November 13, 2017

Vol. CXXXVIII, No. 9 November 13, 2017 thevarsity.ca —— University of Toronto’s Student Newspaper Since 1880

“150 for Whom?”

Panel discussion focuses on colonialism and Indigeneity in Canada

News

page 3

Faculty association says Peterson creating “unsafe” climate

The professor proposed a website that would identify “neomarxist,” “postmodern” courses and faculty

News

page 4

There’s a new coach in town

University holds investments in offshore tax havens, leaked documents show The outpouring of revelations from the Paradise Papers leak has shed new light on the scope and scale of international money in offshore tax havens. The leak implicates high profile politicians from across the world, wealthy businesspeople, and even the University of Toronto.

Continued on page 3

Ryan Medel is leading the men’s hockey team. The Varsity talks with him about Toronto, the team, and the year ahead

Sports

page 17

2 • THE VARSITY

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Sudoku answers from Issue 8 October Campus Police reportings

35

3

2

2

9

2

2

1

Theft Mischief

7

Trespass

Robbery Suspicious person

2

Property damage

Fraud Break and enter

2

Harassment

Missing person Suspicious incident

1

Threats

1

Liquor license act

1

Motor vehicle collision

1

Assault

1

Extortion

1

Bomb threat

NOVEMBER 13, 2017 • 3

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University holds investments in offshore tax havens, leaked documents show Cayman Islands, Malta home for parts of endowment, pension funds Jack O. Denton News Editor

U of T’s endowment and pension funds have been found to hold investments in two offshore tax havens located in the Cayman Islands and Malta.

These revelations come out of the second-largest document leak in history by file size: the Paradise Papers. Leaked documents from the offshore law firm Appleby and business registries in 19 tax jurisdictions were first reported on November 5 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Using these documents, the Toronto Star reported last Wednesday that U of T invests money in companies in the Cayman Islands and in Malta — two jurisdictions in which taxes are very low. While U of T is not breaking any laws by way of these investments, it does raise ethical questions for a university that lists “fiscal responsibility and accountability” among its four principled commitments to the university community.

The investments The Paradise Papers show that U of T’s pension fund is a shareholder in WLR IV Loans AIV Feeder (Cayman), Ltd., and they name the Governing Council specifically as an investor in a Maltese-listed company. Neither investment is named in the university’s annual financial statements.

The University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation (UTAM) manages all of U of T’s $2.6 billion endowment and $4.4 billion pension funds, and it is responsible for the decisions to invest offshore. This responsibility does not come lightly: the head of UTAM is ranked among the top paid public provincial employees, and historically earns much more than U of T’s president.

William Moriarty, the former head of UTAM, made $1,045,582.62 in 2016 despite having retired four months into the year.

“The university is aware of how UTAM makes investments on behalf of U of T,” said Althea Blackburn-Evans, Director of Media Relations at U of T. “Our diversification strategy would be much like any large institutional investor... we have a fiduciary duty to protect and grow the investments we make on behalf of our staff and faculty whose pensions we manage, and to make the most of the donations we receive, for the ultimate benefit of our students.”

UTAM made the investment in the Cayman Islands 10 years ago and calls it “a very small position,” according to reporting in the Toronto Star.

The taxes Nothing about the offshore investments, which the university may be profiting off of, is against Canadian tax law.

“U of T is a tax exempt institution. It does not pay tax on its investment income, regardless of whether those assets are located in Canada, or other countries including tax havens,” said Michael Smart, a tax expert and professor in U of T’s Department of Economics. “There is nothing illegal about having investments in tax havens.”

“If there’s no tax advantage, why do they do it?” asked Smart — and he has an answer. According to the professor, many investment funds and private equity firms are now located in tax havens because their managers receive tax advantages there.

“They are probably also there because some of those funds’ clients prefer the secrecy of tax havens and they may not be fully reporting their income to tax authorities in their home countries, where tax may be due on their offshore investments,” said Smart.

Ethics and optics Len Brooks, a professor of business ethics and accounting in UTM’s Department of Management, said that because the investments are completely legal, the issue of investing in tax havens is mostly about optics.

“There are some who would argue that if you earn money in a state, then you should be leaving some tax to be paid in that state,” said Brooks. “And if the company was not doing that, then some of the supporters of the university might find it unattractive, and some of those may find it sufficiently unattractive to withdraw their support for the university.”

Brooks said that, when it comes to whether or not it’s right that a publicly funded institution has investments in offshore tax havens, it depends on what the company is doing with the money that’s invested.

WLR IV Loans AIV Feeder (Cayman), Ltd., one of the university’s holdings, was founded by the United States Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, who has a net worth of hundreds of millions. It is part of a network of many offshore companies related to the Secretary of Commerce. Another company of Ross’, WL Ross & Co., reimbursed investors to the tune of $10.4 million USD and paid a $2.3 million USD fine to the US Securities and Exchange Commission last year. The fine was paid for overcharging investors on management fees.

One of the major findings of the Paradise Papers leak is that Ross has ties to some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s

cronies through WL Ross & Co. The company is the largest shareholder in Navigator Holdings Ltd, a gas shipping business.

One of Navigator’s largest clients is the Russian company Sibur.

Gennady Timchenko, a friend of Putin, and Putin’s son-in-law, Kirill Shamalov, are among the owners of Sibur.

Smart said that, more broadly, “Tax havens are a big problem in the world today.” He said that “many Canadian corporations have subsidiaries in tax havens,” and some have been accused of using the havens to shift profits out of Canada to “avoid tax in inappropriate ways.”

But, if as Smart said, offshore tax havens are simply where the money is, then it’s important to note what exactly the income on the investments is used for.

According to Blackburn-Evans, the income is used for “student aid, endowed chairs, research and teaching, and new academic programs, in support of more than 85,000 students.” She specified that 43 per cent of the income from the $2.6 billion endowment goes toward student aid.

Smart said that, in his opinion, there is nothing unethical about this for U of T. UTAM became a signatory to the United Nations-backed Principles for Responsible Investing in December 2016. The corporation was also instructed in the March 2016 “Beyond Divestment” report from President Meric Gertler to apply environmental, social, and governance factors into its investments and to increase transparency. It released its first-ever report on responsible investing over the summer.

In the summer, UTAM’s President and Chief Investment Officer Daren Smith spoke to The Varsity about the report and the corporation’s commitment to ethical investing and transparency.

“We have a lot to learn here, and I’m not going to pretend like we’ve figured it all out,” said Smith. “There may be some bumps in the road, and there may be some on the advocacy side that we need to learn from, but so far I think we’ve been quite successful and we haven’t had any hiccups.”

Brooks said that the policies of the university related to its investments “need to be reviewed on an ongoing basis,” and that “the application of those policies need to be reported on by the investment advisors.”

“It’s not as black and white as many people think when they originally consider it,” said Brooks. “But there are fundamental issues that the university needs to reflect upon and conceivably build into its policies.”

“150 for Whom?” tackles anti-racism on Canada’s sesquicentennial Panel features CFS Chairperson Coty Zachariah, former UTSU Executive Director Sandra Hudson Josie Kao Associate News Editor

Canada’s sesquicentennial anniversary, while widely celebrated, has also raised critical discussion regarding what it means to celebrate the past 150 years as seen through the lens of colonialism.

On November 11, the Centre for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies hosted a workshop and symposium event titled “150 for Whom, Canada? Colonialism and Indigeneity across Lands” at U of T’s Ontario Institute of Studies in Education.

The event included a panel discussion featuring Sandra Hudson, former University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) Executive Director and co-founder of Black Lives Matter – Toronto; Coty Zachariah, current National Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS); George Elliott Clarke, former Poet Laureate of Toronto; Eve Haque, associate professor at York University; and Jennifer Mills, a postdoctoral researcher at York. The event was moderated by Alissa Trotz, an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies.

The discussion focused in large part on the ways that the panelists perceived Canada to have failed racialized and

Indigenous communities, and how, as Hudson opined, Canadians should not be celebrating 150 years of conquest, violence, and settler colonialism.

“When I think about Canada 150, I’m thinking of 150 years of what?” she asked. “As a Black person, I don’t see myself reflected in anything about Canada 150 at all.”

The panelists also discussed the basis of Canada’s foundation, asking why Canadians are celebrating the past 150 years when the country’s history stretches far beyond that.

Zachariah, who is Afro-Indigenous, argued that the sesquicentennial celebrates the erasure of the history of Indigenous peoples who have been here much longer than European settlers. “When I think about 150 and 10,000, there’s just no comparison,” he said.

Clarke stated that it was also important to remember the original reason for Confederation, saying that “Canada is, in my opinion, the result of the British empire’s need to establish a bulwark against American manifest destiny, nothing more and nothing less than that.”

There was also discussion about the role of language in Canada’s history with Indigenous peoples.

Haque, who teaches in York’s Department of Languages,

Literatures and Linguistics, spoke about the “importance of language” and how colonialism has destroyed parts of Indigenous culture.

“It is also through the imposition of colonial languages and the violent expunging of Indigenous languages and other languages that are here that colonialism is trying to break Indigenous relationship with land,” she said.

Zachariah echoed Haque’s point, saying, “They stole your language and your culture and they charge you $10,000 a year to get it back,” referring to the tuition some students might have to pay in order to learn Indigenous languages.

When asked by The Varsity how he plans to use his position as CFS National Chairperson to educate students on these issues, Zachariah said that it would be “by having this conversation, by being open to talking to places like The Varsity about what it means and what it could mean, and how we can form better relationships moving forward.” He said his role as chairperson can be to help foster those conversations.

He also said that he was “very open to working with any school,” including U of T, despite the UTSU’s current anti-CFS stance.

Hudson declined to comment.

4 • THE VARSITY • NEWS

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Faculty members pen statement condemning Peterson’s proposed website

Website would target “postmodern, neo-Marxist” profs

Like Pandora's Box, some things are meant to stay closed.

TEXTBOOKS AREN'T ONE OF THOSE THINGS.

U of T to meet with faculty over concerns. STEVEN LEE/THE VARSITY

Aidan Currie Deputy News Editor

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Faculty members at the Women and Gender Studies Institute (WGSI) as well as the University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA) have expressed concern over a proposed website by U of T psychology professor Jordan Peterson “for the purpose of identifying and ranking courses and professors that he advocates should be removed from the university,” such as women and gender studies as well as “ethnic and racial studies.”

The proposed website — introduced by Peterson in Q&A videos on his YouTube channel and in his speech at the Canadian Freedom Summit hosted by Students in Support of Free Speech back in June — would supposedly allow students to upload course descriptions and professor names that would be fed into an artificial intelligence system “to parse apart the postmodern lexicon automatically.”

While the website would start off with U of T, Peterson has said that he wants to expand it to analyze courses across North America.

Peterson said in a Q&A video uploaded on October 3 that he hopes to launch the website in time for the start of the January semester.

At the Canadian Freedom Summit, Peterson identified courses and programs he sees as “corrupt,” including English literature, sociology, anthropology, education, and law.

“Women’s studies, and all the ethnic studies and racial studies, studies groups, man, those things have to go, and the faster they go the better,” said Peterson.

A letter from faculty members at the WGSI states that “the harassment and security problems that this website encourages is therefore guaranteed to garner international attention to U of T. U of T is already in the news for events at Massey College, and this website is aimed at sparking an even larger

storm on campus and in the media.”

In a statement posted on the UTFA’s website, faculty members say that “instructors of the potentially targeted courses believe that their autonomy as educators may be under threat.” The UTFA executive has asked to meet with the Provost’s office to discuss the matter, which they say is a threat to the academic mission of the university.

