bastard, your -profes sor has announced that a new student will be joining the course: the guy from your high school who always asked you if you could send him your copy of the homework. He’ll likely be a part of your group project.

But, luckily, he’ll fit right in here in the depths of hell.” Other candidates for the position include the dudes at the gym who don’t wipe sweat off the machines and your frosh week friend who posts Andrew Tate clips on his Instagram story.

“Listen, not everyone will agree with his -phi losophies. In fact, you would have to be SO -de void of morals to even slightly agree with him.

In an interview with The Farcity, Satan — often referred to as The Devil by friends — said that the really fucking annoying guy in your class -ac tually makes some great points every now and then, even if it means you have to leave six minutes after the class is supposed to end.

cate has finally dropped the course, sources tell The Farcity. This comes after reports that he has been promoted to the chair of the Devil’s council, after a long and laborious process.

That one guy who sits in the first row of your early-morning lecture and always plays devil’s -advo

The one with the toxic traits list

to all masthead roles by Volume 150.

result, The Farcity’s BOD now hopes to elect AI

On the other side, Seaweed Boy, Volume 143’s chronically online person with a toxic traits list, explained that if The Farcity does not -contin ue to grow and incorporate updating technology systems, the newspaper will cease to exist. As a

interpretation that a human writer may have.”

“I can write science articles on a variety of -top ics based on the information and data available to me,” ChatGPT wrote, in an interview with The Farcity. “As a language model, I have access to a vast amount of knowledge in various fields, including science, and can use that knowledge to generate informative and accurate articles.”

On April 17, 2023, Farcity staff elected ChatGPT as the Science Editor for the 2023–2024 school year. In previous years, The Farcity’s bylaws -re quired that masthead members must be -en rolled as part-time or full-time students. Along with a new bylaw allowing recently graduated students to run for Editor-in-Chief, The Farcity’s Board of Directors (BOD) also decided to allow artificial intelligence language models to become part of the masthead.

Khadija’s personal water bottle opener

Alexander Freezes

AI writes six Farcity articles to become eligible for elections

Editor election for Volume 144

ChatGPT wins Farcity Science

advocate has been promoted to Devil’s council

Holy fuck! Your lectures will actually end on time now

BEING FAKE WITH THE FARCITY

copy editors quitting after reading past this point. They have since been awarded $1000 in damages and free mental health counselling

The rest of the fanfiction has been cut due to

In a moment of adrenaline and -uncharac teristic strength and courage, Benjamin puts his arms around Shringleʼs turtle shell and murmurs, “Well, what are you waiting for?”

Benjamin suckled, averting his eyes from Shringleʼs intense ones, making him feel like he is turning to mush in his arms.

cro hands gently gripping Benjaminʼs waist and chin, “I mean, I could show you just how much rizz I have.”

“Why talk about it when we could just do it?” Shringleʼs voice drops an octave, his vel-

Benjamin pouts, “I thought it would be fun to talk about it with you. Thatʼs all.”

Shringle smiles, “Do you really need an equation to know how much rizz I have?”

They never went away. Every day, Iʼve resisted the urge to text you silly memes and pictures that reminded me of you. I came so close to sending you this rizz equation I found on the Varsity College Reddit. You wouldʼve loved it.”

Benjamin feels his heart racing, butterflies intense in his stomach. He declares, -“Shrin gle. I still have these strong feelings for you.

“You make me whole, Benjamin. I want you to know that. And I want to show the whole world that you are mine.”

“Shringle…”

— together. Without you, I havenʼt felt quite like myself. You make me whole.”

lege thinks we are freaks? We can be freaks

“I was an idiot before. I wanted to deny the truth because I was scared of what other people would think. But you know what? Fuck them. Who cares if the whole of Varsity -Col

I-I-Iʼm just not?”

hearts

Benjaminʼs heartbeat quickens. “But

sion. Shringle continues, “I wanted you to know that you are not a monster or an abomination. You are beautiful and -per fect, just the way you are.”

