November 1st, 2021

November 1, 2021 Vol. CXLII, No. 8

THE VARSITY September 2013

Toronto350 calls for U of T to divest fuel shares

D March 2014

Gertler announces committee on fossil fuel divestment

V April 2016

U of T rejects divestment recommendations

S October 2021

U of T to fully divest from fossil fuels by 2030

Business USW1998 calls for paid sick leave for casual unit

Comment

I

Why menstrual products should be available in all campus bathrooms

December 2015

Committee recommends “targeted divestment”

E

Features Walking away from my Korean church

Arts & Culture Interview with professional medical illustrator Sana Khan

October 2020

Divest Canada calls for nationwide divestment

Science

T

Looking under the skin at the science of tattoos

Sports Varsity Blues baseball squad win the OUA championship!

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U of T to fully divest from fossil fuels by 2030 THE VARSITY Vol. CXLII, No. 8 21 Sussex Avenue, Suite 306 Toronto, ON M5S 1J6 (416) 946-7600 the.varsity

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Gertler expects representatives on pension fund to support divestment Lauren Alexander and Marta Anielska News Editors

In a letter to the community on October 27, President Meric Gertler announced that U of T will divest from all direct investments in fossil fuel companies through U of T’s endowment fund over the next 12 months, and will fully divest from all fossil fuel investments by 2030 at the latest. Divestment is part of a larger three-part plan Gertler laid out for addressing climate change at the university.

“The growing severity of the climate crisis now demands bold actions that have both substantive and symbolic impact,” Gertler wrote in the letter.

Climate advocacy groups on campus such as Leap U of T celebrated the announcement, but pointed out that, while the endowment fund makes up a large portion of the university’s investment portfolio, the University Pension Plan (UPP) is not directly controlled by the university, and has not yet divested from fossil fuel investments.

History of divestment at U of T Previously, in 2016, Gertler had rejected a recommendation to divest from fossil fuels by the President’s Advisory Committee on Divestment from Fossil Fuels, a move which has since been widely criticized by environmental advocacy groups on campus.

Instead, U of T chose to follow an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) framework which assesses the climate-related risks of long-term investments instead of fully divesting from fossil fuel investments. Gertler noted that the university’s change of course is due to the growing urgency of the climate crisis, the evolving landscape of the investment industry, and the work of student and university-affiliated activists.

In his statement, Gertler also acknowledged the importance of the President’s Advisory Committee on Divestment from Fossil Fuels, noting that its work “marked a key milestone in the journey towards today’s announcement.”

Campus groups have been advocating for U of T to divest for the larger part of the last decade.

Groups such as Divestment and Beyond and Leap U of T signed onto a nationwide demand that universities divest from fossil fuels in 2020.

Universities across North America have shifted toward divestment in the past five years, with Harvard University announcing in September that it was starting to divest from all investment in fossil fuel companies. That same month, Gertler said in an interview with The Varsity that U of T would also be unveiling an “even more ambitious plan to reduce carbon emissions from our operations” during the fall semester.

Details of the plan Gertler laid out a three-part plan for addressing climate change at the university level, with divesting from fossil fuel investments as the first part. Divestment will happen over the course of the next decade — although the university is planning to cut out all direct investments in fossil fuels from its portfolio over the next 12 months,

Students gather at a fossil fuel divestment march in front of Simcoe Hall earlier this year.

COURTESY OF MILAN ILNYCKJ

funds invested in fossil fuels through pooled funds handled by third-party investment managers will be phased out by 2030 because of the more complicated nature of these arrangements. U of T will also divest from all subsidiaries of fossil fuel companies.

Gertler announced that the University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation (UTAM) — the organization that manages the university’s investments — will commit, by 2050, to an endowment portfolio that will have zero net carbon emissions associated with it. Gertler further highlighted the fact that the UTAM recently joined the United Nations’ (UN) Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance, a global group of investors all aiming for zero net carbon emissions by 2050.

By 2025, the UTAM will also ensure that 10 per cent of U of T’s endowment portfolio is invested in “sustainable and low-carbon investments,” significantly higher than the 2 per cent currently invested in these types of investments. According to the current portfolio, that means the university will make a $400 million investment in these areas.

Gertler added in an interview with The Varsity that the university’s renewed position reflected the increasingly risky nature of investing in the fossil fuel industry. The university will continue to assess all investments through its ESG framework, which aims to produce responsible investments by considering factors that impact the physical environment, the well-being of people and communities, and the governance of a company.

According to Gertler, there are several ways the university will hold itself accountable to its commitment to divestment. The UTAM releases annual reports on its responsible investments, and its inclusion in the UN Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance means that it will have to hit certain targets regarding climate action, of which the first one is set for 2025. The UTAM also receives annual report cards on its investing from the UN, based on UN principles for responsible investing.

“When a large institution like the University of Toronto decides to take such steps, it is our belief that this will both accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy and inspire other investors to do the same,” wrote Gertler.

(in billions)

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Funds controlled by UTAM According to the 2020 report from the UTAM, the endowment fund made up $3.7 billion in investments in 2020, while the UPP made up $6.3 billion. The short term working capital fund made up $3.1 billion.

Though U of T’s endowment portfolio will divest, its pension plan is managed by the University Pension Plan (UPP), which is the pension plan jointly sponsored by U

of T, Queen’s University, and the University of Guelph. The U of T pension plan was joined with the UPP in July of 2021.

The UPP has its own board of trustees separate from U of T that will decide whether or not to divest. In an interview with The Varsity, Gertler added that he would be surprised if U of T representatives on the board “did not reflect the general direction and the philosophy that the university itself has embraced quite publicly in the last couple of days.”

U of T also has a short-term working capital fund which is composed of funds that the university must have access to on short notice. Consequently, the investments the fund makes are much more modest and for which “fossil fuel investment isn’t really a factor at all,” according to Gertler.

Community reaction Community members reacted positively to the announcement, with activists celebrating the victory, which comes after years of campaigning for divestment. However, many are also cautious about celebrating, knowing that there is still work to be done.

In an email to The Varsity, Leap U of T noted that the divestment commitment does not apply to U of T’s pension plan and that it does not mention the social and political implications of divestment connected to land disputes or colonial violence.

“This only further contributes to the evidence that UofT was in little to no way morally incentivized to divest, but rather that divestment was a financially motivated decision that was also convenient for restoring the University’s reputation, having been mired in a variety of scandals over the past year,” Leap U of T claimed.

Leap U of T also told The Varsity that the university lacks financial transparency regarding its direct and indirect investments, adding that given the information it had, most of U of T’s investments in fossil fuels appear to be indirect.

Consequently, Leap U of T sees the timeline for divesting from indirect investments as lacklustre, especially given that some universities have committed to doing so within the next five years.

In an interview with The Varsity, Allie Rougeot, a climate activist and U of T alum, expressed a similar cautiousness because of the length of the timeline. She also noted that the federated colleges have separate investment portfolios, which are not included in the larger divestment. She pointed out that U of T is “late in the game” with regards to divestment.

Moreover, Rougeot said that U of T still has ways to go to become a leader in climate justice.

For her, the next step would be changing U of T’s curriculum to provide students with a really solid foundation on the climate crisis.

As for Leap U of T, it will continue to put pressure on the university, and on the federated colleges in particular, to divest from fossil fuels.

“We are thrilled that UofT has finally taken this step, but there is much more to be done to ensure the future of our planet and to continue our commitments to the liberation of life and land,” Leap U of T concluded.

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NOVEMBER 1, 2021

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UTMSU holds Phone Zap to protest mandated leave policy Over 300 emails sent to admin in objection to policy Lexey Burns UTM Bureau Chief

This week, the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) held a virtual “UMLAP Phone Zap.” Participants in the phone zap event called and emailed administrators from across the university to share their thoughts, feedback, and demands about the University-Mandated Leave of Absence Policy (UMLAP) directly. The UMLAP allows U of T to involuntarily put students on leave from their studies without academic penalty, if the university determines that a student poses a risk to themselves or others. The policy came into effect in 2018, despite student protests, and has been the subject of advocacy ever since.

Students contacted the decision-makers who will receive these recommendations and a report from the committee reviewing the policy.

Originally, the UTMSU was planning to hold an in-person protest against the UMLAP within the first few weeks of the fall semester. The phone zap was held instead of an in-person protest.

Participating students were encouraged to email or phone administrators from UTSG, UTSC, and UTM to voice their opinions on the policy.

In an email to The Varsity, Nour Alideeb, executive director of the UTMSU, shared that the event had generated upwards of 300 emails from over 30 participants in the half an hour that the event ran.

The UTMSU provided 41 different individuals’ contact information — including their phone numbers and email addresses — as well as a

U of T’s progress on Truth and Reconciliation Plans to create dashboard tracking progress on recommendations underway Cedric Jiang Associate News Editor

Since the 2017 report from U of T’s Truth and Reconciliation Steering Committee (TRSC), U of T is still working on implementing the report’s recommendations.

U of T commissioned the report in 2017 in response to calls to action from the national Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC).

The report included 34 recommendations to the university on how to rebuild relationships with Indigenous communities and emphasized the need for a collective effort in order to further reconciliation. To follow up on these recommendations, The Varsity broke down U of T’s progress on Truth and Reconciliation so far.

Report findings The TRSC acknowledged that U of T has historically been an instrument of oppression against Indigenous peoples. “The University may view itself as a benign actor in the social drama.

If we learned anything from the proceedings of the TRC, however, it is that for many Indigenous people, ‘education’ was by no means benign: it was a form of repression and abuse,” read the report. “It was intended to destroy cultures and it broke up communities.”

The report said that although U of T did not have any direct involvement with the running of the residential school system, it has educated generations of leaders and policymakers who were part of the oppressive institutional power that created the residential schools. It further highlighted that researchers at the university have failed to challenge the injustice of the system, and some may have even been involved in studies that cause harm to Indigenous communities.

“For generations the University of Toronto was simply part of a dominant settler culture whose political and social actions have contributed to the profoundly difficult situations that many Indigenous people and communities find themselves confronting in the current era,” read the report.

The report made 34 recommendations in six working areas: creating Indigenous spaces on campus, incorporating Indigenous culture into university curricula, developing research ethics and community relationships with Indigenous communities, hiring Indigenous faculty and staff, supporting Indigenous students, and implementing institutional leadership.

Truth before reconciliation September 30 marked Orange Shirt Day, as well as the first National Day for Truth and

pre-written template that students could sign and send by email or voice over the phone.

Mitra Yakubi, president of the UTMSU, wrote to The Varsity, “Our end goal is to remove the UMLAP completely because there is no way to amend or improve the policy without negatively impacting students.”

Yakubi encouraged students who chose to call administration directly to leave a voicemail if their call was left unanswered. She also emphasized that participants should let her or Alideeb know if voicemails were full or if they were redirected, and told participants to write unique email subject lines so that their emails would not be automatically filtered as spam.

“If somebody is about to hang up on you, I think you should reiterate that… you’re an

impacted person by this policy. They have an obligation to hear you out and listen, and they are accountable to students,” Alideeb said.

The event was incorporated in the UTMSU’s “Halloweek,” where the union celebrates Halloween on campus. Yakubi explained that the UTMSU included the phone zap event in the holiday spirit week because they felt that this event would be a productive way for members to get involved in Halloween events while talking about an important student issue.

The event was not heavily advertised too far in advance to ensure that the emails and calls were not expected by the administration. “When we’ve been part of other phone zaps, decision makers and/or targets have avoided calls because they knew it was part of a coordinated action,” Yakubi wrote.

Reconciliation, which is meant to recognize and honour lost Indigenous children and survivors of the residential school system.

In a statement released on the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, U of T President Meric Gertler pointed out U of T’s efforts and progress on reconciliation over the past years.

He emphasized the importance of dialogue in reconciliation efforts and talked about rebuilding relationships with Indigenous communities, saying all parties should learn from each other through mutual engagement during the process.

“The [TRC] challenged us to acknowledge the truth and history of Canada with respect to Indigenous Peoples and what that means for reconciliation,” read the statement. “We have made progress in many areas — expanding the presence of Indigenous students, staff, faculty and librarians; incorporating Indigenous content into curricula; supporting Indigenous research programs; and creating physical spaces to honour and acknowledge Indigenous peoples, traditions, and histories on our three campuses,” Gertler added.

Shannon Simpson, director of Indigenous Initiatives at U of T and a member of the Mississaugas of Alderville First Nation, expressed how encouraged she felt about the university’s reconciliation progress at U of T’s Orange Shirt Day event this year, saying the progress was happening “at a pace that we’re not used to.”

“The growth is amazing, and the amount of faculty and staff who have come on board really has shown me that the institution does care and that they are committed,” she said. “We just want to keep that momentum going and [keep] creating these spaces.”

At a meeting of the University Affairs Board

in September, Vice-President, People Strategy, Equity and Culture Kelly Hannah-Moffat gave a presentation on initiatives for Indigenous students and staff that the university has been working on. The university’s current initiatives include a number of new architectural projects, such as the Indigenous House at UTSC, the Indigenous Landscape Project at Taddle Creek at UTSG, and the Indigenous Centre at UTM. Simpson also pointed out areas where the university needs to make more progress, including being more supportive of Indigenous students’ needs and attracting more Indigenous students by making the university a more accessible and welcoming place to them.

Research conducted by the Canadian Federation of Students–Ontario in 2017 found that only 11.3 per cent of Indigenous people have a university degree, compared to 29.3 per cent of the nonIndigenous population.

Gertler acknowledged that more work needs to be done and that, moving ahead, U of T will continue to carry important responsibilities regarding reconciliation. His statement echoed the report’s stance that, although the university needs to take immediate action on it, reconciliation is a long-term process.

“Indeed, Orange Shirt Day speaks to the enduring trauma experienced by Indigenous peoples. We pause today to recognize our past, acknowledge our present – and recommit to a better future,” read Gertler’s statement.

U of T plans to set up a website tracking its progress on Truth and Reconciliation efforts — a similar initiative to the website the university created to track its progress on implementing the recommendations of the Anti-Black Racism Taskforce Report.

Protestors hang sign on building against sexual violence Protest in response to alleged “open secret” of sexual violence and racism in Faculty of Music Marta Anielska Deputy News Editor

On October 25, anonymous members of the U of T community hung up a sign which said “U of T protects predators” on the doors of the Edward Johnson Building and spray painted the word “Shame” on the ground in front of it.

According to the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3902 (CUPE 3902), which posted about the incident on Twitter, the protest was a response to the “open secret” of pervasive sexual violence and racism that has circulated in the Faculty of Music for many years but never been properly addressed.

The Faculty of Music released a letter in May that acknowledged this toxic culture and promised to create a working group that would facilitate transparent action against sexual harassment.

The display did not remain in place for long, as

Campus Safety removed it within half an hour of its installation.

Other organizations have continued to organize in response to allegations of sexual harassment and violence in the Faculty of Music. The Faculty of Music Undergraduate Association released two statements on sexual violence in the spring, and it released an open letter addressed to the Faculty of Music in June. The letter included the signatures and testimonies of community members along with the association’s initial grievances and demands.