The statement further argues that Peterson uses “violence-tinged language” in his speeches describing the website. They reference his Canadian Freedom Summit speech, wherein “he stated that making purportedly ‘postmodern neomarxist’ arguments ‘should immediately get you punched in the nose hard enough to knock you out.’”

“We strongly request that action is taken by university leadership to proactively prevent this harassment before it begins,” reads the WGSI letter, signed by Rinaldo Walcott, Director of the WGSI, and Michelle Murphy, a professor at WGSI and in the Department of History U of T’s Director of Media Relations Althea Blackburn-Evans told The Varsity that the administration will be meeting with faculty members to hear their concerns.

In response to the media coverage of backlash against his proposed website, Peterson tweeted, “The postmodern radicals don’t want students to know what philosophy drives their agenda.”

Peterson has built an international following over the course of the past year.

He first gained attention in September 2016 when his YouTube lecture series, “Professor against political correctness,” sparked debate on campus and gained international attention.

The Varsity has reached out to Peterson for comment, who is currently on sabbatical and not teaching classes.

NOVEMBER 13, 2017 • 5

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Campaign period for OPIRG funding referendum begins November 13 Referendum will decide whether to eliminate group’s levy Daniel Kim Varsity Staff

The campaign period for the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) referendum begins November 13. The referendum will decide whether the $0.50 levy for the group will be eliminated.

OPIRG is a province-wide network of campus groups that share a mandate “for action, education, and research on issues of social and environmental justice.” OPIRG-Toronto is one of 11 chapters on university campuses across Ontario.

The referendum will take place from November 20–22 on U of T’s voting website.

Should the referendum pass, the collection of the levy would cease as of the Summer 2018 session.

An unidentified group of students began collecting signatures for their petition to defund OPIRG during orientation week. In an interview with The Varsity on September 13, Souzan Mirza, a board member of OPIRGToronto, stated that she was unaware of any anti-OPIRG movements.

On October 6, a formal petition that called

for the referendum was submitted to the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU).

However, due to an administrative error on the part of the UTSU, the voting period for the referendum had to be pushed to a later date. Under normal circumstances, any referendum that involves a recognized campus group is put to a vote concurrently with the fall and spring elections, as stated in the Charter for Referenda.

“The notice requirements for referenda are outdated and overly burdensome, and [the UTSU was] unable meet them by the deadline,” wrote UTSU Vice-President Internal Daman Singh in an email to The Varsity. “It would have been unfair to penalize the petitioners for the UTSU’s failure, so we decided to hold the referendum at a later date under Schedule A [of the Charter for Referenda].

The petitioners did everything that was required of them, so the referendum should proceed. The timing of the referendum doesn’t confer an advantage or disadvantage on anyone.”

The quorum for the referendum vote is 7.5 per cent of students who currently pay the OPIRGToronto fee. If quorum is not met, the referen-

The campaign to defund OPIRG remains shrouded in mystery. MAX XI/THE VARSITY

dum will not affect OPIRG’s current funding.

Based on its 2016 financial statements, OPIRG-Toronto had a total revenue of $147,338, of which 93.3 per cent, or $137,467, came from the student levy. In that year, the group’s total expenses were $149,419 which meant the group had a net loss of $2,081.

“Defunding OPIRG will impact the countless students who enjoy our programming, volunteer opportunities, and rely on our

services throughout the year. OPIRG supports equity and anti-oppression initiatives on campus, and defunding our organization will impact already marginalized students and organizations on campus,” said Mirza in an earlier interview with The Varsity.

OPIRG-Toronto declined a request for an interview, stating that its current position on this issue has not changed since the last article regarding this referendum.

Fighting a ‘toxic threat,’ Indigenous groups protest at Queen’s Park Demonstration opposes government nuclear policy, discarding of toxic waste on Indigenous land Ilya Bañares Associate News Editor

Members of the Anishinabek and Iroquois Caucus First Nations, as well as the Bawating Water Protectors, led a demonstration alongside environmental activists and supporters in Queen’s Park on November 9. The purpose of the protest was to demonstrate against the provincial government’s nuclear policy and the proposed discarding of toxic waste on Indigenous lands, as well as to push for renewable energy. At its peak, the crowd consisted of around 100 people.

The demonstration, named “We Want a Renewable Ontario,” called for the phasing out of the province’s nuclear stations. A particular focus was placed on the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. Originally designed to halt operations in 2018, the current Liberal government pushed back the deadline to keep the station functional for four more years.

Protesters also criticized the Ontario Power Generation (OPG), a Crown corporation, for its plan to dump its nuclear waste on First Nations lands in the province, arguing that the proposal could “potentially [poison] the waterways, soil, and air forever with radioactive contamination.” A 2017 OPG report contended that a site near the Lake Huron coast would be the ideal location for the toxic refuse. In order for this to happen, Catherine McKenna, the Federal Environment Minister, would have to approve the plan.

The group also demanded that the provincial government accept Québec’s offer to supply renewable energy at a lower cost than Ontario can provide, potentially replacing the current power generated at nuclear

stations. In a pamphlet distributed during the event, the coalition called on “Premier Wynne to support a deal with Quebec that would enable us to replace our high-cost nuclear generation with low-cost renewable water power.” Many signs during the assembly supported this message.

Most of the demonstrators carried signs reading “Close Pickering,” and flags with “Nuclear Power? No Thanks,” written on them.

Candace Day Neveau of the Bawating Water Protectors emphasized the critical role of Indigenous worldviews in this context. “In our language, there’s no word for owning the Earth,” she said. “The Canadian government is just absolutely disgusting, and I’ll say it again: Canada is not a country. It’s a settler idea. This is Turtle Island and we have to own that. We have to be accountable to our identities here.”

Glen Hare, Deputy Grand Council Chief of the Anishinabek Nation, called on media groups to “stand with us; fight with us,” eliciting reactions from CBC journalists on site covering the event. “Only when bad things happen to us are we in the spotlight,” he said.

Amanda Harvey-Sánchez, student member of Governing Council and Academic Director for Social Sciences at the University of Toronto Students’ Union, was among the attendees. Harvey-Sánchez said in an email that she joined the rally “as an act of solidarity with Indigenous youth calling for a phase out of nuclear power in Ontario and a transition to 100% renewable energy.” Harvey-Sánchez reiterated that the proposed burial and abandonment of nuclear waste on Indigenous lands poses a threat to waterways and bodies of water like the Chalk River and Lake Hu-

The demonstration followed a November 8 panel on radioactive waste on Indigenous lands.

MIN HO LEE/THE VARSITY

ron. “The province and Canada more broadly has made a commitment to work towards reconciliation with Indigenous peoples,” she said. “The abandonment of radioactive waste on their territory without consent stands in conflict with that commitment.”

Julia DaSilva, a second-year U of T student, was one of the protesters in Queen’s Park. “It’s really crucial that we have as many people as possible at events like this,” said DaSilva, “so that politicians can’t pretend that there isn’t public opposition to their irresponsibility — to their allowing the colonial project to continue.”

The group tried to bring a mock nuclear

waste drum to the office of Premier Kathleen Wynne but were stopped by on-site security.

The protestors then began chanting, “Take your waste, we don’t want it.”

The protest followed a panel from the previous day called “Toxic Threat: Radioactive Waste on Indigenous Lands” held at Massey College. The event hosted speakers Patrick Madahbee, Grand Chief of the Anishinabek Nation; Angela Bischoff, Outreach Director for the Ontario Clean Air Alliance; Neveau and Meawasige of the Bawating Water Protectors; and Dr. Gordon Edwards from the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.

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U of T students pay respects in Remembrance Day service Annual Remembrance Day service recognizes university members who served in the military

Over 1,100 students and faculty members gave their lives in service. SILA NAZ ELGIN/THE VARSITY

Ann Marie Elpa Varsity Contributor

November 10 marked the University of Toronto’s 93rd Remembrance Day service organized by the Soldiers’ Tower Committee.

Held annually since Soldiers’ Tower was built in 1924, the service pays tribute to the many Canadian servicepeople. This year’s service recognized the 1,181 students and faculty members who sacrificed their lives fighting for freedom.

In attendance were members of the Soldiers’ Tower Committee, religious leaders, university faculty members, student organizations, veterans, and active members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

The service commenced with a few words of welcome from Matthew Jurczak, chair of the Soldiers’ Tower Committee, and a prayer from the chaplain, Major the Reverend Richard Ruggle.

The poem “In Flanders Fields” was read by Major Jana Lok of the 25 Field Ambulance

unit and the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing. The poem was written by University College alumnus Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, who was a veteran of the South African War and died in 1918 while serving in the later years of World War I. Francis Vivian Morton, also one of the many U of T men who enlisted during World War I, was recognized for his service in a statement read by Austin Cotton, President of Toronto’s Theta Delta Chi Fraternity Chapter.

“In March 1915, this small-town boy from Portage la Prairie, Manitoba cut short his studies at University College and enlisted with several other U of T men in the 25th Battery, Canadian Field Artillery,” said Cotton.

“Reaching France with the same unit in January 1916, [Morton] served continuously for nearly two years, through the battles of St. Eloi, Ypres, the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Fresnoy, and Hill 70. He was killed at Passchendaele while in charge of his gun, which was in action on the afternoon of November 10, 100 years ago today,” continued Cotton.

Also recognized was the service of Jewish and First Nations people in the military via a memorial prayer led by Rabbi Julia Appel and a statement given by First Nations House Elder Andrew Wesley. Wesley recalled a story from his own father, who served in the First World War. “They were 40 young Omushkagowuk who enlisted for the First World War. They left their hunting ground [way of life], families, and community to travel to a foreign country they never heard of,” he said. “Many of them did not speak English and many did not return; for them this was a sacred thing to do.”

The service concluded with the laying of wreaths and a playing of the “Last Post,” followed by a two-minute silence and a playing of the lament by a piper.

The Remembrance Day service at the university was one of many services held in the city. Others were held at the Ontario Veteran’s Memorial in Queen’s Park, and the cenotaph at Old City Hall.

SCSU report makes recommendations on academic, accessibility rights of students

Report part of academic advocacy campaign led by VP Academics & University Affairs Christina Arayata

The report calls for self-declared sick notes, maximum cap on late penalties, and more.

Alex Tough Varsity Staff

Self-declared sick notes, a maximum cap on late penalties, and an extension of the creditno credit option to the last day of classes are among the recommendations made in a report published by the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) to make students aware of their academic and accessibility rights.

This report, titled “Creating an Accessible

MAISHA ISLAM/THE VARSITY

Campus: Guidelines and Recommendations for the University of Toronto Scarborough – 2017,” is part of an ongoing academic advocacy campaign being led by the SCSU’s Vice-President Academics and University Affairs, Christina Arayata.

The proposal of self-declared sick notes comes in response to the high cost of getting medical documentation, as well as to free up resources from the Health and Wellness Cen-

tre used to verify students’ illnesses.

“This is just a recommendation towards the University, it is through meetings and consultation with the administration where we would be able to come up with a pilot/ system that would ensure academic integrity is not affected,” wrote Arayata. “Flexible academic policies are already in effect in other institutions like Simon Fraser University or Queens.”

There is also a proposal calling for a maximum five per cent cap on late penalties. According to the report, 68 per cent of students at the Scarborough campus rely on OSAP, requiring them to find part-time jobs, and excessive late penalties — some of which reach 25 per cent per day — force them to choose between assignments and going to work.

The report also suggests extending the credit-no credit deadline to the last day of classes, a process currently in place at UTM. The SCSU believes that doing this would eliminate inaccurate choices made by students predicting their grades two weeks before receiving them. Doing this, according to the report, “has the potential to lessen the load on petitions surrounding this particular area,” which would save resources.