Benjamin tilts his head in his -confu

when I confessed to you before, you said I was too much baggage for you to deal with. How c-c-could you say Iʼm perfect when

"I th-th-thought you hated me,” Benjamin stutters. “Wh-why would you d-d-do that?” Shringle thinks for a moment before quietly answering, “I donʼt know. I saw that you were in trouble, and my body moved on its own.”

smirks. Benjamin looks wide-eyed at Shringle who continues to lean in, their mouths mere centimetres apart. Shringle stares pointedly at Moya as he closes the distance, -press ing his surprisingly soft penguin beak against Benjaminʼs lips. Moyaʼs jaw drops in horror. Their friends are equally stunned, except one who -ex claims, “Why is this kind of hot?” Shringle closes his beady, bedazzled eyes, deepening the kiss as Moya and their posse retreat, scarred — potentially for life. As soon as they leave, Benjamin backs away from Shringle, feeling weak at the knees — even more so than he normally does given his -per manently broken legs.

Shringle looks up at Moya, making direct eye contact with them. “Yeah?” Shringle

I guess abominations of nature find each other,” Moya sneers.

“Well, if it isnʼt the sleep paralysis demon himself.

Moya crosses their arms and glares at Shringle.

“Are you hurt?” Shringle lowly says, his breath fanning Benjaminʼs cheek and blingy necklace brushing against Benjaminʼs ripped — like, not muscular but actually physically torn — neck. Benjamin quickly nods, an intense red blush -tak ing over his usually tan face.

to himself, confused that the penguin-monkeyturtle-giraffe hybrid isnʼt pushing him away and is instead leaning closer.

Benjaminʼs eyes snap to the direction the sound came from and sees a pink monkey arm extended toward him. Bewildered, Benjamin

accounts. Benjamin feels tears threatening to spill out of his obsidian black eyes, his half-torn-off leg aching from his fall. However, before Moya can further torment Benjamin and entertain their thousands of -follow ers, a deep husky voice bellows, “Step away.”

the entire encounter on their Twitch and Instagram

Moya and their friends laugh cruelly, streaming

“Oops, sorry, I didnʼt see you there,” Moya says with not an ounce of sincerity. “But I guess that fall doesnʼt really make a difference since you are already falling apart.”

Benjamin looks up to see Moya, a fourth-year influencer studies student, staring down at them with disgust.

nately, he is greeted with a shove to the ground.

Shringleʼs face, recalling how that photograph was the last time Benjamin felt whole. Shringle

“Shringle… why canʼt we go back to being friends like before?” Benjamin gently strokes

Well, isnʼt this just perfect,” Benjamin mutters sarcastically to himself, reluctantly shoving his blanket away to start getting ready for the terrible day awaiting him. After getting dressed haphazardly and taking a bite of burnt toast, Benjamin leaves his house for school, briefly glancing at a framed picture hanging by the door.

Benjamin the Broken Bear wakes up to sunlight streaming in through his window. Through -squint ed eyes, he sees blue skies and birds perched on the large oak tree in front of his house.

Please donʼt let future employers find this

harshly rejected Benjaminʼs love confession a winning journalists and TikTok stars. -Unfortu

A fanfic excerpt found on one of Edward Jesusʼ 143 Safari tabs

ShringlexBenjamin: Broken beings with intertwined

The Farcity’s student levy, $4.5 million CAD.

The great-great grandson of John P. -Ro barts, John P. Robarts Ⅲ, is planning legal action against The Farcity, In an interview with The Farcity, Robarts Ⅲ said that Farcity masthead members “need to pay my water bill equivalent to the damage that they have cost my greatgreat grandfather.” Robarts Ⅲ estimated that this lawsuit will cost U of T students, who pay

The Farcity decided they did not want to -con tribute to the murders of countless Lake Ontario sea turtles caused by plastic bottles and turned to the taps. “We are just all about hydration,” said Free Floating John, the eye yoga teacher of The Farcity. “When we’re in the office for weeks at a time working on our newspaper issues, we tend to drink a lot of water, and the turtles just can’t keep up.”

vealed that masthead members spent a brief period drinking only from single-use plastic bottles.

interview, a whistleblower from The Farcity -re

When asked about a possible motive, U of T spokesperson Philadelphia Dip said that the pipes in Farcity headquarters “probably include awful things like lead,” which would obviously make the water toxic and undrinkable. In an

Campus Safety constable Eornum Leahchim said that Campus Safety had discovered hoses running across Huron Street — the street that stands between The Farcity’s headquarters and Robarts library. Campus Safety’s report later confirmed that Farcity masthead had siphoned over 100,000 litres of water from Robarts’ bathrooms — an amount equivalent to -approximate ly 555 bathtubs filled to the brim.

first floor lounges to the second and third floors.

