November 30, 2023 by Western Gazette

NOVEMBER 30, 2023 VOLUME 117 ISSUE 6

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BEYOND THE BLUEPRINT: Bridging the gender gap in Western Engineering SONIA PERSAUD FEATURES EDITOR

akhee Patel’s journey to Western Engineering began with a few pieces of coloured plastic. A self-proclaimed “LEGO kid,” Patel’s love of building led her to LEGO Robotics in elementary and high school. Now, the fourth-year mechanical engineering and Ivey Business School student at Western University spends her spare time building a concrete toboggan on the Western Engineering Toboggan Team. Patel picked Western for its dual degree with Ivey and says she’s loved her time at the Faculty of Engineering. But as she goes to her classes or works with her team in the lab, she often feels like the odd one out — because of her gender. Women are no longer a minority at the university, as they were in 1919 when Brescia University College was founded. As the all-women’s college prepares to merge with Western in the spring, women make up 55 per cent of Western undergraduates. That pattern is consistent across the board in Western’s first-entry programs, except one. In the Faculty of Engineering, the percentage of women-identifying students stood at just 23 per cent during the 2022-23 school year. The gender gap in engineering is no secret. Western Engineering recognizes it, and so does Engineers Canada, the profession’s national governing body, which says its goal is 30 by 30 — for 30 per cent of newly-licensed engineers to be women by the year 2030. The number of women enrolling in undergraduate engineering programs across Canada is on the rise. But Western hasn’t had quite as fast of an uptick. Last year, the rate of women enrolled in Western Engineering was just below the middle of the pack for all Ontario engineering universities and dead last out of its research-intensive peers. According to Patel, even though the gender gap in engineering may be closing, there are still jokes about women being “diversity hires,” and men thinking they know better — just because they’re men.

atel is an executive on the Western Engineering Toboggan Team this year and was a team member last year. As a mechanical engineering student who grew up building robots, she’s long been interested in hands-on construction. The toboggan team is a build team — an engineering student project team that is a big part of engineering student culture, especially within

SOPHIE BOUQUILLON GAZETTE Rakhee Patel , fourth-year mechanical engineering and Ivey student, with the Western Engineering Toboggan Team’s Toboggan in WETT’s shop, Nov. 28, 2023.

SOPHIE BOUQUILLON GAZETTE Tierney Craven, fourth-year chemical engineering student, in the Amit Chakma Engineering Building, Nov. 28, 2023.

more hands-on disciplines like mechanical. Western has eight of these teams, including the Formula Racing team that builds an annual Formula Onestyle vehicle and Western SunStang, which makes a solar-powered car. Even though Patel has had a good experience on the toboggan team, the gender gap stood out to her before she joined. “There’s just kind of a preconceived notion that if a guy wants to join a build team, they don’t need to have any experience, it doesn’t matter,” she says. “But if a girl wants to join construction on a build team, they kind of need to prove themselves beforehand.” As a mechanical engineering student, even completing the second-year machine workshop training required for her program was discomfiting. Patel recalls the group of 15 or 20 students saying “ladies first” to her and the other womenidentifying students in her class — adding to the pressure when she was new to learning.

KAI WILSON GAZETTE Western chemical engineering professor, Lauren Tribe, explaining how a proper cup of coffee is brewed. Nov. 24, 2023.

Patel is the vice-president development of Western’s Women in Engineering club, organizing community and professional development events for its members such as resume workshops and self-defense sessions. But this year, she brought a new initiative to the role — launching women’s-only shop times for

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students to complete mandatory training on operating tools used by build teams. She wanted to create a space where women who want to join build teams wouldn’t be judged for asking questions and learning. CONTINUED ON P4

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Shepard says Western will not make women’s hockey program investigation results public SOPHIA SCHIEFLER NEWS EDITOR

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VOLUME 117, ISSUE 6 November 30, 2023 University Community Centre Rm. 263 Western University London, ON, CANADA N6A 3K7 Editorial editor@westerngazette.ca

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estern president Alan Shepard said the university would “absolutely not” make the results of the externally-conducted investigation into the Mustang’s women’s hockey program public, when asked by the Gazette in an interview onNov. 22. As this is an employment matter, the school “will not be sharing any information about the investigation beyond the public statement provided on Nov. 1,” Western University added in a statement to the Gazette. The university completed an external investigation into allegations of misconduct against hockey team’s head coach Candice Moxley and former strength and conditioning coach Jeff Watson on Nov. 1, according to Western. London lawyer Elizabeth Hewitt who conducted the investigation found allegations against Moxley to be unsubstantiated and found some allegations against Watson to be substantiated. Watson is no longer with the university and Moxley has since returned as head coach. Shepard said in the interview, Hewitt consulted with “dozens and dozens” of people for the review before drawing her conclusions. “I feel confident that her conclusions are accurate, are carefully drawn and signal to us that we have a strong, safe sport culture,” said Shepard.