With regard to accessibility concerns,

the report includes a proposal of the development of a mandatory policy against the banning of laptops in lectures, as removing laptops “is also mandating the ways in which students can/are supposed to learn in the classroom.”

The report also calls for the university to include the Student Bill of Rights in course syllabi and on Blackboard and ACORN. The inclusion of the bill, which stipulates the right to receive a syllabus in the first week of class, would prevent documented cases where students did not receive a syllabus in the first week of class or received parts of it as the semester progressed.

The report has been presented to the university’s administration, and the SCSU is now “working with the Administration to get these items into actionable items.”

Liza Arnason, Assistant Dean of Student Life, Community Outreach and International Experience at UTSC, said that although conversations are underway, significant progress toward the implementation of the recommendations will not be made until the winter semester.

Comment

November 13, 2017 var.st/comment comment@thevarsity.ca

Breaking down the University-Mandated Leave of Absence Policy The proposed policy gives sweeping powers to university administration with few accountability mechanisms and little student input

A Governing Council memo states the university has been considering the policy "for a few years." JUDY HU/THE VARSITY

Adrian Huntelar Varsity Contributor

It's time to talk about the new UniversityMandated Leave of Absence Policy. The policy, which originated as a response to the Report of the University Ombudsperson 2014–15, gives U of T administrators unprecedented power to unilaterally place students with mental health issues on an involuntary leave of absence. This power can be invoked in virtually any situation where a student is struggling, academically or personally, and

by Divisional Heads, registrars, and other administrative staff without the consent of the student and, in many cases, without their input.

This policy has drawn the ire of students, mental health awareness groups, and campus organizers, and these are only some of the many concerns expressed by students in the past few weeks.

The Report of the University Ombudsperson 2014–15 highlighted the problematic use of the Code of Student Conduct, a punitive policy, to address scenarios in which students suffering from mental wellness issues were causing direct harm to themselves or others. The report recommended the creation of a separate policy to address these situations without officially suspending students under the code.

There is an inherent tension between the principles that inform this policy. The Ombudsperson’s report highlights that “the right to personal autonomy, self-determination and dignity is as significant for people with mental health disabilities as for others, and must be respected.” At the same time, the Ombudsperson affirms the right of the university under Bill 168 to “protect the safety of its staff and students by excluding a person from campus.” These are necessarily exclu-

sionary practices: the university treads on the right to personal autonomy and self-determination each time they remove a student against their will.

Furthermore, the current writing of the policy extends far beyond the extreme cases in which Bill 168 already permits the university to intervene.

Under the policy, there are two ‘scenarios’ in which a university-mandated leave of absence can be applied. Scenario one deals with students who pose “a risk of harm to self or others, including but not limited to a risk of imminent or serious physical or psychological harm.” Scenario two deals with students who are “unable to engage in activities required to pursue an education at the University notwithstanding accommodations or supportive resources that may be available,” even if they are not at any risk of direct harm.

This second scenario is absolutely unnecessary. If this policy is meant to deal only with the most extreme cases, as recommended by the Ombudsperson’s report, then the first scenario already accomplishes that.

The addition of the second scenario is either a case of reckless policy overreach or a deliberate attempt to place conditions on the autonomy of students.

There is genuine cause for concern about the second scenario. The phrase “unable to engage in activities required to pursue an education at the University” could theoretically extend to virtually any student dealing with depression, anxiety, low motivation, or a handful of other symptoms of mental illness. There is no clarifying language present in the policy, which gives full discretion to administrative staff in how to interpret it.

The second scenario provides the university with a unilateral mechanism for removing struggling students from their academic and social activities.

This approach could also lead to students’ aversion to engaging with deans, registrars, or mental wellness liaisons within college and divisions. The policy does not set any guidelines for when administrative personnel should inform the Division Head about a potential case. This leaves the student in flux. If a student is cognizant of the fact that their registrar or supportive staff may, immediately after hearing their concerns, forward them to a Divisional Head for the purposes of considering a leave of absence, they will be less likely to trust administrative personnel or to come to them with concerns about mental wellness.

While many will argue that in practice, administrative staff will not act in such reckless ways, the point is that nothing in the policy prevents them from doing so. This problem is magnified by the fact that there is no requirement that medical professionals be consulted anywhere in the process.

Instead, these major decisions are left in the hands of university administrators, with no requirement that they have even a baseline understanding of mental health issues.

The policy allows the Vice-Provost Students to unilaterally appoint a Student Case Manager (SCM) or Student Support Team (SST) to assist with the process. Although these people may include “student service representatives, registrarial personnel, medical professionals, academic administrators, campus safety personnel, campus police or others,” they do not have to be medical professionals or even trained in handling sensitive situations related to mental health.

The student also has no say in determining who will be their SCM or SST. This means that, under the current policy, a group of unfamiliar, potentially non-experts have a large say about whether a vulnerable student gets to continue their education. Further, the

policy permits the Vice-Provost Students to delegate the duties of overseeing the cases of students going through the procedure to “their delegate” without specifying who is qualified to serve as the delegate or how they can be held accountable.

Fortunately, the policy is not yet set in stone. Discussion is scheduled to take place at the University Affairs Board on November 20 and then at the Governing Council on December 14. Students can register to speak at these meetings. The St. George Round Table and the University of Toronto Students’ Union are also accepting feedback online or via email, which will be submitted to the Office of the Vice-Provost Students.

Additionally, a grassroots movement has developed in the form of a Facebook group called the Mandatory Leave Policy Response Group, which is compiling a document where students can provide their own analysis lineby-line on the policy. That document will be shared with every member of the University Affairs Board and the Governing Council in advance of their debates on the issue. This group is also planning a series of broad public consultations where students can share their concerns with like-minded peers and organize collective responses.

Students can, and should, voice any concerns about the policy in these venues, as well as directly to registrars’ and deans’ offices. Only by consistently providing the students’ perspective on this policy, in as many forums as possible, can we make it work for students.

Adrian Huntelar is a third-year student at Trinity College studying Peace, Conflict and Justice Studies and Political Science. He is a member of the University of Toronto Students’ Union Board of Directors.

8 d THE VARSITY d COMMENT

comment@thevarsity.ca

Fact-checking Facebook

How getting our news from social media changes the nature of the information we receive

Many readers get their news from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. SHANNA HUNTER/THE VARSITY

Zach Rosen Current Affairs Columnist

On October 31, The Independent reported that more than 126 million Americans may have been exposed to Facebook posts “disseminated

by Russian-linked agents seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election.” This astounding figure, representing more than half of eligible American voters, is indicative not only of the serious effects that foreign agents may have had in the 2016 American election, but also of a larger trend in the way that people access news.

Accessing news from social media instead of from more traditional providers like television and newspapers is becoming increasingly popular. According to Pew research from August, two-thirds of Americans report that they get at least some of their news directly from social media sites, with 20 per cent confessing that they do so “often.”

The source from which news is accessed has an important effect on the nature of the information received. And although it is easy enough to mandate that social media platforms regulate themselves by blocking or labeling misinformation, this may prove to be far easier said than done.

While we should be concerned that news providers — in this case, Facebook and Twitter especially — are motivated by profit instead of by truth, the problem is far more nuanced than that. Media sources have long been businesses first and foremost. The first news program to be broadcast in colour was Camel News Caravan, brought to you by Camel cigarettes. Walter Cronkite, long known as “the most trusted man in America,” uttered slogans for Winston Tobacco between segments.

It is not the profit motive that makes getting news from social media so dangerous; rather, it is what profit motivates these platforms to be. Whereas concern for the bottom line prompts traditional media to be fair and balanced, the effects it has on social media are far more nefarious.

Before the ubiquity of social

media, a lack of options made the average consumer occasionally frustrated but generally informed — and on the same page as his neighbour who, regardless of political affiliation, ultimately got the same set of facts.

This is because, perhaps paradoxically, the business side of traditional news outlets actually incentivizes balance and parity of points of view. As long as the information cannot be tailored to suit the preferences and biases of each individual viewer, fostering a sense of fairness and impartiality is simply the best way to maximize viewership. The left-leaning viewer and the right-leaning viewer are forced, due to simple dearth of options, to get their news from the same source. For this reason, to avoid losing half of the market, traditional news outlets have had to be balanced enough to keep people of all political stripes tuning in.

Today, the algorithms that determine our news feeds are not hindered by lack of options. It turns out that people prefer confirmation to truth, agreeability to variation, and corroboration of previously held views over new, challenging evidence. Within Facebook’s incessantly shifting network are innumerable echo chambers, enclosed by a barrier that is impenetrable to dissenting views: profit. Now that the news provider can tailor the information it provides to the exact preferences of the viewer, the profit motive — which seeks only to ensure eyeballs on advertisements — no longer values impartiality, but rather the continued confirmation and exacerbation of those preferences.

As long as we prefer to return to sources that confirm our views, it is difficult to foresee how getting news from social media could be anything but divisive. Many have called for the platforms themselves to clearly distinguish disreputable information on their sites; Facebook has begun to do so by designing a new banner that will alert viewers to posts that are disputed by the requisite number of sources.

However, these measures can only address a small part of the larger problem. We need to begin

by distinguishing two issues: the proliferation of false informatio and the entirely different issue of inaccessibility of dissenting views.

The first issue seems, at least at first glance, far easier to fix — social media should clearly indicate when false information is being presented. However, this solution is not as simple as it seems. For starters, it’s one thing to remove an unfounded news piece from the site, and it's quite another to censure the contributions of actual individual users.

Using social media as news sources blurs the line between news providers and news consumers. This is troubling because while there is a long tradition of holding news providers accountable if their content is manifestly false, the rest of us are not usually held to the same standard. But social media is built around the contributions of individual users, and there is a big difference between fact-checking content submitted by third-party

sources or corporations and censoring the views of regular people.

This applies just as much to opinion as it does to news. For example, I might write a status about how the Star Wars prequels are better than the originals. As obviously false as most would think this claim is, is it Facebook’s responsibility to correct me?

Once social media sites begin marking the submissions of individuals as plainly false or fallacious, it seems inevitable that there will be considerable backlash, even if the demarcation is correct. Also, if the last 18 months have taught us anything, it’s that people will doubt the credibility of news outlets long before they will doubt their own views. If Facebook positions itself as one of those authorities, it will lose eyeballs and then profits, which will seriously test its resolve.

It is not clear that the problems presented by making social media our primary news source can be

solved by intervention from those platforms. This is especially true due to the inaccessibility of challenges to our views. Indeed, the only real solution may be cognizance. It is only awareness of our vulnerability to bias that will make us less vulnerable to misinformation; it is only consciousness of our inherent hostility toward dissent that we might become more accepting of it. If we can learn to question our own biases, to pause for a moment before hitting the ‘share’ button to consider our own motivations, then perhaps we can begin to undo the damage that has been done. One thing, however, is abundantly clear: whatever we’re doing now is not working.

Zach Rosen is a second-year student at Trinity College studying History and Philosophy. He is The Varsity’s Current Affairs Columnist.

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Editorial

November 13, 2017 var.st/comment editorial@thevarsity.ca

Wilful blindness to Peterson’s antics verges on impunity The erratic professor has incited harassment, threatened students, and vilified faculty — all while the university stands idle The Varsity Editorial Board

Twitter brings out the worst in us.

This is especially true of Jordan Peterson, who took to the social media platform on October 26 to air his latest grievances in notably unorthodox fashion.

