March 20, 2017

Vol. CXXXVII, No. 22 March 20, 2017 thevarsity.ca —— The University of Toronto’s Student Newspaper Since 1880

UTSU executives-elect react to election results Incoming executives include candidates from two slates and an independent

Stories of sexual assault, university response brought into focus with Survivors Speak Back campaign

Jack O. Denton Associate News Editor

page 2 MUBASHIR BAWEJA/THE VARSITY

SMCSU financial audit executive summary details kickbacks, falsified invoices, inappropriate expenditures Full report to be kept confidential Tom Yun & Kaitlyn Simpson News Editor & Associate News Editor

After completing a financial investigation into the St. Michael’s College Student Union (SMCSU), the University of St. Michael’s College (SMC) has released an executive summary of the resulting report.

In July 2016, SMC announced that a financial investigation into SMCSU was underway.

The college is not releasing the full report, which was prepared by Williams & Partners Forensic Auditors, to the public, citing privacy concerns for the individuals named in the report. In addition to the executive summary, SMC President David Mulroney released a statement on the matter.

According to the executive summary, “Certain individuals admitted to receiving kickback payments in the form of cash from third parties for the procurement of goods and services,” but it notes that some of the kickbacks were repaid.

It states that the individual who issued the kickbacks may have done so through overbilling or “fictitious billing to accommodate the kickback payments received” and the kickbacks have spanned over six years.

The executive summary also details “poor controls over cash managements,”

which has led to money going missing.

This includes cash payments being kept off the books, unidentified cash deposits of $120,075, unidentified expenditures of $123,632, and falsified invoices. $50,677.90 of SMCSU monies went towards “professional development,” which included yearly trips to Blue Mountain at approximately $6,300 per trip, as well as $412.45 paid out of SMCSU’s funds to cover damage repairs at the retreats. Other “inappropriate expenditures” listed in the report

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include $400–$600 for a dinner for four people and $300–$350 for a dinner for two people.

Furthermore, the executive summary highlights a lack of records and transitional documents available when newly elected SMCSU council members take over. In one instance, the incoming Finance Commissioner was not aware of the existence of a PayPal account set up to collect fees for orientation. It also states that “proper bookkeeping records were not maintained or did not exist.”

The executive summary recommends SMCSU convert to a cashless system and utilize online, debit, or credit card payments for its transactions. In addition, it recommends hiring a permanent third-party bookkeeper and establishing a code of ethics to prevent “the acceptance of any direct or indirect gifts/ benefits or bribes, etc. from vendors and the promise that assets of SMCSU will be safeguarded and not misappropriated for personal use or for events/usage which is contrary to the constitution.”

SMC President David Mulroney released a statement on the report, in which he notes what he calls a “culture of entitlement” among “some of the most senior officials in recent SMCSU administrators.” He also stated that hazing was a part of this tradition.

The conclusion to the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) election season came in a bag of mixed, and as yet unofficial, results on March 16. The Demand Better slate dominated the executive positions, with We the Students placing a single candidate on the Executive and a rare outcome of an independent candidate winning a position.

President-elect Mathias Memmel said he’s “indescribably grateful to have been given the chance to do some good.”

He noted that faith in new possibilities for the union was part of both the campaign and what he intends to bring into his term in office.

“Students put their faith in us, but also in people who didn’t run with us” he said. “So I need to have faith that those people also want something better.”

While Hello UofT and Brighter UofT swept the Executive last year and the year before, respectively, Demand Better was unable to claim the Vice-President University Affairs and Vice-President External positions, which went to We the Students’ Carina Zhang and independent Anne Boucher, respectively.

“I’m sad that we lost Josie and Fasiha, but I also want to make things work with Carina and Anne,” Memmel said. “It won’t be business as usual at the UTSU, and we can’t afford another year of infighting.”

Vice-President Internal-elect Daman Singh expressed gratitude for having been given the mandate to fulfill the promises he made during Rounding up the campaign. “I’m all the demerit excited to work with points given everyone on the inthis campaign coming team on our season common goal of fix— page 3 ing the UTSU,” he said.

“If there is one thing that this Accessibility, election shows, aerospace [it’s] that students levies pass aren’t happy with — page 5 the UTSU,” Singh continued. “[It’s] not a coincidence that every candidate in this election ran on a platform of some sort of change.”

SMCSU, page 4

UTSU election, page 4

News — page 2

Arts — page 12

Science — page 16

Talk by U of T’s Peterson met with protests at Mac

The smarter track Podcast recommendations for any commute length

Blades of fury Students compete for Hult prize with a coffee-fueled idea

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Poster campaign calls attention to impacts of sexual violence at U of T

Vol. CXXXVII, No. 22 21 Sussex Avenue, Suite 306 Toronto, ON, M5S 1J6 416-946-7600

Survivors Speak Back details institutional responses to sexual violence

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BOARD OF DIRECTORS Hussein Fawzy, Saad Hasnain, Mohamed Hammad, German Guberman, Christina Kefalas, Aidan Harold, Jannis Mei, Tom Cardoso, Jade Colbert The Varsity is the University of Toronto’s largest student newspaper, publishing since 1880. It is printed by Master Web Inc. on recycled newsprint stock. Content © 2017 by The Varsity. All rights reserved. Any editorial inquiries and/or letters should be directed to the sections associated with them; emails listed above. The Varsity reserves the right to edit all submissions.

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On Thursday, posters containing quotes from students, staff, and faculty about the university’s response to their experiences of sexual violence were put up in conspicuous locations across campus.

Silence is Violence, a group dedicated to combatting sexual violence and rape culture, launched its Survivors Speak Back campaign on March 16. The campaign aims to “reveal disturbing trends of power and coercion within the university” and has sparked conversation on campus and on social media.

Later that day, some posters were taken down by the university. University of Toronto spokesperson Elizabeth Church told The Varsity that “the posters were removed in accordance with the university’s Procedure on Distribution of Publications, Posters and Banners.”

The Varsity spoke with the University of Toronto chapter of Silence is Violence’s members Paulysha De Gannes, Tamsyn Riddle, Nicoli Dos Santos, and Hannah Dos Santos about the campaign.

Riddle explained that surveys conducted by the group indicated “that survivors at U of T are routinely silenced and discouraged from reporting or speaking out about the violence they experience,” creating a dearth of awareness among non-survivors about the “widespread sexual violence that happens on campus.”

Riddle continued, “Putting quotes from real survivors around the university that failed them” through the Survivors Speak Back campaign aimed to spread awareness while showing “survivors that they are not alone and that there are other students who care about their experiences.”

Nicoli Dos Santos referred to a Survivors Speak Back poster quoting “one survivor who was told by their college that they could be punished for retaliation if they spoke

about their rape. I don’t think the university realizes how much damage silencing of the voices of survivors of sexual assault does in terms of delaying healing and recovery.”

When asked about the importance of a campaign like Survivors Speak Back at U of T, Hannah Dos Santos stated that the university “is a point of reference to the public on many fronts” and that “the silencing of the experiences of students does a disservice not only to those impacted by sexual violence, but also to those looking to the University of Toronto as an example.”

On the impact of the campaign, De Gannes noted that “response has been far reaching and the campaign has been shared by students across Canada via social media.” Hannah Dos Santos added that public response to the campaign “is indicative of the overwhelming pervasiveness of sexual violence within and beyond the boundaries of the university,” as well as “the importance of survivor-centred and trauma-sensitive approaches” in how the university responds to sexual violence. Nicoli Dos Santos noted that, despite the “challenging and discouraging” effect of the university’s call to have Survivors Speak Back posters removed, “the photos that we now have of contractors removing the posters stand as a powerful, visual metaphor of the systematic silencing of the voices of survivors by our University.”

U of T is currently seeking feedback on methods to address sexual violence on campus through an online consultation website that is open until April 10, as well as in-person consultation meetings on all three campuses.

UTSC and UTM’s consultation sessions respectively took place on March 15 and March 16, while the St. George campus’ consultation will take place on March 20 in the Governing Council Chamber at Simcoe Hall.

These efforts are part of the university’s implementation of a new Policy on Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment, which was passed by Governing Council on December

15, 2016 and took effect on January 1 this year.

The new policy aims for a standardization of access to support and services across campuses for staff, students, and faculty impacted by sexual assault and harassment, whether it occurs on or off-campus.

To achieve policy goals, the Tri-Campus Sexual Violence Prevention and Support Centre was created. It is accessible at the temporary location on the St. George campus on the sixth floor of the Bissell Building, while locations are UTSC and UTM are set to open in April.

Terry McQuaid, the university’s Executive Director of Personal Safety, High Risk, Sexual Violence Prevention and Support told The Varsity that Silence is Violence’s campaign and the implementation of a new policy was an opportunity “to create conversations” on how to “collaboratively ensure that survivors… are supported” by asking the question, “How do we get our messaging, in terms of education and prevention, out into the community in a way that speaks to the diversity of the community?”

On the university’s ongoing consultation campaigns, Silence is Violence stated via Facebook that “many of our members attended and [shared] their thoughts,” but few points were incorporated into “the final version of the policy.” The statement further said that “the support workers who were on-site for the consultations were on their phones the entire time” and that “they are being paid to provide support and did not even want to fully engage for two hours of their work day.”

When asked about the sentiment expressed in Silence is Violence that the university was not doing enough for people impacted by sexual violence, McQuaid said, “Certainly the posters are saying that loud and clear.” She went on to say that given the university’s new policy, “it’s a really pivotal time to create an opportunity to do things even better.”

Jordan Peterson speaks at McMaster, Western McMaster event shut down by protesters Kaitlyn Simpson Associate News Editor

U of T Psychology Professor Jordan Peterson spoke at two universities this past week.

On Friday March 17, Peterson was scheduled to speak on issues of political correctness and freedom of speech at McMaster University. However, according to Peterson’s Twitter account the event was “completely disrupted by protesters.”

The McMaster protesters shouted chants

and held up signs throughout the duration of Peterson’s speech.

The psychology professor ignited controversy following his public refusal to use gender-neutral pronouns when referring to transgender and non-binary people and his opposition to Bill C-16 — which added gender identity and expression as grounds for discrimination.

At the event, Peterson said that the protestors were “noisy activists” who “[claimed] to represent” transgender people but were “not acting on their best interests at all.”

He also stated: “You don’t want to be the one to get the weapon warm, it’s a big mistake.”

A day later, Peterson received a warmer reception at Western University in London.

According to the London Free Press, over 700 people attended Peterson’s hour-long speech, which ended with a standing ovation.

The Western event organizers paid $1,200 in security fees for the event.

Following the event, Peterson was swarmed with supportive students asking for selfies, some of whom were wearing “Make America Great Again” hats.

Notice of Varsity Publications Board of Directors Elections Nominations are now open for the Varsity Publications Board of Directors Elections.

Available positions: Five (5) General Directors One (1) Mississauga Director One (1) Scarborough Director

All nominees must collect signatures of support from 25 members of Varsity Publications and must themselves be a member. Full rules and nomination forms may be found at thevarsity.ca/board-of-directors/ board-election/

If you have any questions or concerns about the election, please contact Saad Hasnain, the Chief Returning Officer, at cro@thevarsity.ca

MARCH 20, 2017 • 3

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Hundreds of demerit points issued for UTSU elections Alleged offences include pre-campaigning, transphobic comments, “sabotage”

All slates, with the exception of Whomst’d’ve, received numerous demerit points from the CRO and the ERC. NATHAN CHAN/THE VARSITY Jenna Moon Associate News Editor

The University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) election spanned one week, with four slates and multiple independents running for executive and director positions. Allegations of pre-campaigning, transphobia, and cross-campaigning resulted in dozens of instances of demerit points being issued.

The Varsity reviewed rulings from the Chief Returning Officer (CRO) and Elections and Referenda Committee (ERC) to see when and where demerits were issued to each slate and independent executive candidate.

Reboot The first ruling issued by the CRO resulted in demerit points issued to Reboot for an alleged violation of pre-campaigning rules on March 6. The CRO ruled that Micah Ryu — Reboot’s then-presidential candidate — along with all other executive candidates for Reboot violated the Elections Procedure Code (EPC) for pre-campaigning due to an article published

by The Varsity on February 14.

The article discussed the slate’s draft platform, which was obtained by The Varsity through a confidential source and included quotes from Ryu about some platform items. 10 demerit points were issued to the executive candidates.

A subsequent ERC investigation into that ruling maintained the 10 demerit points that were issued to Ryu, along with an additional five demerit points, but later reduced the points awarded to all executive and director candidates.

Also on March 6, Ryu was given five demerit points for pre-campaigning for Reboot in a classroom.

All Reboot candidates also received two demerit points on March 6 for posters and campaign materials that were found overlapping with posters from other slates in the Sidney Smith and Galbraith buildings.

The ruling was appealed and brought down to one demerit point for some candidates.

In an incident from February 27, Ryu was found to have been pre-campaigning while collecting signatures for his presidential candidacy. On March 7, five demerits were issued to all Reboot candidates.

On March 14, the CRO was advised that Alex Bercik, the Reboot candidate for Victoria College director was “engaging in misrepresentation of facts and violating the [sic] fair play.” Bercik was given eight demerit points for misrepresenting the way that election funds are used.

In addition, Reboot was found to be in violation of the EPC’s fair play rules for the moderation of their Facebook page. The slate was found to have been ‘liking’ discriminatory comments about marginalized groups and to have failed to delete abusive comments on their page. Reboot received three demerit

points for all candidates.

The ERC ruled against both Vice-President Internal and Services candidate Jessica Leung and Life Sciences Director candidate Avinash Mukkala for allegedly pre-campaigning at a St. George Round Table (SGRT) meeting.

Additional testimony provided by the SGRT showed that the candidates attended the meeting to present their campaign platform, a pre-campaigning violation. Leung and Mukkala received 10 more demerit points each.

Ryu, along with Engineering candidate Riley Moher, received 10 points each for allegedly posting transphobic comments online.

“I don’t know what these alleged ‘transphobic’ comments are, or why the CRO even made a ruling not only after the election, but after I had been disqualified,” said Moher. Moher told The Varsity that he has reached out to the CRO but has not received a response.

Overall, seven Reboot candidates obtained enough demerit points to be disqualified from the election.