LIAM MCINNIS GAZETTE Western University’s Middlesex College, Feb. 26, 2018.

But following the announcement Moxley would return to the team, some players wrote a letter to Shepard on Nov. 2, planning to boycott all games and practices Moxley was involved in and said they “do not believe that the investigation was fair, unbiased, and transparent.” Western sent a confidential survey on Nov. 7 and the majority of the women’s hockey team responded they wished to play for the remainder of the season. According to Shepard, more than 20 of the 24 team members responded that they wanted to continue playing. “Coach Moxley has our full support,” added Shepard.

The president also expressed his disappointment with Federal Minister of Sport and Physical Activity Carla Qualtrough’s recent comment in a statement to the Gazette on Nov. 14 that Western’s response to the allegations was another example of the normalized “maltreatment” within the Canadian sport system. While Qualtrough agreed with Western’s decision to conduct an external investigation, she pointed out the decision only came “after concerns were raised about how complaints are handled internally.” “I thought it was unfortunate she commented, because I doubt that she’s aware of the details or the context of the investigation,” said Shepard. More than 50 Western faculty members and alumni sent a signed letter addressed to Shepard on Oct. 26, calling for a broader investigation into the university’s sports and recreation department. Shepard said that he believed student athletes at Western have adequate means of reporting misconduct or abuse in the sports and recreation department. Western has since appointed kinesiology professor and program director Laura Misener as the senior advisor on safe sport for the university. The women’s hockey team continues to play in the Ontario University Athletics conference and Western confirmed in a statement on Nov. 24 that Moxley has been on the bench at the team’s last three games.

‘We’ve always wanted to play at the next level’: Flag football joins Olympics HANNAH JEON SPORTS INTERN

rom humble beginnings in backyards to making its Olympic debut, flag football shoots straight for glory as it looks to make a global name for itself. The sport had previously been an exhibition sport at the 2022 World Games, but has now been approved as one of the five sports pending inclusion into the Los Angeles Summer 2028 Olympics. Olivia Ghosh-Swaby, vice president of the Western University Women’s Football Club, says the inclusion of the sport in the Olympics is a move towards creating history, particularly for women in football. “We’ve always wanted to play at the next level, we just haven’t had that space. Whereas men, you can go into the CFL, you go to the NFL,” she says. Flag football is a no-contact variation of traditional American football, played on a smaller field and involves players pulling flags worn at the waist as a substitute for tackling. The International Federation of American Football has been holding both men’s and women’s flag football world championships since 2002. Flag football’s arrival to the Olympics wasn’t an unexpected one for Ghosh-Swaby, who has been in the provincial flag football organization for some time now. “I knew it was coming. I just didn’t know the pathway to get there,” she says. Ghosh-Swaby is a fourth-year neuroscience PhD student and recipient of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, which recognizes graduate students who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and scholarly achievement. She has played a big role in the conception and development of the women’s football program at Western as well as across Canada. Ghosh-Swaby has led the flag football club team to multiple championships since 2016 while working to establish a space for flag football at the university level. During its inception, the women’s football system remained very informal. Individuals at univer-

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sities mainly relied on word of mouth, email and Facebook to spread information and organize flag football tournaments. “It was not regulated,” describes Ghosh-Swaby. “No rulebook, no governing body and we were not under our provincial sport organization or national sport organization.” Ghosh-Swaby faced this challenge head-on, taking the initiative to coordinate amongst other universities and establish the Ontario Women’s Intercollegiate Football Association in 2018. The club has been around informally since 2012 but was finally ratified last year. Despite the adversities of the pandemic and the challenges of becoming a recognized entity, the Western women’s flag football team has been a leading program since 2019-20, with applications of over 120 women consistently signing up.