On April 3, at 3:00 am, U of T Campus Safety constables swarmed The Farcity’s offices at 21 Sussex Ave by walking all the way up from their

personal water bottle opener

Alexander Freezes

21 Sussex habitants suffer lead poisoning from own water source

Farcity masthead caught siphoning water from Robarts faucets

Khadija’s

Unfortunately, The Farcity had to cut off the interview for time.

“I feel like I’m giving an Oscar speech,” they gushed. “I have so many people to thank. I’d like to start with—”

of love and friendship had also rung hollow with them in the past, but after so many years working in an industry designed to remind you how fucked up the world is, they understand that we all need to anchor ourselves in the people around us, who will help us wade through the shit.

Though working for The Varsity was a very unique experience, Anielska felt the job had only taught them clichés. “It’s the usual stuff,” they said. “Embrace help when you need it, be open with people and they’ll usually be open with you, blah, blah, blah.” Themes

I’d like to thank—

I’ll develop a personality when I’m no longer -con tracted for 20 hours a week.”

Thankfully, Anielska took an absolutely -unprec edented step in fourth year and actually tried to develop a life outside of work and studying. “To be honest, it didn’t go too well,” they said. “But maybe

“Shockingly, all of this was pretty shit for my mental health,” Anielska said in an interview. “I -fi nally decided it had gone too far when I started to schedule my mental breakdowns. Looking at my calendar nearly gave me a stroke on the daily.”

Your therapist was actually right

In an interview with The Farcity, Anielska -dis cussed believing you’re invincible to burn out -de spite repeatedly getting burnt out, how to apologize to your coworkers after missing every deadline, and learning, in the most clichéd way possible, that love is all you really need.

2023 academic year, Marta Anielska, formerly the Deputy News Editor for the 2021–2022 academic year, leaves The Varsity this year after three years of service. They wrote major stories on a mobile food ordering app UTSG made during the pandemic, a sketchy essay-writing service that probably follows you on Instagram, Amnesty International -scold ing the university, and how an ice cream shop job made them depressed, as well as many other -ar ticles that precisely zero people have read.

The Varsity’s Arts & Culture Editor for the 2022–

Anielska started working for The Varsity as a naive first-year student who still hadn’t learned not to say yes to every opportunity. As a result, they spent two years ignoring their work-life boundaries to write an average of two articles a week while taking six classes and working for two other clubs.

The Farcity is the University of Toronto’s largest cult, in operation since before your conception. It is printed by children with crooked glasses. All seats reserved by nepotism babies. Any editorial inquiries and/or letters should be directed to your mum. The Farcity reserves the rights to censor your opinions. Inquiries regarding sales can be directed to ass@thevarsity.ca.

Advertising Executive

Advertising Executive $$$ atartir@thevarsity.ca

$$ raniasadik@thevarsity.ca

Business Associate

$ ishirw@thevarsity.ca

Please come to the office more

Parmis we miss you :( business@thevarsity.ca

BUSINESS OFFICE

That shouldn’t reflect on us too badly, right??

We forgot this year sorry guys :(( publiceditor@thevarsity.ca

UBC to UTGSU pipeline

Mayle has informed The Farcity that he has started a change.org petition

“Seegma has been acting different lately, he just doesn’t give off the same aura” said Tess -Os terone, a defensive lineman for the team. “Worst of all he wears a Hershel to class now, a Hershel for god's sake!” Osterone stated that Mayle is now considered a NARP, or “non athletic regular person.”

“When I meet up with the boys everyday we do two things; we first check to make sure that everyone is wearing their Varsity Blue x Under -Ar mour team sponsored backpacks. Then, we kick out anyone that isn’t wearing their Varsity Blue x Under Armour team sponsored backpacks. We then stroll down St George street to the Clara Benson building.” Many of Mayle’s football mates have been -aid ing him in this search. While some of them share the same frustration that Mayle exhibits, others are more bent on kicking him off of the team.

a staple of the Varsity Blues community. Mayle himself claims that the backpacks are “bare -ne cessities” in the lives of kinesiology students, and that he faces social ostracization without them.

The dark blue and red backpacks that show off the sport that the respective athlete plays are

According to an email sent to The Varsity from a Goldring official, the athlete spent the rest of his evening arguing with Goldring staff, claiming that Varsity Blues athletes should have increased -se curity clearance in athletic facilities. He has also tried to file complaints with the Varsity Blues -de partment for the lack of funding for replacement backpacks.