The U of T psychology professor was lamenting the postponement of a panel he was scheduled to partake in at Ryerson University titled “The Stifling of Free Speech on University Campuses,” featuring notable figures like Gad Saad, Oren Amitay, and former Rebel Media reporter Faith Goldy. The panel was cancelled due to safety concerns, according to Ryerson, followed by organized protests by student and non-student activists alike.

Among the protesters were two activists, George Brown student Marco La Grotta and U of T graduate Christeen Elizabeth, who became the targets of online harassment after Peterson tweeted URL links to their personal Facebook profiles in retaliation for the panel’s cancellation. “Communists,” who “celebrated the shutdown of our Ryerson talk,” he captioned the tweets.

Some of his Twitter followers, a horde of over 245,000, quickly assumed mob mentality. “She is utterly insane, fck that dumb btch,” wrote one, replying to Peterson’s tweet.

“The s*** truth Seekers have to deal with,” wrote another. The few users who questioned Peterson’s decision to link to the activists’ profiles were quickly dismissed as ‘concern trolls.’

Peterson’s tweets have received a total of 108 retweets as of press time.

As a result of this sudden exposure, both Elizabeth and La Grotta opened their Facebook inboxes to discover extensive hate mail and violent threats.

“Im coming after your kids you bitch,” wrote one user to Elizabeth. “You deserve the bread line and the gulag,” wrote another. Following numerous messages and anti-semitic depictions sent his way, La Grotta temporarily deactivated his Facebook account.

The Varsity first reported on the incident two weeks ago.

Exposing the Facebook profiles of two student activists is, especially for a tenured professor earning a sixfigure salary, a sad display of bullying and anti-intellectual behaviour. But it’s not the professor’s first endorsement of online harassment. More recently, Peterson announced his plans to launch a website that would allow students to identify left-leaning faculty members and “postmodern” course material, what U of T’s faculty association says has “created a climate of fear and intimidation” at the university.

Meanwhile, Peterson’s increasingly erratic behaviour has gone almost entirely overlooked by the university

DARREN CHENG/THE VARSITY

itself. Peterson has demonstrated a deteriorating ability to interact maturely with many of those he is paid to interact with — a pattern that should give any employer cause for concern in any profession — and yet time and time again, the university has cowered to him, leaving students and other faculty to bear the brunt of his antics.

The trouble began in September 2016 when Peterson first stepped into the ring with campus activists following his statements on Bill C-16 and his refusal to use gender-neutral pronouns. Ever since, Peterson has found himself in numerous public yelling matches with students protesting his events or rallies.

While not necessarily fault of Peterson alone, the exchanges have been anything but productive, serving only to foster animosity between the professor and swaths of the student body.

Peterson has become so engulfed in ideological warfare that it’s unclear whether he could detach that from the necessary fairness required of a professional academic.

This inundation extends to Peterson’s interaction with student media as well. In October 2016, a staff writer at The Varsity reached out to Peterson for comment on a news story they were writing. The writer took all the necessary steps in assuring the due diligence of a reporter: they provided Peterson with the premise of their story, a sincere set of questions, and a deadline for when to respond.

Peterson, who normally declines to provide comment for The Varsity’s

reporting, responded by threatening the writer, telling them they were “playing with serious fire” and that “reality [would] arrange itself so [they would] have serious cause to regret it” if they didn’t “play it straight and careful.”

It’s instances like these that make us question Peterson’s capacity for moral judgment, and how someone displaying such a lack thereof could be employed at a university where students and faculty are expected to work amicably with one another.

Peterson’s recent actions have only made us question this more. In July, he shared an article from InfoWars on Twitter, a publication known for actively spreading falsehoods and baseless conspiracy theories. In October, he railed on what he referred to as “female insanity,” arguing that men can’t control “crazy women” because men are not allowed to physically fight them. All the while, Peterson has been profiting greatly off his antics: in exchange for lectures and panel discussions on political correctness run amok, Peterson earns tens of thousands of dollars from Patreon subscriptions on a monthly basis. He offers video recordings of his lectures to his subscribers and promotes ‘anti-PC’ sticker-sets for the real keeners among them.

In an academic setting, it is detrimental to the pursuit of truth and understanding to embrace fake news, to use terms like ‘crazy’ and ‘insanity’ without an inkling of actual medical diagnosis, and to exploit divisive political issues in order to turn a profit.

Moreover, it is antithetical to a safe and productive learning environment to threaten students and faculty, and to expose their personal information online when you disagree with them.

It is evident, too, that the university is unsure of how to handle this problem, and it’s not hard to see why. When the administration fails to intervene in Peterson-related controversies, they are scolded by his opposers on account of complacency.

When the administration makes an effort to chide Peterson, as they did so delicately last year through an open letter asking him to respect students’ personal pronouns, Peterson cries oppression.

As a result, the administration has become like the parent at daycare who doesn’t know how to discipline their petulant child. When The Varsity asked the media relations office if the university believed Peterson’s actions toward the two students were appropriate behaviour for a professor, they declined to answer directly, replying that “universities are places where people can express opinions that are controversial and sometimes unsettling.”

This response was disappointing, to say the least. Peterson’s latest actions are not a matter of free speech.

Of course free speech and free expression are imperative to a properly functioning liberal democracy. Of course these principles are paramount to a healthy learning experience in a university setting. But Peterson’s latest actions are a matter of harassment, and if the administration cannot dis-

tinguish this matter from a matter of free speech then students and faculty alike should be gravely concerned.

The administration must recognize that Peterson’s latest actions extend beyond the realm of ideological debate and into the realm of ideological aggression and, in turn, it must reconsider the values it holds in teachers.

It must ask if it is appropriate for its employees to threaten students and incite harassment onto dissenters. It must ask if it is prudent to indulge a professor who has exchanged nuanced, intellectual thought for the inflamed rhetoric he knows will tickle the fancy of his oft-rabid fanbase.

Should Peterson be made aware of this editorial, he will inevitably dismiss it as the rhetoric of the ‘neoMarxist postmodernists’ that oppose him — overreacting, triggered leftists that need to sort themselves out.

Many of his followers will mindlessly agree.

So, given the futility of confronting Peterson directly, our attention turns instead to the administration, whose role it is to reflect on the core values of the institution it leads, and to judge whether Peterson’s recent behaviour has a place at this university. Because in our opinion, it doesn’t.

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

The web: a museum of our everyday lives How researchers might examine our digital data centuries from now Sophia Savva Varsity Staff

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henever I make a post on social media, I wonder who it will reach — not just in the present, but in the future.

Hundreds of years from now, will a researcher studying a hashtag on Instagram labelled ‘dog’ meticulously analyze the editing choices I made for a photo of my dog? Will historians piecing together the lives of millennial university students investigate my tweets? Will my social media accounts exist at all?

I learned while writing this piece that my curiosity might not be as weird or narcissistic as it sounds: archives of our generation’s social media and web pages are currently being compiled, investigated, and utilized across U of T and the world.

Like cave paintings in France or clay tablets from Mesopotamia, our social media posts are artifacts that will offer future historians insights into our daily lives, our society, and our politics. Our social media accounts are museums of our everyday lives, selfcurated time capsules for future researchers. Such a large — and constantly expanding — collection of the thoughts and behaviours of ordinary people has never been available to researchers before.

While this wealth of data will be invaluable to future researchers and historians, it also presents unique problems that don’t have conclusive solutions.

PRESERVING OUR DIGITAL DATA Last December, volunteers gathered at U of T to archive climate change and environmental data that was at “high risk” of being deleted or of being made unavailable to the public under Donald Trump’s then-incoming presidency.

This “Guerrilla Archiving” event was done in collaboration with the Internet Archive’s “End of Term 2016” project. The Internet Archive is an online non-profit library that has recorded around 279 billion web pages for future historians to use. Its Canadian headquarters are located on the seventh floor of Robarts Library at UTSG. Matt Price, a sessional lecturer at U of T’s Department of History, was one of the organizers of the event. Price explained it was important to copy these pages not just for historical reasons, but for the sake of documenting the truth: our understanding of climate and its relation to human health comes from these long stretches of data, which is why it’s imperative for them to stay publicly accessible.

Sam-chin Li is the Reference/Government Publications Librarian at Robarts Library who assisted volunteers at the archiving event.

According to Li and Nich Worby, a Government Information and Statistics Librarian at Robarts Library, government information is now only available digitally and only on government websites.

Without strong enforcement, this digital content could be at risk of being edited or deleted.

“That is why preserving government websites is not only essential for researchers, historians and scientists to do their work in the future, it is also critical for the opposition and public to keep

government accountable,” wrote Li and Worby in an email.

According to Li and Worby, future historians and researchers can use archived web content to grasp a better understanding of our “history and heritage.” Platforms like Twitter reveal valuable information about the lives of ordinary people and contains relevant interactions between governments and citizens.

Wendy Duff, a professor and dean in the Faculty of Information at U of T, thinks our social media archives will be “incredibly valuable” to future researchers trying to understand our societies, and that they will be able to exclusively provide information about certain demographics. Primary sources from the past, like letters and diaries, came from a small, specific group of people: those who were literate and had the free time to write. Now, tons of different groups have access to the internet — and the ability to inadvertently share glimpses of their daily lives with future historians.

PIECING TOGETHER OUR LIVES Back in April 2010, the Library of Congress announced that it would preserve all public tweets — excluding private account information or deleted tweets, as well as pictures and links — for future generations and historians. In addition to tweets, the Library of Congress is also collecting online information about American and select international election candidates, select Facebook pages and news sites, and websites related to important historical events.

Price underscored that an archive of the lives of ordinary people has never been available to historians before. Historians of earlier centuries have a “scarcity of sources,” while historians of the early 21st century will be overwhelmed by sources. “Their problem is going to be that there’s so many documents that it’s going to be very difficult to sort them,” said Price.

“There will be a massive amount of records, and you will not be able to read them all,” agreed Duff.

For example, a researcher studying a president from the 1800s might have the ability to read every letter sent from the president’s office, but a researcher studying a president from the 21st century almost certainly could not read all the relevant emails and tweets sent out, Duff explained.

“So you will have to have electronic tools to be able to understand certain patterns.”

To sort through these sources, historians of the early 21st century will need to use computational methods — such as searching for keywords or more complex queries — as well as physical analyses of outside texts or sources, explained Price.

For some media, like tweets, statistical analysis is the only way to interact with them. One tweet doesn’t reveal enough; historians would have to examine an aggregation of tweets and consult relevant Twitter threads in order to gauge enough context.

JING TEY/THE VARSITY

‘FAKE NEWS’ AND SELF-CURATION Our social media accounts are near-shrines of our idealized versions of ourselves: we only post edited photos, we only tweet our wittiest thoughts, and we only share our most ‘likeable’ life events.

A more insidious issue is the spread of misinformation — popularly known as ‘fake news’ — on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The proliferation of false news stories and even fake firsthand accounts has been a pressing concern, especially over the past year. How will researchers hundreds of years from now be able to navigate our social media posts, all of which have varying degrees of reliability and bias?

Fiorella Foscarini, an associate professor and Director of Concurrent Registration Option at U of T’s Faculty of Information, says that fake news, forged records, and unreliable information has always been around, especially in the personal sphere or other environments with little outside control.

“What we are experiencing with social media, with the current proliferation of partial accounts or completely fabricated facts, is an interesting cultural phenomenon,” said Foscarini. “But it is also worrisome, because many people do not seem to have the critical instruments necessary to evaluate their sources.”

Archivists can prevent the spread of unreliable information by verifying the identity of the data at hand, providing resources for cross-examination, and monitoring the use of information to detect any modifications, Foscarini explained. However, outside of official archival spaces, these best practices might not be implemented.