Bercik did not wish to comment on the demerit points for the article saying, “I really had a rough time this election and so as a result I want to stay as far away as I can from student politics from now on.”

When speaking to The Varsity Ryu stressed that he is “no longer involved or affiliated with the slate in question.” However, Ryu said that he would be attending the upcoming ERC meeting on March 20.

With regards to demerit points, Ryu said that “overall, the EPC tries to regulate behaviours that are too difficult to apply objectively... Some violations can theoretically cost a candidate 1 demerit point, or an entire slate 20 demerit points, depending on who is the ERC. “I think even individuals on the ERC realize this, but they, like the incumbants, are so set on a certain perspective of how the UTSU should run that it seems very unlikely that they will fix the electoral process.”

Demand Better On March 9, the CRO issued 10 demerit points to Mathias Memmel, Demand Better’s presidential candidate. According to the ruling, Memmel was found to be precampaigning for “several months” leading up to the election, speaking about the Demand Better platform at SGRT meetings.

Memmel received an additional five demerit points for a conflict of interest, as his invitation to be a member of the SGRT was due to his current position as Vice-President Internal & Services.

The CRO noted that given Memmel’s current position within the UTSU, the precampaigning was “especially condemning.”

Upon review by the ERC, Memmel was found to have never spoken about his campaign at a formal meeting and the demerit points issued were subsequently removed.

Demand Better allegedly removed competing slates’ campaign materials from the pit of Sanford Fleming. According to the CRO complaint, all candidate posters except Demand Better’s were removed. Additionally, the complaint alleges that Chris Dryden, Director candidate for Professional Faculties, Engineering, orchestrated the violation.

Dryden was issued 10 demerit points for the offence, which were later reversed upon receival of a written confession from another individual.

Demand Better candidates received 10 points each for the use of drone footage that was previously used to campaign for last year’s winning slate, Hello UofT. The CRO had initially ruled that five points be awarded for the use of the material, with an additional five points per day that the footage was in use. The ERC then reduced the ruling to one point each.

On March 15, Demand Better was found to have been in violation of the EPC for precampaigning by the CRO. Allegedly, Billy Graydon — the Speaker of the UTSU Board of Directors and a board member of the Engineering Society — was found to have been pre-campaigning.

According to the complaint, Graydon allegedly stated that he was part of the “campaign team so to speak” with the “incumbent slate,” which would prove to be “particularly good for engineers if they get in.” Graydon then allegedly circulated the Demand Better platform.

The CRO ruling did not state when this precampaigning occurred but provided all Demand Better candidates with 10 demerit points.

The CRO gave two points each to all Demand Better candidates as Sylvia Urbanik, a campaign volunteer, was found to have been posting prototype campaign material online about the Demand Better platform more than one month prior to the start of the elections.

On March 17, the CRO issued 12 demerit points to all Demand Better candidates after the Chinese Undergraduate Association of UTM (CUA UTM) allegedly offered “red envelopes” to students who shared Demand Better’s campaign material and voted.

The CRO describes “red envelopes” as “a mobile application that allows users the opportunity to provide money in the form of virtual credits ... [which] is deposited into a user’s WeChat pay account.”

The CRO also alleges that a CUA UTM executive attempted “to cover up the initial distribution of red envelopes in exchange for votes for Demand Better and sabotage the general campaign of We the Students.”

The Varsity has reached out to Memmel and CUA UTM for comment.

We the Students Jackie Zhao, current Vice-President Internal with the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) and Vice-President Internal candidate for We the Students, was given one demerit point for campaign

materials.

The CRO report did not give details of the violation, saying that photographic evidence was provided confirming the offence.

The entirety of the We the Students slate was handed one point by the CRO as a supporting “non-arm’s-length party” was found to be covering up posters of an opposing slate. The complaint was received a second time, and the slate was handed an additional point each.

According to the EPC, a non-arm’s-length party is any individual or group that has either campaigned with a candidate publicly, used the candidate’s campaign materials, or performed campaign related tasks on behalf of a candidate.

The ERC ruled seven demerit points be awarded to We the Students for utilizing a table in Sid Smith that was reserved by a club.

An additional five demerit points were issued to We the Students for “failure to comply with spirt and purpose of the elections.”

According to the ERC ruling, it is likely that a member of a club used their status to reserve a table on behalf of We the Students.

We the Students appealed the ruling and reduced their demerit penalty to four points each.

In addition, Zhao allegedly failed to provide a notice of a leave of absence to the UTSU for the campaign period. Zhao is a UTMSU designate, and therefore a member of the executive committee. Executive members that do not declare a leave of absence are considered “unauthorized campaigners” by the CRO and EPC. Zhao received 10 demerit points for the incident.

We the Students presidential candidate Andre Fast told The Varsity that most of the demerit points were received while campaigning at a table in Sidney Smith. Fast said that his slate “[respects] the decision made by the CRO and ERC.” Fast also stated, “To my knowledge there are currently outstanding appeals before the ERC that appear to be significant and could potentially change the outcome of the election. I along with the rest of the student body will be waiting to see how the ERC handles these appeals.”

Other candidates No members of the Whomst’d’ve slate received demerit points.

Independent Vice-President External candidate Anne Boucher received 10 demerit points for endorsements from non-UTSU members after posting online about a meeting with the U of T Health and Wellness team.

The CRO found that Boucher “failed to comply with the spirit and purpose of the elections.”

Boucher appealed the ruling and the ERC found that the photo would not be counted as an endorsement. All of Boucher’s points were then reversed.

4 • THE VARSITY • NEWS

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UTSU election, from cover President

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Andre Fast

1690

Andre Fast

1799

Mathias Memmel

2213

Mathias Memmel

1532

Mathias Memmel

1597

Andre Fast

2019

John Sweeney

885

Joshua Hands

296

John Sweeney

966

Vice-President Internal

Daman Singh

1781

Daman Singh

2229

Jackie Zhao

1639

Jackie Zhao

1875

Jessica Leung

823

Vice-President External Anne Boucher

1346

Anne Boucher

1391

Anne Boucher

1802

Emmanuela Alimlim

1314

Emmanuela Alimlim

1355

Emmanuela Alimlim

1645

Fasiha Khadija Mukhtar

1047

Fasiha Khadija Mukhtar

1645

Nadine Aboud

157

Vice-President University Affairs Carina Zhang

1701

Carina Zhang

1791

Carina Zhang

2035

Josie Wu

1330

Josie Wu

1452

Josie Wu

1975

Saarthak Saxena

697

Micaël Thompson

509

Saarthak Saxena

917

Vice-President Equity Chimwemwe Alao

1613

Chimwemwe Alao

1933

Michelle Mabira

1445

Michelle Mabira

1621

Keelie-Shay Eaid

576

Stuart Norton

1956

Julian Oliveira

1586

Vice-President Campus Life Stuart Norton

1683

Julian Oliveira

1398

Abdul-Fatah Dau

561

Vice-President Professional Faculties

Vice-President Externalelect Anne Boucher is a rare case of an independent making it to the Executive. “I was, and still am, extremely shocked and excited,” she said.

Boucher is not concerned with the ability of a mixed-slate executive to get work done. “I firmly believe that this executive team is filled with bright, competent people, and I think we’ll all work very well together,” she said. “We all want to make fundamental changes. We all want the UTSU to be fixed. And that, to me, is very promising.”

On her victory, Boucher said she thinks that being an independent allowed her to stand out in the midst of a messy election season.

“I think I just luckily came in at a good time, too,” she explained, “The common feeling I came to gradually observe was disenchantment with the concept of slates in general.”

Vice-President University Affairs-elect Carina Zhang said that despite the fact that the unofficial Executive results are in, nothing is set in stone for next year. “I understand that the results are not final and there may be complaints to be ruled on,” Zhang said, and “that could change the outcome of the election.”

“I would be more than happy to get real change to work on issues like exam deferral, free menstrual products and international student rights, once the results become official.”

Vice-President Equity-elect Chimwemwe Alao said he is “incredibly humbled and honoured that the students be-

Demand Better

Shivani Nathoo

425

Shivani Nathoo

468

Shivani Nathoo

534

We the Students

Veronika Potylitsina

218

Veronika Potylitsina

270

Veronika Potylitsina

335

Whom’std’ve

Natalie Biancolin

225

Natalie Biancolin Jenny Yue

lieve in [him] and gave [him] this opportunity.”

Alao noted that “the same equity problems with the UTSU remain,” and, looking forward, “this year is particularly important as we need to try and heal and move forward from the past year.”

Vice-President Campus Life-elect Stuart Norton is “incredibly excited to be the next VP Campus Life,” and said he’s “looking forward to working together with everyone on the incoming team in bringing the change that we promised during the campaign.”

Norton’s biggest takeaway from the campaign was that many clubs feel unsupported by the UTSU. “It’s a problem that numerous clubs don’t see what the advantage of being a UTSU recognized club is,” he said, and that he’s “looking forward to working with these clubs in reforming both the recognition and funding process, as well as expanding the resources available to them.”

Vice-President Professional Faculties-elect Shivani Nathoo is “grateful to have been given this opportunity,” and said she is very excited to work... with everyone on the common goal of improving the UTSU.” Nathoo is encouraged by the increase in voter turnout during this year’s election. “It’s clear that students care about the UTSU,” she said, “and aren’t happy with the current state it’s in.”

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Reboot (Current) Reboot (EX) Independent

SMCSU, from cover “Students who were part of this corrupt sub-group worked to indoctrinate and implicate members of each succeeding administration, justifying the wrongdoing as being part of SMCSU culture,” he wrote.

Mulroney believed that SMCSU operated on “three levels.”

“The well-intentioned majority was largely sidelined, kept at arm’s length from information and decision making. Another group refrained from actual wrongdoing, but was aware of it and failed to speak out and stop it,” he wrote.

Mulroney continues: “Finally, a smaller group of students held real control of money, information and decision-making.

This group, essentially an entitled elite, turned their backs on the students and the institution that they should have served, and treated SMCSU as a private club,” his statement continues.

Mulroney attributed a part of the burden of responsibility to the college “having become so consumed with internal affairs that it lost sight of what matters most: providing an exceptional academic experience for our students, one shaped by our fidelity to Goodness, Discipline and Knowledge.”

In September 2016, Mulroney released a blog post criticizing SMCSU’s past financial practices and describing a new policy that he subsequently presented to Collegium — the college’s highest governing body — that would appoint an academic advisor to SMCSU, The Mike newspaper, and the St. Michael’s College Residents’ Council.

Two months later, Snapchat videos depicting jokes about Islam were leaked onto social media and implicated then-current and former SMCSU council members.

The union was subsequently prorogued, and in February, SMC announced that it

struck a committee to organize elections for a new student government.

Mulroney plans to have a meeting with all individuals named in the report and insist on any outstanding funds still unaccounted for to be returned, and “in the most serious cases, ask individuals to withdraw from student government and related activities.”

Former SMCSU President Zachary Nixon told The Varsity that “the audit findings are accurate, and I believe the results speak for themselves.” Nixon declined to comment on Mulroney’s statement or the SMC administration’s actions taken towards SMCSU. Georgina Merhom, the University of Toronto Students’ Union representative for SMC and founder of the Our SMC campaign, also agreed that the audit’s findings were accurate: “SMCSU has been mismanaged for years; there is no doubt that there is a lot of rebuilding to do, but I can, beyond

a shadow of a doubt, guarantee that the audit for the 2016-17 year is going to look very different due to the policies and procedural changes that Council implemented in the last year.”

Merhom believes that the administration should “interject” but only in ensuring accountability of student representatives.

“Students voted to pay a membership fee to SMCSU. I believe that using that membership fee to fund a ‘new student government’ — one that is created by a committee comprised of members of administration and non-elected student representatives — without conducting a fair referendum first to receive consent from students, would be un-transparent, unaccountable, and a decision that undermines student voices,” Merhom stressed.

Mulroney and the SMC administration declined to comment further.

MARCH 20, 2017 • 5

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Referenda for levies pass Levies will go towards accessibility resources fund, Aerospace Team rocket Josie Kao Varsity Staff

During the elections for the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU), students voted in two levy referenda: one for establishing levies for an accessibility resources fund, and the other to increase funding for the Innovation Fund for the University of Toronto Aerospace Team (UTAT). Both referenda passed.

There were 2,280 votes in favour of the accessibility resources fund and 1,094 votes against. The UTAT’s levy received 1,881 in favour and 1,553 against.

UTSU members at UTSG will pay $0.50 per session, including the summer session, for five years to establish an accessibility fund, as well as $2.77 in the Fall and Winter sessions for three years to establish an Innovation Fund.

Students will have the option to opt out of the UTAT fee, as they do with other levy groups associated with the UTSU. According to the referendum question for the accessibility levy, the money collected will be spent “exclusively on caption for UTSU events, American Sign Language for UTSU events, personal support workers for UTSU events, and any other accommodations that a member with a disability would need within the UTSU event.”

Farah Noori, the current Vice-President Equity for the UTSU, commented, “As a students union we organize multiple events/initiatives for our members, this fund will help our events/initiatives be more accessible...

Personally, I’m just happy that it passed. A lot of students will benefit from this fund.”

The levy will be collected for five years,

LIFT project construction ongoing

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO AEROSPACE TEAM

From left to right: Katie Gwozdecky, Sam Murray, Keenan Burnett, and Karen Morenz from UTAT, with the Heron Mk 1 satellite. from fall 2017 to spring 2022, after which another referendum will need to be conducted in order to continue the collection of fees.

The Innovation Fund will be established to support the UTAT’s co-curricular aerospace projects, most notably their plan to develop and launch a microbiology research satellite into space. A large portion of the levy will go towards the actual cost to launch, according to Stephen Dodge, the UTAT’s Director of Business Development.

“The point of the satellite is to do research and publish papers on how fungus will act in space, [because] that’s a big question that we don’t know the answer to,” he said.

In regards to why the UTAT elected to go through the UTSU for funding, Dodge said, “We decided, you know what, this [is] a project made by students, it’s going to deliver a lot of value back to students at the university… so why not go to students and ask them, ‘Hey, is this something that you want to support?’”

“Just the amount of effort that was put in… it would have been terrible to have lost, and I don’t know that I can describe how awesome it is that it passed,” he added.