“This year, we probably have the biggest retention, with up to 30 players,” says Ghosh-Swaby. “But only about 15 can represent nationally.” Ghosh-Swaby attributed the rapid growth of the sport to its increasing popularity in high school as well as Western’s ability to attract students from all over Ontario. A main contributor to the sport’s appeal is, in part, its ability to accommodate a diverse range of athletes. As opposed to traditional football, where physicality and height are crucial, flag football doesn’t discriminate. “You don’t have to be super tall — you can be short, even being short is an advantage to evading pulls,” notes Ghosh-Swaby. The vice president envisions increased accessibility for the sport and potentially even a future in the Paralympics. “This is the time to invest,” says Ghosh-Swaby.

NEWS | P3

Western acquires the second 15.2T ultra-high field MRI scanner in North America SONIA PERSAUD FEATURES EDITOR

estern is now home to a new ultra-high field 15.2T MRI scanner, the second of its kind in North America and sixth in the world. The magnetic resonance imaging scanner was delivered on Nov. 23 and is housed in Western University’s Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping at Robarts Research Institute. Ravi Menon, a professor of medical biophysics in the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, says the university will use the scanner for mouse neuroimaging in areas like the study of cognition or neurodegenerative diseases. Demand for the CFMM’s existing ultra-high field small animal scanner prompted the need for the new 15.2 Tesla MRI scanner, according to CFMM core director Joe Gati, who oversees the day-to-day operations of the facility. The CFMM uses a 9.4T ultra-high field MRI scanner to image the brains of small animals, including rodents and non-human primates like marmoset monkeys. The centre sees such high demand for the 9.4T machine that it is operational round-the-clock. Imaging of mouse brains will be moved to the 15.2T scanner, freeing up time on the 9.4T for marmoset and rat imaging. “Mice have smaller anatomies, and in order for smaller anatomies to be investigated, higher field strength is a good direction to go,” said Gati. “We’re trying to work on, not absolutely the bleeding edge, but close to the bleeding edge of the technology.” Magnetic fields are measured in units of Teslas.

KAI WILSON GAZETTE Bruker 15.2 T preclinical MRI scanner at the Robarts Research Institute, Nov. 21, 2023.

High-field MRI scanners typically used in clinics are usually 1.5T or 3T — Western’s new 15.2T scan-

ner has a magnetic field five or 10 times higher than those clinical systems.

“Magnetic field is sort of the currency of MRI,” explained Menon. “The higher the magnetic field, the more signal you get.” In addition to the new 15.2T scanner, the CFMM — Canada’s National Ultra-high Field MRI platform — also has a human high field 3T scanner, an ultra-high field 7T human and 9.4T small-animal MRI scanners. According to Menon, the new MRI scanner has a price tag of around five million, and the university fronted a significant amount of the initial funding for its purchase. Penny Pexman, Western’s vice-president research, said she feels the scanner’s acquisition “opens new avenues for discovery and provides yet another first-in-Canada tool to help researchers better understand, diagnose and eventually treat brain diseases.” The acquisition of the new 15.2T machine is also important for undergraduate students as they consider working on summer or graduate research at Western, said Menon. “If these students want to prepare themselves for careers in research in industry or academia, it’s really important to have access to these sorts of things,” he said. Western ordered the magnet in December 2022 and it arrived at the university three months ahead of schedule. Gati said the installation is expected to be completed by Christmas.

Western establishes chair in Ontario renews scholarethics and technology after ships for students affected $1.5M alum donation by international tragedies DANIA LIU CONTRIBUTOR

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estern has established a chair in ethics and technology that will research how to ethically use artifical intelligence, as well as its impact on individuals, society and humanity through a $3 million endowment. The endowment contains a $1.5 million donation from class of 1990 alum Tim Duncanson and $1.5 million from Western University’s matching chair programs. Duncanson told the Gazette the idea for this chair came after months of discussion with Western president Alan Shepard and former Faculty of Arts and Humanities dean Michael Milde. “As technology continued to evolve, we all agreed on the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to studying ethical approaches to both the development and implementation of these new technologies,” said Duncanson. “I felt Western was a natural place for this.” The position was announced in October, and Western will fill it through a joint appointment from the philosophy and computer science departments. According to Jan Plug, Faculty of Arts and Humanities’ acting dean, students in his faculty and the Faculty of Science at both the undergraduate and graduate level have shown significant interest in AI ethics. Plug said the new position will provide opportunities for an additional research complement