Price explained that, regardless of genre, every source historians deal with has an “agenda,” and that historians have to learn to “read between the lines” of people’s self-presentations.

“Social media today are different in genre from the kinds of texts produced 100 or 200 years ago, in part because they offer a very strange hybrid of public and private with highly curated visions of oneself,” said Price.

Instead of looking for answers about what people were “really like,” future researchers should turn to social media to see how people curated themselves and the conventions for this self-curation — or, in Price’s words, what “kind of cultural representations were dominant in a particular moment.”

Price also said it would be a good idea to use tweets as ways to learn about how events or ideas “travelled and became meaningful to the historical actors,” rather than to learn what was really happening during an event or crisis.

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Read the rest of this article in The Varsity Magazine, on stands and online soon.

Arts&Culture

November 13, 2017 var.st/arts arts@thevarsity.ca

U of T beatbox club hosts workshop with American champions

Spider Horse's Chris Celiz and Gene Shinozaki explain how they were drawn to the niche art form

Celiz and Shinozaki have won the American Tag Team Championship twice as Spider Horse. STEVEN LEE/THE VARSITY

Doyun Kim Varsity Contributor

On November 3, the University of Toronto Beatbox (UTB) club hosted a workshop with two of the world’s highest ranked beatboxers, Chris Celiz and Gene Shinozaki, collectively known as Spider Horse. Both performers are decorated champions — Shinozaki won the Grand Beatbox Battle in 2015, and Spider Horse won the annual American Tag Team Championship twice. The duo appeared at Trinity College’s Junior Common Room to lead the UTB’s beatboxing workshop.

Beatbox as a distinct art form began as an offshoot of hip-hop culture in 1980s New

York. The “Beginner’s Guide to Beatbox” on Human Beatbox, a central online resource for beatboxers, defines it as “the crafting of music by only using the mouth, throat, and nose.” Because of its reliance on the human body alone as an instrument, beatbox is a unique way to create music. Shinozaki and Celiz both took up beatbox for this reason, believing that this freedom allowed for more self-expression than traditional methods.

Both beatboxers come from formal music training backgrounds, with specialties in percussion. For Celiz, a classical musical background was too restrictive of how he could voice himself — it felt too much like somebody else telling him how to speak mu-

sically. Given the musical freedom of beatbox, he found a new outlet that allowed him to develop new ways to make the sounds he wanted to convey to people. For Shinozaki, the ability to directly voice a musical thought without another instrument was similarly captivating.

Sean Ihn, co-president of the UTB, said that when he started beatboxing, there were very few fellow beatboxers around him. Seeing a lack of community, he reached out to Changmo Kim, his fellow co-president, in order to start the club. Ihn hopes to create a sustainable environment for beatbox at U of T that can showcase its potential as an easily accessible art form.

Celiz advised the UTB members to keep up their efforts in making beatbox more accessible and understandable to the general student body. “If we really love something this much, we need to share it with people who don’t know what we do,” said Celiz.

As representatives of a growing art form, the UTB finds itself in a place where it can motivate significant growth in awareness of beatbox and work toward building a stronger beatbox community in North America. Celiz and Shinozaki both feel that the club can work with established beatbox community members such as HeAt and BBK — both Canadian champions — to cultivate the scene.

Honors is so over Down With Webster Former DWW vocalist Cameron Hunter speaks with us about the new band George Moshenski-Dubov Varsity Contributor

Many Canadians can easily remember Down With Webster songs playing on their car radios, but it might have been a while since you last heard anything by the band from The Beaches neighbourhood. On June 2, 2017, having gone a few years without releasing new music, the band announced they were taking a break. But former Webster members Cameron Hunter, Patrick Gillett, Tyler Armes, and Andrew Martino recently announced the start of a new project: Honors. Hunter, one of the band’s vocalists, spoke with The Varsity about transitioning from Down With Webster to Honors, what’s next for the band, and what to expect at their Toronto show on December 21.

The Varsity: What is Honors to you? Is it a sequel to Down with Webster, a continuation, or a complete reset?

Cameron Hunter: For me, it feels more like a reset. We’ve always been a group of people who write and make a ton of music, ever since we were 14 years old doing this. When we got into the studio and made a bunch of records that didn’t sound like Down With Webster, it was sort of what we were naturally gravitating towards. We thought it didn’t really sound like the old project, and it didn’t make sense with the old project. We’d rather put it out as something different. A couple of us had dabbled in doing some side projects; I did my own solo rap thing;

our guy Tyler had done a songwriting collective, more of an EDM thing. Those projects sounded different, so we branded them differently. This time, we all came back together and wrote this body of music that sounds like something else.

TV: Down With Webster was formed back in middle school. Now that it’s just you, Gillett, Armes, and Martino, how is it different that you don’t have Martin Seja or Dave Ferris next to you?

CH: I mean, I think it would be a lot weirder if the only thing we’d ever done had been Down with Webster, and we were coming off of that.

For me, it was so weird when I did stuff on my own. Like, ‘Wow I’m the only one up here.’ I think after that, everything felt more normal.

So it’s not ‘crazy crazy,’ but it definitely is a different thing. Even with the music, it’s more of a chill thing, it relies more on the sonics of it. Down with Webster was this insane ball of energy. When we did live shows, I remember jumping until I thought I was going to die. This is a little bit different than that, where it’s a little bit moodier, a little more chill. It is a different energy, and with that different energy, the makeup matches that.

acoustic vocals come into this mesh of genres?

CH: We’ve always been people who don’t think about the genre necessarily when we’re making the music. We tend to make whatever we think sounds good at the time, [and] afterwards we have a difficult time putting a label on it. Because we aren’t a rap group, we aren’t an EDM group, we aren’t a rock band, it’s always tough.

With this stuff, we got in on a couple songs and were like, ‘Hey, a choir would sound really cool on this.’ For no deeper reason other than we thought it would sound great. Everything fell into place organically, I guess. It always starts from the music for us, and that informs everything else.

TV: Honors has a new energy. You can call yourself electronic pop, but you also have Pat’s rock guitar riffs and your experiences in rap. You also teased a couple videos where you’re recording in a church or with a choir. How do these

TV: Because you are so immersed into many different kinds of genres, what is the writing process like?

CH: All of us write music independently. We all write songs, and we send them around to each other. We always share what we’re work-

Several former members of Down With Webster have joined Honors.

PHOTO BY NIKO NICE, COURTESY OF RYAN ARMES

ing on. If something jumps out, a couple of us will be like, ‘Yeah, let’s work on that one.’ You can get into a room with everyone and start to write from scratch, but I think the best ideas usually come out from one person. It might be an instrumental, might be a lyric, an idea, or a chorus, sometimes it’s a full song. That’s how it usually starts. We’re very lucky to be a band where everyone writes and everyone has the capability to pitch those ideas. There are a lot of groups out there where it’s one dude who does it, [and] everyone else is just there to play their part. For us, it’s always been that every single person is that guy. There are a lot of ideas to sift through, which is nice. I definitely have moments where I write a bunch of stuff, but I’ll also go through periods where I don’t have any ideas. There is always someone there with ideas, who can help spark it in you.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For more of this interview, visit var.st/honors.

12 d THE VARSITY d ARTS & CULTURE

Introducing this year’s Arts & Culture columnists and critics

Kevin Yin Varsity Columnist Kevin is a second-year student at Victoria College studying Philosophy and Economics. An avid follower of Toronto’s rap and R&B scene as well as a lover of the city’s food and art, he hopes to sort through it for The Varsity’s readers so they can avoid turning to blogTO for everything.

Kevin was born in Toronto, raised in Edmonton, and lived briefly in New Mexico for boarding school. He is a longtime J. Cole fan and is too willing to get into pretentious debates to be fun at parties.

Outside of writing, Kevin enjoys mountaineering and traveling beyond his budget. After undergrad, he intends to go to law school.

Katie Macintosh Varsity Columnist Katie is a fourth-year student at Trinity College studying Psychology and Linguistics. She is excited to be joining The Varsity this year as a columnist writing about pop culture.

Katie was born and raised in Toronto, but she discovered at a young age that she was a huge anime nerd and has since harboured an interest in the pop culture of East Asia.

When it comes to matters of the western hemisphere, she loves comedy and rigorously applying her few years of undergraduate education in psychology to analyses of TV shows and movies. In the future, she will probably go to grad school or something.

Edgar Vargas Varsity Columnist Edgar is a third-year student at St. Michael’s College majoring in English and Cinema Studies. He’s excited to begin this new journey with The Varsity as a columnist focusing on Toronto culture, and he hopes to point a spotlight on all the attractions the city has to offer.

Edgar was born in a small town in Guatemala, but he moved to Ontario with his family at the age of one. Beyond writing, music is one of his biggest passions in life, whether it be listening to it, writing it, or writing about it. He hopes his love for music, the arts, and the city will help others to embrace the world in a more positive light.

Sabrina Ramroop Varsity Columnist Sabrina is a fourth-year student studying English and Women & Gender Studies. She hopes to pursue a master's in gender studies after graduating this year. In her column, Sabrina hopes to explore everything going on around campus.

She is excited to get more involved with the university’s campus culture and everything that it has to offer, and to be joining The Varsity’s staff.

Khyrsten Mieras Varsity Theatre Critic Khyrsten is a second-year student at UTSC studying Journalism and Political Science. As a theatre critic, she is looking forward to attending and covering theatrical productions on campus.

Khyrsten is from Chatham, Ontario and moved to Toronto for university.

After university, she would like to travel and become a writer. In addition to her work at The Varsity, she writes for UTSC’s The Underground and enjoys playing soccer in her spare time.

Leah Kuperman Varsity Theatre Critic Leah is in her fourth year of a specialist in Political Science and minor in Art History. She is looking forward to writing for The Varsity as a theatre critic this year and having the opportunity to see and review all of the amazing and creative productions that take place on campus.

Leah was born in Toronto and raised in Los Angeles, but she returned to Toronto for university. After graduation, Leah hopes to complete a master's in journalism and pursue a career involving travelling and writing, but Toronto will always be home.

arts@thevarsity.ca

NOVEMBER 13, 2017 u 13

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Hart House’s Putnam County Spelling Bee is D-E-L-I-G-H-T-F-U-L The ensemble cast portrays their roles with humour and sincerity

The musical comedy opened at Hart House Theatre on Friday, November 10. PHOTO BY SCOTT GORMAN, COURTESY OF HART HOUSE THEATRE

Khyrsten Mieras Varsity Theatre Critic

“My parents keep on telling me just being here is winning, although I know it isn’t so!” sings Chip, a character in the charming musical comedy The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which opened at Hart House Theatre on Friday, November 10.

The show is set in a high school gymnasium, where contestants compete in the Putnam County Spelling Bee and for a place in the national competition. The story is told across nearly two hours, with the contestants taking turns to spell words that range from easy, like 'cow,' to more difficult, like 'Weltanschauung.' As the show progresses, the spellers are eliminated one by one, until a single contestant is left. They reveal their

backstories between rounds.

The contestants consist of an eclectic and quirky mix of characters. Former spelling bee champion Rona Lisa Perretti (Amy Swift) and Vice Principal Douglas Panch (Art Carlson) are introduced as the host and pronouncer of the competition, respectively, alongside a mix of overachieving student competitors.

Leaf Coneybear (Kevin Forster) is the only student who didn’t make first place in his district's spelling bee and spells his words in a trance, and Marcy Park (Braelyn Guppy), who speaks six languages and skipped fourth and fifth grade, has high expectations for winning the competition.