The UTAT attempted to get a referendum on the ballot last year but was unable to get enough signatures in their petition. The group needed to present a petition with signatures from five per cent of UTSG students.

The group will also be relying on corporate sponsors and the University of Toronto for support, as the fee collected for the Innovation Fund will not be enough to cover the cost of the entire project, particularly if students choose to opt out.

“We don’t want you to be uncomfortable with where your fees go. We just want the people who are excited about UTAT, or at the very least don’t care either way, to be the ones to support us. So we’re very happy if the student exercises the right to opt out, that’s totally fine with us,” said Dodge.

UTSC food service worker strike continues Workers reject Aramark’s final offer, dispute to go before Ministry of Labour board Jack O. Denton Associate News Editor

Food service workers at UTSC continue to strike as talks proceed between UNITE HERE 75, the union representing the workers, and Aramark, the company that holds the contract to provide food services at the campus.

On strike since February 9, UNITE HERE Local 75 has been negotiating with Aramark over what is deems as unfair wages. According to the union’s press release, most of the Aramark employees at UTSC make $11.50 per hour with little to no benefits. The living wage for Toronto was determined to be $18.52 per hour by a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report.

“Our strikers are standing up to end poverty wages on Toronto’s university campuses,” UNITE HERE’s Organizing Director, David K. Sanders, told The Varsity. “Employers like the University of Toronto should not be hiding poverty wages in the shadows of subcontractors like Aramark or Compass.”

A picket line at UTSG on March 15, planned to encircle King’s College Circle, was cancelled due to developments in the strike negotiations on March 14.

Aramark put a final offer to the workers, which it called “generous.” After two days of deliberation, according to Sanders, the workers “voted 100% to reject the offer.”

According to a strike statement on Aramark’s website, the offer they presented “is the same settlement accepted by Aramark’s associates at York University who are represented by the same Union, UNITE HERE Local 75.”

Asbestoscontaining dust forces closure of lab in Medical Sciences Building

The York agreement involved all of the workers reaching a $15 per hour wage within a year and benefits for both full-time and part-time employees.

Marc Hollin, a spokesperson for UNITE HERE, told The Varsity that the offer to the Scarborough workers was slightly different than at York and unsatisfactory to the workers’ bargaining group on three fronts.

“The Scarborough workers start further back and take a little bit longer to get to $15 [per hour] than they do at York,” Hollin said. “The main thing,” he continued, “is that the workers know that the direct employees of the university at the St. George campus make $18 or even a bit higher in many cases. So they feel like they deserve to do better.”

Sanders spoke of a poor negotiation environment. “Unfortunately, the University’s sub-contractor refused to engage in bargaining,” he said. “After the union started the day presenting a new position, the University’s sub-contractor responded with a final offer and said that it was going to demand that that offer be put to a vote by the Ministry of Labour.”

Hollin echoed Sanders’ sentiments about the negotiations process. “With the York bargaining, there was actual bargaining, which we’re used to,” he said. “There was kind of a back and forth.” In the case of the Scarborough final offer, however, “the company just put forward a final offer... it’s not the way we would like to bargain,” Hollin stated.

The offer that the workers turned down will now go before the Ontario Ministry of Labour. At this stage in the negotiation process, the government will organize, conduct,

and oversee a vote of all the employees in the bargaining unit on Aramark’s final offer.

There have been calls for the university to step in and enforce a commitment to wage fairness. “The University is [an] anchor institution in our community,” wrote John Cartwright, President of the Toronto & York Region Labour Council, in a letter to President Meric Gertler on March 14.

“At a time when decent work in our city is scarce and when we are plagued by growing inequality especially for new Canadians, women, and racialized communities, our anchor institutions have a vital role to play in setting a standard for decent work,” the letter continues.

Sanders said that the union members “expect the University administration to ensure that a U of T education is not built upon a foundation of poverty wages.”

Aramark disagreed on the role of the university in this. “To be clear, these negotiations are between Aramark Canada and the Union and does not involve the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus,” a statement on Aramark’s website reads. “The responsibility for resolution of this matter rests solely on the Union and on Aramark.”

Hollin said that they “expect the university not to allow poverty wages on their campuses.”

“They’re hiding behind the fact that it’s a contractor, but ultimately they pick the contractor,” Hollin continued. “They are responsible.”

Elizabeth Church, a spokesperson for the university, told The Varsity that “this is a labour dispute between Aramark and food service workers employed by Aramark at UTSC” and declined to comment further. Aramark also declined to comment further.

NATHAN CHAN/THE VARSITY

There were two separate instances of asbestos-containing dust: one on February 1 and another on February 24.

Tom Yun News Editor

U of T is warning of potential exposure to asbestos in the Medical Sciences Building after “unusual dust” was reported during renovations in the building.

Trevor Young, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, sent out a notice to all Physiology graduate students and postdocs via email. In addition, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) disseminated information about asbestos.

The university has been undertaking the $189.9 million Lab Innovation for Toronto (LIFT) project, which aims to make various improvements to laboratory infrastructure on campus.

In November 2016, the university began “asbestos abatement and demolition on five separate sites” within the building.

According to Young, there were reports of “unusual dust” in early February in the sixthfloor lab located at room 6360, which was across from the construction site.

“Immediately upon notification, U of T’s Hazardous Construction Materials Group and [U of T Environmental Health & Safety (EHS)] were advised, attended, took samples and closed the lab,” Young wrote. “Test results February 1 confirmed asbestos in the dust; the lab and its contents were then cleaned, and the labs were cleared for reoccupancy within days.”

EHS also cleaned and cleared two other labs for re-occupancy located at rooms 7366 and 7368. These labs were connected to room 6360 and it was found that they also had asbestos-containing dust.

On February 24, “unusual dust” was also reported at lab 6334, which was located in an area “completely unconnected to the first incident.” Asbestos was also present in the February 24 dust samples.

After the university cleaned and cleared the lab for reoccupancy, dust reappeared there and “it and two lab support rooms were closed on March 7 while further testing was conducted.”

Young states that a third-party contractor continues to sample the air quality, working on one floor per day.

“One lab remains closed; once we are notified by EHS that the space has been inspected and cleared for occupancy, we will let you know,” wrote Young.

6 • THE VARSITY • NEWS

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Olivia Chow leads panel on women in power at OISE Event organized by Amnesty International U of T for International Women’s Day Ilya Bañares Varsity Staff

On Thursday night, former NDP MP for Trinity–Spadina, Olivia Chow, led a panel on women empowerment at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Chow also ran to be the Mayor of Toronto in 2014.

Amnesty International U of T hosted the event in celebration of International Women’s Day and included speakers such as UTSG Sociology Professor Judith Taylor, Canada’s first Indigenous forensic pathologist Kona Williams, and Samra Zafar, the founder of a non-profit organization that helps survivors of domestic abuse.

Chow, now a distinguished visiting professor at Ryerson University, spoke about her life story and her beginnings in community activism and local politics.

She recalled that she was initially an artist by profession; her degree was in Fine Arts, and she would often skip the news section of the paper in favour of the arts and entertainment.

It was only when she saw photos of Southeast Asian refugees escaping the horrors in

STEPHANIE XU/THE VARSITY

Chow was a former NDP MP for Trinity–Spadina and also ran for Mayor of Toronto in 2014.

their homeland on boats that she felt inspired to take up political pursuits.

Chow went on to say that it was when she went to a rally for the “boat people” that she was moved to act, and she participated in the

push for the federal government to accommodate thousands of refugees in 1979.

Inspired by other Canadian refugee programs, especially those concerning people fleeing South American dictatorships, she ran for political office as a trustee on the Toronto Board of Education and won.

Chow spoke of her student days, when she sat in the back in fear of speaking in public, and contrasted them to today, when she has realized that there are more important things.

Chow also spoke of her successes on the board of education. As a school trustee, she successfully led the campaign to translate 911 emergency calls, arguing that if a person were in danger, they would not be able to receive proper help if the operator did not understand them.

Her push initially failed, as the Police Services Board turned down her request due to limited funding. Nevertheless, she persisted.

She organized her community and reached out directly to the immigrants, convincing them to call their local councillor and ask for the service. Eventually, her goal materialized.

In order to succeed, she laid out three im-

U of T commits to hiring Director of Indigenous Initiatives Administration responds to TRC Steering Committee’s final report

NATHAN CHAN/THE VARSITY

Cheryl Regehr speaking at the ceremony for the presentation of the Steering Committee’s report in January.

Aidan Currie Associate Features Editor

U of T has issued a response to the Truth and Reconciliation Steering Committee’s Final Report, including an acknowledgement of the University of Toronto’s “responsibility in contributing to the plight of Indigenous peoples.”

The statement, titled Humility, Responsibility, Opportunity: In Response to the Report of the University of Toronto’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission Steering Committee, was released jointly by President Meric Gertler and Vice-President and Provost Cheryl Regehr on February 16.

Gertler and Regehr thanked the Committee for its dedication to crafting the Final Report and stated that the Committee “performed a great service for the University of Toronto, for the extended U of T community, and for Canada.”

“The Commission and the Committee both emphasized that the vital first step towards reconciliation is acknowledging the truth,” reads part of the statement, in a section titled “Challenging but Optimistic.” The statement continues, “To its enormous credit, the Committee’s report does not equivocate in

this task; the report both confronts and challenges us with the truth. And we must accept this challenge.”

The committee’s final report was released on January 10. It included 34 ‘Calls to Action’ in which six different working groups gave their criticism and constructive advice to the administration so it can honour the TRC. These working groups focused on: Indigenous Spaces; Indigenous Faculty and Staff; Indigenous Curriculum; Indigenous Research Ethics and Community Relationships; Indigenous Students and Indigenous Co-Curricular Education; and Institutional Leadership/Implementation.

In a section of the final report called “Indigenous Research Ethics and Community Relationships,” the Committee recommends the creation of a “permanent central office in the Provost’s office that supports the success of Indigenous initiatives through resources, education, training and advocacy” and later goes on to detail the existing Indigenous Initiatives & Programming at U of T. In response to this recommendation, Gertler and Regehr stated that they will appoint a Director of Indigenous Initiatives. A description of the position details that “the

Director will have a mandate to coordinate, advise, collaborate, and liaise with academic and non-academic communities addressing the Steering Committee’s calls to action.”

“The Director of Indigenous Initiatives will be important because it will be a position that really consolidates the efforts across the university,” said Regehr in an interview with The Varsity. “Right now groups are working across the university on issues such as space, curriculum, and access. The Director of Indigenous Initiatives is really going to support that and assist us to think about this as a coordinated kind of effort across the university.”

Regehr confirmed that it is the administration’s goal to hire the Director of Indigenous Initiatives in the next couple of months and that the hiring process is already underway.

She also highlighted the administration’s commitment in the budget to allocate $1.5 million in matching funds for creating Indigenous spaces, a major part of the Committee’s final report, as well as funds for 20 new faculty positions and 20 new staff positions respectively, specifically allocated to hiring Indigenous people.

Part of the response to the final report stated that U of T has been complicit in the oppression of Indigenous people.

Clarifying what the university has done to contribute to the plight of Indigenous people, Regehr stated: “Over the years that the University of Toronto has been offering education, we have educated teachers, social workers, doctors, nurses, other professionals, that have contributed to providing services in what we now know to be oppressive systems, such as the residential schools.”

Regehr cited politicians and policy makers who had attended U of T as others who had contributed to oppression of Indigenous peoples.

She went on to add that U of T has “not adequately addressed barriers to participation that have led to underrepresentation of Indigenous staff, students, and faculty, and these are issues that we are seeking to redress.”

portant actions: find out who has the power, get your issue on the agenda, and find out how to apply pressure.

Chow concluded, “When people come together we have the power to make the change we want.”

Taylor also spoke on women in power, specifically on the feminist movement. She discussed a project in which she interviewed feminists across the country on how feminism should continue and raised the concern that the movement does not have clear leaders and spokespeople.

Nonetheless, Taylor praised the fact that many people are now talking about issues that are not their own.

Williams spoke on the contrast between modern society and Indigenous communities, which are mostly matrilineal, as women hold considerable power.

Zafar, who was brought to Canada as a child bride, spoke on her ordeal and how she survived emotional and physical abuse. Since leaving her husband, she has been featured in multiple media outlets and has recently founded her not-for-profit organization Brave Beginnings.

Police searching for suspect in New College residence break-and-enter, theft Incident took place February 20, police say

PHOTO VIA TORONTO POLICE SERVICES NEWS RELEASE

The photo of the suspect released by Toronto Police.

Kaitlyn Simpson Associate News Editor

Toronto Police are currently searching for a suspect in a break-and-enter investigation at a New College residence near Spadina Avenue and Willcocks Avenue. They are asking the public for assistance.

The break-and-enter occurred on Monday February 20, after an 18-year-old woman left her residence room at 4:00 pm. When the woman returned, her credit card appeared to be missing.

The following day, the credit card was used multiple times at stores near Dufferin Road and Highway 401.

Security camera footage captured an image of a suspect following the break-and-enter.

Toronto Police issued a news release on the morning of Wednesday, March 15 requesting that those with information contact the police or Crime Stoppers; a text message can also be sent to CRIMES (274637).

Comment

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE March 20, 2017 var.st/comment comment@thevarsity.ca

A foot in the door to legal education Harvard Law’s decision to stop requiring the LSAT for admissions has important implications

Perspectives on mental health issues from two Varsity columnists. var.st/comment

Debate Club

Are standardized tests good?

Two contributors weigh the merits of standardized evaluations Sam Routley and Shailee Koranne Varsity Staff and Varsity Contributor

PEARL CAO/THE VARSITY

One of the best law schools in the world considers the GRE a fair substitute for the LSAT. Yael Kogan Varsity Contributor

Many aspiring lawyers look to Legally Blonde’s Elle Woods for inspiration, remembering that she scored 179 on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) before being admitted to Harvard Law School. Yet, starting in the fall of 2017, prospective students will no longer need to even write the test in order to follow in her footsteps.

On March 8, Harvard Law announced that it would no longer require the LSAT for its admissions and that prospective applicants would be able to submit their Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores in its place.

Considering how widespread the LSAT is in North America — including at Canadian universities — Harvard’s move away from the test is not only bold, but it could set positive precedent with respect to the inclusivity of future law school admissions.