Though CUPE 3902 did not organize this particular protest action, it comes a few months after the union’s autonomous activist wing, the Flying Squad, assembled clotheslines along Philosopher’s Walk that displayed student testimonies about the faculty’s culture on note cards. In an email to The Varsity, CUPE 3902’s Chair Amy Conwell added that the union supports survivors’ right to protest.

Protest sign hung up by community members.

COURTESY OF CUPE 3902

CUPE 3902 added that it is organizing with members of the department to demand a more proactive system to prevent sexual violence “with timelines for responses, protections for survivors and whistleblowers, and real consequences for perpetrators.”

The protest also comes after an investigation

by Al Jazeera published allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct recently against

former Trinity College provost, vice-chancellor, and professor of English and medieval studies Andy Orchard. In response to The Varsity’s request for comment on the allegations, a representative for Orchard wrote, “Our client denies these allegations and will co-operate fully with the university in any enquiry it wishes to make. He has no further comment.”

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SCSU Vice-President Campus Life TJ Ho resigns After second executive resignation, new vice-president operations appointed Syeda Maheen Zulfiqar UTSC Bureau Chief

The Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) held its October Board of Directors (BOD) meeting on October 27, where SCSU President Sarah Abdillahi shared with the board that Vice-President Campus Life TJ Ho had resigned. Ho will be replaced through an appointment by the current executive committee.

Ho’s resignation is the second executive resignation of the year, after former Vice-President Operations Andy Mai resigned during the September meeting. Mai was replaced by Ghaith Hanbali at this month’s meeting.

Board members voted on the appointment of a political science director, an international students director, and two first-year directors.

The board also made changes to the

SCSU’s Emergency Bursary, which will now allow students to receive funds through e-transfer.

Executive resignations and appointments At the October BOD meeting, Abdillahi shared the news of Ho’s resignation from his role as vice-president campus life. Ho, who was not present at this meeting, announced his resignation to the SCSU on October 25.

At the September board meeting, Ho had received criticism from Michael Sobowale, the orientation coordinator for Frosh 2021 — an event organized by SCSU with the overseeing responsibility falling under the jurisdiction of vicepresident campus life. Sobowale said Ho had failed to contribute to event planning.

In response, Ho claimed that he had contributed to the event’s planning but

had allowed the orientation coordinators to have “creative freedom.”

Details about the now vacant role will be made available on the SCSU website and social media, and those interested in the position will be welcome to apply.

The position of vice-president operations had been previously occupied by Andy Mai, who announced his resignation at the September BOD meeting. Mai had remained in the role while the SCSU searched for an appropriate candidate to take over the position.

The board members voted on and appointed Hanbali as the new vicepresident operations.

Appointment of directors Due to the large number of applicants for four out of the five available positions, the board members read through the

letters of intent of each applicant and then voted on their preferred candidate.

Following this process, Kauel Rajeshkumar Brahmbhatt and Aaliyah Jaleel were appointed as first-year directors, Nafisa Nawal was appointed as the political science director, and Carlos Paez Gonzalez was appointed as the international student director.

One of the five available positions — part-time student director — remains vacant, since there were no applicants for the position.

Change made to Emergency Bursary The board also voted on changes to the Emergency Support Bursary, which is a bursary designed to aid students dealing with financial distress. “[The changes are] just about streamlining the process overall to ensure that we can help students the

best way we can and get their funds out to them as quickly as possible,” said Vice-President Equity Isaiah Murray.

He continued, “We wanted to make sure that the funds that were dedicated to folks that applied were as accessible as possible and we found the best way to do that was to not go through the Financial Aid office.”

Murray added that going through the Financial Aid office meant that funds could only be administered via Acorn.

The changes discussed at the meeting will mean that students will have the option to receive bursaries through an e-transfer.

Murray concluded that the changes allow SCSU to “acknowledge the vast amount of needs that the different students will have.”

The Varsity has reached out to TJ Ho for comment.

Four executives fail to submit their monthly reports at October UTGSU meeting No council members run for executive-at-large Padraic Berting Graduate Bureau Chief

The University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) General Council met virtually on October 26 for its October meeting.

Four out of seven executives failed to submit their reports by the deadline.

They will include their written reports in the November meeting package.

The council also discussed changes to the Black Graduate Excellence Bursary subcommittee and discussed funding for the Centre for Women and Trans People. Elections for the executive-at-large position were also held, though no one ran for the position, so it will be filled at a later meeting.

Monthly reports UTGSU General Council meetings generally begin with the acceptance of monthly executive reports detailing what each executive has done that month.

However, for this meeting, only three of the seven current executives submitted their reports to be included in the meeting package by the October 22 deadline — Finance Commissioner June Li, Civics and Environment Commissioner An-Noûra Compaoré, University Governance Commissioner Lwanga Musisi, and Academics and Funding Commissioner Divisions 3 & 4 Danielle Karakas all failed to submit their reports.

Li, Compaoré, and Karakas delivered brief oral reports on their progress during the month in lieu of a written report.

Some members of the General Council expressed concern that the reports were not included, and put forward a motion for those executives to include their October reports in the November meeting package. The motion passed.

Changes to levies and bursaries Li presented the UTGSU’s updated terms of reference for its Black Graduate Excellence Bursary this year. The change makes it so that the subcommittee is elected from the general graduate student population rather than the UTGSU General Council, and that the chair of the subcommittee will be someone elected from the finance committee. The motion for this change also passed.

The UTGSU attempted to pass a motion to cease the levy collected for the Centre for Women and Trans People (CWTP). Li said that in the last three years, the CWTP has failed to give any financial audits and reports. By distributing the money without getting these reports, she said that the UTGSU was essentially breaking its own bylaws and had no choice but to discontinue the levy.

The executive director for the CWTP also spoke, explaining the reasons behind the failure to send financial statements to the union. Recently, its former coordinator has taken an indefinite sick leave and failed to return to their post, the centre has been evicted from its former office in the North Gordon Building, and it has faced other

administrative issues that have hindered its ability to function normally.

The CWTP’s representative then explained that the centre has now hired a certified accountant and has hired lawyers to help them through this process. They requested that the centre still collect the levy fees, but not use them until March 2022, when their finances and statements are all supposed to be organized. Their request passed instead of the original motion.

Each year at the October meeting of the General Council, the UTGSU elects an executive-at-large, and the executive’s election is held during the meeting. However, since no one ran at the meeting, the position currently remains vacant, and voting has been delayed until next month’s meeting.

The Breakdown: Student health insurance at U of T UTSU insurance claims deadline coming up on November 29 Marta Anielska Deputy News Editor

In light of the University of Toronto Students’ Union’s (UTSU) decision to switch health insurance providers and the upcoming deadline to submit claims for the last coverage period, The Varsity has compiled a breakdown of the different sources of student health insurance and how students can take advantage of the coverage they are provided.

This article includes an overview of the basic health insurance plans for domestic and international students, as well as an overview of the fees students automatically pay for health insurance, how they can make claims, and how their claims will be assessed.

The last day to submit claims to Desjardins for the last coverage period is November 29.

Basic health coverage Students with an Ontario health card will automatically be covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP), which covers family doctor

appointments, walk-in clinic visits, emergency room visits, medical tests, and surgeries.

Domestic students without an Ontario health card and students with OHIP-eligible immigration status can access the province’s health care plan through a dedicated application process. Students must apply in person at a Service Ontario centre with documents proving their residency in Ontario, their identity, and their Canadian citizenship or OHIP eligibility.

The closest Service Ontario centre to the St. George campus is located at 777 Bay Street.

International students not covered

by OHIP can get their basic coverage from the University Health Insurance Program (UHIP) offered by U of T. Unlike OHIP, eligible students do not need to apply for UHIP; they are automatically enrolled and the payment is added to their fees. The university’s plan covers services such as hospital and physical visits, vision care, and dental care.

While OHIP automatically covers any costs that arise while someone is covered under the plan, students need

MIA CARNEVALE/THEVARSITY

to submit claims to be reimbursed under UHIP for a healthcare-related payment or to have the consulted professional directly paid by the plan. These can be filed by filling out a claims form and sending it either over email or in the mail to UHIP’s insurance provider Sun Life. Students will also need to send an invoice if they want the medical professional to be paid by UHIP directly.

Union insurance options All undergraduate students at UTSG also receive additional coverage from the UTSU, which provides health and dental coverage as well as vision and travel coverage. Several other specialized treatments, such as physiotherapy, speech therapy, and psychotherapy are also provided through the plan. Similar plans are offered by unions at both UTM and UTSC, and for graduate and part-time students by their respective unions.

Because of the UTSU’s switch to a new insurance provider, students must also find out which insurance provider they will be submitting to this year. Students who wish to be

reimbursed for payments made before September should have their claims sent to Desjardins. All claims for payments after September should be sent to Green Shield.

The deadline to make a claim to Desjardins for the last coverage period is November 29. Students can either send their claims in the mail or submit them through the Studentcare app.

For now, claims to Green Shield will

only be accepted if they are sent in the mail or submitted online at the company’s website.

Students should note that they may need to send additional documentation with their claim depending on its nature, and that reimbursement for a healthcare-related service will only be granted if the payment for it has been made in full and the student has already received the benefit of the service.

thevarsity.ca/section/news

NOVEMBER 1, 2021

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UTMSU updates Board on fall initiatives at October meeting Chief returning officer report summarizes first-year representative elections Lexey Burns UTM Bureau Chief

The University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) held its October board meeting on October 29, going over developments for initiatives such as the UPass Survey, the International Round Table, and the union’s job readiness support program.

The union’s chief returning officer (CRO) also delivered a report on the recent first-year representative elections, and the board elected members to various committees.

Executive reports The UTMSU executives updated the board on several ongoing and past initiatives that the union has spearheaded in the fall semester.

Vice-President Internal Wei Lai announced that the UPass Survey, which asked students to share their experiences with Mississauga transit, has been closed, and the results have

been sent to Mississauga’s municipal transit system in the form of recommendations that can be implemented to improve transit for students.

Wei added that, after going through a multi-day interview process, the union has hired two volunteer coordinators.

She also reported that UTMSU’s International Round Table, an initiative where the UTMSU is trying to address the issues of international students, has had two successful meetings.

Recently, the UTMSU has kickstarted its job readiness support program with résumé, cover letter, and mock interview workshops. Merica Joy Carlos, the UTMSU’s vice-president university affairs, updated the board on the program. She mentioned that the UTMSU has started offering students free professional headshots on Thursdays at UTM’s Student Centre and that the union will be running a LinkedIn workshop soon.

Carlos wrapped up her report by speaking about the union’s academic accommodation policy. She explained

that it’s being created “to really help students… [safely] return back to campus next semester, creating general guidelines that hopefully the university will implement for next year.”

President Mitra Yakubi’s report included the results of the UniversityMandated Leave of Absence Policy Phone Zap event, the UTMSU’s first health and wellness session, and an explanation of how the UTMSU is handling the return to in-person classes in the winter semester.

The UTMSU will be holding its Culture week from November 8–12, a Mental Health Awareness week from November 24–26, and it will hold its annual general meeting on November 23.

Report from fall election Athisaya Satgururajah presented the CRO’s report for this year’s fall elections. Nominations opened on September 20, and while eight nomination packages were requested by potential division one candidates, which is for

director at-large positions, only four were completed and submitted by the deadline.

“These four candidates were successful in passing the nomination verification process and were approved to campaign,” Satgururajah said. The UTMSU did not receive any nomination packages for divisions three and four, which refer to the divisions for parttime director at-large and professional faculty positions, respectively. Consequently, these positions remain vacant.

Although the union held a hybrid election, running five in-person polling stations in addition to online voting, the number of votes was significantly lower than in previous years due to COVID-19.

These elections were also only open to first-year students, who are typically less engaged in student politics.

Despite some difficulties finding and delivering chairs to polling stations, all the polling stations opened on time, and virtual polling stations were held over Zoom. Due to changes in campus secu-

rity policies and guidelines, ballot boxes were kept in the UTMSU’s storage room rather than with Campus Safety where they have traditionally been stored.

However, Satgururajah assured meeting attendees that the room in which ballot boxes were stored is only accessible to a select few individuals and that the boxes were protected with multiple locks to prevent ballot tampering.

There were no election violations and no invalid votes reported from inperson voting. Poll clerks confirmed that all students were first-year students by checking their TCards. Irene He and Glenda Fu won the election for first-year representatives, with 39 and 25 votes respectively.

While a majority of the UTMSU’s committee positions were filled at the meeting by way of nomination and needing no election process as a result, there are still vacant positions in the Organizational Development and Services committee and the Elections and Referenda committee.

No COVID-19 outbreaks reported so far on campus this year Vice-president updates on new UCheck ambassador pilot program, vaccination rates Lauren Alexander News Editor

U of T’s Governing Council met on October 28, where acting Vice-President and Provost Trevor Young gave updates on the status of COVID-19 vaccinations and outbreaks on campus, along with a new UCheck ambassador pilot program and an update on U of T’s plan for the winter semester.

The council also heard criticism of the university’s transparency on health and safety measures from Terezia Zorić, president of the University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA).

COVID-19 updates In his report, Young gave the most recent vaccination numbers at the university. So far, over 88,000 community members have declared their vaccination status via UCheck, with 97 per cent of them being fully vaccinated and 2 per cent on their way to being fully vaccinated.

He noted that staff who are working on verifying vaccination documents have found very few that are incorrect.

Young also mentioned that a number of international students were not able to get fully vaccinated by the October 29 deadline because of problems returning to Canada or having gotten vaccines not approved by Health Canada. The university is working with those students individually, and they will continue to use the rapid testing program. Young encouraged students who do not plan to get vaccinated to contact their registrars.

Addressing unvaccinated employees, Young said, “This fall, a small number of employees, who were needed on site that were not able to attend due to vaccination status, have been moved to unpaid status.”

On the subject of COVID-19 case rates, Young said that so far there have been zero outbreaks reported on campus, with an average of four cases reported each week.

Young noted that despite a new timeline for returning to normal recently put out by the Ford administration, which includes the lifting of some safety measures like mask mandates

by March, the university has not yet changed their plans for returning to in-person courses. The university will continue to look at the province’s plan and what it indicates for U of T going forward.

Young also discussed a new UCheck ambassador pilot program that the university is looking to introduce in the coming weeks. Ambassadors with the program would be placed at various locations around campus and check students’ UCheck status at the entrances of certain spaces.

He also said that the delivery methods for winter 2022 semester courses may be available next week. Currently, 15 per cent of courses are planned to be delivered in person only, 45 per cent will have a hybrid course of delivery, while 40 per cent will be delivered online only.

Criticisms from UTFA Zorić spoke at the meeting, criticizing the university for a lack of transparency and information around health and safety on campus.

“We want transparent information as [it] relates to the university’s ventilation systems, and we want to be assured that all employee groups and student groups will have access to key documents, not as occurred courtesy, but because they have a right to know, a right to participate, and a right to refuse unsafe work,” said Zorić.