William Barfée (Hugh Ritchie) exudes confidences, using his “magic foot” to spell out words before giving an answer, and the determined Logainne Schwartzandgruben-

niere (Erin Humphry) faces severe pressure from her two dads in the audience, frequently ranting about the state of politics in America.

Chip Tolentino (John Wamsley), last year’s champion, is back to defend his title amidst some raging hormones, and Olive Ostrovsky (Vanessa Campbell), a somewhat nervous newcomer, is best friends with her dictionary and the only contestant without parents or supporters in the audience.

Finally, Mitch Mahoney (Carson Betz) is present at the spelling bee in order to complete his community service by comforting the eliminated contestants with a hug and a juice box.

The ensemble portrays these roles with both humour and sincerity. The audience often erupted with laughter at the production’s endless jokes, but attendees were also

moved by heartfelt moments like “The I Love You Song” sung by Olive and her parents. Another unique aspect of the show is its audience participation, with several theatergoers brought onstage to participate as contestants in the spelling bee. These unscripted scenes make for hilarious moments.

Throughout the story, the characters learn that winning isn’t everything. This is especially true in a scene near the end, when Marcy asks Jesus himself (Wamsley) if he’ll be disappointed if she loses, to which he replies, “Of course not... I also won't be disappointed with you if you win... this isn't the kind of thing I care very much about.”

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee will play at the Hart House Theatre until November 25.

Newcomer: how we got a record deal U of T student Matias Gutierrez writes on his band's upward trajectory Matias Gutierrez Varsity Contributor

Newcomer — a band of misfits that recently decided to dip our feet in the music industry. Our group is made up of four musicians: Josh Sofian, a bass player from Beijing, Martin Camara, a drummer from Brazil, Lucas Ratigan, a guitarist originally from New York, and me, Matias Gutierrez, a vocalist and guitarist from Mississauga.

We’ve been officially playing together since last September, and early in October we signed with Coin Records, a Mississaugabased record label. All of us met as U of T students from a variety of different fields.

Martin is an engineering student, Josh studies statistics, and Lucas and I are in the social sciences.

Together, we’ve attempted to balance academic life with our music careers. As a band comprised of full-time students at UTSG, managing our time while allotting space for creativity might seem difficult.

Often, student bands will dissipate or remain forever as the stuff of a hobby — stuck playing covers and trapped by their members’ external commitments. There is nothing wrong with student bands remaining exactly what they are. The trouble comes when student musicians wish to further explore the possibilities of their own sound but find themselves confined by their busy

schedules, assignments, or lack of awareness of the opportunities available to them.

Our guitarist, Lucas, says that it requires a change in perspective to see university life as an opportunity for inspiration. “University experiences are so diverse and compelling, it's easy to write,” he says. Josh adds that music can also serve as an escape from school.

“If I'm having a hard time, music helps me release some of that in a productive way.”

Our band’s members share the feeling that student life is able to enhance our music and creativity. It can be easy to write a song when you’re experiencing so many strange new things as a university student. Your remaining task is to manage your time wisely to rehearse, record, and publicize.

In this sense, we’ve been somewhat lucky in our own journey as a band. For a variety of reasons, students often lack the resources to record and publish their own music. Without a studio, or the knowledge of how best to publish music, student bands hardly receive the kind of exposure they need to break into the music industry.

My own recording studio, which I built in my basement while in high school, serves as the location for all Newcomer recordings, made with a variety of old and new equipment assembled over the years. It’s there that we recorded our first single, “Zeitgeist,” and released it on social media using an online song distributor.

Newcomer's debut album will be released on December 1. STEVEN LEE/THE VARSITY

If you listen closely to the sounds of “Zeitgeist,” which is available on all major streaming services, you’ll hear audible shouts and crooning that respond to the lyrics like echoes. It was this single that drew the attention of Coin Records.

We became a band when Josh, Lucas, and

I were in first year and met at a U of T music club event. It wasn’t until a full year had passed that we saw our first successes in the form of getting signed and booking our first gig. Getting the attention of a label required consistency and persistence.

Science

November 13, 2017 var.st/science science@thevarsity.ca

It’s time to stop changing the time The case against the biannual daylight savings time shift Daniel Li Varsity Contributor

Two weekends ago, thousands of students rejoiced at the end of daylight savings time (DST) and gained an extra hour of sleep.

DST, a day-lengthening concept, was adopted by Canadians in the early 1900s as an energy-saving measure. But there is no conclusive evidence that we save energy by turning the clock forward. Few alleged benefits of DST remain relevant today, and scientists are beginning to better understand the negative effects that a one-hour time shift can have on our bodies and behaviour.

Hormones, body temperature, and other aspects of our physiology are influenced by exposure to sunlight. These are known as our body’s diurnal circadian rhythms.

Researchers have found that DST disrupts these natural rhythms.

Circadian disruptions can lead to immune deficiencies, metabolic abnormalities, and most notably, abnormal sleep cycles.

Loss of sleep can increase the possibility of making life-threatening errors. Research has shown

that at the start of DST, the resulting loss in sleep correlates with a rise in traffic accidents. This effect is reversed in the fall, as the number of accidents drops after DST ends.

Lack of sleep not only affects your commute, but it can also have negative consequences at work.

According to a 2009 study, the incidence of workplace injuries increased on the Monday after the springtime DST change. Unlike traffic accidents, there are no significant reversals in workplace injury risk in the fall.

Issues associated with DST are not exclusive to the winter season.

Prior to the time change last week, Toronto Police issued a warning to Torontonians about the earlier nights. What would have been a sunset at 6:00 pm is now at 5:00 pm. In addition to more severe weather, commuters heading home from work will be driving in less visible conditions. With the dark days ahead, it is suggested that you take steps to make yourself more visible at night.

Shorter days also have psychological effects. In Toronto, we see a six-hour decrease in daylight in

CARISSA CHEN/THE VARSITY

the fall compared to what we experience in peak summer. Exposure to sunlight during the day has an overall positive effect on well-being because it maintains our circadian rhythms. With the sudden time change imposed as DST ends, individuals may find themselves in psychological distress.

A study published in Epidemiology this May ties this distress with increased rates of depressive episodes. The end of DST marks the beginning of dark winters, which can act as a bad psychological aggravator for those prone to depression — those who suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD) may be particularly susceptible.

About 15 per cent of Canadians

will experience a mild form of SAD at some point in their lives. Students who are feeling unwell are advised by the university to seek out campus resources such as the Health and Wellness Centre. Robarts Library has started providing light therapy lamps to students — an effective means of mimicking lost sunlight.

It is increasingly evident that dialling our clocks back and forth can have a negative impact on our health and safety. So why do we still have DST? Although DST does not actually provide us with more hours of sunlight, it does increase the amount we are exposed to on a typical day, and most people consider this to

be favourable. If DST did not exist, Toronto would experience a 4:30 am sunrise at the peak of summer.

For this reason, some people have even suggested implementing DST year-round. This would maintain the perception of ‘normal time’ and avoid the negative impacts that come from adjusting our clocks twice a year.

DST continues to be a topic of controversy in Canada. Recently, Alberta tried to pass legislature on abolishing the practice, but the bill was overwhelmingly voted against.

Saskatchewan is currently the only province in Canada that does not implement DST.

The caffeine boost you probably need A quality ranking of caffeinated products

ARJUN SANYA/THE VARSITY

Carol Chen Varsity Contributor

Caffeine is one of the most popular drugs today. To fuel your midterm studies, here is a ranked list of commonly consumed caffeinated products based on caffeine content and nutritional quality.

5. Pop Coca-Cola contains a relatively low level of caffeine at 34 mg per bottle. It often isn’t enough for most students. Moreover, Coca-Cola has 35 grams of sugar, an overwhelmingly high amount that meets the recommended daily sugar intake level in just one can.

Regular Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and Dr. Pepper all have similar caffeine content and sugar levels.

Diet pop drinks, such as Pepsi Zero Sugar, can contain up to 69

mg of caffeine per bottle.

Overall, due to its high concentration of sugar and relatively low caffeine content, pop should be a last resort when looking for an energy boost.

4. Energy drinks Energy drinks are highly concentrated with vitamins and minerals. However, they often lead to a sugar crash and potentially serious side effects like high blood pressure and hyperactivity.

Red Bull and Monster energy drinks, for example, contain up to 160 mg of caffeine per can and 27 g of sugar along with B-vitamins.

Additionally, the 110 calories per can may cause weight gain if consumed excessively.

5-hour ENERGY drinks have zero grams of sugar, but 18 mg of sodium — enough to elevate your

blood pressure. A slightly healthier alternative is the V8 Fusion energy drink, which has a lower level of caffeine than Red Bull and Monster at 80 mg per can, while containing a full serving of fruits and vegetables at only 50 calories.

3. Commercially sold and specialty coffee beverages Coffee may have potential health benefits such as improving cognitive function. Tim Hortons’ original blend has around 140 mg of caffeine for one small cup, while Starbucks’ short coffee has around 180 mg. Specialty beverages like cappuccinos, mochas, espressos, and Americanos contain around 70–150 mg.

While those beverages are relatively harmless, there are some extremely caffeinated beverages that should be avoided: a Starbucks

Venti for example, may contain over 400 mg of caffeine, meeting the recommended daily dosage.

2. Tea Whether it’s hot brewed oolong or fruit-infused iced tea, tea is an affordable and healthy way to energize your body in the mornings.

Green tea is rich in antioxidants and has been shown to help lower blood pressure. Green tea from brands such as Tetley and Tazo only have around 30 mg per cup, but some brands, such as the Teavana Matcha Japanese Green Tea, can contain over 40 mg.

Black tea, like those under common brands of English Breakfast and Earl Grey, has around 40–70 mg per cup. For a stronger caffeine boost, Zest Tea Blue Lady, a flavourful black tea with an aromatic mix of citrus fruits contains

about as much caffeine as a cup of coffee.

1.Traditional ‘homemade’ brewed coffee Freshly ground and without extra additives or sugar, homemade coffee is the number one go-to in the morning and before an allnighter. Brewing your own coffee is not only more affordable, but it’s a healthier option than buying out.

Typical brands like Nescafé, Maxwell House, and Starbucks VIA Ready Brew have around 90– 200 mg of caffeine per cup. Lightly roasted, more finely ground beans may result in higher caffeine levels. Cold brewed coffee may have higher caffeine content and be less acidic than hot coffee. Depending on how it is brewed, it may be tastier and easier on a sensitive stomach.

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Greased palms and greasy food Private industry influences in the nutritional and pharmaceutical sciences need more transparency Spencer Y. Ki Varsity Contributor

In 1994, political satirist Christopher Buckley released Thank You for Smoking, a farcical account narrating the woes of tobacco industry lobbyist Nick Naylor that was later adapted into a critically acclaimed film. The twin works accomplished more than simple entertainment.

They showcased the inner workings of ‘Big Tobacco’ and the manners in which private industries alter public perception of scientific research.

Although we may imagine ourselves in 2017 to be better informed via the internet of possible corporate chicanery, there are still many ways in which private industries, like Naylor, “filter” the truth.

However, all of this begs the question: why is private funding a concern? The empirical answer is that the source of a research study’s finances may very well bias its conclusions. In one paper, researchers discovered that out of 206 articles on the health effects of non-alcoholic beverages, an industry-backed paper was more than seven times more likely to have a favourable conclusion than a paper with no industry funding.

Much like cigarettes in past decades, junk foods are one of the main comforting or relaxing vices we turn to. And, like their predecessor, there is a scientific consensus that junk foods are harmful to one’s health. Thus, as one might expect, the titans of the junk food industry have spent vast amounts of money funding nutritional research that they hope will either vindicate their products or discover some hitherto-unknown benefit to consumption in large quantities.