Those familiar with the LSAT can certainly appreciate the significance of Harvard’s decision. According to the Law School Admission Council, the organization that produces and administers the LSAT, the test is “designed to measure skills that are considered essential for success in law school.”

However, many students continue to struggle with the examination, and some have been skeptical of the connection between doing well on the test and being a strong legal scholar.

Earlier this year, Harvard released a study showing that the GRE is equally effective to the LSAT in predicting first-year academic performance in law school, posing a challenge to the long-standing dominance of the LSAT. Harvard’s decision to afford students other options invites other law schools to reconsider the importance of the LSAT in their admission criteria. This has meaningful implications beyond the LSAT’s effectiveness in judging a candidate on their merits — it also opens doors to applicants who may otherwise be turned away.

The statement posted on the Harvard website reflects this rationale, as it states that the program “is part of a wider strategy at Harvard Law School to expand access to legal education for students in the United States and internationally.”

For many applicants to law schools and graduate schools, having to prepare for both the GRE and the LSAT is often an unaffordable and extremely strenuous process. Both the

LSAT and the GRE carry a hefty price tag to even write the test — not to mention the cost of books or tutoring, if needed — along with months of study that may otherwise go toward other endeavours, including paid employment.

By allowing applicants to submit GRE scores, Harvard Law will open its doors to many who were not able to prep for both tests at once.

It can be argued that the GRE is a much more accessible test. While the LSAT is offered four times a year, the GRE is offered almost every day on a year-round basis.

Moreover, the GRE can be taken up to five times every year, while the LSAT can only be repeated three times in a two-year period.

Finally, aside from making the application process more accessible, allowing GRE scores will attract a whole different faction of applicants to Harvard Law. Because the GRE is accepted by a wide variety of graduate schools, there is significant diversity in the GRE test-taking pool itself.

This is fitting, considering that law is a profession that constantly intersects with other fields of expertise.

As the Dean of Harvard Law Martha Minow put it, “Law needs students with science, technology, engineering and math backgrounds. For these students, international students, multidisciplinary scholars, and joint-degree students, the GRE is a familiar and accessible test, and using it is a great way to reach candidates not only for law school, but for tackling the issues and opportunities society will be facing.”

As for Canadian students, the impact of Harvard’s decision remains to be seen. U of T Law has made no strides in the same direction.

Given that the GRE is not required for admission to Canadian graduate schools, let alone law schools, they are unlikely to follow suit.

Yet, as said by Christopher Loss, an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Higher Education at Vanderbilt University, “When Harvard sneezes, everyone gets a cold.” Considering Harvard’s prestigious reputation, it is possible that this decision will have a ripple effect on other American law schools.

At the very least, Harvard has made a widereaching statement about access to legal education and intellectual diversity within law school admissions — one that North American schools will hopefully not take lightly.

Yael Kogan is a fourth-year student at Trinity College studying Criminology, Ethics, Society, and Law, and Jewish Studies.

Debate Club is a column that pits writers head-to-head on questions that matter to students. Though it lacks the shaky knees and microphone feedback screeches that typically accompany any oratory competition, rest assured that Debate Club is not for the faint of heart.

Resolution: “Be it resolved that standardized tests are good.”

SR: Standardized testing provides a great deal of effectiveness and accountability to the education system. By using a fixed set of criteria, educators can best review the strengths and weaknesses of student performance, properly indicating the areas that need work.

By giving them all the same test — as opposed to more subjective evaluations — all students in a given jurisdiction are put on the same level, regardless of their differences, and thus treated equally in the eyes of the educational establishment. According to cognitive psychologists Aaron Benjamin and Hal Pashler, standardized tests have been found to improve memory and retention and increase inferential ability; consequently, these tests are excellent for overall learning.

that create standardized tests are for-profit businesses and purposely leave out questions that students are more likely to perform well on in order to preserve score variance.

Furthermore, these tests have become the model for who is smart and who isn’t, even though they are inaccessible to some.

Standardized testing marginalizes students with learning or developmental disabilities who cannot adapt as easily to their requirements, as well as students of lower socioeconomic status who cannot afford to pay for preposterously expensive tests and prep classes.

In Canada, the GRE and LSAT both cost over $150 for each time the test is taken. Other exams, such as one of several that must be taken to be a certified dentist in Canada, cost upwards of $1,000. Standardized testing has also always been skewed to disadvantage people of colour; for this reason, recent outrage has taken place over tests like the Louisiana Literacy Test, administered in the 1960s.

As highlighted by the Huffington Post, the material these tests contain is often only relatable to richer white students, which is cause for concern with respect to fairness and accuracy.

SK: I disagree with the notion that students can benefit from standardized testing, especially in its common form: the dreaded twohour Scantron test. While I am not advocating for the total eradication of such testing, I am opposed to it being the only option for students at any level — especially when it is what determines most of their final grade.

Other forms of testing, such as creative projects and essays, should be implemented in order to truly test students’ absorption of curriculum material.

By encouraging students to use skills and resources beyond the memorization commonly required for standardized tests, evaluations more accurately reflect real-world assignments. Students should be given the option to choose between showcasing what they’ve learned through several different avenues, not just a standardized test.

SR: Some disciplines, such as the arts, can utilize alternative assessment methods.

However, several others — particularly science and mathematics, which deal more with concrete concepts than abstract or subjective analysis — require standardized testing.

Success in these fields requires the same memorization and on-the-spot application that standardized tests reflect.

For instance, ER doctors are required to recall their knowledge in medicine and apply it to a situation they may have never encountered. Nothing simulates these situations better than tests.

If one’s education were to be based on subjective evaluations, its value would be inconsistent and likely inaccurate — more subjective assessments are based on varying criteria that is valued differently depending on the instructor.

SK: Standardized tests are prepared in a way that leads many students to fail. For example, according to the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the companies

In favour: Sam Routley (SR) Opposed: Shailee Koranne (SK)

SR: With that said, on a national level, standardized testing can identify the educational dynamics of different ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic categories. For instance, standardized testing has helped to indicate the predominant educational disadvantages faced by African-American communities.

SK: Yet after locating areas of weakness, tests don’t do anything except discriminate further.

For example, in 2013, the Chicago Public School Board announced that it was considering closing some schools — the majority of the preliminary list was made up of schools attended by mostly Latinx and African-American students because test scores helped determine what schools would close.

There are always alternative options to standardized tests, such as reports, research, and papers, all of which can evaluate much more than a student’s retention capability.

In elementary, middle, and high schools, occasional in-class inspections held by government inspectors can assess a classroom’s overall performance.

Considering these options, eliminating standardized testing is possible. Scotland, for instance, has no government-mandated standardized tests — its national education policy places emphasis on having a variety of educational assessments, and government inspections of schools have been in place since 1833. Students come from different backgrounds, and the idea that we can continue to test them all in the same way is misguided.

8 • THE VARSITY • COMMENT

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The emergence of national conservatism Examining the ramifications of this political ideology in Canadian politics and on campuses Yousif Abu Al Soof Varsity Contributor

Over the past few years, national conservatives have erupted onto the political stage, making significant gains in popularity and sending shockwaves across the world. Nowhere has this been more pronounced than in Europe and the United States, especially since the outcome of the US presidential election.

While there may be minor differences distinguishing the various national conservative parties across the West, several unifying themes exist that paint a clear picture of this emerging political philosophy. These include the opposition to mass-migration as communicated through the Brexit campaigning of Nigel Farage in the UK and by President Trump; this messaging is often coloured by an opposition to multiculturalism, economic protectionism and isolationism, and the favouring of local and more direct forms of government.

Most recently, Geert Wilders, a Dutch national conservative politician with the Party for Freedom, gained five seats in the Netherlands’ general election. Although Wilders lost to Mark Rutte of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, Rutte’s winning party has also taken a shine to right-wing political rhetoric.

The rapid rise of national conservatism across many Western nations suggests that, at least to a certain degree, it may be inevitable in Canada as well. Signs of national conservatism can be found in political happenings close to home; it is necessary to anticipate the rise of this ideology in order to address the challenges it may bring for Canadians and students on Canadian campuses.

Though Trump’s election has been widely discussed, we ought to pay attention to two of its ramifications.

The first is the way his movement has emboldened leaders in other nations. Marine Le Pen, a member of the conservative National Front party and a prominent contender for the French presidency, claims that the impossible was made possible with Trump’s victory.

The second is that Trump’s victory was widely unanticipated, including by reputable sources. Even on the day of the election, The New York Times predicted that Trump only had a 15 per cent chance of winning.

Such poll-defying outcomes cast doubt onto expert models, predictions, and polling, making the political future of Canada less certain.

A number of factors suggest that Canada may be fertile ground for national conservatism, both in politics and on university

campuses.

One major factor associated with Trump’s success is civilian distrust of the government, something that has recently been happening in Canada as well. According to a recent Edelman poll, only 43 per cent of Canadians say they trust their government, down from 53 per cent a year earlier. 80 per cent of Canadians feel the country’s elites are out of touch. Similar public attitudes in the US and Europe have undeniably affected elections and favoured populist candidates who are less approving of the establishment.

There are also manifestations of nationalist rhetoric in Canadian politics. There were chants of “Lock her up!” directed at Premier Rachel Notley during a rally at the Alberta Legislature a few months ago. This supports the notion that Canada is developing a similar political climate as the one that contributed to the results of the elections in the United States.

Additionally, some Canadian politicians have begun to entertain some of Trump’s proposals, such as the extreme vetting of migrants. Though the argued purpose of this is to prevent potentially dangerous individuals from entering the country, we have seen its overbroad and vastly exclusionary effects south of the border.

Furthermore, Conservative leadership hopeful Kellie Leitch has proposed screening immigrants for “Canadian values,” reminiscent of the unified set of values that is typical of nationalism. While Canada has yet to elect anyone whose politics come close to those of Trump or European national conservatives, we are beginning to see this type of rhetoric become more acceptable here.

With that said, anti-immigrant sentiment driven by national conservatism manifests differently depending on context. For instance, given that Canada is far less prone to undocumented immigration, there has been no talk of “building a wall.”

What this suggests is that national conservatism in Canada may not be as recognizable as one may think. It may involve a gradual shift to extreme vetting of refugees, followed by decreasing the intake of refugees and economic migrants, and fewer promulticulturalism policies.

By introducing such policies systematically, national conservative ideas may become normalized, and eventually more drastic suggestions will be considered appropriate within political discourse.

DANNA ARANDA/THE VARSITY

In the meantime, we see the consequences of national conservatism on campuses.

Discriminatory flyers distributed at various universities across Canada, including the University of Toronto, McGill University, the University of Alberta, and McMaster University, are examples of fringe political ideologies rising in popularity and emboldening extremists to take action. If this continues, it could significantly damage international students’ perceptions of Canada and create a tense atmosphere of uncertainty and anxiety on campuses.

Yet, while it seems obvious that the rise of national conservatism may embolden those that lean to the extreme right, we should also pay attention to the backlash from extreme leftists. In the US, emboldened left-wing activists are protesting Trump in the hundreds of thousands. Much of this type of political protest, albeit in a different context, is happening on campuses as well.

One recent example is when radical ‘antifascist’ protesters shut down the Toronto Action Forum, hosted by Students in Support of Free Speech and Generation Screwed at U of T, an incident that was met with controversy.

We are also reminded of Hillary Clinton’s assertion during the campaigning period that a significant portion of Trump supporters were irredeemable and “deplorable” people.

Such sentiments signify that the political spectrum is intensely divided and that many consider the left and the right to have irreconcilable differences.

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Liked Debate Club this week? Try it LIVE. The Varsity is hosting the very first instalment of Debate Club: Live in the newsroom at 21 Sussex on Friday, March 24 at 5:00 pm.

Watch Sam Routley and Zach Rosen duke it out over the resolution: “Be it resolved that voting should be mandatory.”

Regrettably, polarization, activism, and extremism on both sides of the political spectrum within the campus environment paints a bleak picture of relations between students in terms of political discourse.

Conflicts between groups on campus, events being shut down over activists’ demands, and political controversies such as the one surrounding Dr. Jordan Peterson are all consequences of a new political era characterized by a decline in common and shared fundamental values.

Such an environment leaves little room for one to be moderate in their political leanings, further intensifying the situation.

Debates over political correctness — which have all but consumed the campus this year — are but one symptom of a divided people, where the rules of communication itself have become a central issue.

Consequently, if it is the case that this political philosophy will spill into Canada, adherence to the principle of freedom of speech will be essential in the interest of continuing the free exchange of ideas in a peaceful manner — and avoiding political polarization. For students, this will mean prioritizing exposure to differing viewpoints in order to avoid political echo chambers and understand opposing perspectives.

Yousif Abu Al Soof is a first-year student at UTSC studying Life Sciences.

Editorial

March 20, 2017 var.st/comment editorial@thevarsity.ca

New blood — now what?

Letters to the Editor

The Editorial Board’s take on what the incoming UTSU executives and directors should prioritize for the year ahead

1. Financial accountability

2. Democratic representation

3. Advocacy

NATHAN CHAN/THE VARSITY

The Varsity Editorial Board Candidates and journalists alike were no doubt relieved when this year’s University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) elections period came to a close. Now that unofficial results have been released, The Varsity’s Editorial Board seeks to draw the new administration’s attention to the concerns that we feel are most salient to students.

Firstly, any organization that collects non-optional fees from students should be intensely concerned with managing that money responsibly. The hope is that the UTSU will continue to work away at these issues by undergoing the internal reform promised by many candidates during the campaigning period.

Given that human resources make up $982,300 of the UTSU’s 2016–2017 Operating Budget, President-elect Mathias Memmel was particularly outspoken about his desire to cut back on spending in this area. During their campaign, Demand Better — who won all but two executive seats — proposed merging the Vice-President University Affairs and Vice-President External positions, claiming this would save the UTSU $50,000 a year.

With contract negotiations for positions coming up in January 2018, the UTSU should start making plans to cut back.

We are also reminded of the ongoing lawsuit against former UTSU executive director Sandra Hudson, in which the UTSU alleges that $247,726.40 of student fees are at stake, and that Hudson has countersued the union citing breach of disparagement and confidentiality clauses within her termination agreement. Legal proceedings are often frustratingly slow, but given the accountability and liability concerns involved, it is crucial that updates to the student body be continually issued on this file.