UTFA has brought up the topic of transparency repeatedly. Over the summer, UTFA criticized the university for what it described as a lack of transparency around Legionella outbreaks in water pipes on campus.

Replying to Zorić’s concerns during the Governing Council meeting, VicePresident, People Strategy, Equity and

Culture Kelly Hannah-Moffat said, “We share that concern; [we are] making sure that there are multiple layers of safety implemented in our community, along with a really high vaccination rate [and improvements to ventilation.”

— With files from Evangeline Yeung.

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Business & Labour

November 1, 2021 thevarsity.ca/section/business biz@thevarsity.ca

U of T Entrepreneurship launches Black Founders Network Program to provide funding and support for Black-owned start-ups Sarah Folk Business & Labour Editor

On October 7, U of T Entrepreneurship hosted a launch event for the Black Founders Network (BFN) a program meant to help Black founders launch, fund, and scale their start-ups.

The launch event included panel discussions from highly accomplished Black entrepreneurs and investors, along with an inspirational speech from guest speaker Michael Seibel, the managing director of the start-up accelerator Y Combinator.

Built by and for the Black community The concept of the BFN came about in response to barriers faced by Black entrepreneurs that have come into the spotlight over the last two years.

“The BFN is an intentional, consultative response built with and for the Black community,” wrote Manager of the BFN Efosa Obano and Director of U of T Entrepreneurship Jon French in an email to The Varsity. The pair also explained that the BFN follows recommendations from the Anti-Black Racism Task Force at U of T, such as providing funding structure and advancement opportunities, promoting Blackinclusive spaces, and providing anti-Black racism training to members of the university.

The BFN is also modelled after a communitycentred approach. Participants have access to mentorship opportunities in many forms, including one-on-one peer discussions and advice from experienced entrepreneurs and investors. “With a commitment to allyship and sponsorship, we will ensure that the BFN opens doors and connects participants with relevant business leaders, investors, and potential customers,” Obano and French wrote.

One of the BFN launch event panellists, Melisa Ellis, talked about the importance of developing programs like the BFN. “Having programs like these on campus not only encourages us to start solution [focused] approaches, but it also allows us to focus on the root problem, which is financial

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literacy [and the] socioeconomic development of our communities,” she said.

Overall, Obano and French hope that the BFN will help dismantle the structural barriers that Black entrepreneurs and founders face. They recognize that it will take time to “fill the top of the funnel” by educating, empowering, and providing funding and opportunities for aspiring and experienced entrepreneurs to grow their ideas and businesses.

“We expect that the BFN will drive a significant increase in the number of Black-led start-ups that emerge from the U of T community,” Obano and French wrote.

Insights from panelists The event opened with a panel of entrepreneurs who shared their journeys and what their companies do. Panellists included Jeffrey Fasegha, Elsie Amoako, and Ellis.

Fasegha is a Rotman alum and the founder of Fyyne, a service that connects hair artists with technology and support to help them grow their

businesses. Growing up in small towns across North America, Fasegha struggled to find a barber that could cut his hair and wanted to create a solution for Black people going through similar struggles.

Amoako is the founder and chief executive officer of Mommy Monitor. They created a maternal health care application that provides access to support and services along with maternal health education.

Ellis, a UTSC alum, founded Nobellum, a service that provides a directory of Black-owned businesses to help keep money circulating within the community for longer. During the panel, Ellis explained that when a Black person gets paid, the dollar only stays within the Black community for six hours on average, while in other communities, it usually stays for up to 28 days.

In a separate interview with The Varsity, Ellis explained that the directory does not only direct people to everyday services such as hairstyling and personal care, but also services that are integral for founders and start-ups, such as legal clinics and accountants.

A wealth of advice and experience The launch event was a gold mine of entrepreneurial advice and insight, provided by investors and founders alike.

During the investor panel, a participant asked a question on how to close the financial gap that Black entrepreneurs face because they are often underfunded and struggle to find funding. Melissa Allen, the chief operating officer of Bay Mills Investment Group, urged founders to embrace rejection and put themselves out there.

“Each time you do go into [a] new meeting, your pitch is going to get stronger,” she said. “The entrepreneurship journey, whether you’re starting a fund or whether you know you are starting a company, [can] be very lonely and very difficult, but also really fun.”

Seibel, the keynote speaker, gave some hardhitting advice. He encouraged founders to be willing to put in hard work over a long period of time before they would see any results.

“There are too many people out there that look like they’re succeeding quickly. There are too many dishonest press stories about things that look like they happen fast. But when you dig under the surface, you realize that this should take a long time,” Seibel said.

He also emphasized the importance of taking the advice that you know you should take, and making sure that you are staying disciplined to complete the tasks that you know you need to complete as a founder. It is important to talk to your users, keep track of important metrics, and take care of yourself, urged Seibal. “I would argue that genius in the context of business and start-ups is far more… about discipline than intelligence,” he said.

The BFN is open to anyone interested in supporting Black entrepreneurship, including investors, entrepreneurs, corporations, and community networks.

USW Local 1998 calls for paid sick leave for its casual workers’ unit Protection, pay, precarity among union’s top bargaining priorities Zen Nguyen Varsity Contributor

For many casual workers, paid sick leave has been “a longstanding issue, even before the pandemic,” according to Colleen Burke, president of United Steelworkers Local 1998 (USW 1998). USW 1998 represents casual workers, who are workers who are on short-term, part time or seasonal contracts.

Now, the union’s fight for sick pay and better working conditions continues as the union sits down with the university at the bargaining table to renew their collective agreement for its casual workers.

When asked about the union’s demands, a U of T spokesperson explained that the university is engaging in the bargaining process and is working toward a renewed collective agreement.

“The University values and respects the work of the employees in the USW Local 1998 Casual bargaining unit. Over the past two decades, we have successfully negotiated numerous renewal collective agreements with USW Local 1998, and we look forward to constructive discussions with the Union in the current round of bargaining,” the spokesperson wrote.

Bargaining process USW 1998’s Casual Unit represents 3,500 casual workers employed across U of T. Casual workers, or non-staff appointed employees, are those employed on “short term, part-time and intermittent contracts.” These positions include research assistants, IT professionals, student life officers, weight room attendants, and standard patients, who are professionals who portray medical scenarios for medical officers in training.

USW 1998 is responsible for representing workers’ interests and negotiating with their employer to create a collective agreement that determines employment policies, pay, working conditions, and more. The last such agreement expired in June 2020, and thus a new one is in the process of being negotiated.

When asked in an email interview with The Varsity about difficulties that the union faces in the bargaining process, Burke shared that the process was delayed by the pandemic. Bargaining dates were set in the spring of 2021 but were pushed to a later date due to scheduling issues. She added that Bill 124 — which limits public sector pay rise to one per cent per year — poses a “huge obstacle to getting monetary improvements.”

There was one round of in-person bargaining

last week, and another will commence on November 8. The union is represented by the USW 1998 president, the Casual Unit’s president, and unit members. The university’s negotiating team comprises representatives from Labour Relations and Human Resources, Student Life, and the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

Heightened difficulties during the pandemic Unlike staff-appointed workers, casual workers do not have paid sick leave. At a news conference, standard patient Scott Eldridge, a USW 1998 Casual Unit member and an employee of the university for 19 years, commented on the difficulties of not having paid sick days. “Here we were helping out everyone get vaccinated, knowing that if we got sick, we would not be getting paid,” they said.

The USW Local 1998 held a news conference to discuss the union’s demands.

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Burke pointed out that paid sick leave is particularly important right now. “There is a lot of community support for this and shock that a big institution like U of T does not have paid sick days for all workers,” she wrote. Burke mentioned that the “growing call for paid sick leave all across the country” was an advantage for the union in their negotiations.

Last year, the Canadian Labour Congress urged governments at all levels to provide paid sick leave.

Subsequently, 10 days of paid sick leave were granted to workers across the country. An open letter from health providers affiliated with U of T also urged the university to “immediately close the gap in paid sick leave by expanding this basic health protection to all employees, starting with USW 1998.”

Protection, pay, and precarity Fair pay and a pathway to full employment are also key issues for USW 1998. As stated in the last Collective Agreement, Casual Unit workers have a minimum wage of $15 per hour, but there is no set pay range. In a video called “Precarity U,” USW 1998 members spoke of the difficulties they’ve had in addressing wage grievances due to a lack of details in the agreement, and about being paid less than staff-appointed employees for doing the same work.

The previous agreement also included a pathway to full employment. In response to union concerns, the university set out to review casual employees for conversion to staff status semiannually. However, USW 1998 still raises complaints about the precariousness in its members’ work, describing them as facing a “revolving door of temporary work.”

Comment

November 1, 2021 thevarsity.ca/section/comment comment@thevarsity.ca

Reconciliation cannot occur through performative actions Hudson’s Bay selling orange shirts will not erase the company’s colonial past Elim Evangeline Yeung Varsity Contributor

Content warning: This article contains discussions about the atrocities committed against Indigenous peoples.

The Cree writer Michelle Good, whose most recent novel is the prize-winning Five Little Indians, recently said in an article for CBC that she felt the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation deserved greater attention. “It needs to be considered in the same vein as Remembrance Day,” she said.

Despite the many voices calling for greater strides toward reconciliation, not much substantial change for Indigenous peoples in Canada has manifested. After all, it took the discovery of around 200 potential child burial sites at a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia for the federal government to institute the statutory holiday.

Even the land acknowledgements common at U of T are an example of the lack of substantial change. No doubt they have raised awareness within our community and beyond, but what tangible impact, in any shape and form, has actually been executed as a result of them? And what lengths are settlers willing to go to change the living conditions for Indigenous peoples in Canada?

Like other social movements, including Black Lives Matter, reconciliation has become a source of profit for companies looking to improve their reputations. Companies can claim to raise awareness without having to put in any effort to foster substantial change.

For example, Hudson’s Bay has received a lot of backlash for selling “Every Child Matters” orange shirts ahead of the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which was on September 30. Before Canada became a country, Hudson’s Bay was heavily involved in the fur trade and had set up much of its property and trading posts on Indigenous land. While Hud-

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son’s Bay appears to be promoting tolerance and equity through the orange shirts, one may wonder how much they will actually help to further reconciliation.

The company’s spokesperson said that all the orange shirt sales will be given to the Orange Shirt Society, a British Columbia-based non-profit working to raise awareness about the residential school system’s effects. However, it is unclear whether these actions would create real change — especially in comparison to places like Velma’s House in Winnipeg, Manitoba, which directly helps Indigenous women subjected to violence and exploitation. Would residential school survivor Phyllis Webstad, who had her favourite orange shirt taken from her on her first day of school — the story which inspired the Orange Shirt Day movement in the first place —

feel honoured to have her experience made into a source of profit for Hudson’s Bay? “When we look at their history, even within the past 100 or so years, [Hudson’s Bay had a] role with Inuit [and] the High Arctic relocation program, where families were taken from… northern Québec to Nunavut,” said Dani Lanouette, who is Anishinaabe from Neyaashiinigmiing and Algonquins of Barriere Lake, in an article for CBC. She is referring to when the Canadian government persuaded a group of Inuit people to leave their homes in the 1950s and promised that they could return if they were unhappy — a promise that the government failed to carry out.

According to Lanouette, Hudson’s Bay played a part in causing the starvation and food insecurity of the people who were relocated.

While Hudson’s Bay claimed to “[recognize]

Banning fraternities will not solve anything The issue of sexual violence is deep-rooted Jasmin Akbari Varsity Staff

Content warning: This article contains discussions of sexual violence.

In North American university culture, fraternities go hand in hand with partying. U of T alone has 11 different fraternities — none of which are associated with the university — all with the goal to foster camaraderie and friendship among their members, not only at university but also later in their lives.

Fraternities on campus have promoted academic success in their members, become increasingly more diverse, and partake in community work.

Unfortunately, despite these incredibly positive goals, fraternities have been linked with sexual assault and attacks. While Greek life at Western University has not been directly linked to the sexual assault cases that occured during orientation week, students at Western have called for the student council to sever ties with fraternities and sororities, claiming that they contribute to a toxic culture. This case is not isolated. There have been numerous cases similar to this one across North America; at Northwestern University, all fraternity-related activities have been halted due to cases of non-consensual drugging of students at two separate fraternity houses.

The students calling for these bans are not alone in these sentiments. However, while banning fraternities may seem like an obvious

solution to put an end to destructive party culture, it would be a surface-level solution that fails to address the deep-rooted issues within universities. At the same time, we still need to recognize fraternities for making positive change on campus through charitable acts and adding to the community’s social life.

Fraternities can do good for their communities Banning fraternities is nothing but a quick fix for a greater issue. People who would ordinarily be part of fraternities will still be on campus, and parties will still happen with or without fraternities.

Many fraternities at U of T have played a part in bettering their community. They offer students of diverse backgrounds opportunities to get together and build long lasting relationships. Members are expected to maintain a certain GPA, participate in meetings and events, and take part in community service. Fraternities like U of T’s Alpha Delta Phi chapter had been challenged to donate blood amid the ongoing blood donations shortages, and the Phi Delta Gamma chapter has participated in helping senior homes.

Although these contributions do not necessarily outweigh the negatives of party culture, we should recognize that not all fraternities are inherently bad. Fraternities on campus have not only contributed to the harms of party life, but also to charities and disadvantaged communities.

Accountability is required North American institutions have tried to implement solutions in order to change the potentially problematic culture involved in Greek life, including allowing women to become members of fraternities, creating stricter rules and policies for all frats, and banning fraternities that broke those rules for a fixed time frame or permanently.

However, many of those policies have not resulted in meaningful change.

Assault — whether it is sexual, verbal, or physical — should not be accepted under any circumstance, nor should it be tolerated. Sexual assault in particular is a crime that is a complete violation of human dignity. As such, we must learn how to navigate cases of sexual violence and work to prevent it at a systemic level. This means holding fraternities accountable and making them answer for the aspects of a university culture of sexual violence that they have upheld.

Fraternities themselves need to hold their members accountable for what they do. That means holding educational seminars on building safer spaces for everyone and investing time in educating future members on the behaviour that is expected of them. Most importantly, it boils down to fraternity members holding themselves and their friends accountable for their actions and words that promote sexism and sexual harassment, even if that means publicly calling them out.

Sexual violence is not an issue that one policy

the role it played in the colonization of Canada,” it is extremely hypocritical and performative for Hudson’s Bay to profit off the Indigenous suffering that the company itself contributed to.

Lanouette said, “To see a company that has a very colonial history — a history of colonial violence within so-called Canada — to see that they were now selling orange shirts actually made me nauseous. It was so gross to me.”

Reconciliation — creating a respectful relationship between Indigenous peoples and settlers — is a goal we should all share despite our inherent differences. However, reconciliation cannot occur through performative actions, like marketing orange shirts, especially if the company marketing them has a long history of hurting the groups it is claiming to support.