A recent target is the US National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s Moderate Alcohol and Cardiovascular Health study. The study will measure a sample group’s cardiovascular health as they consume 15 g of alcohol once a day for 90 months.

The results will be compared to a control group that has stayed sober for the same period.

Although it is a publicly funded organization, the NIH was unable to obtain financial backing from the

Science Around Town Charmaine Nyakonda Varsity Staff

US Congress to carry out the study, forcing it to look for private backers. Unfortunately, this has led to the dubious arrangement of 67 million USD being provided by a cabal composed of companies Anheuser-Busch InBev, Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Heineken, and Carlsberg — all among the largest producers of alcoholic beverages in the world.

Some private entities don’t stop at funding otherwise unaffiliated scientists. For organizations with the means and finances, it is not unheard of to create an entirely new corporate branch or private laboratory dedicated to the research of their choice. Frequently, these labs operate solely for the purposes of research and development of new products, such as Google’s Verily Life Science, which is currently developing smart contact lenses.

Other times, scientists research the health benefits and shortfalls of already existing products. A prime example is Mars, Inc.’s Center for Cocoa Health Science, dedicated to unravelling the multifaceted mysteries of the cocoa bean, since its inception in 2012. Mars, Inc. has published studies in over 140 peerreviewed academic journals since the early 1980s.

In 2013, one paper analyzed industry and non-industry funded studies on the link between sugarsweetened beverages and weight gain. They found that industryfunded papers were five times more likely to determine that there was no link.

Furthermore, there is evidence that industry-backed research not only yields biased theoretical results, but it may distract from effective applications as well. A study found that randomized controlled trials proposed by researchers funded by private companies were less than half as likely than independent researchers to propose a change in diet as a method to combat obesity.

All of this points to a need for greater transparency from researchers. “The funding, research, study design, data analysis, manuscript writing, and publication — all of which are part of the process and all require full transparency,” said

Dr. Mary R. L’Abbé, Chair of U of T’s Department of Nutritional Sciences. “Not all should be controlled by the funder… Once the study is funded, its conduct, analysis, and publication are based on the study results, not the funder’s needs or objectives.”

But there are more links in the experiment-to-announcement chain than just the researchers themselves. Once conclusions are drawn and test tubes are put back in the cabinet, scholars must have their findings published in an academic journal to see their results applied beyond the laboratory. Of course, academic journals are also staffed and edited by humans who, like researchers, are then also potential recipients of a corporate payoff.

Published in September in the British Medical Journal, a paper by five University Health Network scientists looked at the growing practice of private industries giving financial payments to academic journal editors.

They scrutinized the payments made to 713 editors from 52 American medical journals. The main measure sought was the amount of money in USD received from private pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers by each study participant in 2014. All participants were at least associate editors in the publishing hierarchy, and all journals were cited as influential.

The authors divided the payments into two categories: research payments, which were for research related activities such as coordinating clinical trial enrolment, and general payments, which were for items more particular to the recipient such as meal or flight reimbursements. Due to their more ambiguous and personal nature, general payments were the focus of the paper.

They discovered that while editors received a median general payment of $11, the mean general payment was a whopping $28,136.

This massive right-skew to the data can be explained by the fact that editors in certain esoteric fields, such as endocrinology or cardiol-

Posttranscriptional Regulation of Mitochondrial Gene Expression This seminar will focus on recent findings on the role of specific enzymes involved in the modification of mitochondrial RNA.

Innovation in Global Health: Insights from Around the World and the Implications for Canada Rotman Commerce will be hosting a talk about the implications of health innovations around the world for innovation in Canada, the US, and other developed countries.

Date: Monday, November 13 Time: 4:00 pm Location: Fitzgerald Building, 150 College Street, Room 103 Admission: Free

Date: Monday, November 13 Time: 5:00–6:00 pm Location: Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, 105 St. George Street, Room 1065 Admission: $28.25

FIONA TUNG/THE VARSITY

ogy, seemed to attract much more money.

“It is speculative, but certain fields, such as cardiology and orthopedics, have developed innovation in medical devices and this may be driving the increased payments by industry to physician editors in these fields,” explained lead author Dr. Jessica Liu. “Other specialties, such as endocrinology, have innovation in novel drug development to an extent that is not seen in other fields, such as pathology or family medicine, for example.”

Evidently, there is a problem with privately funded research in academia. In her paper, Liu called for editors-in-chief of academic journals to consider the possibility of excluding industry-tied individuals from editorial positions.

However, there are issues with this approach. “This is where a blanket rule on conflict of interest doesn’t exactly work to me. It’s a small world out there after all; if you start eliminating these kinds

Lithium Ion Batteries: Past, Present and Future Living in a technologically advanced world means everyday gadgets and machinery are powered by batteries, with the most common being lithium-ion.

This talk will go over Canadian research that combines physics and chemistry aimed at powering the world for a cleaner future.

Date: Thursday, November 16 Time: 7:30–9:30 pm Location: Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas Street West, Jackman Hall Admission: Free

of conflicts-of-interests you’re not going to be left with many experts,” said Dr. Emanuel Istrate, who is coordinator of VIC172Y1, a course focused on the interactions between society and science and the ethical responsibilities of scientists. “You can find a million people who have no industry ties, but how qualified are they?”

Once more, it seems that the answer lies in increased transparency.

“We propose that a good place to start would be for all journals to have accessible, comprehensive, and transparent conflict of interest policies for editors,” said Liu. Istrate, too, is optimistic. “Now most pharma journals declare conflict of interest or at least declare there is no conflict of interests. Journals are starting to insist a lot more on seeing the reliability of the statistics so that you can’t just have bad statistics or bad sample sizes and just hide it under the rug. So, I’m optimistic things are changing.”

Unconventional Energy – How it “Changes the Game” The world is threatened by the possibility that fossil fuels, which provide most of the energy we use, will run out. This presentation will discuss the environmental concerns and mitigation practices around developing “unconventional” oil and gas.

Date : Thursday, November 16 Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm Location: Galbraith Building, 35 St. George Street, Room SF3201 Admission: Free

16 • THE VARSITY • SCIENCE

science@thevarsity.ca

The bedbugs are biting Urbanization may be the cause of unwanted evolutionary consequences

FIONA TUNG/THE VARSITY

Andrea Tambunan Varsity Contributor

In London’s underground subway stations, there’s a species of mosquito that has evolved to the point where it no longer needs to feed on blood to produce eggs. These mosquitoes are no longer dormant during the winter season, and unfortunately, they carry many harmful diseases and are now found in cities across North America as well.

It may seem strange to think that these mosquitoes have developed such traits so quickly. What could drive evolution to occur in such a short period of time? According to U of T’s Professor Marc Johnson and Professor Jason Munshi-South of Fordham University, the answer is right outside our doorstep: urbanization.

Recently, the two professors published an eye-opening study in Science suggesting that urbanization has yielded some rapid evolutionary consequences. But their interest in the topic didn’t start there.

“Jason started working on this problem around 10 years ago and I started on it about 5-6 years ago,” said Johnson. After investigating the influence of urbanization on evolution in their own experiments, they decided to look at it from a larger scale. “We became interested in trying to understand [if there are] any general patterns that are emerging if we [synthesize] every single study that has tested for how urbanization influences evolution.”

From mutations that result from random DNA replication errors to entire adaptations, the professors showed that urbanization has an

effect on both the small-scale and large-scale factors of evolution.

“Pollution can influence mutation rates,” explained Johnson.

“For example, if you go into Hamilton Harbor, there are steel plants there and they are emitting airol hydrocarbons into the air. These are mutagens, and they seem to be increasing the mutation rates of some of the organisms that live in the Hamilton area, such as the herring gulls.”

Urbanization can even affect the dispersal of native species. Organisms that have difficulty moving around, like salamanders, are now experiencing drastic genetic changes between different populations.

“It’s almost impossible for them to move across a dry, busy road [and as a result] those populations are becoming genetically different from one another,” said Johnson.

The consequences of urbanization don’t end at genetic changes.

According to Johnson, one of the most serious effects is a loss of biodiversity. “We are entering what a lot of people think is a biodiversity crisis. We’re seeing a very rapid loss of species around the globe and one of the main drivers of that is urbanization.” Johnson hopes that understanding the effect of cities on different organisms can help us save them and their ecosystems.

Pests are another unwanted byproduct of urbanization that have garnered the most media attention.

Our urban lifestyle is partially responsible for animals like rats, bed bugs, and cockroaches evolving a resistance to pesticides. “Rats have adapted... to the warfarin poison that we’ve used... and mosquitoes, which are one of the most important vectors of human diseases, fre-

quently adapt to the pesticides and the physical environments we create in cities,” explained Johnson.

With 55 per cent of the world’s population living in cities, understanding the effect of urbanization on different organisms is an increasingly pressing problem. “Our paper is just the tip of the iceberg,”

said Johnson. “We still do not really understand really well how urbanization influences evolution,” and “we need to think about whether we want to design cities in different ways in order to conserve certain species.”

Though evolved mosquitoes and rats may seem like daunting out-

comes of urbanization, the potential consequences run far deeper than that. Losing biodiversity is not reversible. Only by studying its effects are we able to understand the changing phenomena around us and protect life on this planet.

Notice of Referendum CAMPAIGN PERIOD: November 13, 0:00 - November 19, 23:59 VOTING PERIOD: November 20, 0:00 - November 22, 23:59 Voting is online at www.utsu.simplyvoting.com The University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) is seeking the consent of its members at the St. George Campus to eliminate the portion of the UTSU fee designated for the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG). The fee is $0.50 per session, and is collected in the Fall, Winter, and Summer sessions.

Collection of the fee would cease as of the Summer 2018 session; Are you in favour of eliminating the portion of the UTSU fee designated for OPIRG, as described above? [ ] Yes [ ] No [ ] Abstain

Sports

Novermber 13, 2017 var.st/comment comment@thevarsity.ca

Meet the new head coach of the Blues men’s hockey team Ryan Medel talks coaching, Toronto, and the 2017 squad

Blues head coach Ryan Medel instructs his team against the Ryerson Rams. RUILIN FU/THE VARSITY

Rachel Quade Varsity Contributor

In July, for the first time in more than two decades, the University of Toronto Varsity Blues men’s hockey team made a change at the head of its coaching staff. Ryan Medel joined Toronto as a first-time head coach this season after seven years in an assistant coaching role at Carleton University, where he attended university.

Medel took over from former head coach Darren Lowe, who left after a long run — he had headed up the team since 1995, and he had been on the Blues coaching staff since 1992.

Originally from Ruthven, Ontario, Medel comes to Toronto after a very successful run with the Carleton Ravens, where he was a part of seven straight playoff appearances. He has a lot of love for the Carleton program but is excited to start a new chapter of his career here with the Blues.

“Carleton was a newer program and coming here there’s just a rich tradition of success, and a lot of history here,” said Medel. The move has been a change in atmosphere. “Just being downtown Toronto too, it’s just a different feel. The city is alive, it’s always going,” he added. “It’s been a lot of fun here.”

He hasn’t been met with any surprises in his new role so far, but there has been a certain level of increased responsibility in making the big decisions.

“I think the one thing I’m just finding as a head coach is you have to be bringing your A-game and energy every single day.

You know, I think you’re the person that the guys are looking to, and you just have to make sure you’re at your very best.”

Medel has a real love for the game, especially the strategy behind it — a passion that resulted in him getting into coaching right after graduating. “[I] just thought that if I could stay inside the game somehow I would give that a try. I had the opportunity there after graduating at Carleton to jump right in as an assistant coach,” said Medel.