In the meantime, as the rubble settles around the explosion of campus controversies that occurred earlier this year, students and campus groups have repeatedly requested the UTSU to respond to the equity

concerns that have arisen, particularly with respect to the safety of transgender students.

A number of candidates expressed solidarity with marginalized groups on campus throughout the campaign period, but as has been echoed in our pages, verbal commitments are only useful insofar as concrete action follows.

During The Varsity’s UTSU presidential debate, Memmel expressed that education plays a crucial role in equity work. The Editorial Board is interested to see how this might play out in practice, given that the campus remains divided on a number of fronts.

Tuition advocacy also ought to play a significant role in the new administration’s agenda: maintaining the recently-renewed three per cent cap on tuition in Ontario and pushing for further changes in the name of financial accessibility to education, is in all of our best interests. Incoming VicePresident University Affairs Carina Zhang was the sole elected executive from We the Students, and she might be a strong influence on this front considering the slate’s commitment to affordable education.

One of the more widely discussed advocacy campaigns this year has been with regard to potential decertification from the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS). Since four members of the outgoing UTSU Executive publicly endorsed the You Decide campaign for a CFS decertification referendum — and the three others promptly condemned the endorsement — You Decide’s relationship with the UTSU has remained unclear.

Incoming Vice-President Internal Daman Singh has been involved with the You Decide campaign, and whether Singh will take the reins and spur the UTSU to action within the scope of his new role remains to be seen. You Decide organizers themselves seem to be keenly conscious of the work that remains to be done before decertification becomes a realistic prospect, as reflected in their recent Facebook post: “We ain’t done yet.”

The UTSU should also consider what might happen if the ‘yes’ vote that decerti-

fication proponents been salivating about comes to fruition. The $750,000 of UTSU membership dues that are now being paid to the CFS could be reallocated to other projects, or, perhaps ideally, returned to students’ pockets. It is crucial that the UTSU develop a student consultation strategy should it need to make that decision down the line.

To the tune of democratic representation, there was talk from Demand Better about banning slates for UTSU elections. Incoming Vice-President External Anne Boucher won her seat whilst running as an independent, and the prospect of an election where all candidates are altogether free of UTSU partisanship would be an interesting departure from previous protocol if pursued.

Yet, regardless of the efforts the incoming UTSU makes to reform its practices internally, there are still entire cross-sections of the campus community that it is failing to reach. The voter turnout in these elections is often abysmal; this year it was 11.8 per cent, admittedly up from 9.7 per cent in 2016. Spoiled ballots are just as telling as no-shows — in some categories this year, abstentions made up over a third of the total votes, as the UTSU’s unofficial election results show.

There is a reason why so many candidates in this year’s election flocked to describe the UTSU as broken: an organization that collects student fees from all students, but whose members are chosen by a meager portion of the student body, can hardly be considered fully democratic.

Voter engagement is something that past administrations have consistently struggled with, and the incoming UTSU would be wise to prioritize this concern and perhaps adopt some new strategies toward addressing it, as it is clear that what has been done before is not working.

To all elected UTSU representatives, the Editorial Board wishes a sincere best of luck and awaits the progress that new blood might bring. When it comes to student politics, we’re always on the edges of our seats.

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

Re: “Government has broken its promise on electoral reform” “Most Canadians are not political party members, so most of them feel comfortable supporting multiple parties across elections. Free party membership would only entrench divisions. Michael Chong’s proposals fall short of addressing the real issues. Proportional representation would address the strength of the PM, as well as many other issues Chong leaves unaddressed. Also, why reform a broken Senate? The institution must be eliminated to address its uselessness in the contemporary era.”

— Winston Sullivan (from web) Re: Five Reboot candidates, including Micah Ryu, obtain enough demerit points to be disqualified “‘...has issued a string of demerit points to Reboot UofT connected to alleged transphobic comments left on its Facebook page, resulting in the disqualification of five of its candidates’ Would like to note (because The Varsity failed to make this clear in its reporting), that the comments were NOT made by anyone on the slate or directly affiliated with the campaign. With its ambiguous phrasing, the article makes it seem as if these five candidates specifically are transphobic/directly responsible for the comments.”

— Jessica Leung (from web) Re: Conservative at best, irrelevant at worst “I talked with one of the advisors to the Minister in charge of Universities a year or two ago and she explicitly said that if students wanted a big change like altering U of T’s governing structure, then students would need to protest. Now, that person left to be an advisor to the PM, but I doubt much has changed.

They won’t give you anything unless students show they care.”

— Jason Dumelle (from web) Re: Demand Better wins most UTSU executive positions, unofficial election results show “‘Carina Zhang... won the Vice-President University Affairs position handily’ I think you misread the results. Carina won 2,035 to 1,975 (60 vote margin) over Josie Wu. You only see 3,447 beside her name because neither of them reached the 2,119 threshold because of exhausted ballots, and so Josie’s votes were redistributed. Saying that she won “handily” isn’t true; this was the closest final round of all the executive positions.”

— Andrew Nestico (from web) Re: Athlete’s political views met with disdain “How does an article about athletes’ political views (and two of the three listed here aren’t necessarily political) not even mention Colin Kaepernick’s stance on the police, his support for Black Lives Matter, and the ensuing intense backlash he received for it?”

— Marko Velimir Kobak (from web) Re: UTSU CRO has ties to We the Students presidential candidate Andre Fast “The ERC chair has been on slates twice with the leader of Demand Better. Obviously it’s not an ideal system, but its problematic to write this story and not to mention that any possible bias in favour of Fast is corrected for at the appellate level.”

— Zach Morgenstern (from web) Re: SMCSU financial audit executive summary details kickbacks, falsified invoices, inappropriate expenditures “Dude SMCSU y’all need Jesus.”

— Honza Durward (from web)

Letters to the editor should be directed to editorial@thevarsity.ca. Please keep submissions to 250 words; letters may be edited for length and clarity.

A place of pride and partnership Indigenous culture celebrated at U of T’s first powwow in over 20 years Aidan Currie Associate Features Editor

A

s observers trickled into the gymnasium at the Athletic Centre, the excitement was palpable. Families and children began to flood the gym where the Honouring Our Students Indigenous Students Pow Wow and Indigenous Festival would be held.

“In this circle, there is no politics. No religion. We are one,” stated the emcee, his comedic tone momentarily replaced by one of sombre and sincere gratitude.

Vendors displayed their wares at either end of the room, selling paintings, jewellery, and clothing such as moccasins and shirts that read “NATIVE PRIDE.” All were welcome, as was repeated throughout the day.

Decorated in yellow, red, black, and white, the colours of the medicine wheel, the event was made to be inclusive and welcoming, a teaching and learning space for all who entered.

“Over this whole process, overall we’ve had about 20 committee members and also just the partners from the Faculty of Kinesiology to our volunteers, I would say probably close to about 100 people have helped plan this event today,” estimated Jennifer Sylvester, President and Communications Coordinator of the Indigenous Studies Students’ Union (ISSU).

Those volunteers busied themselves as a powwow transformed the gym.

The festivities began with Grand Entry: people entered the circle and bore flags of significance to their communities, including Métis, Mi’kmaq, and the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. Non-Indigenous people also took part, including Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Carolyn Bennett.

Spectators and participants were treated to a variety of traditional dances and performances from Indigenous cultures across North America, which is referred to by many Indigenous people in the Toronto area as Turtle Island. Performances included a Métis jig segment and Aztec dance group COYOTL. People of all ages and genders were allowed to join in on many of the dances, fostering an environment of inclusion and diversity, which the event’s organizers took great pride in.

“Looking at the crowd down there, there’s a lot of Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people. What’s [important] about having non-Indigenous people here at the powwow is having them see Indigenous cultures and different Indigenous cultures from across Canada,” explained Sylvester.

“So a lot of people have come up to me and they sort of stress that this is the first powwow they have ever been to, and then they’re just so blown away that they never knew the beauty of what a powwow can do for a community,” she said.

PHOTOS BY NATHAN CHAN/THE VARSITY

First Nations House Elder in Residence Andrew Wesley carries the Eagle Staff.For the Anishinaabe peoples, the Eagle Staff is sacred: it carries significant spiritual meaning and symbolizes nationhood.

Organizing the Powwow Honouring Our Students began to take shape in July, when Sylvester and the rest of the ISSU decided to make an effort to increase Indigenous presence on campus. Up until November, it was just the ISSU working on the event, but once the planning committee was officially formed and the venue for the event was secured, Sylvester said that was the “cement” they needed to move forward.

M pe awa

Drummers performed traditional songs throughout the powwow, often keeping the beat for round dances in which all members of the community were invited to dance and celebrate.

“It has been a long process,” Sylvester said of the eight-month-long effort.

“The hope [is] that this would become an annual event, for the purpose just so the Indigenous Studies students who are in the program have that ability to transmit or transcend what they learn within a classroom and put it into practice, from the knowledge that they learn from their instructors.”

Sylvester credits the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education with allowing the ISSU to use the gym for the powwow “in kind,” meaning that the rental fee was waived, as a sign of solidarity.

She also said that every college on campus contributed to the organization of the powwow in some monetary form.

“Even unions that are here on campus… Like IATSE 58, they do the theatre houses here, to the United Steelworkers 1998 who are the admin’s representatives here — they’ve given money,” Sylvester said.

As a team, they have asked groups that are part of the university to see if they are willing to help. “And everybody says come back to us next year,” she added.

Jonathan Hamilton-Diabo, Director of First Nations House and Coordinator of the Council of Aboriginal Initiatives, attended the powwow and acknowledged “the hard work of all the students, the dedication, [and] the time that they put in.”

“Considering... all the things they had to work on and pull together, they did a phenomenal job,” Hamilton-Diabo said. “I think it just talks about how talented and gifted our students in our community are.”

Indigenous Presence on Campus The powwow is just one of many Indigenous initiatives beginning to take place at U of T. Indigenous people are gaining far more publicity and influence on a variety of issues and are taking advantage.

Sylvester describes this as “augmenting the presence” of Indigenous individuals and taking small steps toward claiming space and growing visibility on campus.

Hamilton-Diabo described the powwow as an event that created “a lot of energy... [which] went outside the community as well.”

Not only were Indigenous groups from U of T present, but there were groups from across Canada and North America. The crowd took great pleasure in watching a throat-singing demonstration from an Inuit group, a cultural sharing that truly spoke to the purpose of the event — to foster a positive atmosphere for Indigenous people to proudly be themselves.

Alex McKay is an Associate Professor in Indigenous Studies at U of T who teaches Indigenous language courses, mainly Anishinaabemowin, the traditional language of many Indigenous communities in the northern parts of Ontario. McKay gave the land acknowledgement at the beginning of the powwow, just before Grand Entry, first in Anishinaabemowin, then in English.

“I think it’s great that we have the privilege to host this along with ISSU,” McKay said. “They’re the one’s who made it what it is now. These native eople come from all over Turtle Island, and non-Indigenous people become are because they didn’t learn it in class or in school.”

Federal Minister of Indigenous Affairs Carolyn Bennett spoke with The Varsity about the importance of Indigenous participation on campus and what it means for the government and the future of reconciliation in Canada.

“I think what you see in an event like this is there’s two real benefits. One is that the Indigenous students and families feel proud of their First Nations, Inuit, or Métis status — being a proud Indigenous person,” said Bennett. “We know that that is so linked to self-esteem and resilience and secure personal cultural identity, a safe place to be proudly Indigenous is hugely important.”

The federal government recently committed to honouring all 94 calls to action in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report.

The ISSU, Centre for Indigenous Studies, First Nations House, and other Indigenous groups on campus have increased their visibility by hosting events like the Pow Wow; places such as the Centre for Indigenous Studies reflect the work being done in the community to better serve Indigenous people.

U of T’s TRC Steering Committee’s Final Report has announced 34 calls to action to build a new relationship with Indigenous communities.

What Comes Next The end of the powwow left a positive feeling that there would be much more to come for Indigenous events on campus. Sylvester highlighted what it meant to have non-Indigenous people welcome and be part of the event. “[At the Pow Wow,] knowledge transmits not only within the Indigenous circle but also in the non-Indigenous circle, and therefore it will create this unified effect and the base for reconciliation so you have all these future allies — you have these young leaders who, when they graduate beyond university, they’re able to take what they learn here by the powwow either [by] being on the committee or just attending, and that sticks with you for the rest of your life,” she said.

“They can bring that with them as they move forward.”

Bennett remarked that the powwow was a demonstration of nonIndigenous and Indigenous people coming together to reconcile and better understand the past that was a “pretty dark chapter in Canada’s history.”

“There’s a real presence now of amazing Indigenous people right amongst us... [and] the only way we can go forward is in that partnership, in the Two Row Wampum, in us having the kind of leadership that the Indigenous Studies Students’ Union demonstrated today,” she continued.

The Two Row Wampum was originally an agreement between the Haudenosaunee and Dutch settlers in the seventeenth century. The treaty described two vessels travelling down the same river together, parallel to one-another, each with their own set of laws, customs, and traditions, and never interfering with the other, only living in partnership.

The Two Row Wampum has made its way into contemporary discourse surrounding reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

The challenge now lies in working together to achieve and implement a unique traditional worldview. Allowing Indigenous people to have space to honour their culture and gather in a proudly Indigenous manner is just the first step in achieving that relationship.

Arts&Culture

March 20, 2017 var.st/arts arts@thevarsity.ca

Podcast recommendations for every kind of commute From conspiracy thrillers to comedians on comedians, these picks are sure to help ease the pain of travel by TTC One hour, and I like politics: FiveThirtyEight Politics Recommended episode: “Anatomy Of A Scandal” ARTWORK VIA FIVETHIRTYEIGHT.COM

DANNA ARANDA/THE VARSITY

Reut Cohen Arts & Culture Editor

Every commuter knows the feeling of dismay that comes with forgetting your earphones at home. Our earphones are a security blanket, a flimsy yet significant barrier between us and the everyday horrors of the public transit system.

With your eyes closed and music blasting, you can block out all distractions, such as those high schoolers discussing the intricacies of pubescent relationships or that man taking up three seats to cut his toenails.

Lately I’ve taken to podcasts as a way to multitask on my commute; it’s an attempt to learn something or entertain myself while I ignore the world around me. Below are a few recommendations to pass the time, sorted by length of commute and area of interest.