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in existing courses, such as Philosophy 1130: Big Ideas and Philosophy 2078F: Ethics for a Digital World. The new position “ensures we are extremely well prepared to respond to current questions and debates around the ethical implications of technology,” wrote Plug. The creation of the chair position comes after Western appointed Mark Daley as its first-ever chief AI officer on a five-year term earlier this year. Daley is looking forward to collaborating with the new chair, emphasizing their expertise across Western’s faculties. “We’ve got a really strong philosophy department, we have really strong researchers in neuroscience, computer science and AI, and so, we can take that multidisciplinary lens to AI ethics.”

he Ontario government has announced the renewal of the Ontario-Ukraine Solidarity Scholarship and the Ontario Remembrance Scholarship for students impacted by international crises. The province is funding $2.5 million in scholarships, providing over 200 students with $10,000 towards post-secondary education in Ontario. The Ontario Remembrance Scholarship was established in partnership with Ontario’s Ministry of Colleges and Universities in 2020 to honour Canadian students who lost their lives in the tragedy of Ukrainian International Airlines flight PS752, four of whom were students at Western University. Similarly, the Ontario-Ukraine Solidarity Scholarship was implemented in 2022 to aid those affected by the war in Ukraine and supports four $10,000 scholarships at every public university and college. President of Western Ukrainian Students Club Sofia Holowatsky explained that in her view, “the scholarships for students are fundamental in securing the future of the young Ukrainian generation.” “It’s so easy to become hopeless and nihilistic about everything … a scholarship may serve as an additional motivator to get involved,” added Oleksii Zalipa, the vice-president of finance of the club. “Most, if not every, Ukrainian student right now is preoccupied with one issue — ending the war in the home country.”

To be eligible for the Ontario Remembrance Scholarship, the student must have a cumulative average of at least 75 per cent as a full-time student the year prior. Students must also have the “intent to pursue graduate studies and have a desire to make a difference in the lives of others,” according to Valerie Sarkany, associate registrar and director of student financial services and student records at Western. The Ontario-Ukraine Solidarity Scholarship is open to both undergraduate and graduate students from Ukraine attending Western or its affiliate colleges. “Successful recipients must have demonstrated financial need as well as academic achievement, community service and dedication to their education,” said Sarkany. Western previously offered $10,000 to four eligible international undergraduates in 2020 and 2021 under the Ontario Remembrance Scholarship. Last year, Western provided four scholarships at $10,000 to recipients under the Ontario-Ukraine Solidarity Scholarship. The university is currently awaiting further information from the government about the renewed scholarships including the amount and number for this year. Ontario renewed the scholarships for the upcoming academic year, Western encouraged eligible students to reach out to the financial aid office for application details and further information.

FEATURES | P4

Beyond the

Bridging the gender gap

SONIA PERSAUD F CONTINUED FROM P1

“This was an initiative born out of the idea of, we want to give girls in engineering confidence and have them learn in a safe space, so they can then prove themselves — which sucks — but have the abilities to prove themselves and to go after those roles,” says Patel. Once a month this semester, the club has held women-only shop training sessions on weekends. Patel says they’ve gone well so far and filled up quickly through word-of-mouth. The situation is different in other engineering disciplines like chemical engineering, according to fourth-year chemical engineering student Tierney Craven. Here, the gender gap is virtually nonexistent — Craven estimates around half of chemical engineering students at Western are women. But even when it’s a close-to-equal split, Craven says the men in her classes tend to be louder and more confident. To illustrate, she describes an experience where a male student spoke over her when she answered a question in class. “I had the right answer, which was just extra funny to me, but he spoke over me and he wasn’t even right. But he felt comfortable doing that,” she says. Third-year civil engineering student Gabriela Guisandes Bueno agrees. She says sexist behaviour shows up in group projects and teamwork — a core part of engineering classes, especially in upper years. “You can see for certain people, certain guys, how they are kind of patronizing or ‘mansplaining’,” she says. Craven loves chemical engineering and is happy with her choice of discipline, but even when choosing chemical over her other interest, mechanical, she had the gender gap in the back of her mind. “There was definitely a part of me that was like, you aren’t smart enough to go into mechanical because all of these guys in mechanical try to talk it up like it’s harder than other disciplines,” says Craven. “I definitely got in my head a bit like they would think I’m just this dumb girl in mechanical engineering, whereas maybe chemical I wouldn’t feel that way as much.” Regardless of discipline, women-identifying students in engineering shared they had few role models within the faculty — just 20 per cent of full-time faculty in the Faculty of Engineering are women, the lowest percentage at the school. But getting to today’s representation of women — 23 per cent of students and 20 per cent of faculty — is the product of long cultural change.