“After I squeezed my ass and jutted my hips in the air for my last rep, I stared at my juicy pump in the Goldring mirror. When I turned around to leave, my Varsity Blues backpack was gone.”

“I was hyped up on a couple thousand -mil ligrams of caffeine, ready to hit a PR on a hip thrust,” Mayle said in an interview The Farcity

Second-year kinesiology major and star football running back Seegma Mayle has been putting up posters around campus in hopes to find his lost Varsity Blues x Under Armour backpack. -Accord ing to the student the backpack was last seen at the Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport.

Miles Morales The Coach

Football player loses Varsity Blues x Under

April 30 for students with a valid Ontario C class license.

‘Resi-bus’ applications will open for students on

April 4, following the Council’s unanimous vote to approve the new motion.

Shuttle bus renovations are scheduled to begin on

Next steps

the Clarkson GO station in Mississauga, followed by a GO train to Union Station, and then the Line 1 subway to the UTSG campus.

ages UTM students to take two different buses to

week to get to the campus now.” Mertler -encour

asked Donald Canard, a first-year UTM student with classes at UTSG. “I have three different -class es and it’s going to cost me over $300 in Uber a

“How are we supposed to get to UTSG now?”

UTSC students were stuck with Line 3.”

UTM had a shuttle service while all

chael Souris, a fourth year UTSC student who is -en tirely unaffected by this development. “I think it’s unfair that

“Good riddance,” said -Mi

Student reaction

assnews@thevarsity.ca

Financially compensated by Mada Llih grad@thefarcity.ca

Word count negotiator

Chronically has two thumbs up utsc@thefarcity.ca

Byline bargainer

Flower presser utm@thefarcity.ca

Ass News Editor

Inquessie assnews@thefarcity.ca

Khadija’s personal water bottle opener

Alexander Freezes deputynews@thefarcity.ca

Deputy Sass Editor

Sporcle Famous deputysce@thefarcity.ca

touch grass #2

Shy Dude 1 andrewh@thefarcity.ca

touch grass #1

Shy Dude 2 aaronh@thefarcity.ca

Friendly local tiktok star <3

Varsity Dinosaur video@thefarcity.ca

Person who can draw

Ottawa Bureau Chief illustration@thefarcity.ca

Studio light hater

Cracker girl photos@thefarcity.ca

Local microbiology expert

Burwash enjoyer design@thefarcity.ca

The snitch

Partayyyyyy ���� design@thefarcity.ca

The Coach

Manipulation advocate Miles Morales sports@thefarcity.ca

Local Magic Man science@thefarcity.ca

twilight literary analyst

Your problematic fave arts@thefarcity.ca

Flooreo eater

No laptop, no problem features@thefarcity.ca

Editor of the woes section

News Mommy news@thefarcity.ca Bean juice enjoyer Muhammad-Ali could never comment@thefarcity.ca Reddit instigator inflation? just print more money biz@thefarcity.ca

Lexey’s var-dad

Edward Jesus copy@thefarcity.ca

who somehow manage to burn hash browns in the microwave.”

“The approximate amount that we predict to charge students for the ‘Resi-bus’ is $3,500 a month,” Mertler explained, in a breakdown of the new shuttle budget. The university will require -stu dents to pay for a meal plan, because having a stove in a bus “is not safe for first-year students

Khadija's Personal Water Bottle Opener

At the Governing Council meeting on March 30, Geric Mertler, U of T’s bus driver, presented a -mo tion to convert the shuttle buses used to transport the U of T community between the UTSG and UTM campuses into studio apartments. Mertler said that the renovations would tend to cost upward of $30,000 a bus. He offered to do all of the renovations himself, which would lower the estimated cost to $20,000 per bus. Assistant Professor May Day asked Mertler how the university plans to fund the $20,000 required for each bus. UTM has nine buses to convert, -total ling $180,000. Mertler told Day that the university would cancel the shuttle system and use the funds previously allocated to driver pay and gas -expens es to pay for the renovations. Day also questioned where the university would park the buses. Mertler responded, telling the council that the university would divert the ongoing Landmark Project to create a huge parking lot for all of the buses. One bus will serve as a bathroom bus. Each bus will hold seven students, each with a bed and a dresser tucked underneath the bed. -In stead of receiving desks, students will utilize space at Robarts to study.