As Good remarked, “I think more non-Indigenous people will participate [in Truth and Reconciliation Day this year] and I think that’s important. I think it’s important [for] both nonIndigenous and Indigenous people to come together and to acknowledge this reality together.”

Unity and tolerance alone cannot completely solve the systemic inequalities between settlers and Indigenous peoples. However, when that unity and tolerance are genuine, they are certainly small steps that can contribute to justice and change.

Elim Evangeline Yeung is a fourth-year professional writing, communications, and English student at UTM. If you or someone you know is in distress because of the recent news about residential schools, you can call: • Indian Residential School Crisis Line at 1-866-925-4419 (available 24 hours a day), • Hope for Wellness Helpline at 1-855-2423310, • KUU-US Crisis Line at 250-723-4050, • Talk4Healing Help Line at 1-855-554-4325.

can solve and, similarly, is not an issue that can be solved by banning fraternities. The culture surrounding sexual violence is complex, deeply rooted within society, and will need time and effort to fix. Educators, parents, and students — including fraternity members — must work together against sexual assault through education and by creating a healthier environment for everyone.

Jasmin Akbari is a second-year industrial relations and human resources, digital humanities, and writing & rhetoric student at Woodsworth College.

Fraternities should be reformed, not banned.

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COMMENT

Decolonizing society begins with decolonizing the classroom Examining how a new course at UTSC sheds light on the importance of Indigeneity in education Shernise Mohammed-Ali Associate Comment Editor

Classicism is an aesthetic attitude that centres around emulating the art, literature, and culture of ancient Greece and Rome. The style of classicism is based on Greek and Roman models and, especially in visual art, often centres around objectivity, simplicity, and emotional restraint.

However, beyond simply being an aesthetic attitude, classicism is also a pervasive social force.

Greek and Roman models continue to influence every aspect of modern Western civilization, including our architecture, system of government, laws, and art. The omnipresent impact of classicism on our society not only influences its structure, but also the ways in which we are taught to perceive the world around us.

Yet, in doing so, classicism fails to account for Indigenous ways of knowing. This ignorance toward Indigenous perspectives is present

throughout North America, as white settler colonialism brought with it the notion of the cultural superiority of ancient Greece and Rome.

In a desire to emphasize Indigenous perspectives in the classics, Katherine Blouin — an associate professor at the UTSC Department of Historical and Cultural Studies — designed a new course titled CLAC02 — Indigeneity and the Classics. This course is offered by the Department of Classics of the University of Toronto and became available at UTSC this fall.

The course examines how Indigeneity is represented in the ancient Mediterranean world, as well as the connections between current settler colonialism, historiography, and acknowledgement of the “classical past.” This course’s framework and flow are designed to bring ancient and current Indigenous ways of knowing together. In doing so, the course challenges the conventional teaching methods established by white settler colonialists and allows students to learn from an Indigenous perspective.

The Department of Classics is offering a new course on Indigeneity and classics.

As such, in the end, students will leave the course with a greater understanding of the vibrancy and richness of ancient and present Indigenous cultural forms and knowledge, and better insight into the place of both the classics and ourselves on Turtle Island.

Traditionally, the study of the classics is an elitist and antiquated discipline that stands on a pedestal of whiteness and, in doing so, stifles Indigenous voices. However, by teaching both the classics and their connections to Indigeneity at the same time, Blouin brings the study of the classics down from its pedestal of ‘cultural superiority.’

According to Blouin, a key feature of the course is instilling a sense of “constructive discomfort” in students that gives them the ability to “carry themselves into the world… in a way that is more mindful of their positions on Turtle Island and especially on whose land they’re on and how they can limit the harm that they’re doing.” To accomplish this, Blouin incorporates several evaluations into her curriculum that challenge students to acknowledge the Indigenous presence in the world around them.

All settler colonies are located on the traditional ancestral colonies of Indigenous peoples.

Even in Canada, every location is a part of Indigenous peoples’ long-established ancestral territory on Turtle Island. As part of an assessment titled “Where are you?” students are tasked with considering who formerly inhabited the land they are living on, including the oldest ancient Indigenous and settler groups. In doing so, students recognize that to live in a settler colony is to be territorialized by Indigenous peoples — that is, to live on land that belongs to Indigenous peoples.

As part of the course, students are also taught

to critically analyze the role of classicism and Indigeneity in architecture and the arts by closely examining monuments and museum exhibits. As a result, students learn how history, art, and architecture have traditionally been depicted from a classicist’s perspective.

The enduring and ever-present influence of classicism perpetuates archaic and Eurocentric ideals that ignore Indigenous voices. However, by focusing on the entanglements between the classics and Indigeneity, Blouin is changing the narrative to one that examines classicism with an Indigenous perspective in mind.

It’s worth noting that the classics is not the only discipline that has traditionally been westernized and, as such, stripped of Indigenous ways of knowing. Other subjects, such as the sciences and history, have commonly been taught from a Eurocentric perspective. The reality is that many disciplines have been developed from the perspective of white settler colonialists. As a result, Indigenous ways of knowing are often neglected from study.

To further develop Indigenous perspectives in education, more Indigenous-centric courses — courses like CLAC02 — should be encouraged throughout U of T. In addition, other departments should examine approaches through which they can implement Indigenous perspectives into their programs. In doing so, we can begin to acknowledge the presence of Indigeneity in education.

Education lies at the core of societal change.

In that light, decolonizing society first begins with decolonizing the classroom.

Shernise Mohammed-Ali is a third-year neuroscience, psychology, and English student at Victoria College. She is the associate comment editor at The Varsity.

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U of T should provide free menstrual products in all campus washrooms People who mensturate face academic barriers when they have to focus on menstrual hygiene and not their lectures Paden Neundorf Varsity Contributor

For most people who menstruate, periods are a fact of life — a persistent biological process around which we must plan our lives. We are forced to alter what would otherwise be our ‘regular schedule’ to accommodate for our periods, whether that means not wearing our new cream coloured pants, making sure our medicine cabinet has enough pain relievers to subdue the inevitable cramps, or leaving home 10 minutes earlier than we normally would because we have to go to the washroom just to ensure everything’s all good before our lecture starts.

But sometimes you reach into your bag only to find that while you’ve remembered your insanely overpriced textbook and your four different, but all extremely necessary, lip balms, you’ve forgotten to bring a pad. There’s not even a stray tampon at the bottom of your bag.

The University of Toronto’s mission statement promises to foster an academic community with “vigilant protection for individual human rights” as well as “a resolute commitment to equal opportunity” for all students. So, if this is the case, why are there not free menstrual products available in all campus washrooms?

Menstrual products in campus washrooms — yes, including men’s washrooms — should be provided free of charge to all students. These products, which are integral to the health of people who menstruate, are a necessity, not a luxury, and should consequently be treated as such.

Free menstrual products would help ensure that all students are able to be present in class and learn, void of worry about their menstrual hygiene.

U of T’s mission statement additionally claims that the university is committed to prioritizing the “principles… of equity,” which should extend to all aspects of students’ health. The complimentary provision of menstrual products would create an equitable environment for all students, eliminating a potential learning barrier for those who may experience difficulties accessing menstrual products of their own accord.

Woodsworth College does, in fact, offer free menstrual products in all buildings and residence washrooms, in addition to offering extra products in the Woodsworth College Students’ Association office, which is located in room WW103 of Woodsworth College. While this effort is not enough yet, it is certainly a start.

The Ontario provincial government has recently announced a three-year deal where, in partnership with Shoppers Drug Mart, they will provide free menstrual products to students belonging to all Ontario school boards. This is, of course, amazing, and a guaranteed step in the right direction. However — not to take away from this monumental initiative — I cannot help but wonder whether Premier Doug Ford thought about the approximately 47,000 students who menstruate and attend U of T. We all know Ford dropped out of college himself, but surely, he knows that people who menstruate still have periods after Grade 12. Right?

The onus, however, cannot be placed entirely

on the Ontario government. U of T must also work to better embody its mission statement that promises all of its students the opportunity to academically flourish. People who menstruate won’t be able to do that if they’re not provided with free menstrual products in all campus washrooms.

Period poverty is a growing concern in Canada.

A 2018 report conducted by Plan International Canada reported that one-third of the women under the age of 25 in the study said that they were unable to afford the menstrual products that they require.

This devastating reality has caused women to skip work and school. Without menstrual products, people who menstruate are forced to turn to unsanitary measures such as using toilet paper as a makeshift pad or using a tampon for longer than the recommended four to eight hours. The latter can result in serious health implications, like toxic shock syndrome or urinary tract infections.

In addition to preventing people who menstruate from reaching their full potential, the lack of free menstrual products in campus washrooms is complicit in the debilitating stigma surrounding periods. This stigma also contributes to stripping people who menstruate of opportunities that they otherwise may have received.

The stigma is evident in how we feel selfconscious about the seemingly obnoxious crinkly sound of the pad packaging, and how we tuck tampons deep in our pockets when walking to the washroom. Furthermore, women and girls

Menstrual products in campus washrooms should be provided free of charge to all students.

STEVEN LEE/THEVARSITY

in some parts of the world are viewed as dirty when menstruating, and are forced to leave their societies and live in solitary confinement for the duration of their period, preventing them from attending school, showering, and cooking.

The effects of inaccessible menstrual products, in conjunction with the intense stigmatization surrounding periods, culminates in negative impacts on people who menstruate, including lower mental and physical health and well-being, decreases in school attendance, declines in academic performance, and fewer economic or career opportunities. U of T has the power to ensure that people who menstruate have the same opportunities as those who don’t menstruate — so what is the university waiting for? To truly carry out its mission statement, all students must be given the opportunity to achieve success.

Paden Neundorf is a third-year English and critical studies in equity and solidarity student at Woodsworth College.

thevarsity.ca/section/comment

NOVEMBER 1, 2021

Readers know best — or do they?

The definition of “newsworthy” in journalism is more expansive than you think JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY

Catherine Dumé Varsity Contributor

Content warning: This article contains descriptions of violence and rape.

As writers, we are taught to write with the reader in mind — to treasure them when they like our works, and consider their words when they offer insightful feedback, no matter how harsh the words may sting. However, in recent months, I have grown to despise a certain frequent comment that I’ve seen readers make when I read articles from The New York Times, The Guardian, or CBC: the insidious “How is this news?”

I first discovered the comment while lazily scrolling through my Instagram news feed. Sandwiched between a Toronto Star article on the US’ exit from Afghanistan and the tragic news of the collapse of a Florida condo, there was an article reporting that a teenage boy in Colorado had crashed his truck into someone’s pool. Luckily, no one got hurt, and the boy’s truck was safely towed out.

However, the comments beneath articles like

these on social media are often littered with people asking, “How is this news?” It is as if they expect the journalist to ‘do better reporting’ by talking about something like the crisis in Afghanistan.

Of course, that issue is important to talk about, especially as the Taliban have effectively taken over as if they never left power. However, at a time when every news station is releasing the same articles, I was relieved to have a bit of a mental break and some good news where there was no one dying.

When I read the comments under the truck crash story, I was confused, because while the teenage boy in the story survived, it was nonetheless about a crash. But then I saw another article that had the headline,“Three women discovered they were dating the same man. They dumped him and went on a months-long road trip together.” I found the article entertaining, but some Twitter users did not share my opinion. They dismissed it as not newsworthy, despite the fact that it highlighted the importance of driving education and spotlighting supportive friendships over sleazy guys — and declared that The Washington Post was “out of *actual* stories.”

Since then, I see these sorts of comments everywhere, and it is irritating. These readers don’t fully understand how journalism is what I call an artistic business. As a form of writing, journalists have the freedom to seek out stories that they personally find interesting or discuss an issue they have a passion for. Like painters, they must be allowed to explore their passions in order to put out beautifully crafted articles that do the topic justice, either by drawing on their experiences and opinions or by conducting interviews and additional research. However, sometimes they run into a writer’s block and may resort to writing filler pieces to keep putting out content.

Also, journalism is a business. While some journalists can work independently, others work for a news organization such as the Toronto Star, The New York Times, or even The Varsity here at U of T. They can come up with their own pitches, but sometimes, the senior editor requests certain topics: some cover big topics, but others are localized filler articles.

So the question is, why do journalists write

9

these filler articles, other than to get through writer’s block?

Firstly, there is not a lot of breaking news to talk about. I know it sounds wrong, considering our news feeds and TV stations seem to be putting out a “breaking news” story every second of the day. But if you really pay attention, you’ll realize that most of these articles are essentially milking the same few topics and are drawing them out over weeks, months, and even years until they are bone dry, and there are no more ‘takes’ they can make.

For example, The New York Times recently put out an article about Amanda Knox, who was jailed for the rape and murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher, but was acquitted in 2007 due to a number of flaws in the investigation.

According to the article, Knox is now a mother and experiences what the journalist Jessica Bennett describes as a “cultural purgatory” while trying to live her new life.

While this well-written article isn’t exactly a filler, it follows up on an old story that happened 14 years ago and was considered ‘cold’ for years until the news of the birth of Knox’s daughter reignited it. Hence, even the biggest and most reputable news outlets may turn to updates on old stories as opposed to constantly finding new ones.

Secondly, having your Instagram feeds flooded with nothing but bad news that screams the end of the world and the death of human decency drowns you emotionally and mentally to the point that you may consider ending it all for peace of mind.

You might be reading this and may agree with me, or you may feel personally attacked by it, but I will reassure you that I agree that the reader is important in terms of effectively communicating.

They are the ones that bring meaning to the words on the page that used to be a random thought in a person’s brain. I just hope that we give journalists a little bit of respect for spending their time writing and informing us of the news.

And, hey, if you don’t like the news you’re consuming, I strongly encourage you to pick up a pen and give it a try. If the work gives you a splitting headache, you’re better off leaving it to the professionals. But who knows? You might be the next upcoming journalist writing about your passion in the big city — it worked for me.

Catherine Dumé is a third-year political science, writing & rhetoric, and history student, Dumé is the online editor of the Innis Herald and the president of the University of Toronto Accessibility Awareness Club.

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THE VARSITY

FEATURES

Walking away from

When faith and culture are intertwined, l

GEORGIA KELLY/THE VARSITY

Je Ho Cho Varsity Contributor

There was a huddle of schoolboys on the sidewalk. The majority of them wore tank tops or graphic tees. The circle was silent, except for the sound of a single pair of hands rubbing together. The boy’s twiggy arms aimed carefully at the target: the folded blue paper square belonging to his opponent.

He swung and flung his own red paper square with all of his prepubescent might. The blue square flipped in the air and landed on its bottom. A cheer erupted from the huddle as the square was swiped up by the victor. This was the intense game of ddakji, a Korean children’s game where the goal is to flip the opponent’s square over using your own.

I was one of those graphic-tee-clad schoolboys eagerly perched around this game of ddakji on the church parking lot sidewalk.

I spoke in broken Korean, loudly sang church hymns, and even won a couple of ddakji rounds.

It was a snapshot of youth that could have easily been mistaken for being taken in Korea itself.

That was 10 years ago.