My commute is…

Half an hour, and I like mysteries: Homecoming Recommended episode: “Mandatory” ARTWORK VIA PLAYER.FM

This narrative offering from Gimlet Media is both a psychological and conspiracy thriller.

Set at a rehabilitation facility in Florida for soldiers returning from deployments overseas, the unanswered questions mount with each new instalment. Episodes are stitched together through conversations between the characters, phone calls, and interviews, causing the listener to feel as though they’ve discovered an archive of evidence in a top-secret investigation.

While I can’t say much more without giving away major plot details, trust that these six episodes will make your commute fly by, if only because of Oscar Isaac’s voice in your ears, sotto voce.

Two hours, and I like listening to comedians talking about themselves: You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes Recommended episode: “Aaron Rodgers” ARTWORK VIA NERDIST.COM

Comedian Pete Holmes recently debuted his new HBO show Crashing, which is about an aspiring standup comic who is shuffled between various friends’ couches in the aftermath of his divorce. Longtime listeners of You Made It Weird will recognize these themes easily, as Holmes has been discussing them with a nearly pedantic level of detail on his podcast for years. Everything is fair game in an episode of You Made It Weird, with topics ranging from the existence of God and life in outer space to the nomadic lifestyle of the comic.

More than anything, Holmes is an earnest interviewer, and the listener senses every nuance of his delight and curiosity about the lives of his friends and acquaintances.

It’s only a few months into Donald Trump’s presidency, and phrases like ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ have already become so commonplace so as to lose all meaning. Nate Silver and the rest of the team behind FiveThirtyEight have been addressing the problems associated with mainstream reporting for years, prioritizing a data-driven, evidence-based approach to journalism rather than cultivating sources and access.

All of this is on display in the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast where host Jody Avirgan, political reporter Clare Malone, analyst or ‘whiz kid’ Harry Enten, and Silver himself dive into a week’s worth of news with thoughtful analysis and more than a pinch of skepticism.

Beyond its weekly instalments, the podcast also features miniseries like Party Time, in which Malone and her counterpart Galen Druke speak to representatives and stakeholders from both the Democratic and Republican parties in order to glean insight into what’s next for bipartisan politics in an era of increasingly blurred lines.

An hour and a half, and I like Gilmore Girls and witty banter: Gilmore Guys Recommended episode: “They Shoot Gilmores, Don’t They?

ARTWORK VIA TWITTER.COM/GILMOREGUYSSHOW

What could be better than listening to grown men passionately discuss a show aimed predominantly at teenage girls? On Gilmore Guys, veteran fan Kevin T. Porter and Gilmore newbie Demi Adejuyigbe dissect every episode of the long-running show that was recently revived on Netflix.

Porter and Adejuyigbe’s backgrounds in comedy — Adejuyigbe currently writes for NBC’s hit sitcom The Good Place — definitely take centre stage in the podcast, resulting in always entertaining extended ramblings and Twitter-celebrity guests such as Megan Amram.

What might be most interesting about the podcast is its development from the guys’ side hobby to something that’s attracted a major fanbase. Many of the show’s original stars have made appearances on the Gilmore Gabs episodes, from Milo Ventimiglia to Liza Weil.

Perhaps it’s not entirely fair for me to include this under the hour and a half heading — analysis of particularly gripping episodes, like the “Fall” instalment of the Netflix revival, have run upwards of five hours, so pencil this one in for a gruelling week of TTC delays.

Two hours, and I like listening to celebrities talking about themselves: Anna Faris is Unqualified Recommended episode: “Mike Birbiglia part one” and “Mike Birbiglia part two” ARTWORK VIA POPSUGAR.COM

You might know Anna (pronounced “Ah-na,” as she often reminds listeners) Faris from her iconic roles in The House Bunny and the Scary Movie franchise.

On her podcast, cohosted with producing partner Sim Sarna, she proves she’s much more than the ‘dumb blonde’ stereotypes that fill her IMDB page. In fact, Faris becomes someone much more recognizable — your completely unqualified friend routinely providing dubious advice.

Some of the podcast’s best moments include the calls Faris and company receive from fans each week, asking for advice on everything from difficult mother-in-laws to long distance relationships. Other highlights are games like How Do You Proceed?, where guests are presented with a series of surreal scenarios and asked for their reaction — for example, you run into Oprah in the bathroom, smoking a joint. She asks for your urine to pass a drug test.

How do you proceed?

Unqualified’s lineup features big names like Seth Rogen and Allison Janney, but knowing that they’re sitting around Faris’ kitchen table, talking to strangers while tipsy, makes them all oh-so-relatable, if only for a few hours.

MARCH 20, 2017 • 13

var.st/arts

Tabletop gaming convention at U of T provides students with a needed escape Last weekend’s CritCon was part of a larger resurgence in gaming culture Allegra Wiesenfeld Varsity Contributor

Tabletop games, in a broad sense, refer to any board game played on a flat surface. But the term has also developed a second, more specific meaning that excludes games like chess and backgammon. It is used to specify role playing board games, distinguishing them from Live Action RolePlay (LARP) and video games that centre on role playing.

Netflix’s hit thriller series Stranger Things heavily highlighted the tabletop gaming trend of the eighties, with best friends Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson, Lucas Sinclair, and Will Byers frequenting Mike’s basement to play Dungeons & Dragons; the kids often use the game as a reference point in their sleuthing.

This is one of the most recent shoutouts tabletop gaming has received in mainstream media, but it is not the first. From Leonard Hofstadter hosting a Dungeons & Dragons Christmas game in The Big Bang Theory to the gang from Community dedicating an entire episode to the game, Dungeons & Dragons has become a ubiquitous reference for tabletop gaming in popular culture.

Finding a tabletop community at U of T Tabletop gaming, and the world of games outside of Dungeons & Dragons, has gained recent popularity,

STEPHANIE XU/THE VARSITY

CritCon, a gaming convention that took place at Hart House,attempted to bring back the “gritty” feel of 1980s university conventions. notably at U of T. The University of Toronto Tabletop Gaming Club (UTTGC) was founded two years ago and works to connect those interested in tabletop role playing games, collectible card games, board games, and miniature wargaming.

While tabletop games are still foreign to many, they might be able to provide the average student with an unexplored form of stress relief.

Robertson believes that “the escape it offers from the student life” is what draws students to role playing games.

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Robertson noted that many students experience stresses of schoolwork and financial obligations. “It’s nice to be able to see yourself as someone different, whether you’re a Paladin crusading against Demons, or a scavenger harvesting archeotech from a forgotten civilization to sell for profit,” he said.

CritCon Friday marked the first day of the inaugural UTTGC-sponsored CritCon, a three day convention of tabletop gaming, tournaments, and seminars — all with a cash bar.

Designed to bring back the gritty feel of the ’80s university conventions, CritCon was located downtown at U of T’s own Hart House.

Guest of honour and Toronto native Ed Greenwood is the creator of Forgotten Realms and a New York Times bestselling author.

Greenwood brought a charity component to the convention by auctioning off seats to the game he’s running to raise money for The Children’s Book Bank. The message of this charity, which works to promote children’s literacy, resonates with many gamers.

“A lot of people within this hobby started with creating their own adventures as kids. The ability to draw inspiration from history, mythology, and fiction further helps you to tell your own stories,” said Robertson.

CritCon vs. ComiCon At conventions such as Toronto ComiCon, which feature panels on upcoming mainstream movies and events such as meet and greets

with wrestling superstars, gaming sometimes is an afterthought, Robertson said.

While ComiCon moves away from its comic book roots and towards a Hollywood focus, CritCon offers those with a specific interest in gaming a weekend to completely immerse themselves.

One of the trademarks of recent ComiCons attempting to appeal to the masses has been wading through dozens of events on television features and episode screenings to find the few events geared towards your specific interests. By contrast, CritCon focuses solely on gaming, showcasing a board game library, featuring industry professionals as guests, and hosting its own role playing games.

Getting involved Role playing games may seem a bit daunting with their abundance of terms and rules and the incredible array of games to play. Those who may not be familiar with the hobby might be interested in getting involved through a UTTGC event.

As for next steps, Robertson recommended Geek and Sundry’s Critical Role, a group of “high end” voice actors who play Dungeons & Dragons on Thursdays on Twitch. “[They] can really show you how fun and thought provoking the game can be,” said Robertson.

A celebrity endorsement doesn’t hurt — Robertson also recommended D&Diesel, a special edition of Critical Role run for Vin Diesel, who happens to be a huge fan.

14 • THE VARSITY • ARTS & CULTURE

arts@thevarsity.ca

A preview of this year’s Trinity Art Show Upcoming exhibition to focus on minimalism across a variety of mediums Rishika Wadehra Associate Arts & Culture Editor

Beginning on March 24, the Trinity Art Show will once again open its doors to the campus artistic community and beyond for an exhibition in the beautiful Seeley Hall at Trinity College.

The annual show is run exclusively by students and aims to facilitate the presentation of student artwork that relates to a unique chosen theme. This year’s show will feature a variety of mediums, including sculptures, photographs, prints, sound installations, and video projections.

The theme of this year’s show is minimalism, with the goal of creating an aesthetic space that showcases simple artistic processes and students’ individual interpretations of minimal and reductive visual forms.

The theme is a continuation of last year’s show, which transformed Seeley Hall into a space dominated by shades of white, grey, and black, with flashes of colour dispersed throughout.

Each year, the Trinity Art Show gives emerging student artists the opportunity to display their work

in an inclusive setting. All potential artists go through a process of submission and review. The lineup is then finalized, with particular attention paid to selecting a diverse collection of works from across the spectrum of different mediums.

The curators of this year’s event are Eleanor Laffling and Elisa Natarelli. The Varsity spoke to Laffling, who commented on the theme of the show and the process of curating an entirely student-run exhibition.

“This year’s show is a continuation from last year’s theme,” said Laffling. “We attempted to curate a collection of works that visually interpreted our theme but also touch on other subjects, themes, and experiences. Minimalism as an art movement provides a formal basis for how to express other conceptual matter. The Trinity Art Show provides a space for individual artists to show their work, of which each piece has personal and independent meaning.”

Laffling also said that she felt fortunate not to have encountered any significant obstacles in curating the exhibition. “The most important aspect of a student run is to have a curatorial team that works well together and is able to work towards

S

B-Sides is a weekly feature where we pose a question about the arts to generate discussion about the role of culture in our everyday lives.

This week’s question is: “What is the worst series finale of all time?”

Warning: this sidebar contains spoilers.

PHOTO BY ELISA NATARELLI, COURTESY OF THE TRINITY ART SHOW EXECUTIVE 2016

The Trinity Art Show takes place each year in the atmospheric Seeley Hall.

one objective,” she said. “Our team has been working together for a couple of years, and each of us [understands] the vision of the show.”

This year’s featured artists include Maddy Bailey, Monica Bujas, Carine Chelhot Lemyre, Vivian Cheng, Clara Chung, Benjamin De Boer & Phat Le, Sandy Ma, Jenna

Robineau, Malcolm Sanger, Hiba Siddiqui, and Eugenia Wong.

The opening reception of the Trinity Art Show will take place on March 24 from 6:00–9:00 pm at Seeley Hall in Trinity College. General admission will take place on March 25 from 12:00–4:00 pm.

In conversation with Nam Nguyen, writer of A Perfect Bowl of Phở An award-winning production returns for a remount at the Cat’s Eye Aidan Currie Associate Features Editor

A Perfect Bowl of Phở, winner of the U of T Drama Festival’s Best Production Award, staged a remount last Saturday at Victoria College’s Cat’s Eye Pub. The musical comedy tells the story of Nam, a young first generation Vietnamese-Canadian, and focuses on phở, a Vietnamese noodle soup.

In the show, phở is the vehicle through which a story of colonialism, cultural differences, and the struggles of immigrant families is told.

The production’s main character also happens to be a version of the writer himself, Nam Nguyen.

“Something I didn’t know I wanted to talk about was being an Asian-Canadian,” Nguyen said. He thought that he could attempt to incorporate Vietnamese history into the story.

“I found a convenient way to do that when I read this article online, it was called ‘The History of Phở’... it was a lot of stuff that I already knew... how phở was invented under French colonialism, but then it just had a bunch of historical tidbits in it. It was just an engaging enough piece that I found this was something that you could stage and people, probably they won’t fall asleep,” he said.

Nguyen explained that his thought process behind writing himself into A Perfect Bowl of Phở was that it was “definitely very much from my perspective and my experiences growing up as a Vietnamese-Canadian kid. It would be somewhat dishonest to portray my experience as everyone’s, so I decided to be entirely straight and upfront about it.”

As a musical, Phở stood out at the Drama Festival. It was the only show to feature an original

I D E S

Mad Men was at its best when it focused on the interactions between its characters, whether they took place at home, in the office, or at an office party where a secretary accidentally shreds a man’s foot with a lawnmower. Its finale, “Person to Person,” separates the characters and provides each of them with predictable endings that were underwhelming considering the overall quality of the show. The final scene features Don Draper figuring out how to achieve happiness, which would have been fine if the show hadn’t already featured countless similar scenes.

— Avneet Sharma

The worst series finale is Mockingjay, the last book of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games series. Neither Prim nor Finnick, my favourite character of the series, had to die. Prim was Katniss’ heart, and Finnick had finally found a family by that point — I felt it was too cruel to cut their lives short.

— Vivian Li

How the hell was Dan Gossip Girl? Why did everyone forgive him so easily for placing them in emotional turmoil for six seasons? Why did Gossip Girl’s series finale feature so many unnecessary cameos and instances of blatant product placement? This entire show made no sense, and I think about it nearly everyday.

— Shania Perera PHOTO COURTESY OF HART HOUSE THEATRE

The cast of A Perfect Bowl of Pho accepts the President’s Award for Best Production at this year’s U of T Drama Festival. score, including a rap song titled “Medium Phở,” which described a 15-year-old Nguyen on a date during which he takes his partner to a phở restaurant. Hilarity ensues.

A Perfect Bowl of Phở received universal praise at the Drama Festival and won the President’s Award for Best Production.