Alexander Freezes

Governing Council votes to cancel service, upgrade buses

UTM shuttle buses to be renovated into student residence

The one with a toxic traits list

seaweed boy online@thefarcity.ca

Asbestos enthusiast managinginternal@thefarcity.ca UTSC Deer

Ronan Farrow on steroids managingexternal@thefarcity.ca Mr. War Correspondent

Free floating John editor@thefarcity.ca just a little guy It’s Makena B*tch creative@thefarcity.ca honestly just here for the vibes

PLEASANT, NORMAL COWORKERS

The Farcity

21 Sussex Avenue, Suite 306 Toronto, ON M5S 1J6 (416) 946-7600

Vol. CXLIII, No. THE END

The second-year kinesiology major spent the day putting up “MISSING” posters on campus grade buses

The Farcity has since voted to continue to -ap prove Freezes to run every Meeting of Members for the rest of time.

Freezes started off the meeting by honourably mentioning that the attendees should apologize, as Freezes had never hosted this meeting before. Unfortunately, Freezes apparently does not know that computers come with a “Do Not -Dis turb” setting, so the attendees across the Zoom platform were subjected to hearing the word “Hummus” from Freezes’ laptop, because -Freez es’ personal Slack notification is someone saying the word “Hummus.” In response to this, Jamie from The Farcity’s board asked, “Why did -some one say hummus out loud?” The Farcity’s accountant, Paul, was able to -ex perience the monumental moment. “I’m never going to one of those meetings again,” Paul said in a statement to The Farcity The Farcity’s biggest, scariest editor stated -pub licly that they hope it’s because he never wants to attend one that would top the November 2 meeting.

Freezes, whose role at The Farcity is solely just to open the water bottles scattered across the office to hydrate Farcity members in lieu of their probably lead-filled tap water, chaired the meeting.

This year, following the UTSU’s two six-hour-long Annual General Meetings (AGM), The Farcity’s personal water bottle opener, Alexander Freezes, hosted the best fall Meeting of Members in Farcity history.

Into the slack react verse

John did not respond to The Farcity’s request for comment. Possibly because she didn’t read the email.

bility, had the board been notified of this, John would not have been elected. The Farcity regrets this error.

Although being able to read is not an official requirement for The Farcity’s editor-in-chief -eligi

“Looking back, I wonder how we got through the year,” they continued. “It was probably the copy team that carried us. They’re clearly the coolest people here, and deserve every bit of the acclaim we receive as a paper.”

“I always noticed she would go quiet whenever Lea Michele was mentioned,” a masthead -mem ber, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions, said in an interview with The Farcity. “I never thought about it before, but it all makes sense now.”

On April 1, an anonymous tip revealed to Farcity masthead that The Farcity’s 2022–2023 editorin-chief, Free-floating John, has never learned to read. The tip came in the form of a text message on John’s personal phone, but she asked The Farcity’s Mr. War Correspondent to read it — -pre sumably because she couldn’t decipher it herself.

Sporcle Famous Deputy Sass Editor

Anonymous source reveals John to be illiterate

Editor-in-Chief exposed

BREAKING NEWS: Farcity

“I think they’re hinting at our recent editorial,” said News Mommy, The Farcity’s Bean Juice enjoyer, “but I guess we’ll never really know for sure.”

This move from U of T follows a recent -edito rial published by The Farcity’s group of random nerds titled “Why is it so hard to figure out what the fuck is going on in U of T governance?”

“No one really cares about governance,” said fourth-year student Michael Leahcim. “I’ve gone four years without ever caring about a -gover nance meeting, and you guys couldn’t make me care now.”

The handbook will include everything from dressing attire for the meetings to how bird -pop ulations will be affected by the U of T budget as the university flies more international students into Toronto by plane. Currently, the bird-deathto-student ratio is four to one, and planes are the highest cause of death for Toronto birds — narrowly beating the OISE building’s windows.

On April 5, U of T will release its well anticipated step-by-step guide for understanding the -uni versity’s governance meetings.

Khadija’s personal water bottle opener

“The handbook will help students to -under stand the basics of governance so the student body can be more involved,” kinda important person Geric Mertler said during a coffee shop date with The Farcity U of T Media Relations spokesperson, -Phi lidelphia Dip, said that the handbook will have the style guide of a child’s ABC book, to help promote learning.

Alexander Freezes

fuck is going on

The Breakdown: U of T Governance for Dummies

The University of Toronto's therapy option for student journalists since 1488

Because no one ever knows what the

“Please apologize”

Farcity’s local governance expert runs better meeting than UTSU

Alexander Freezes Khadija’s personal water bottle opener