In fact, the last time I went to that Korean church in Singapore — a church that I practically grew up in — was five years ago.

As a byproduct of walking away from my faith, I’ve long since severed ties with the community of Koreans that acted as my sole connection to my home culture. Leaving Christianity has greatly affected my relationships with my family and my community, and has even affected my perception of my own identity. To this day, it has left me with unanswered questions as I navigate university.

Korea and Christianity Korea is a surprising country in many ways.

Slightly less than one third of Koreans identify as Christians — an unusually high percentage for an East Asian country — and the majority of religious Koreans are either Protestant or Catholic. Whenever I visit relatives in Korea, it is hard to miss the neon red crosses looming atop the plentiful church steeples.

Among Koreans in the diaspora, Christianity is an ever-present part of life as well. Studies have even examined the role of Korean churches in fostering community and acting as a vehicle for social interaction between diasporic Korean communities.

One locally based example, Kim’s Convenience — a TV sitcom that features a Korean family-owned store in Toronto — illustrates this perfectly with the family’s involvement in the local Korean church. Even Umma’s nagging questions about when Janet, her daughter, would get a “cool Christian Korean boyfriend” align with my lived experience that a lot of the community and relationships in the Korean diaspora are concentrated within church. As someone who resided outside of Korea but was raised as a Korean, I was living out that reality.

Home church and Sunday services Nowhere was the intersection between community, family, and my identity as a Korean more evident than in the weekly “home church” gatherings that my family hosted at our house.

Every Friday, we held a big dinner, and the hours before that would consist of hectic preparation of the guests’ food for the worship services that would be taking place at my dining table.

It was through these gatherings that I was exposed to Korean culture, both in the form of hymns and in the close relationships I developed with the families that came over week after week.

It was with these same families that I would celebrate Korean holidays like Chuseok — the Korean Mid-Autumn festival — and New Years’.

I celebrated with them almost as often as I would with my actual extended family back in Korea.

I had learned a little Korean at home, and Sunday services and home church were the places where I used it with people outside of my family. These were also the places where I would follow traditional cultural norms, like showing respect to my elders by bowing and adjusting my language to include honorifics.

While I went to an international school that ran under an American curriculum, Sunday school lessons were taught exclusively in Korean. At school, I was rambunctious and talkative, but on Fridays and Sundays, I became passive and polite to appease my elders and parents.

This was the dichotomy that defined most of my early childhood — and it wouldn’t last.

My breaking point As I entered my teens, there was a growing gap between my knowledge of the Korean language and what was expected of me. I struggled to understand the content of sermons and the discussions taking place between my peers. Not knowing enough of the language also began to stunt my social interactions with other Koreans: I could only respond to the most elementary of questions and could barely hold a conversation without resorting to English loan words.

I began to lose track of trends back in

Korea that made their way to my peers, and my previously native Korean accent became tinged. In the words of a childhood friend, I sounded “foreign.”

All of this was occurring as I obtained a Western education. Meanwhile, on the internet, I was exposed to all sorts of new ideas — ideas I could understand and comprehend in English. I had no recourse to ask any theological questions within my Korean community due to my elementary grasp of Korean and a church culture that frowned upon doubt. Attending church on Sundays, which had previously been an obligation I didn’t question, gradually became a slog. Eventually, it was completely unbearable.

At first, I would pretend to go to church, stepping away from the gate the moment no one was looking to head either home or to a quiet space like a café where I could read a book. It took a while for people to notice that the quiet, polite son of the deacon was missing from the youth service. Eventually though, I had to face my parents.

My father is a deacon and was elected to the position due to his reputation in the community as a pious and likeable member of the congregation. My mother is what I like to call a church socialite: always hosting gatherings and listening in on the various rumblings of the church. As their son, the weight of their status bore down on my every interaction, even when I was still attending church.

Word had gotten out that I was playing hooky, and out of concern, some churchgoers informed my parents. Needless to say, their reaction was severe for a multitude of reasons.

It was shameful, according to them, that the firstborn son of a deacon wouldn’t even do

features@thevarsity.ca

m the Korean church

leaving one can mean losing the other

such a basic thing as attend services. They also couldn’t understand how I had come to my alternative ideas about religion, and scolded me for being selfish by prioritizing myself over the obligations I had as a son and member of the family.

I knew whatever explanation I gave wouldn’t satisfy them, so I just kept my head down and my mouth shut.

Attempts to draw me back My parents weren’t the only ones who would lecture me in the coming days, months, and years. A host of visitors would stop by my house in attempts to convince me to return to church.

The first to arrive on the scene was the head minister of the congregation, who tried to ask in broad terms why I had stopped coming. Each time he showed up to my house, he managed to fit small sermons into our conversation. I never asked for him to come visit for dinner, so I had the sneaking suspicion my parents had called him over for an intervention.

I couldn’t give him a straight answer, so family friends were brought in next to try to convince me. No dice there either.

After that, in a clever and subversive move, my parents enlisted help from my guitar teacher to try and get me back to church. He was a couple of years my senior, and because he was closer in age to me than the rest of the solicitors, they probably figured that his youthfulness would help in winning me back.

I quit playing guitar several weeks later.

All of their advice couldn’t reconcile my fundamental issue with the Korean church: it had become a place where I no longer felt like I belonged or understood anything.

The feeling was akin to waking up one

morning and realizing that your body is not your own — like your voice sounds a lot different than you remembered, and suddenly you don’t even have the faintest idea of what anyone is saying to you. No amount of proselytizing, moral arguments, and preachy anecdotes could change that reality.

A fake Korean?

When I stopped going to church, I stopped attending all of the activities related to it, which included the annual sports day, youth retreats, and holiday worship services. These had constituted the bulk of my interactions with other Koreans, so when I disconnected myself from church, I also unplugged myself from the Korean community at large.

In effect, I had stopped trying to pretend to be Korean. I spoke in English exclusively when I was outside of my home and gave up trying to keep up with anything happening back in Korea.

If you had asked me what bands I liked, shows I watched, or movies I enjoyed, the response would have lacked any trace of my heritage.

For me, leaving church behind also meant leaving Korean culture behind. I wouldn’t say that I loathed my culture, but over the years, I had subconsciously come to associate it with the church. My rejection of religion had also turned into a simultaneous rejection of being Korean.

It forced me to reconsider who I really was.

Does it matter if my parents are both native Koreans if I can’t even speak the language well? Am I still Korean even if I’m out of touch with the culture? If I’m not Korean, who am I? All of these questions swirled around my head like bathwater going down the drain.

I still haven’t found an answer to them, and

I don’t expect to anytime soon — but that doesn’t mean that I’m not making any efforts to. Despite everything that happened with my split from the church, I’ve felt compelled to reconnect with Korean culture in recent times, especially since moving to Canada. Losing my connection to my Korean identity was the unfortunate consequence of distancing myself from Christianity, and I do miss the feeling of belonging that came with the label.

One way that I’ve attempted to make my way back into Korean culture in a way that’s separate from religion is through music. I’ve developed a penchant for artists like Zion T and DPR LIVE, and I try my best to sing Korean songs at karaoke nights with my friends. I’ve also taken Korean language courses in an effort to improve communication between myself and my parents. All of this comes with the silent acknowledgement that I will never truly be as integrated as someone who grew up in my homeland, but I pursue that integration regardless.

Speaking of my parents, they have largely accepted the fact that I am no longer religious, despite their many dogged attempts in the past. The unexpected church visits stopped a while ago, and I can safely say that no musical teachers have attempted to convert me to Christianity in recent years.

It’s taken me a while to realize that I had never really chosen to be Korean, much less Christian. For people who have never really lived outside of their home country, their nationality is a given. But for third-culture kids like myself, there are often a lot of thoughts to be had and decisions to be made in order for us to consider ourselves a part of our ‘home’ country.

I suppose that the most important thing I

learned from all of this ruminating is that it was my own decision to leave Christianity and the Korean community in which I felt like a foreigner. I made my own choice and that autonomy applies to my identity too: I wanted a choice in who I was.

(Fake) Korean solidarity I was at a gathering for U of T’s Kendo club when I first met them: Koreans who had grown up in Canada and spoke the same broken, English-accent-infused Korean as me. I had never really met anyone else that shared my lack of knowledge about our native country, so this encounter really gave me a jolt — in a good way.

There was a sense of solidarity that came with our shared situations: the same solidarity I had felt playing ddakji as a church boy all those years ago. But this time it was different, because I was realizing that there were Koreans like myself who were confused about their identity out there in the wider world.

The most impactful moment in this encounter was when, after I realized one of the members was older than me, I started using honorifics to address them like I would have back in my church days. They shut me down quickly, saying, “There’s no need to be so formal, just speak casually.”

There it was.

It hit me that I could stop either pretending to be both fully Korean or rejecting my heritage entirely: I could just be who I wanted to be.

For the rest of the night we chatted away in our imperfect renditions of our native tongue.

But this time it was different. This time, I felt like I truly belonged.

Arts & Culture Madeline Szabo Varsity Contributor

I like sex. I’m happy when campus centres give out free condoms, and I can take down any parent advocating for abstinence-only education before you can say the word ‘bondage.’

What I can’t do is actually have sex.

Rather, I can’t have sex without taking 20 deep breaths, being in a good headspace, and doing visualization exercises centred around the image of a flower blooming. The only mindblowing thing about the sex I have is the power of my vagina to create an impeneratable wall of anxiety.

Sex has always scared me. A good therapist may suggest that a good deal of it stems back to my mother making my brother and I repeat the phrase “sex before marriage leads to poverty and suffering” from the time we could talk.

But I thought I’d moved beyond that.I’ve questioned my mother, read Cosmopolitan, and along the way, created my own sex-positive perspective. Yet, the first time anyone tried to stick a penis in my vagina, I screamed, cried, and stopped everything before it started. I had always assumed that the only obstacle to sex I’d ever face was whether any partner could want me — never did I consider that my body would physicially reject the process.

I became obsessed with finding the answer to this problem. Every article I read in my search for answers told me to relax, use lube, and understand that sex could hurt. Believe me, I understood. But I knew that “could hurt” had to mean something different from the gutwrenching unpleasantness I had experienced.

Most upsetting to me at the time of this monumental ‘sex-covery,’ was that it felt like I was creating a border between myself and a boy

November 1, 2021 thevarsity.ca/section/arts-and-culture arts@thevarsity.ca

Help! There’s a rock in my vagina A reflection about vaginismus and sex-related anxiety

ANDREA ZHAO/THEVARSITY

I assumed I was in love with. I was unable to be as vulnerable as I wanted to be. We had done all the relationship foreplay. I had laid in his arms on a quiet Sunday; I had told him that when I was alone, I was worried I’d be alone forever; he had made me waffles randomly one singular time. We were perfect candidates for amazing sex!

How Sana Khan merges her love of art and science A U of T student who sells art on her Etsy shop

But at the time, I never examined what my wall was. I assumed if I just stopped squirming, it would subside.

When I was 16, I thought I found a way to heal the squirming. I drank alcohol until my body didn’t feel real, held my breath, and focused as hard as I could on the music — mostly a disturbing complex diagrams to people without a scientific background. However, Khan is also leaning into her artistic side by selling her pieces as decorative works on her Etsy shop.

The Varsity interviewed Khan to discuss her artistic training, her career, and her opinion on the divide between art and science.

The Varsity: What do medical and scientific illustrators do?

Sana Khan: Our main job is to basically translate complex scientific information into a visual form so that it’s easier to understand. This is especially important in this day and age, when all this complex research is coming out but then there’s no way to convey it to the public. It’s our job to fill in the gap between science and the public.

TV: How did you get into medical and scientific illustrating?

SK: I’ve been making art for as long as I can remember. In middle school, I would participate in art clubs and art contests. During my undergrad, I stopped for a bit to focus on the science side, so I did my specialist in neuroscience at UTM, and then I found out about [U of T’s Masters program in biomedical communications] that merged the art and the science together.

Sana Khan’s illustrations have garnered a large social media following.

COURTESY OF ANNIE SPRATT/CC UNSPLASH

Khaleda Khan Varsity Contributor

At some point in our lives, we’ve all been presented with the internal conflict: do I identify more with

the arts or sciences?

U of T student Sana Khan is combining her love for both. As a medical and scientific illustrator, Khan uses anatomy sketches, animation, and 3D technology to present

TV: How did you learn to make sketches?

Did you take any kind of formal or informal education, certifications, or classes?

SK: I was able to learn how to draw but I had no formal education, so I guess I would say I’m self-taught, because it just came with a lot of practice. I’m a very detail-oriented person and a perfectionist, so when I’m creating my drawings, I pay a lot of attention to detail and that takes a ton of patience — something I’m still learning how to do. I think observational drawing really helped me a lot because I would sit down and draw whatever was in front of me, and that’s how you get better at it.

TV: Is making these illustrations a hobby for you or more of a career?

SK: I have an Etsy store where I sell anatomy prints and drawings I made as part of my coursework. Some of them I made just for fun, and that part is more of a luxury. People buy

amount of Elton John — until it was over. Though I figured out how to have sex, the pit in my stomach that manifested in my vagina hadn’t gone away through magic, lube, or breathing.

The technical term for the uncontrollable tightening of the vaginal muscles during penetration is vaginismus. Vaginismus happens due to a feeling of anxiousness around sex, and it seems like it can be brought about by trauma or the alignment of the stars on the day you were born. Vaginismus is officially supposed to go away with physical therapy, behavioural therapy, or dilators.

For years, I assumed this was a problem so specific to me that there was no solution.

When I learned the technical term for it, I read other people’s stories and felt less alone. Most comforting was the reassurance that I had not, in fact, ‘destroyed’ my ability to have sex when I broke my hymen on a waterslide at Disney World.

In the end, I’ve found being honest with my partner about my condition, taking time before having sex, and knowing that having penetrative sex is not the be-all-end-all of our relationship has helped me manage it the most. I’m not failing to be vulnerable; I simply need more time and effort to be ready for comfortable penetration.

In all honesty, I can’t say that I’ve figured out how to override what is for some reason my first sexual instinct. Sex is a struggle — a struggle I fear greatly. Use this article as a disclaimer that in no way do I have the answers.

What I do have is a perspective that I hope makes some people feel less alone. It’s okay to be sex-positive and also be anxious about sex.

Whether it’s vaginismus or a general dread at the thought of romping around in the sheets, you’re not alone. You’re not undermining your beliefs by taking more time before you do the deed. that and hang it up and it’s just nice to look at. But then there’s the whole field of medical illustration and animation where you design visuals for textbooks, companies, for hospitals, or for patient education, and that’s what I would say where my career is.

TV: What’s your creative process like when you’re starting to sketch?

SK: The first stage would be the research stage, where I would gather all my visual references, especially if I’m drawing something hyperrealistic.

When you’re doing hyperrealistic art, you have to pay attention to a lot of detail, which requires a lot of references.

If I’m designing an infographic for something space-related, I’d have to do all the sciencerelated research about space, and then I would have to do the visual research. So gathering other space infographics and seeing what the artists came up with is more science-oriented than the stuff that I produce for the actual field, rather than just my coursework.