ec. 6, 1989, began as a normal day for Western chemical engineering professor Lauren Tribe, then a Western student in the middle of her undergraduate engineering degree. It was a typical early December day: cold and blustery with near-freezing temperatures, and Tribe spent most of it on campus — going to classes and studying at the library for her upcoming exams. Around 4 p.m., an armed man entered the École Polytechnique, an engineering school affiliated with the University of Montreal in Québec, and murdered 14 women — all engineering students — and left another 10 women and four men injured. When Tribe came home from campus that evening, she saw her answering machine full of messages from her mother, frantic to hear her daughter’s voice. Tribe recalls her mother’s slightly panicky voice on the phone, then tears as she heard her daughter’s voice and confirmed that she was okay. These were the days before the Internet and cell phones. Tribe’s parents were living in Montreal at the time and had seen the news shortly after the shooting happened, but in those “first hours of chaos” they — and the country — were unaware if it was an isolated incident. “When the incident first happened, you didn’t know if it was a lone person or if it was going to be all engineering schools across Canada targeted,” Tribe explains. The École Polytechnique massacre, as it’s now called, remained the deadliest mass shooting in Canada for 30 years. It was also an explicitly anti-feminist and misogynistic shooting — in the perpetrator’s suicide letters, he blamed feminists for ruining his life and expressed interest in killing women he considered feminists. Even before the École Polytechnique massacre, it was never particularly easy to be a woman in engineering in Canada. Western’s first woman engineering student graduated in 1966, 16 years after the faculty first opened. Back then and in the years that followed, there were never a lot of women in engineering faculties — Statistics Canada data from 1975 says approximately five per cent of Canadian engineering students were female. Tribe continued her studies in engineering — she describes herself as someone who, if told she can’t do something, will try harder to do it. By 1992, three years after the massacre and two years before Tribe received her undergraduate degree, the percentage of women in engineering and architectural programs had grown to 17.5 per cent country-wide.

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In the absence of robust, women-focused organizations at Western Engineering, Tribe describes an informal network of women-identifying students who supported each other through their degrees. “You tended to gravitate towards each other in class, working on assignments and working on group projects,” she says. “We had to informally make our own support network.” While women have historically been relegated to prioritizing family above their own higher education and careers, the latter half of the 20th century saw changes that encouraged women’s participation, according to Western economics professor Audra Bowlus. Maternity leave was implemented in Canada in 1971. Daycares and technological innovations like the dishwasher allowed women to spend less time taking care of the home, while social movements like the feminist movement encouraged women to seek out equal opportunities in all areas of their lives. But even though women began to participate more in higher education, they were mostly concentrated in certain areas — like the arts, nursing and education. Bowlus attributes this discrepancy to both discrimination faced in other fields, like engineering, as well as the perceived lack of flexibility from these career paths. “If I’m going to go to school, I’m going to put all this effort in and think I’m going to be working, but I still want to have a family or I still want to have

children, then initially there were choices around “in what kinds of careers could I still do that?” says Bowlus.

n 2023, as Patel completes her engineering degree, nearly a quarter of Western’s engineering students identify as women, a trend on an upward trajectory, albeit a slow one. Although the gap has begun to close, the gender gap in engineering begins before students step foot into their first university classes — even before they apply to university in the first place. The drop-out of girls and women from science, technology engineering and math in highschool is described as the “leaky pipeline.” Through elementary and middle school, girls participate in science classes and math classes in equal numbers to boys. In high school, though, they’re less likely to take higher-level courses in calculus and physics — the very courses needed to apply to engineering schools. According to a 2019 report from the University of Guelph, high school physics represents the largest “leak” in the engineering pipeline, with only 34 per cent of grade 12 physics students identifying as women. The report says societal attitudes about women in science mean adults tend to rate girls as less academically capable and less likely to enjoy science — regardless of their actual skill. Teachers are also less likely to encourage girls to continue taking science, technology, engineering and math courses.