“The thing I like about [winning Best Production] is that it is a ‘Best Production’ award, it’s not just like ‘Nam, you were great,’ but it really, I think, recognizes everyone for their accomplishments. Just like, altogether we may

not have had the best script, or the best direction, or the best acting, but… altogether we were the best product,” he said.

In a media and cultural landscape that often leaves Asian-Canadians out of the picture, Nguyen believes it is important to tell stories that are especially relevant today, such as how phở came to Canada. In telling that story, he had to explore refugee crises and the experience of immigrant parents. “The importance is in all things that come along with [phở],” he said, “and I don’t think that’s ever going to stop being relevant.”

She dies. We wait a whole nine years to meet the love of Ted’s life, the mother of his two children, and she dies. Watching How I Met Your Mother, we all sat eagerly awaiting the lesson that true love will come if you wait patiently enough.

Instead, we got the frustrating suggestion to make a pact with someone to marry each other if you are both still single at 40.

— Jillian Schuler

Science

March 20, 2017 var.st/science science@thevarsity.ca

Revamping the Canadian healthcare system U of T professor Danielle Martin proposes six ways to improve efficiency and quality

Canadian healthcare can be improved by rethinking the way we organize it. NATHAN CHAN/THE VARSITY

Danielle Martin’s six “big ideas” for improving Canadian health care:

1

Strengthening relationships between patients and healthcare providers

2

Including prescription drugs in our Medicare plan

3

Reducing unnecessary tests and interventions

4

Reducing wait times and improving quality of care

5

Introducing a basic income guarantee

6

Scaling up successful existing health care solutions

Elizabeth Loftus Varsity Contributor

When it comes to public health care, more resources will not necessarily result in improved service. According to Danielle Martin, a leader in the movement to improve Canada’s healthcare system, Canada should focus efforts on reorganizing resources, not on finding more.

Martin, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto and the Vice-President of Medical Affairs at Toronto’s Women’s College Hospital, has been advocating for the preservation and improvement of Canada’s health care system for over a decade.

In her recent book Better Now: Six Big Ideas to Improve Health Care for All Canadians, Martin proposes ways to enhance our current health care system’s efficiency and quality.

First, Martin suggests a return to strong relationships between primary health care providers and individual Canadians. In an interview with CBC News, Martin stressed that this relationship will form a safety net for Canadians as they navigate the health care system.

Second, she recommends that the country include prescription drug coverage under Medicare. In a video published on U of T Medicine’s YouTube channel, Martin notes that Canadians pay unusually high prices for generic medications. This forces many Canadians to skip or entirely forgo necessary medications in favour of meeting fixed expenses such as housing and transportation.

Third, Martin explains that our health care system should reduce unnecessary tests and interventions. In the same U of T Medicine video, Martin draws attention to Choosing Wisely Canada, a campaign encouraging physicians and patients to

ask the right questions in order to reduce unnecessary tests, treatments, and procedures.

Fourth, Martin proposes that we reorganize health care delivery to reduce wait times and improve quality. As discussed in her interview with CBC News, Martin suggests the adoption of a bank system in which there is one central line for health care and patients are seen by the next available, qualified provider.

Fifth, she believes our current system would benefit from a basic income guarantee. Income is the primary social determinant of an individual’s health, therefore meeting the basic income needs of Canadians who fall below the poverty line has the potential to make the greatest difference in the health of Canadians, she argues.

Martin’s sixth and final proposal is to scale up solutions which have already been successful locally. Martin cites a Vancouver project in which the collaboration of family physicians and orthopaedic surgeons reduced wait times for hip and knee replacements from eighteen to three months.

If we were to scale up these kinds of innovations to a national level, the impact could be substantial, she says.

According to Martin, the role of public discussion in achieving these proposed changes is “the most critical thing… The kind and quality of change we need most will only come about if it is the consequence of popular consensus and widespread public engagement.”

Productive public discussion includes everything from “the ways that you interact with your own healthcare team as a patient to the questions you ask the canvasser on your doorstep,” she says. “[Each discussion should lead] us to not just think differently but act differently, and demand different actions of the institutions around us.”

In addition to public discussion, Martin emphasizes the importance of political

courage. When asked about the roadblocks faced by political leadership in promoting these suggested reforms, Martin says, “Change is challenging and this is true especially when different interests are competing — healthcare isn’t the sole priority of any government and the status quo is a powerful state.”

Within current discourses on healthcare, Canadians “often hear the argument that change is too costly.” At the same time, we hear “rhetoric about the system being unsustainable.” Martin believes neither is true and that “the only way to overcome opposition to positive change is by starting the debate from a place of strength — with the evidence in hand.”

When asked about the potential of political courage in the upcoming federal election in 2019, Martin says that, while travelling across Canada on her book tour, she has had “even more reason to believe that we have the courage to push for change… A lot of people are very attuned to the things we need to do to make healthcare better for everyone, including our politicians.”

She adds, “What we ne é ed to do is set the stage for that courage to manifest itself in the platform commitments not only of federal parties in 2019, but in provincial elections across the country until then.

Concerns about fiscal constraints are always dominant, which is why it is critical that we talk about how to make improvements to the care Canadians receive, without spending a lot more money.”

Despite the challenges associated with change, Martin remains optimistic and holds that “the important thing is that we never stop believing that our voices matter. Healthcare is one of the most important social programs in the country and we have so much to gain from making it better and so much to lose if we let roadblocks discourage us.”

16 • THE VARSITY • SCIENCE

science@thevarsity.ca

U of T students drive social innovation through entrepreneurship and coffee Team of five excelled in Singapore competition for global Hult Prize Andrew Kidd Varsity Contributor

While the tradition of students treating coffee as figurative ‘fuel’ is alive and well, some U of T graduate students are aiming to lend this term a literal meaning. Team Moto, a group of students studying at the Rotman School of Management and the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, has developed an alternative fuel log made primarily from used coffee grounds.

The team advanced to a high level in the competition for the prestigious Hult Prize.

The Hult Prize Foundation describes itself as “a start-up accelerator for social entrepreneurship” and is a collaboration between the Hult family of philanthropists, their namesake Hult International Business School, and former President Bill Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative.

University and college students across the world compete in local and online competitions for an invitation to one of five regional competitions of the best social enterprises.

Social enterprises are businesses that attempt to provide value to society by tackling shared issues, like improving the environment, while also making profit.

The winners of these five competitions spend a summer working on their social enterprise, supported by the expertise of the Hult Prize Foundation. The winning team is announced by former President Bill Clinton and awarded $1 million USD to continue their efforts to expand their social enterprise.

Seeking to improve the lives of those in refugee camps, Team Moto, named after the Swahili word for ‘fire,’ initially identified gen-

der-based violence as their target issue and soon realized that violence towards women and children frequently happens while they gather firewood.

Looking for an alternative energy source that would allow women and children to avoid collecting firewood, the team was inspired by an Instagram photo of a decorative log made from coffee grounds.

Matthew Frehlich, a graduate student in Electrical & Computer Engineering and a member of Team Moto, outlines how they connected this social media post to a pressing global issue. “Coffee grounds are actually a very good fuel source when properly treated, and Canada alone produces around 400k tonnes of it per year that mainly goes straight to the landfill — we thought why not put it to good use?”

Team Moto is currently testing their coffee log in a refugee camp in Uganda, and they have ambitious plans for next steps. Frehlich says the team will “launch a larger scale pilot program in Africa to verify our business model, develop further strategic partnerships with organizations such as UNHCR, and validate our assumptions on working in refugee camps.”

Having honed their product and pitch, Team Moto advanced to the regional stage of the Hult Prize, competing in Shanghai on March 3. The team advanced to the final pitch round and finished in the top three.

While in Shanghai, Frehlich was heartened by how many students see the potential to “create social good through business.” He said, “The social entrepreneurship community is a fantastic group of passionate people. We were able to meet tons of inspiring entrepreneurs,

NATHAN CHAN/THE VARSITY

Team Moto advanced to the top three in the Hult Prize competition in Shanghai. and it was amazing how accessible everyone was and how willing they are to help.”

If Team Moto had won both the Shanghai competition and the global $1 million USD prize, they “would [have aimed] to launch our pilot and provide our firewood substitute to 5,000 refugees. This seed funding would cover the costs to set up initial processing facilities in Canada and supply chain in Africa, along with R&D to refine our product.”

Frehlich is realistic about the magnitude of the work ahead of the team. “It’s a big challenge, but with the funding and the supplier and distribution partnerships we’ve already developed, we believe we could make it work!”

The history of the Hult Prize suggests that Team Moto could likely “make it work” and drive meaningful social good through their

entrepreneurship. In 2015, the prize was won by a team from the National Chengchi University in Taiwan who proposed improving early childhood education in urban slums in the developing world by leveraging existing local daycares as the foundation for a network of early education franchises.

Closer to home, the 2013 Hult Prize focused on the global food crisis and was won by a team from McGill University who created a social enterprise processing and selling edible insects. Their startup has spread to the United States, Mexico, and Ghana, and is one of the largest commercial providers of insects for human consumption.

Team Moto’s coffee-based solution may be more appetizing than edible insects, but both have potential to create positive social change.

U of T researcher uncovers genes associated with autism spectrum disorder U of T and Google’s collaboration fills some gaps in ‘MSSNG’ autism knowledge Leslie Oldfield Varsity Contributor

The largest genomic analysis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to date, led by Drs. Ryan Yuen and Stephen Scherer, appeared this month in Nature Neuroscience.

The authors completed whole genome sequencing of 5,205 individuals with ASD, a term that encompasses disorders previously considered to be distinct diagnostic entities such as autistic disorder and Asperger’s disorder. ASD is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting approximately one per cent of the population worldwide, with features such as “impaired communication, challenges socializing, repetitive behaviours, and restricted interests.”

As a result of collecting over 5,000 samples from families, the authors uncovered 61 genes that increase an individual’s risk for ASD. Of these 61 genes, 18 were novel and had not been previously reported in connection with the disorder.

It is perhaps unsurprising, given the diversity of disorders under the umbrella of ASD, that many individuals had differing mutations and genes associated with their ASD risk. The authors in this study also looked at over 80 families with hereditary ASD in order to explore the history of the disorder within different families.

When looking at siblings both affected by ASD, “only one-third of the sib-pairs shared the same genetic alteration,” said Yuen.

This study, among others, has “[confirmed] the familial heterogeneity of ASD,” Yuen explained.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN

Drs. Stephen Scherer and Ryan Yuen are world leaders in understanding the genetics behind autism.

ZEANA SAMI HAMDONAH/ THE VARSITY

After analyzing data in over 1,000 families, the authors were able to discover de novo mutations. These are changes in the DNA — the genetic material of an organism — that occur spontaneously in either a parent’s sperm cell, egg cell, or during fertilization.

The mutation in the DNA is retained in each cell as the fertilized egg divides. These de novo mutations may explain ASD in cases where there is no hereditary component.

“Right now there are no medicines for the core features of autism,” said Scherer, Director of The Centre for Applied Genomics and the senior investigator on the paper.

The researchers showed that 80 per cent of the 61 genes they found within their data are connected to networks that could potentially be targeted pharmaceutically.

Not only does this research provide insights into drug treatment, but it can also play a role in improving diagnosis of ASD. Most ASD-affected children are diagnosed after the age of 3, but “if genetic diagnosis is [implemented], intervention can be given for children under [the] age of 3 when they benefit most,” stated Yuen.

This study was able to discern the molecular basis of the individual’s disease in 11.2% of the cases. “We will continue to do whole genome sequencing on more families with ASD in order to complete the autism genetic puzzle,” said Yuen.

To deal with the heterogeneity in ASD, more samples need to be sequenced.

Scherer aims to “get 10,000 samples done by 2017.”

The whole genome data and clinical information generated in this study is uploaded

to Google Cloud. “As far as I know, this is the biggest dataset available to researchers via an ‘open science’ format,” stated Scherer.

The cloud database is accessible to researchers in a controlled-access internet portal, free of charge. Scherer noted that gaining ethical approval to upload patient data to a cloud platform and making it available to researchers represented one of the greatest challenges.

The MSSNG project, to which this database and study belong, is a collaboration between Google, Autism Speaks, and The Hospital for Sick Children.

According to its website, MSSNG’s goal is to create the world’s largest genomic database on autism.

The omission of letters in MSSNG, pronounced ‘missing,’ represents the information that has yet to be uncovered in relation to autism. As research continues in this field, these data may be leveraged to fill the gaps in knowledge about autism.

MARCH 20, 2017 • 17

var.st/science

How cells react to nanoparticles

Science Around Town

Advances in understanding nanoparticle uptake by cells could lead to more effective vehicles of drug delivery

Plan Your Program Expo The Faculty of Arts & Science will be holding a two-day expo to help students with their program selection. This expo will give students the opportunity to discuss questions with professors and registrars, explore all the programs the faculty has to offer, and meet other U of T students.

Date: March 22–23 Time: 12:00–3:00 pm Location: Sidney Smith Hall Lobby, 100 St. George Street Admission: Free

MIRKA LOISELLE/THE VARSITY

Charis Lam Varsity Contributor

Researchers from U of T, in collaboration with scientists from Florida State University (FSU) and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), have discovered that enriching certain sizes of silica nanoparticles improves their ability to enter human cells, opening potential avenues for the design of drug delivery vehicles.

Nanoparticle drug delivery addresses one of the prevailing failures of the pharmaceutical industry: of the tens of thousands of drug candidates that the industry churns out each year, the vast majority fail. Many are too poorly soluble to enter the bloodstream, some flush straight through the kidneys, and others fall apart in the body before they can be of any benefit.

Scientists seeking to rescue these casualties of the drug discovery pipeline have turned to nanoparticles.

Nanoparticles measure millionths of a millimetre in diameter.

Because they occupy the same size range as proteins, they accumulate inside cells by exploiting the cell’s existing mechanisms for engulfing biomolecules.

Drugs loaded within nanoparticles can thus hitch a ride into the cell interior. Nanoparticles also protect drugs, hiding fragile molecules from the physiological environment and screening hydrophobic, or ‘water-fearing,’ molecules from the watery interiors of our bodies.

As always, when we meddle with our cells, we can do harm as well as good. Particles of the wrong material, or the right material in the wrong size, can induce cytotoxicity, damaging the cell’s lipid

membrane and causing oxidative stress, or genotoxicity, which harms the genetic information that encodes the cell.