TV: How do you think technology intersects with this art and the field of scientific illustration as a whole?

SK: I would say it’s very tech-heavy. As of maybe ten years ago, there’s a huge focus on 3D animation and replicating the real life mechanisms of our bodies and molecules. There’s a lot of digital drawing. I wouldn’t say traditional art is dying. It’s still part of the process, especially the preliminary phase when you’re starting to sketch out your ideas.

TV: How do you think that the field of scientific illustrators bridges the age-old ‘art or science’ debate?

SK: There are people who always try to identify themselves as more artistically inclined versus more analytically inclined; the field that I’m in merges both of them. If I’m drawing from a reference, I have to learn to break down that reference into pieces. Even though the final result that you produce is very different, the process in order to get to that final stage is very similar.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

thevarsity.ca/section/arts-and-culture Sky Kapoor Associate Arts & Culture Editor

I first discovered How I Met Your Mother when I was 12. It was the mid-2000s and I was in middle school, at an age entirely too young to be watching that type of show.

A few times a year, I’d peruse our family Netflix account. This was not leisurely scrolling, but a carefully strategized act to convince my mother that I wasn’t watching a vulgar sitcom.

Eventually, she’d retire upstairs to sleep, and my victory rang out in stifled laughter.

In short, sitcoms are fun.

They’re short snippets that run in the background of life when you need a quick laugh — something mindless to pass the time. They’re easy, simple stories that are ensured to be entertaining no matter what.

Indeed, these stories are classically stupid. They’re not meant to be substantial, but they sometimes subvert this norm. And it’s that marriage of intellect and humour that keeps viewers coming back for more.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a time in my life when I wasn’t in the middle of watching How I Met Your Mother. If it’s a rainy afternoon, it’s Christmas Eve, or I’m sick with the flu, I’ll be watching How I Met Your Mother. I watch it in sickness and in health, in good times and bad, and all times in between.

Sure, it’s another one of those mindless, raunchy sitcoms at first glance — the type that is littered with less than tasteful jokes

NOVEMBER 1, 2021

Guilty pleasures: How I Met Your Mother is more than just another raunchy sitcom

and endless plotlines that drive you mad. And maybe it isn’t remembered in sitcom history like other popular shows, but it’s filled with some phenomenal thought-provoking moments.

“Listen to what the world is telling you to do, and take the leap,” Lily Aldrin tells Ted Mosby

Old stars gained fame for their talent, current ones experience luck

Considering the fact that you’re currently reading a newspaper article, it’s probably fair to assume that you’re not trapped in the cycle of social media algorithms. However, all of us have experienced the difficulty of controlling what we pay attention to and how long we pay attention to it. When hours of algorithmicallycurated content are prepared for you, it’s hard to manage your intake. There’s also been an undeniable increase in our media usage because of the COVID-19 lockdown. What’s the result of this? A new breed of clout-obsessed teens and new celebrities to lead them.

Let’s think back to our childhoods. Remember Disney Channel and Club Penguin? Well, while the latter and many of its counterparts have faded into obscurity, Disney has moved onwards and continues to thrive. That’s because, in my opinion, their formula appeals to the same desires that fuel modern influencer culture: seeing people revel in their wealthy lifestyles.

What are the elements that are left out of current influencer culture? Social awareness and talent. We’ve shifted our gaze to the image of the individual and seem to excuse them of all their failings by over-sympathizing with the pressures that we imagine they have to face as celebrities. For example, when we hear about celebrity breakups and our immediate instinct is turn to other celebrities looking for clues about who broke up with who, we fail to be critical of the reasons they became celebrities in the first place.

Young influencers like Addison Rae and

In the middle of a classic, lighthearted moment — a goofy character attempting to do something comedically dangerous — we’re faced with an important lesson. And though it’s a long and often intricate story, the nine seasons recalling how Ted Mosby met his wife lend themselves to rich character development, life lessons, and an understanding of how mundane moments can really be pivotal.

It’s a show that resonates with me because of how relatable the characters are. Despite their uniquely wild adventures — see: season one, episode three — each member of the FIONA TUNG/THEVARSITY group is terribly flawed at their core in a way that viewers can easily understand. Whether it’s Robin Scherbatsky’s inescapable choice between her career and her personal life, Ted Mosby’s endless search for ‘The One,’ or Lily Aldrin’s attempts to find herself, each character has their own set of problems — ones that mirror real life. The show does an excellent job of sprinkling humour into heavy realities.

Admittedly, I’ve watched and rewatched the characters live through the motions of their lives more times than I can count. It’s been nearly seven years of rewatching; as I age, I when he is facing a difficult decision. see the nuance in something that may appear At the same moment in time, a determined to be nothing more than a laugh track.

Marshall Eriksen is about to jump from the roof When reality rears its head, there’s no doubt of one building to the other, in an attempt to about it: a sitcom like How I Met Your Mother prove to himself that he can still do legendary is chicken soup for the soul. things.

Behind the laugh track are heavy realities that mirror real life

What does current youth celebrity culture look like?

Gabriela Martins Varsity Contributor

13

Charli D’Amelio rose to fame not for a skill or a valuable idea, but because of their appearance and the brand that they were able to build from it. They create 30-second to three-minute clips, throw in basic filters and audio, and somehow attract attention by executing simple dances that are, by necessity, performable by anyone.

It’s hard for me to excuse the fact that people are rewarded immense wealth for making short videos that influence kids to skip school so that they can focus their time on becoming TikTok famous. Maybe TikTok stars are geniuses for producing a perfect visual aesthetic and content that makes millions interested in a tiny clip about nothing, but I doubt that it’s the case.

As the world slowly wakes up from the hazy internet coma of pandemic life, it’s strange to see these new celebrities out and about in the wild. Many have found a way to defend them by categorizing them as celebrities of vanity and notoriety — hello, Kardashians. Sometimes, we justify their snobbery and their opulent lifestyles because we believe that they were unprepared to become famous.

This sounds very forgiving and pleasant, but I think that wealth uncovers one’s basic morals.

If some of these celebrities chose to share the platform they acquired by strokes of algorithmic luck with the disenfranchised, that would be a sign they were truly beautiful people and worthy of admiration.

While selfishness is unjustified at any age, it’s worth noting the possibility that these celebrities are being used by managers, production companies, or even their parents and families for wealth and fame. My previous argument still stands with regard to the exploitation of power being unethical, but I express my sympathies for all young people being used for their fame.

No matter the case, celebrity life seems to be dangerous if you want to find lasting success and fulfillment. It’ll be interesting to watch how young celebrities continue to grow in the industry — I doubt their careers will be similar to that of past stars like Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez who became famous because of talent.

If you become famous on social media for no apparent reason, remember to be aware of how you handle the new attention — there will always be critics like myself watching and evaluating whatever you do. Best of luck in the spotlight!

Today’s young celebrities shouldn’t be celebrated.

COURTESY OF VANESSA/CC WIKIMEDIA

14

THE VARSITY

arts@thevarsity.ca

ARTS & CULTURE

Why a carefully made playlist is essential to spice up your sex life Let’s talk about how the right music is crucial when doing the dirty Tomiris Frants Varsity Contributor

Oh, the sex world.

Within this complex place, there are plenty of mood setters you can carry in your arsenal to elevate your intimate moments. These mood setters don’t need to be part of an array of toys you take with you at the promise of a hookup — music, for instance, can be just as effective at igniting a spark that leads to a mindblowing night.

Or, you know, keeps your roommate from hearing you do the dirty.

This includes — but is obviously not limited to — a stellar sex playlist. Simply pressing shuffle on your songs may lead to you unwillingly getting down with One Direction playing in the background. However, if you carefully choose your music, it can be an absolute game changer.

There’s also the obvious advantage of drowning out any not-so-sexy sounds.

So, what exactly differentiates a good playlist from a bad one?

For starters, make sure that the music you choose compliments the mood you’re trying to convey. If you’ve got extra time on your hands or if you’re truly dedicated to the craft, you can create different playlists for different types of sex. Let’s be honest; Valentine’s Day sex with your partner and a drunken Tinder hookup may need different music.

Ideally, the music should fade into the background and

enhance your senses, not make you drift away from the moment. Something as simple as a tune to throw on in the background can help enhance the physical and psychological aspects of sex.

Instrumentals are also debatably one of the most important aspects of a sex playlist. Music that has a build up can ignite excitement and add another sensory response to your experience.

Studies have also shown that listening to music can be a great stress reliever. Stress has no place in the bedroom; allowing yourself to free your mind can amplify your sexual pleasure.

COVID-19 taught me the importance of reaching for opportunities It’s still okay if I don’t accomplish everything I want to How I came to realize that missed opportunities aren’t a dealbreaker.

JOHANNA FORTES/THEVARSITY

Oliver Zhao Varsity Contributor

In many ways, I’ve been fortunate during COVID-19. I didn’t work, and I never had to worry about putting food on the table, or affording rent or tuition. From March 2020 to September 2021, I stayed at my house in Richmond Hill, where my parents provided everything for me.

But staying at home also meant my life was the

most transformed of anyone in my family. My parents still went to work and saw their colleagues.

My sister still had school in person.

My classes were online. I only left the house for medical appointments, errands, and to go on a daily walk in the neighbourhood by myself. I didn’t hang out with anyone outside my household.

I wasn’t extremely proactive about making friends in my first and second year of university.

Now, let’s get into the kind of music you want to add to your playlist.

Obviously, people may have varying music preferences, especially for an activity as intimate as sex. But there are unspoken general rules that I highly recommend you follow.

For starters, pick songs that are universally enjoyed. No one wants to listen to your underground indie artist who sounds like they record their music in the backseat of their car, Brandon.

Now is not the time to be pretentious or play

songs that you want the other person to give their full attention to. Music can be enticing and all-consuming on its own, but you’d typically want your partner to focus on you rather than the lyrics.

You can choose music that has more vulgar lyrics and explicitly talks about sex. Or — perhaps the more effective route — you can add music that has a beat that matches the tempo you want to move to. Rarely will you be giving 100 per cent of your focus to the music, but the beat is going to be in the background of every move you and your partner make.

Your partner is also a crucial element when making your choices. If you’re in a relationship or having sex with the same person consistently, throw in a few songs that you know they personally enjoy.

Having music that both you and your partner get consumed by will allow for both parties to reap the benefits.

All things considered, R&B tends to be a go-to for nearly every sex playlist that I’ve encountered. When in doubt, The Weeknd, Summer Walker, and Rihanna are all safe bets to get down and dirty to.

There are plenty of advantages to adding a bit of music into your sex life. Taking a shot at making a sex playlist might just activate the feeling you want to keep when having sex.

As long as both you and your partner are having fun, there’s no harm in spicing up FIONA TUNG/THEVARSITY the night.

When the pandemic started, I had a few friends, but I wasn’t close with any of them. I barely talked to them online when we didn’t have any in-person interactions or shared co-curricular activities.

But I did make one new friend. We took an asynchronous course in the summer of 2020, and neither of us knew anyone else in the class.

When I became involved in student life within Woodsworth College, she did, too — and the rest is history.

COVID-19 has lasted longer than most of us expected. When U of T finally returned to campus this September, I was starting my fourth year.

I made a plan that, before graduation in June, I would visit every building and study in every library on the St. George campus.

I’m adding items like this to my bucket list because I lost opportunities I didn’t know I had until it was too late. I first heard of Daddyo’s last year; the restaurant closed permanently in September, right before I moved back downtown and could dine at this favourite student spot.

But returning to campus was not the cure for all my struggles that I dreamt up in my mind. I have much more on my plate now than I did in first year; I juggle school, work, cooking, preparing law school applications, extracurriculars, and setting aside time to catch up with friends. I became overwhelmed and lightened my course load. I ate less than I did back home and I lost several pounds in a month.

Faced with all this, I couldn’t help but wonder if I would be better off now had I lived on my own during the pandemic like some of my friends did. It would’ve cost a lot of money for rent and I would’ve needed to work to pay for the cost of it myself. If the only jobs I could find were in person, I would have had to risk COVID-19 exposure every day.

However, if the cost of all that meant I became more capable of supporting myself and

adjusting to the return to campus, would it all be worth it?

Living at home for a year and a half gave me abundant time, which I could have spent on personal growth. I wish I’d accomplished more.

There were some activities, such as exercise, that I’d used the pandemic as an excuse to put off. York Region’s gyms were open sporadically through all of the COVID-19 restrictions; I could have gone to the gym, but didn't because of the risk of becoming sick. I could have exercised at home, but I wanted to wait to return to the gym, where I had access to the equipment to do it properly. I postponed anything that I felt was inconvenient, or anything that would be more enjoyable to do once life finally returned to normal.

This being said, good things did come during the pandemic for me. I wrote the LSAT in June and scored well. I landed several jobs, for the first time in my life. I booked and passed my G-class road test.

For some of my acquaintances from before the pandemic, my chance of becoming close with them at U of T has passed. But I have been able to reconnect with most of the people who were in my life in first and second year. U of T’s return to campus and co-curricular activities has also given me the opportunity to befriend some additional, wonderful peers.

Ultimately, COVID-19 has been a defining and unique experience for all of us. For me, it reinforced the importance of reaching for opportunities — whether they be related to school, work, friendships, or making memories — whenever I can. But it also taught me that it’s okay if I don’t accomplish everything I want to. What’s important is that I experience the most I can, in both trying times and tranquil ones.

The sum of my unique set of experiences — both my hits and the misses — make me who I am today.

Science

November 1, 2021 thevarsity.ca/section/science science@thevarsity.ca

dermis. In the case of tattooing, ink is deposited at the dermal layer, which is home to blood cells and lymphoid cells. These cells are triggered in response to physical damage — damage like the wounds inflicted by tattoo needles.

Of course, your immune system registers tattoo ink as a foreign body, which is why it acts very quickly to compensate for this new guest. If you have a tattoo, this is why your skin swells and puffs up shortly after your new ink has been completed.

This response is the clever work of ‘macrophages’: specialized immune cells that engulf foreign bodies and store them in little pockets called ‘vacuoles.’ However, tattoo ink can’t be broken down as easily as bacteria, so the macrophages remain in the dermis. As these macrophages die, they release the ink like a burp, and it is consumed by new macrophages.

This cycle continues in perpetuity, which is what allows tattoos to maintain their permanence.

Breaking down the science of tattooing Investigating the ins and outs of ink

Tattoos stay permanent with the help of our skin cells.

COURTESY OF STEPHANIE SCHOENE/CC FLICKR

Sky Kapoor Associate Arts & Culture Editor

Some people choose to wear their hearts on their sleeves, while others choose to wear it on their skin. According to a 2012 Ipsos poll, 22 per cent of people in Canada have a tattoo, which suggests that they’re pretty popular body modifications. Whether they’re stickand-pokes done in someone’s basement at a house party or pieces that have been planned out extensively, most tattoos tell stories. Every tattoo is a permanent piece of art, history, or tradition. But how do tattoos work, exactly?