Medel described his coaching style as being heavily dependent on communication, relationships, and preparation. “I think the biggest thing is I want our group to grow as a team, [and] grow into a family.”

He credits his fellow coaches from Carleton, who were with him from the beginning of his career, with helping to shape him as a coach. Marty Johnson, who was an assistant coach during Medel’s playing career and head coach while he was an assistant, was a huge influence. “I got to learn from him for nine years, and just learn what it was to basically be a professional, coming to the rink every day.”

Medel credits a lot of his coaching abilities to Shaun Van Allen, a former NHL player and former head coach of the Ravens. “I feel that he’s got so much valuable experience. He just was really able to open my eyes in a couple different areas of the game.”

The trio has been scattered this year: Johnson is coaching in the AHL for the Manitoba Moose, while Van Allen has taken over the head coaching duties back at Carleton, but Medel said they’re still in “constant communication.”

In terms of less personal coaching influences, Medel named head coach Mike Babcock of the Toronto Maple Leafs,

for whom he grew up cheering, and Washington Capitals bench boss Barry Trotz as some of his favourite NHL coaches.

Babcock also started at the university level, providing Medel with an example to look up to. He also likes to learn from the greats of the past, like Pat Quinn, and often reads coaching biographies in his spare time.

Medel praised his new team for their speed and their work ethic in particular. “This is an extremely hard-working group, on and off the ice. We have a lot of great students on our team, but also guys that are coming each and every day and working really hard,” he said.

Hard work and commitment are very important to him and he wants his players to focus on improving every day as a team. “We know if we do that… we’re going to win more games than not.”

For Medel, the thing that gives him the most fulfillment in his job is being able to have a positive influence on the young guys, and to see them take steps forward.

“We tell the guys that we want to get better each day, and when you see improvements in not only the individuals but in our team game… that gives me a lot of fulfillment.”

Ultimately, Medel wants his team to grow both as players and as people this year. Through hard work and dedication, he hopes to have a lot of success with the men that make up this year’s team. However, no matter what happens at the end of the season, it’s the relationships that Medel thinks are going to be the most valuable takeaway.

“I want guys to not only enjoy their time here but look back at it as one of their favourite years when they’re older.”

18 d THE VARSITY d SPORTS

sports@thevarsity.ca

Celebrating the life and career of Roy Halladay The greatest pitcher in Blue Jays history died in a plane crash last week Michelle Krasovitski Varsity Staff

Roy Halladay loved being a Blue Jay. He loved playing for Toronto’s baseball team, and he was vocal about it. Though a Blue Jays team fresh off of two consecutive ALCS appearances is genuinely something to be proud of today, Halladay, commonly referred to as ‘Doc,’ was part of a very different baseball team.

His was an era before bat flips, sellout games, walkoff home runs, and — to be blunt — competent baseball.

Halladay, nothing less than a prodigious pitcher, had little to be proud of, and yet he pitched in Toronto for 11 years, not once making it to the playoffs and not once complaining about it. This humbleness and kindness is what makes up the core of Halladay, a man who put as much effort into enriching Toronto’s community as he did to throwing his two-seam sinking fastball.

Halladay died at the age of 40 on November 7, when his plane crashed in the Gulf of Mexico.

It feels wrong to define by numbers a man so known for his generosity and spirit, but the numbers Doc put up in his 15 years of pitching in the MLB were tremendous.

He recorded a 3.38 earned run average in 416 games played — 67 of which were complete games and 20 shutouts. Doc led the league in wins above replacement for pitchers four times: twice in the AL with the Blue Jays and twice in the NL with the Phillies.

Halladay was impressive off the field as well; his benevolent efforts to enrich a city that never gave him a postseason berth will forever be cherished and appreciated. While in Toronto, Doc and his wife Brandy established “Doc’s Box,” a suite that they annually rented out at Rogers Centre, where children from SickKids Hospital and their families could enjoy a day at the ballpark. He was also a keen contributor to Toronto charities, donating $100,000 to the Jays Care Foundation annually.

Though his impact and legacy within Toronto are unquestionable, it is important to note that, after being traded in 2009, Halladay pitched for the Philadelphia Phillies and added a couple more achievements to his already impressive arsenal. And, almost as if written by a novelist, in his first career playoff appearance with the Phillies in 2010, he threw a no-hitter. It was only the second post-season nohitter in MLB history.

Earlier that year, he threw his first perfect game, becoming the 20th player in baseball history to record one and the first pitcher to ever throw a perfect game and a no-hitter in one season. Halladay was magic; genius, hard work, and talent all rolled into one spectacular pitching performance after another. Phillies fans understood why Doc was so admired in Toronto, and they showed him the same calibre of love.

I became a baseball fan after Hal-

laday had retired in 2013 due to injury, so I never saw the man don powder blue or stark black on the mound in the Rogers Centre. While getting acquainted with Blue Jays greats, before Joe Carter, Vernon Wells, and even Roberto Alomar, I learned about Doc — the savant who, when pitching, uplifted an otherwise depleted baseball team into greatness.

When Doc took the mound, Toronto was no longer the vehicle for other teams to flex their pitching and hitting skills — no longer the punching bag. Once every five games, Doc worked his magic, commanding the league to pay attention to an unexceptional team with an exceptional player. With his two Cy Young wins and eight All Star appearances — six of which were with Toronto — Halladay maintained the Blue Jays in baseball fandom’s consciousness. For that, I came to revere his name.

He was a methodical and calm pitcher who worked his magic on the mound and stuck with his team through tough times. In an institution where teams have ever-changing rosters of more than 40 athletes, and play more than 160 matches a year, it is a true accomplishment to stay relevant after retirement and an even bigger one to be labeled a legend so quickly.

Those who were baseball fans during Doc’s reign had profound reactions to the announcement of his tragic death. Every sports news station remembered and celebrated the pitcher, every publication put out a touching tribute, and experts, journalists and fans alike joined forces in remembering Halladay’s generous spirit and incredible talent. The Toronto Maple Leafs and the Toronto Raptors both held moments of silence before the starts of their matches, effectively proving that Doc’s influence was not confined to baseball but rather spread into other sports.

It would be a disservice to remember Halladay as simply an athlete, and an injustice to recognize him solely by his statistics, as good as they may be. Halladay not only reignited a spark in Canada’s baseball community, but he put time and effort into enriching Toronto, both through his inadvertent ambassadorship when representing Canada’s team at an All-Star game and through Doc’s Box. Already inducted into Canada’s Baseball Hall of Fame, it is only a matter of time before Doc gets his spot in Cooperstown. Now the conversation turns to the Blue Jays and how they will honour the man who breathed life into a team that was otherwise bereft of it. Put his name on the Level of Excellence, retire his number, erect a statue of him outside of the Rogers Centre — do anything and all that is possible to ensure that every generation of Toronto fans cherishes, appreciates, and reveres the legend that was Roy Halladay.

Roy Halladay sets his sights on his target. KEITH ALLISON/CC FLICKER

NOVEMBER 13, 2017 • 19

var.st/sports

The mythical importance of sweating at the gym Why sweat isn’t a determining factor for a productive workout

WEEKLY BOX SCORES BASKETBALL MEN’S

57–80

November 10 Varsity Blues

Brock Badgers

92–88

November 11 Varsity Blues

McMaster Marauders

WOMEN’S

71–46

November 10 Varsity Blues

Brock Badgers

47–71

November 11 Varsity Blues

McMaster Marauders

HOCKEY MEN’S

4–1

November 8 Varsity Blues

Western Mustangs

MIA CARNEVALE/THE VARSITY

Jordan LoMonaco Varsity Contributor

When I’m at the gym or out for a run, I find the presence of sweat a strong indication of a successful workout. If I’m not drenched in sweat, then I think I didn’t work out hard enough. This is a common misconception many of us have.

I can’t even count the number of times I have been told by coaches, my parents, or sporting brand ads that in order to shed calories or fat or even gain muscle, you need to sweat after every workout. It sounds almost intuitive: you must be working harder than normal to sweat, which means that the more you sweat the more you’re burning.

On the contrary, almost all research done on sweating comes back with the same conclusion: a correlation between sweat and fat burn does not exist. So where does this myth stem from?

Our muscles do require a certain amount of calories, or energy, in the form of fat or carbohydrates. The harder we work out, the more energy we need. At certain energy levels, our body will need to work harder, which in turn will raise our bodies’ overall temperature and trigger a response from our sweat glands.

Sweating is an autonomic nervous system function that is triggered when your inner core temperature gets too high. Sweat is our bodies’ way of cooling off and maintaining a normal body temperature. Not only does sweat cool the skin as it evaporates, it also helps cool our inside core temperature.

Made up of water, sodium, and other substances, sweat helps cool your body. It makes sense to think that since working out increases our inner core temperature, the amount of sweat we produce is a good indication of how hard we work. As you work out harder, your body needs to pump more blood to your

muscles, which logically increases the body’s overall temperature.

However, despite people having an average of 2–4 million sweat glands in their body, no two people produce the same quantity of sweat — especially not for the same activities.

Everything from gender, genetics, environmental conditions, age, weight and even fitness can drastically change how much a person sweats. Aspects like stress, anxiety, and hormones also trigger the stimulation of those sweat glands and have been shown to even alter a person’s body temperature.

Therefore, it is a major misconception to believe that the rate you sweat is only determined by fitness level.

Fit people do sweat earlier and more easily than most people. Individuals who are fit have bodies that are more efficient at not only sending motor and neuron signals to their muscles, but also are more effective at regulating the inner core temperature. As a result, individuals who are fit sweat much sooner, cooling down their bodies faster and for prolonged periods of time, to allow those individuals to work out longer.

Another potential explanation for the sweat-fitness correlation myth could originate from the fact that a prolonged amount of sweating does make you lose water weight, since your body is producing so much sweat from your glands. You could appear to have burned fat and calories when in actuality you have only burned off water weight.

In other words, your rate of sweat and level of calorie burn are not synonymous.

You could be sweating more than another individual not necessarily because you’re working out harder, but more likely because of different factors like a higher weight or higher level of fitness. To more accurately keep track of fat or calorie burn, individuals should focus more on heart rates and scale numbers instead.

2–5

November 10

Ryerson Rams

Varsity Blues

4–2

November 11 Varsity Blues

Western Mustangs

WOMEN’S

3–5

November 9 Varsity Blues

Ryerson Rams

2–3

November 11 Varsity Blues

Waterloo Warriors

VOLLEYBALL MEN’S

0–3

November 11 Varsity Blues

(13–25, 20–25, 18-25)

Varsity Blues

(26–24, 15–25, 25–20, 25–22)

Nipissing Lakers

WOMEN’S

3–1

November 11

Nipissing Lakers

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THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY

SPELLING BEE

NOVEMBER 13 , 2017 u 20

U OF T’S PERFORMING ARTS LEADER SINCE 1919

2017/2018 HART HOUSE THEATRE SEASON

THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE Music and Lyrics by William Finn Book by Rachel Sheinkin Conceived by Rebecca Feldman Additional material by Jay Reiss Originally Directed on Broadway by James Lapine Directed by Cory Doran

NOV. 10-25, 2017 harthousetheatre.ca

Season Sponsors:

Dialogue on Intangible Cultural Heritage Interactive sessions presented by the Ontario Heritage Trust

Symposium

Lecture by Wade Davis Thursday, December 7 7 p.m.

Isabel Bader Theatre Learn more and buy tickets at heritagetrust.on.ca/dialogue2017 Student discounts available!

© 2017 Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation

Wednesday, November 22 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Artscape Wychwood Barns