Scientists seek to maximize the benefits while minimizing the harm. For that, a deeper understanding of nanoparticle toxicity is required.

The Florida-Toronto-Karlsruhe team leapt to fill the knowledge gap. Led by Dr. Steven Lenhert from FSU, Dr. Geoffrey Ozin from U of T, and Dr. Christian Kübel from KIT, they measured the cellular toxicity of various sizes of silica nanoparticles.

percentage of drug that reaches the bloodstream after ingestion.

But less toxic is not necessarily non-toxic, and even silica is not without potential drawbacks. As demonstrated in some laboratory studies, it has produced inflammation and causes oxidative damage in cells.

The researchers sought to better understand this toxicity and how it may be driven by particle size. They treated a lab-bred cell line using lipid-coated silica particles of varying diameters and found that some size ranges depressed cell viability significantly more than others.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CHENXI QIAN

Pictured here is the U of T team behind this nanotech research.

Better known in its macroscale forms as sand or quartz, silica is relatively cheap and chemically inert. It forms nanoparticles that were “previously reported to be less toxic comparing to other semiconductor nanoparticles,” according to Chenxi Qian, a PhD student in Ozin’s lab. “That’s why we are more interested in them.”

They are also demonstrably effective. In laboratory dissolution studies, silica nanoparticles enhance the dissolution rate of poorly soluble drugs, and in beagle dogs, they increase bioavailability — the

Then came a twist: contrary to the current understanding of nanoparticle toxicity — that smaller particles tend to be more toxic, possibly due to their larger surface area-to-volume ratio — diameter of the particles did not correlate with toxicity.

Equally interesting was when the team measured the toxicity of a sample of pooled nanoparticles, which contained particles of all sizes, and found it to be relatively low, even though some of those sizes exhibited higher toxicity when used alone. In the nanoparticle produc-

tion process, chemists first produce a single batch comprised of many particle sizes and then separate the batch into different-sized fractions.

During that separation process, the research team postulated that they must have enriched some fractions for toxic factors.

The team hypothesized two possible drivers behind these more toxic fractions. First, that certain fractions might be inherently more toxic; second, that all sizes of nanoparticles might be equally toxic, but the more toxic fractions might more readily enter cells.

The team found little evidence to support the first hypothesis, but when they tested the second, they saw the more toxic nanoparticles at a higher intracellular density. Under a fluorescent microscope, the more toxic fractions lit up the cell interiors.

This discovery reveals a contradiction in the functioning of our vehicles of drug delivery: we want them to enter cells to deposit their cargo and produce a therapeutic effect, but it is precisely this easy entrance into the cell that seems to increase their toxicity.

Any attempt to reconcile these opposing effects will require a better understanding of how nanoparticles interact with cells, especially with the cell membrane, the most obvious barrier to entry. At the end of their paper, which was published in Nature Scientific Reports, the team laid out their next steps: to further delve into the toxic fractions, enrich them for their most active components, and elucidate their mechanisms of interaction.

The tools for safer, more effective drug delivery lie tantalizingly on the horizon. In their recent work, Lenhert, Ozin, and Kübel have taken us closer. We will walk the next mile, but first come more experiments.

CERN Discovers a Higgs Boson U of T Physics Professor William Trischuk is hosting a public talk where he will be discussing his work with the European Organization for Nuclear Research involving the ATLAS experiment, of which he is a founder, and other discoveries in the world of physics.

Date: Thursday, March 23 Time: 2:00–3:15 pm Location: Program Room, Deer Park Library, 40 St. Clair Avenue East Admission: Free ASX Star Talk: The Algonquin Pulsar Project The Astronomy & Space Exploration Society will be hosting U of T Astrophysics Professor Ue-Li Pen. He will be discussing how science can use astrophysics to answer questions regarding space phenomena and the existence of our universe.

Date: Thursday, March 23 Time: 8:00–10:00 pm Location: McLennan Physical Laboratories, 60 St. George Street Admission: Free Voyager’s Odyssey: A Small Probe’s Adventures into Interstellar Space Voyagers 1 and 2, which were launched from Earth in 1977, are now about to venture into interstellar space, the farthest any man-made object has travelled in space. The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada will be holding a public talk to discuss the journeys of the two probes and their discoveries so far.

Date: Friday, March 24 Time: 7:00–10:00 pm Location: Room 79, U of T Astronomy Building, 50 St. George Street Admission: $6 with registration

Sports

March 20, 2017 var.st/sports sports@thevarsity.ca

Big-league hockey comes to Sin City New NHL franchise Vegas Golden Knights latest to roost in the Sun Belt Brock Edwards Associate Sports Editor

When the newest National Hockey League (NHL) franchise was officially announced in June 2016 as part of the league’s expansion to 31 teams, responses were mixed. Canadians’ hopes for the return of a team to Quebéc City or a new arrival to the Greater Toronto Area were dashed when the NHL announced the Vegas Golden Knights as the league’s newcomer.

But in the Sun Belt of the US, excitement abounded.

Slowly but surely, ice hockey is migrating south. While this is not a new development — the first major NHL expansion brought two teams to sunny California 50 years ago — the meteoric rise in hockey’s popularity down south is becoming increasingly hard to ignore, even as Canadians insist that hockey’s true place remains in the frigid north.

Recent changes in the 100-year-old league exhibit a noticeable trend as the moving front of the hockey market extends toward sunnier climes. Of the 15 expansions and relocations since 1991, 10 are located in cities south of the fortieth parallel — stretching from roughly northern California to Maryland.

As with any other region, the ultimate metric of success down south is wins — specifically, Stanley Cup wins. The Tampa Bay Lightning and the Dallas Stars have each had multiple successful runs and claimed a Stanley Cup apiece in the last 26 years.

California’s three NHL teams have consistently tallied impressive season records and have been playoff mainstays each year, collectively winning three Stanley Cups — the Anaheim Ducks in 2007; the Los Angeles Kings in 2012 and 2014.

It is a well-known fact in the league that the

road swing through California is, for most visiting teams, a trip through hell; at a critical time in their season as they chase for a playoff spot, the Toronto Maple Leafs recently went 0–3 in their annual Golden State trip.

With the early advent of artificial ice and the continued improvements in arena technology today, hockey has shifted from an outdoor winter pastime to a sport that can be played anywhere at any time of year.

A 2015 outdoor game in San Jose between the Kings and San Jose Sharks was played at a balmy 14 °C, nearly twice the average temperature for the league’s previous 14 outdoor games.

While the ice surface was a little choppier than usual, the game passed without incident and was played in front of more than 70,000 fans, underscoring hockey’s surge in popularity in the Sun Belt in recent years.

But is Sin City the right place for a hockey team?

Ice hockey has, in fact, been around for decades in Las Vegas. The city has been home to semi-professional teams since the 1960s, starting with the Gamblers and Wranglers of the ECHL and the Thunder of the International Hockey League, who reached the Conference Finals in both the 1995 and the 1996 seasons. In 1991, Las Vegas hosted an outdoor exhibition game between the NHL’s New York Rangers and the Kings before a crowd of over 13,000.

But the Golden Knights will be Vegas’ first major-league sports team, and the viability of hockey in the desert is about to undergo a second trial, as the on- and off-ice struggles of the Arizona, formerly Phoenix, Coyotes continue. With a population of 2 million and a dearth of any other major sports franchise, Las Vegas is being touted as a fertile hockey

IHTESHAM ISMAIL/CC UNSPLASH

Las Vegas is the latest in a long line of NHL expansion cities. market. Early results are promising as the Knights hit their mark of selling 13,800 season tickets for their inaugural 2017–2018 campaign.

Importantly, the team also has a brand new home arena: the $500 million T-Mobile Arena om the vegas strip which opened for events last year.

The United States hockey program has been challenging Canada’s hockey supremacy for years. Their gold medal win against Team Canada at the 2016 World Junior Championships was a shot heard around the world — the Americans have arrived.

Leafs prodigy Auston Matthews grew up in

Scottsdale, Arizona, and is thus a product of the desert. He is heralded as a future NHL superstar and is currently on track to break the Leafs rookie single-season points record set by Wendel Clark in the 1985–1986 season.

The evolution of the NHL to warmer climes is unstoppable, even if potential northern markets continue to go untapped.

The powerhouse of American ice hockey talent may be in large part originating in the growing fan market of the Sun Belt, where the league’s foray into the desert is creating a new generation of hockey players and fans.

Yet another IOC scandal Kenyan Olympic Committee stripped of IOC funding Daniel Samuel Associate Sports Editor

A whirlwind week of drama at the boardroom level saw the National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOCK) reject a political reform proposal from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), lose their IOC funding, and then finally vote to adopt the same rejected policy in a last ditch effort to escape the possibility of a ban.

While the IOC still hasn’t made a clear decision on how to punish Russia for their state-sponsored doping scandal, they seem to have set their sights on the NOCK. The IOC’s issues with the NOCK initially began at the Rio Games, where Kenyan officials regularly became a distraction and acted in a detrimental fashion towards the performance of their athletes.

Embarrassment began for Kenya in the lead up to the Rio Olympics, when sprinter Carvin Nkanta was unable to compete in the competition due to not having proper documentation, and fellow athlete Julius Yego nearly missed his chance to compete in the

games because his travel arrangements to Rio hadn’t been properly organized.

During the Olympics, the ridiculousness continued as uniforms were taken by officials and never provided to athletes. Two Kenyan coaches were sent home from Rio, one for posing as an athlete in order to give a urine sample and the other for requesting money from undercover journalists who were posing as athlete representatives to obtain information about the schedules of doping tests.

The nation’s Olympic program is in crisis; it has seen a wave of Kenyan track athletes abandon their native land to compete for other nations, like the US, Turkey, and Bahrain. At the 2016 Olympics alone, 20 Kenyan-born athletes competed for a different country.

A total ban is unlikely, but the IOC’s decision to cut off funding and demand reform was made with the athlete’s best interests in mind.

The onus is now on the NOCK, who must make fundamental changes to improve their organization or they’ll likely see more of their athletes leave to compete for better equipped nations.

The IOC is facing one of the most difficult challenges in the history of its organization in Russia and continuing to have to deal with the NOCK’s incompetence of can be seen as an absolute waste of their time.

U.S. ARMY/CC FLICKR

Kenya has long been known for their running program, but it is uncertain how far they will be able to go without IOC funding.

MARCH 20, 2017 • 19

var.st/sports

Leicester City — how the mighty have fallen The fairytale is over Kareem Shahin Varsity Contributor

Last February, Leicester City sat atop the Premier League table. Fast forward a little over a year, and the club currently sits in fifteenth place, only three points above the relegation zone, struggling to capture last season’s incredible run of form.

Leicester City’s title-winning manager Claudio Ranieri, was sacked from a team that looks absolutely bereft of confidence.

The Premier League’s greatest fairytale story seems to be just a one season wonder.

Following their unprecedented Premier League triumph in 2016, the immediate concern that worried Leicester fans was whether they could ward off interest from the rest of Europe in order to protect their key players. Despite interest from major clubs around Europe throughout the summer, Leicester City managed to retain the services of star players Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez.

The club, however, was unable to keep midfielder N’golo Kanté, who transferred to Chelsea FC for £32 million. Kanté’s primary duty is closing down the opposition in order to grant attack-minded teammates more freedom and mobility, and he has helped Chelsea to 69 points and a spot atop the table this season.

By the end of the 2015–2016 season, Kanté led the league in 175 successful tackles and 156 interceptions. Leicester City have been lacklustre defensively this season, as they’ve already managed to concede 47 goals, com-

pared to last season’s final tally of 36 — and there are still 10 games left to play.

The loss of Kanté has clearly hurt Leicester City, as the talismanic Frenchman was responsible for anchoring the midfield and linking the play between the defence and midfield. The protection he provided his defenders proved to be invaluable and it does not seem as if any players in the current Leicester squad can offer anything similar.

In addition to Leicester City’s shaky defence, their offensive quality has declined and become inefficient. So far they’ve only managed to score 30 goals, less than what they had at this point last season.

Vardy has only managed to produce seven goals this season, three of which were scored against Manchester City in December. Vardy’s offensive productivity is nowhere near last season’s output, as he’s been struggling to get off shots and complete his dribbles.

Vardy cannot bear responsibility for Leicester City’s offensive woes, as he relies heavily on service from his fellow teammates.

Mahrez, Leicester City’s main creative outlet, has struggled to generate any meaningful chances this season, scoring only five times and assisting twice. Last season he totalled 17 goals and 11 assists. Mahrez’s inability to recapture last season’s form has left Leicester City strikers feeding off scraps because they simply do not possess the technical ability to create chances for themselves.

Leicester City’s success last year was not solely due to their players consistently putting in world class performances nor was it due to Ranieri’s tactical prowess. In fact,

BEN SUTHERLAND/CC FLICKR

Things may be looking up but Leicester have still fallen a long way down. some of the credit goes to the other nineteen Premier League clubs; the opposition allowed Leicester City to play how they wanted.

Leicester City’s team statistics after week 28 this season seem roughly the same as last season: 46 per cent possession, 71 per cent accuracy, and 6,867 completed passes this year, compared to 46 per cent possession, 71 per cent accuracy, and 6,469 completed passes this time last year.

The difference lies in the amount of goalscoring chances they’ve been able to create, which is significantly less and reflected in their assists total.

Premier League teams have adapted their tactics to contain Leicester City’s quick counter-attacking football. Defenders are

now playing deeper to neutralize the threat posed by Vardy’s pace and midfielders are closing down Leicester City’s playmakers a lot quicker.

It’s arguable that the mentality of the opposition has also changed. Managers have instructed their players to avoid complacency and not to underestimate Leicester City. They aren’t playing the same team that finished fourteenth at the end of the 2014– 2015 season — they are playing the reigning champions of England.

Leicester City are currently embroiled in a relegation battle and might set a new record in the process: the first Premier League champions to get relegated the following season.

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To learn more about these programs and other graduate certificates, visit mohawkcollege.ca/gradstudies

Saturday, April 1, 2017 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

40+ Seneca graduate certificate programs Finish in 2 or 3 semesters Build a powerful industry network through work experience TO REGISTER AND FOR MORE INFORMATION:

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senecacollege.ca/openhouse