A brief history of tattooing Archaeologists have found that the oldest recorded tattoos date back as far as 3,100 BC, meaning that tattooing has been practiced for quite some time. Across the world, methods of tattooing vary from single needle stick-andpokes to procedures that use mallet-type instruments used to hammer a needle into the skin.

Archaic tattoo machines are reminiscent of Edison’s blueprint for an electric pen. Today’s modern coil tattoo machines, on the other hand, rely on alternating electromagnetic currents that power anywhere from one to 20 or more needles.

A common misconception about tattoos is that they’re bad for your health. While inks commonly used for homemade stick-and-poke tattoos such as India ink or calligraphy ink can be harmful, professional tattoo ink is usually safer. If you’re curious about your ink, most brands of ink offer publicly available Material Safety Data Sheets for your viewing pleasure.

So, how do tattoos stay permanent?

Your skin is made up of three main layers: the epidermis, which is the visible outer layer; the dermis, which contains hair follicles; and the subcutaneous layer, which lies below the

Removing tattoos Is there any way to get rid of that misspelled inspirational quote or wonky crescent moon from when you were 18? While you can cover smaller tattoos with larger ones, the most wellknown method of eliminating an old tattoo is laser tattoo removal. This method can be quite painful due to the fact that the lasers used in tattoo removal are intended to break down ink particles using heat.

Some colours of ink are easier to remove than others. Black ink absorbs all wavelengths of light, so it’s the easiest to remove. Ink colours like white or red only absorb certain wavelengths, which makes them more difficult to erase.

Despite the power of lasers, they also have some limitations when trying to completely remove permanent tattoos. The macrophages mentioned above are often recruited by the body to repair laser-damaged tissue, at which point they engulf expelled ink and prevent it from disappearing completely.

Until better methods of getting rid of tattoos are developed, here’s my advice: think before you ink!

A guide for healthy sleeping habits during midterm season Sleep is important for physical health, mental well-being, and academic performance Shankeri Vijayakumar Varsity Contributor

Midterm season is here. While everyone is trying to manage coursework and life’s expectations, it can feel like there are not enough hours in a day to keep up with all these responsibilities and find the time to sleep. Who needs sleep anyway, you might ask?

One night of bad sleep won’t affect your wellbeing too much, but consistently poor sleep can lead to developing unhealthy sleeping habits, which can negatively affect your energy, mood, and academic performance.

During midterm season, there is usually a parallel dip in hours of sleep among university students. Here is a guide with some tips to help you develop and maintain healthy sleeping habits.

1. Have a bedtime routine Follow a nightly routine to help you unwind before you fall asleep. Take a shower, do a skincare regimen, read a book for fun, or drink a warm drink. Develop a routine with several steps to follow that does not involve reading lecture notes or going on an electronic device.

Research has found that bedtime routines are associated with well-being and positive development among children, and routines are just as important for adults as well. Establishing a bedtime routine can train your brain to automatically trigger a state of relaxation that will

let your body know that it is time to go to sleep.

2. Avoid screen time before bed Avoid looking at your devices before going to sleep. You’ve probably heard this tip before, and for good reason — there is evidence behind it!

Blue-toned light can trick your body into thinking it is daytime. Studies have also suggested that the blue light emitted from screens suppresses melatonin, a hormone associated with controlling the sleep cycle. Melanopsin, the pigment that helps your eye cells assess light brightness, can also be more sensitive to blue light. Limiting your screen time before sleep ensures that your eyes and body are not overstimulated, which helps you fall asleep more easily.

3. Maintain a consistent sleep schedule Have a set time for when you go to bed at night and wake up in the morning. Consistency can help you improve your sleep schedule and feel better rested.

Rather than falling asleep when you are finished studying at night, you may want to decide on a time you will go to sleep beforehand. To help solidify your sleep schedule, try to block out your sleep time in your agenda or calendar.

4. Watch the food you eat before bed Limit caffeine and salty foods before bed. While snack breaks and coffee might help fuel your study sessions, these types of foods can dis-

The key to good sleep is intention and consistency.

SAMANTHA YAOTHE/THEVARSITY

rupt your sleep. Eating a high-sodium meal can increase blood pressure and fluid retention, which can lead to restless sleep, frequent awakenings, and not feeling rested in the morning.

As a stimulant, caffeine before bed is counterproductive to falling asleep at night. Limiting these foods a couple hours before you sleep can help you fall asleep more easily and stay asleep throughout the entire night.

5. Keep your bed for sleeping Avoid studying and working from your bed.

Many people have rediscovered the novelty of working from bed during the pandemic. While it’s comfortable to sit on your bed during a virtual lecture or while doing your readings, it can confuse your body.

Try to establish a separate space for studying and working. Having boundaries for work and sleep spaces can help to separate your work

time from your sleep time.

6. Keep a sleep log Log the time you go to sleep and wake up each day. Sometimes, the week can escape you, and it can be hard to know how much sleep you’ve gotten in the past few days. Any bullet journalers out there? Keep a visual log. Have a fitness watch? Use the sleep feature to track your sleep hours and patterns. Don’t want any hassle? Just write down the times you go to bed and wake up in a notepad or in your notes app. The National Sleep Foundation recommends that young adults aged 18–25 get between seven and nine hours of sleep. Tracking your sleep can help you see if you need to readjust your sleep schedule.

Don’t neglect your sleep schedule — take the time to properly rest your body and mind. If you’re getting a good amount of quality sleep, midterm season will have nothing on you!

16

THE VARSITY

science@thevarsity.ca

SCIENCE

Mapping the North Polar Spur U of T researcher Jennifer West on the discovery of connected magnetic fields as “tunnel-like,” although the tunnel is, in fact, a magnetic field.

This the first time that multiple spurs have been modelled together.

Catherine Lu Varsity Contributor

A map of the night sky is usually made in two dimensions, like a flat map of the earth. And just like how two-dimensional maps often cause distortions — such as when they make Antarctica appear larger than it actually is — maps of the night sky face the same distortion problems.

Most importantly, the sky has hidden depth caused by the extreme variations in the distances between stars on the same map. For example, the star Bellatrix in the constellation Orion is 250 light years away from us, while the star Alnilam, also in Orion, is roughly 1,976 light years away from us. Determining distance is a problem in astronomy, especially when talking about large structures such as gas clouds that overlap each other.

The North Polar Spur One large structure that has been difficult to map is the North Polar Spur (NPS) — a collection of large structures made out of gas particles and a magnetic field that seems to stick out from the galactic plane of the Milky Way, but is not visible to the naked eye. Instead, it’s only perceivable through radio waves.

From the early ages of radio astronomy, scientists have investigated questions about whether the NPS is a gigantic structure in the center of the galaxy or a smaller but closer line of charged gas bursting from a nearby area. One theory that new research now supports is that the NPS might even be in the ‘Local Arm’ — the same part of the galaxy as our solar system.

A recent paper by Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics research associate

West has shed new light on old data through clever computer modeling.

COURTESY OF DR JENNIFER WEST

Jennifer West presents an incredibly simple model of the NPS and other spurs — settling the debate for now.

Same data, different perspective West studies magnetic fields in our galaxy with survey data from radio telescopes.

“We’re trying to understand three-dimensional space,” she explained in an interview with The Varsity. “[But] everything we get

from the vast universe is projected onto our twodimensional sky.”

She has thought about the spurs for years, and gradually accumulated evidence for this paper.

After analyzing existing radio data and papers, West concluded that the NPS and the Fan Region — a similar spur to the NPS, previously thought to be a separate structure — must reside in the Local Arm. Once they are located more precisely in space, scientists could have an easier time deducing their shape. The final shape of the connected spurs can be described

From two dimensions to three Turning two-dimensional images into threedimensional models is much harder than the other way around, so West ran three-dimensional models on her desktop computer at Dunlap to generate something that looked like the radio sky map. “It’s more about changing our thinking than using a fancy computer,” she noted.

In the most basic simulation, there are eight parallel lines that make up a tube structure — a structure similar to xylem in celery — that stretches into infinity. The camera is placed in the middle of the tube, equidistant from every line. Then the camera starts mapping the ‘sky’ like a full radio survey.

With a more fine-tuned model, a recognizable map of the sky emerges. West’s model described a shape that looked like the observed shape of the NPS, strongly indicating that her model was correct.

This paper’s press release has been republished on popular science websites such as Futurism. West has received a flurry of emails about the paper, and spoke fondly of the public attention. “The excitement and the enthusiasm and the interest [is] really great to see,” she said.

Space objects off the visible light spectrum, such as the NPS, may not be immediately useful or understandable to non-scientists on Earth.

However, the beauty of a simple computer model and the importance of not taking maps at face value cannot be underestimated while discovering something new about our universe.

The unseen mental and physical impact of ADHD on women and girls How education, awareness, and advocacy can change the status quo Angel Hsieh Associate Science Editor

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is often stereotypically perceived as a disorder that’s more prevalent in men, while ADHD in women and girls goes underrecognized and underdiagnosed. A recent media release from the Centre for ADHD Awareness, Canada (CADDAC) highlights that women and girls with ADHD are vulnerable to physical and mental health risks.

Since October is ADHD awareness month, The Varsity interviewed Professor Esme FullerThomson, director of the Institute for Life Course and Aging at U of T, and Heidi Bernhardt, the founder of the CADDAC, on how to support the underrecognized girls and women with ADHD .

Oversight of symptoms In general, people may exhibit one or more of three types of ADHD: hyperactive, inattentive, or combined. When asked about how ADHD present in women and girls, Fuller-Thomson pointed out how “[women] normally present with the more inattentive type [of ADHD], which isn’t as disturbing to those around them but still can cause problems.” She added that, for this reason, ADHD in girls and women tends to fly under the radar to clinicians and teachers.

Fuller-Thomson also said that another complication that leads to overlooking symptoms of ADHD in girls is their tendency of “wanting to fit in a little bit more.” She elaborated that girls’ social awareness may

result in them deliberately suppressing or controlling their symptoms. The oversight often results in ADHD being undiagnosed well into adulthood, causing lifelong and debilitating consequences for many women.

The impact of ADHD During the interview, Fuller-Thomson referred to her 2016 research to provide statistical evidence illustrating the hardships that young women with ADHD are facing. The objective of the population-based study was to construct a sociodemographic and health profile of women with and without self-reported ADHD. Overall, findings revealed that women with ADHD are at least twice as likely to suffer from substance abuse, major depression, and anxiety disorders.

The acuteness of these coexisting mental health-related problems is apparent, as approximately half of women with ADHD have considered suicide, according to Fuller-Thomson’s research. Besides increased mental health risks, women with ADHD also report a higher chance of experiencing insomnia and chronic pain, which may limit their functional capacity.

Moreover, there are economic implications associated with ADHD in women. FullerThomson pointed out that women with ADHD are particularly vulnerable to early adversities, and to physical and mental health problems.

Her research over the years indicates that women with ADHD suffer from high levels of poverty, defined by an inability to meet basic food and shelter costs.

Women with ADHD are more vulnerable to health risks, according to researchers.

COURTESY OF DR JENNIFER WEST/CC FLICKR

Raising awareness How can society best support girls and women living with ADHD? The Varsity turned to Heidi Bernhardt, the founder of the CADDAC, to learn more about ongoing initiatives and efforts for this cause. The CADDAC is devoted to “[bettering] the lives of individuals and families impacted by ADHD,” said Bernhardt. It is actively engaged in areas of advocacy and education. Beside hosting conferences, webinars, and workshops, the CADDAC also works systematically with the government to build more awareness and request resources for people with ADHD. Bernhardt mentioned that the CADDAC was receiving a high number of reports from postsecondary students their and parents that said that institutions were requiring students with ADHD to undergo expensive testing before they could be registered as having ADHD. Bernhardt emphasized that these assessments were designed for quantifying learning disabilities and that some schools were rating

the students as functioning below normal levels.

“That would just mean they have a learning disability. It does not quantify ADHD impairments,” said Bernhardt.

To address this issue, the CADDAC developed a policy paper in 2015 that examined 50 postsecondary institutions nationwide and looked at the documentation they requested from students with ADHD. The CBC-featured media release represented a significant win for the CADDAC when it found that “everyone except one of [the 50 schools] had changed their requirements” in 2019. According to Bernhardt, most of the schools involved in the policy paper are now accepting physicians’ reports to determine academic accommodations for students with ADHD. Fuller-Thomson concluded by saying that ADHD is “not all deficit-based.” With proper support, education, and understanding, women and girls with ADHD can have the opportunity to not only deal with the disorder but also thrive as contributing members of society.

thevarsity.ca/section/science Khodr Jaber Varsity Contributor

NOVEMBER 1, 2021

17

Opinion: Textbooks should be free

I’ve come to the realization that I will not be able to afford more than a couple of my textbooks for the remainder of my graduate studies.

It is not uncommon to come across books that cost on the order of several hundred dollars.

For example, the Handbook of Atomization and Sprays, edited by U of T Professor Nasser Ashgriz, is listed at over $300 for a paperback copy, and $500 for a hardcover version.

It is well known that the rate of increase in postsecondary textbook prices has been surpassing that of our tuition fees for some time.

The solution to the price gouging problem is to go open-source them. He provides three alternative explanations: the cost of the extensive review process, which can involve dozens of professors that all require compensation for their services; the quality of the textbooks, including paper, figure, and ink quality; and competition between publishers.

Competition often leads companies to publish of materials to supplement textbooks, such as instructors’ manuals and online content, in an attempt to fulfill the needs of faculty and

textbook, since they’ll certainly be referring to its content repeatedly to complete their assignments.

This reasoning leaves students befuddled, as most of this content could be reproduced by the professor and shared with the students, as is commonly done in graduate courses where there is usually more emphasis on theoretical fundamentals rather than high rates of repetition and practice.

Professors may also require students to get the latest edition of these books in order to ensure that

around 15 per cent of all book chapters. It also allows access to even more textbooks because of its connection to Library Genesis, another shadow library with an archive of over half a million books and articles. According to a recent study that looked at the rate of citation of papers downloaded through Sci-Hub, the library is popular enough that papers that can be found through it are almost twice as likely to be cited.

These databases have caused controversies regarding copyright infringement, and Sci-Hub has been successfully sued by the publishing giant Elsevier. However, pirate sites like these will remain alive and well as long as paywalls cannot be unlocked by students.

WENDY GU/THEVARSITY

For many students, it is becoming infeasible to purchase all the books required for their courses.

However, it is difficult to understand why the rate of price increases must be so high.

A typical first assumption is that textbook companies are simply trying to exploit students, knowing that, in many cases, they’ll have no choice but to buy new books every year. But upon further research, it becomes clear that a variety of economic factors play a major part in raising the final price of textbooks.

Nonetheless, these high prices can hinder a student’s educational experience, especially when textbooks are required for coursework.

Any potential solutions to this problem have to account for the necessity of course books while bypassing their cost constraints.

The problem, beyond greed According to Professor Christopher Ragan of McGill University, textbook prices cannot be simply explained through a profit motive, as textbook companies are generally not considered profitable because of the risk it takes to publish

students. These materials all require additional costs. This point is substantiated in a 2006 report published by the Education Resources Information Center, which notes that it is difficult to compare textbook prices from different periods of time as more and more content is being bundled with the books.

On the other hand, prices of textbooks in e-book format continue to soar, especially in the COVID-19 era, as reported by The Guardian — even though the cost of printing is eliminated.

Although Ragan also brought up peer review — the process in which an academic work is evaluated by scholars in the field of interest — as a possible cost, it is now performed in most journals by volunteers. So why should compensation of reviewers be a factor in the price of textbooks today?

Optional is not an option The latest textbooks are often required in courses where students are expected to complete large sets of practice problems. Professors reason that students should be expected to purchase their

all students are using the same source, which is frustrating for students who may be able to get access to older versions at lower prices. Students who cannot bear to pay exorbitant prices for the latest editions may seek more desperate measures to get access to textbook content. Although some lucky students might be able to ask their older siblings for copies, if those siblings recently attended postsecondary schools and taken similar introductory courses, most will end up scouring the internet for digital copies of the text.

Consequences of inaccessible textbooks These digital copies can be found on socalled shadow libraries — online databases for content that would normally be concealed by paywalls and copyright controls. Sci-Hub is a well-known example of a shadow library for academic literature and was started so that journal articles could be accessed by students whose institutions could not get access to major publishers’ expensive subscriptions.

Sci-Hub contains nearly 80 per cent of all published proceedings and journal articles, and

Free as in freedom Knowing that peer review is mostly done without compensation, that authors of textbooks do not normally collect large royalties, and that digital publication can eliminate the costs of physical printing, an open-source library is an obvious solution.

An open-source book is one that is available over an open-source license, meaning that it can be freely used, modified, or shared. Examples of open-source libraries are eCampusOntario’s Open Library, BCcampus’ online open textbook collection, and the University of Minnesota’s Open Textbook Library.

Such systems would eliminate the cost of production and procurement for faculty and students, respectively, so that course requirements from the former are maintained while the educational experiences of the latter are not hindered. By advocating for the widespread adoption of open-source textbooks in universities, we’d be eliminating the need for students to scour the internet to find their educational materials, and we’d keep them from facing a terrifying bill at the bookstore.

Sports

November 1, 2021 thevarsity.ca/section/sports sports@thevarsity.ca

Varsity Blues men’s baseball team takes home the OUA baseball championship A 6–2 win over McMaster in the finals capped off a perfect season for the Blues Cole Hayes Varsity Contributor

The University of Toronto Varsity Blues men’s baseball team capped off their perfect 16–0 season in style. The Varsity Blues beat the McMaster Marauders by a score of 6–2 in the finals, taking home the Jason Guidon Trophy, crowning themselves the 2021 Ontario University Athletics (OUA) baseball champions for the first time in four years.

The Blues were hot out of the gate, scoring three runs in the first inning. McMaster started to gain momentum in the third, when they scored their only two runs of the game. However, this was not enough for McMaster, and our Varsity Blues knocked in some insurance runs in the sixth inning — off of an Owen Taylor base hit, to add insult to injury. Meanwhile, pitcher Kevin Angers

dominated on the mound as the Blues crowned themselves the OUA champions.

In an interview with The Varsity discussing the

[veterans] played a huge factor by keeping us younger guys relaxed and focused during the playoff stretch.”

The Blues had many standouts on the team this season. Kekatos took home the award for Blues’ success, rookie Niko Kekatos wrote, “The most valuable hitter, pitcher Dean Christidis biggest factor for us was we had really good won the award for most valuable pitcher, and chemistry from day one. We always had each coach Michael Didier took home the honour other’s backs and we were fearless.” of being named coach of the year. The Blues In regard to the team’s chemistry also had five players named to the 2021 OUA during the playoff run, Kekatos Baseball All Stars. added, “We also had a good mixture Kekatos not only reached the team’s goal of of [veterans] and young talent. The winning the OUA Championship but also one of his personal goals of being named most valuable hitter. “Winning the most valuable hitter was definitely a goal of mine,” he said “I wanted to contribute to the team’s success as much as possible and having that goal in mind kept me motivated to do more for the team.”

Through hard work, great coaching, and the mix of young talent and veterans on the Blues’ team ­— a team that was poised to take home the OUA Championship from day one — the Blues dominated OUA baseball this year. They have some of the best young talent in the league and are on track to do big things in the OUA for years to come.

The men’s baseball squad was exceptional this past season.

COURTESY OF SEYRAN MAMMADOV/VARSITY BLUES

EA Sports and FIFA end a decades-long partnership Analyzing the split and what it means f or the series’ future Mike Furlong Varsity Contributor

Electronic Arts (EA) and FIFA are looking to part ways after a decades-long run of dominating the eSports gaming industry. Since 1993, the EA Sports FIFA series has been the most successful soccer simulation that the video game industry has ever seen. In fact, according to Forbes, the FIFA series is the best selling sports video game franchise of all time, selling around 325 million units since its first installment. The FIFA series has been so successful that FIFA itself reported a larger licensing income — much of which it attributed to the series — than income from actual soccer in 2020. So why the split?

EA has dominated the sports gaming industry since the late 1980s, producing sports simulation titles like Madden NFL, FIFA, PGA Tour Golf, and NHL. However, licensing deals with singular leagues like the NHL and the NFL seem to be much more straightforward and easier to maintain than the licensing required to produce a game with FIFA. According to General Manager of EA Sports

Group Cam Weber, EA has to work with over 300 individual licensed partners to work with over 700 teams and their accompanying players, stadiums, and kits — you get the idea.

Compare this licensing situation to the NFL, for example. In an interview with Forbes, Vice President of EA Sports DJ Jackson stated that the only two parties involved in licensing are the NFL and the NFL Player’s Association. The licenses for teams, players, logos, and everything else, are centrally controlled by these two organizations. The same article discusses how, by contrast, FIFA licensing is much more varied and creates much more of a headache.

This unique licensing situation is the main reason that EA and FIFA are considering a split. Current knowledge on the situation from The New York Times suggests FIFA is seeking over double the amount of revenue from the games than the amount they were receiving before the dispute. EA can afford to refuse this deal because of soccer’s global nature. EA can retain many of their rights to depict clubs and players; they would only be unable to use FIFA’s name in their products. This would mean that any future installments of EA’s

EA Sports has dominated the soccer gaming sphere for years.

BENJAMIN LAPPALAINEN/THEVARSITY

series under a new name would be theoretically much the same and feature most of the same clubs, players, and leagues — although the FIFA world cup would be noticeably missing.

Having played FIFA games for many years myself, I can imagine that gamers would not notice much change. The systems, graphics, and gameplay that EA has developed over the years are what make fans continue to buy the games year after year, and these elements have nothing to do with FIFA. I think if the split were to happen, FIFA would have extreme difficulty finding another way to create a video game series as lucrative as the

one they have with EA. However, one catch of the split on EA’s side is that they would need a new name for the series.

The word ‘FIFA’ is now used more as a reference to the game series than to the global organization it’s named after; it would be difficult to find another name short enough, memorable enough, and iconic enough to replace it. The New York Times reports that EA is already creating patents in Europe for something called “EA Sports F.C.” Whether this new name will have the same staying power and will become a part of the sports gaming lexicon like ‘FIFA’, only time will tell.

thevarsity.ca/section/sports

NOVEMBER 1, 2021

Whitney Buluma Varsity Contributor

Streaking, broadly defined, is running nude or semi-nude in public for entertainment or shock value.

It is not known precisely when streaking started. One of the first depictions of streaking is a legend from the thirteenth century: to compel her husband to lower taxes on his subjects, Lady Godiva rode a horse naked through the town of Coventry. Since then, streakers have invaded university campuses, sports pitches, the Olympics, and even the Oscars.

In the 1970s, arguably, the golden age of streaking began. A “streaking epidemic” kicked off in the fall semester of 1973 across colleges in the US. Students of all genders eagerly participated. At Harvard, two streakers wearing only surgical masks disrupted a first-year anatomy test. At Princeton, a student campaigned for vicepresident of the class of 1976 with the slogan: “Vote the Streaker—if Elected he will Run.” Some people even streaked in front of the Capitol Building and the White House. But even before that, students at the University of Notre Dame had organized a “Streaker’s Olympics” in 1972. When asked why streaking was so popular, a student at Yale said, “We’re college students and college students are supposed to have fun.”

Some mass streaking events at universities enjoyed a surprising longevity. Starting in 1986, the “Naked Mile” was established at the University of Michigan, where students streaked to celebrate the end of the winter semester. The event steadily grew and became a part of the university’s culture.

Exposed: A brief history of streaking Why the hell is this phenomenon so popular?

PhotoCap.

PHOTOCRED/THE VARSITY ANDREA ZHAO/THEVARSITY

However, by 2000, increased media attention and pressure from university administrators and the police dissuaded students from participating in the run. The last Naked Mile was held in 2004.

The first recorded incident of streaking at sporting events occurred in 1974, at Twickenham in the UK, during a charity rugby match between England and France. Michael O’Brien streaked across the field at halftime to win a £10 bet. He was later arrested, and a picture of the incident, taken by photographer Ian Bradshaw, won Life Magazine’s “Picture of the Year” award.

Similarly, in 1975, Michael Angelow streaked across the cricket pitch on the fourth day of a test match between England and Australia. He won a £20 bet but was fined the same amount for indecent exposure, thus earning nothing for his exploits.

The NHL had its inaugural streaker in 1974, when Ms. Cyndi skated onto the ice naked during a game between the Los Angeles Kings and the Pittsburgh Penguins. This incident turned out to be a publicity stunt organized by the Kings.

During the closing ceremony of the 1976 Summer Olympics, held in Montréal, a streaker sauntered past security into a circle of dancers — echoing the spirit of the original Olympics when athletes competed in the nude.

Streakers are also prevalent in individual sports.

Wimbeldon’s first streaker, Melissa Johnson, ran onto the court wearing only an apron. That was arguably the most memorable moment of the 1996 bout between Richard Krajicek and MaliVai Washington. In 1999, Yvonne Robb dashed onto the golf course during the British Open and kissed Tiger Woods. She was later fined £100

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for breaching the peace.

Occasionally, players have expressed frustration with streakers. Greg Chapell spanked a streaker with his cricket bat repeatedly during a test match between Australia and New Zealand in 1977. In 2008, cricketer Andrew Symonds slammed into a streaker and knocked him down during a match between Australia and India.

Streaking has become increasingly commercialized; famous streakers can now monetize their notoriety. Mark Roberts, the selfdescribed “World’s #1 Most Prolific Streaker” seemingly streaks as a full-time job. As of 2018, he has streaked 565 times in 23 countries.

During the 2006 Winter Olympics and Super Bowl XXXVIII, he darted onto the field with “GoldenPalace.com” written on his body. His streaking, though, is not always commercial: during the 2018 Winter Olympics, he snuck onto the rink with the words “Peace + Love” written on his chest.

Dressed in a revealing swimsuit, Kinskey Wolanski dashed across the pitch in 2019, during an otherwise unremarkable Champions League Final between Liverpool and Tottenham. She was promoting Vitaly Uncensored, her boyfriend’s porn site. Her boyfriend, YouTuber Vitaly Zdorovetskiy, had previously invaded the pitch during the World Cup Final between Germany and Argentina in 2014. Kinskey was fined £13,000 by UEFA, but the publicity her stunt generated — and the traffic it brought to her boyfriend’s website — created a profit that far outstripped the size of the fine.

Streaking has come a long way from its origin: students running naked on college campuses for the fun of it.

The only thing holding back the WNBA is our perception of it Why we could be at a turning point in the league’s popularity

BIANCA REATENGUI/THEVARSITY

Mekhi Quarshie Associate Sports Editor

In the long book of modern sports politics, another chapter has just been written. On October 17, 2021, the Chicago Sky won the WNBA championship. This was both the first win for the franchise and the first Chicago basketball win since the Bulls won the NBA championship in 1998. Despite the monumental win, though, some shocking videos showed a very low fan turnout at the championship parade.

While the parade does seem to have had low attendance, the Chicago Tribune claimed that at the ceremony celebrating the championship, which featured speeches from stars of the team, almost every seat was filled. But the ceremony pavilion only seats 11,000 people, which is still quite miniscule compared to the 500,000 people that attended the Milwaukee Bucks championship parade.

This story signifies the rebirth of the two biggest plagues of the WNBA: viewership and player salaries. WNBA players’ protests for a

larger salary became a big issue in 2018 when athletes asked for a bigger portion of the WNBA’s overall revenue. It is estimated that WNBA players get 22 per cent of the league’s revenue, while NBA players get 50 per cent.

Why isn’t this number equal? Because of one pretty big issue: the WNBA has yet to turn a profit in a single season since its inception.

However, there’s a key fault in all of those discussions: the fact that they are trying to draw direct comparisons between the NBA and the WNBA, which should never be compared to each other in terms of profit or viewership.

The first reason is that the two leagues have been around for different amounts of time.

The NBA was established in 1949 and has a generous 47-year headstart on the WNBA, considering it was only established in 1996.

Comparing two leagues that have been around for different amounts of time holds no merit. The NBA has had more time to attract talent with regard to players, coaches, and fans.

Secondly, the two leagues target two different consumer bases. A goal for most WNBA players

is to have young girls watch them play, but this goal is taking a while to accomplish. In an interview in 2018, Washington Mystics forward Elena Delle Donne said, “I just believe that young women haven’t seen us. And you can’t follow something that you haven’t seen.”

There is also a lack of investment in the WNBA’s advertising. In early 2018, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver admitted that the WNBA indeed did have a “marketing problem,” saying that they have to “do a better job connecting to young people and to get them to be interested in women’s basketball.” In the three years that have passed since then, the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement has instituted new rules, including 1.6 million dollars for marketing agreements. It could be only a matter of time before views follow.

The NBA and WNBA also feature two extremely different styles of basketball. For example, only seven WNBA players have dunked in the history of the league, whereas in the NBA, there are thousands of dunks every season.

WNBA players cannot do everything that NBA

players can due to differences in skill sets, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the league is less fun to watch. A high percentage of older men watch the WNBA because of how it highlights the fundamentals of the game.

Sports fans also constantly sacrifice quality for excitement. Most college basketball teams would get blown out by NBA teams, yet millions of fans still tune in. Televised high school football games include players that have much less experience than NFL players and yet there is enough interest for ESPN to broadcast them.

The WNBA could gain popularity if support like the above is applied to their league.

Ultimately, the low attendance at the Chicago Sky parade doesn’t mean anything for the WNBA in the long term. Equality in the WNBA is not up to Adam Silver, it’s not up to the WNBA executives, and it’s not up to the coaches; it’s up to the fans. Regardless of which side of the coin you ascribe to, go watch an WNBA game and then develop a point of view — because views are exactly what will make or break this league.

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NOVEMBER 1, 2021