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e blueprint:

p in Western Engineering

FEATURES EDITOR

A smaller pool of applicants means fewer women engineering students admitted and enrolled across the province. So when students finally step foot in a classroom, it ends up with the situation today — women representing just a quarter of students. Western’s gap is smaller than it is at many Ontario universities, but for the schools that are part of the U15 — a group of Canadian research universities — Western’s 2022-23 numbers rank dead last. It’s not for lack of interest from the faculty. Tribe served as the assistant dean of first-year studies for Western Engineering for five years and was involved in recruitment as part of that role. One of the major changes she introduced was what the faculty calls a Connect Profile — an optional part of the application to Western Engineering that allows students to discuss their personal experiences. Tribe says the supplemental application can help all students, regardless of gender. But it can also be a chance for applicants — including women — who have faced barriers in STEM education, to share their aptitude for engineering in another way. “Marks don’t tell the whole story. There’s differences in high school, life happens,” she says. “Maybe somebody had to have a job to help support their family. There are other things that affect the whole person.”

Western is one of several schools across the province to use supplemental information, in addition to high school grades, to determine admissions to engineering programs. Like Western, York University and University of Waterloo have optional supplementary applications, and McMaster University and University of Toronto require supplemental profiles. The latter three schools — McMaster, Toronto, and Waterloo — also include video interviews as part of their assessments. During Tribe’s time as assistant dean from 2016 to 2021, the percentage of women enrolled in the faculty increased by about five per cent. “We moved the needle a little bit, but not very much. I don’t know why,” says Tribe. “I wish I knew why more women don’t choose Western Engineering — why more women don’t choose engineering across the province.” Among other proposals, Tribe says she doesn’t believe in implementing an admissions quota to increase numbers. “There might be this perception that women got in that were less qualified, and that will change the dynamic and not in a good way,” she says.

aculty of Engineering dean Ken Coley says Western recognizes the gender gap, and the faculty sees encouraging girls to be interested in engineering and guiding them towards the required high school cores as an “important step toward increasing applications, and therefore admissions to engineering programs.”

Georgia Trifon, Western Engineering outreach coordinator for equity, diversity and inclusion programs, says she hopes her role will soon be obsolete. The office runs outreach programs designed to teach students from kindergarten through high school about engineering and technology. While most offerings aren’t targeted at a specific group, Trifon’s role is focused on organizing events for those from equity-deserving groups in engineering, including Indigenous, Black and 2SLGBTQIA+ youth in addition to girls. Engineering Outreach’s flagship just-for-girls event is Go ENG Girl, an outreach event designed to teach girls in grades seven to 10 about engineering and encourage them to consider the profession. The targeted age range is when girls’ career aspirations tend to shift away from STEM and engineering. One of the main goals of the program is to change perceptions about what engineering can be. The program had 155 sign-ups in London and 75 in Sarnia for its October offering. Catherine Tse, a third-year mechatronics engineering student and the vice-president outreach of Women in Engineering, is one of those girls and can attest to the power of outreach. Tse was always a problem-solver as a child, and she says the outreach events she grew up attending at Western and other universities opened her eyes to the kinds of problems she could work on solving as an engineer. As vice-president outreach, she’s attended and helped to organize events like Go CODE Girl, and hopes that they will help more girls feel less intimidated by the male-dominated field. “You want to get past that initial barrier, and once you do that, there’s endless possibilities,” says Tse. “I think there are so many women that are interested in it, and it’s just that little push they need at that time, that will help them to to understand more about if they want to do it in the future.” Tribe says there’s likely no one magic answer explaining the gender gap, but part of the picture is that — since girls are less likely to have opportunities in STEM — learning what the profession actually entails can be a challenge. “Its strength is that you can do a lot of things, but that also means it’s harder to sell to a 17 year-old.”

ust because women make up only 23 per cent of Western’s engineering students doesn’t mean they haven’t made their mark.

Speaking with the Gazette after teaching a fourth-year chemical engineering class called Engineering Coffee, Tribe points out the seat where Craven, one of her students, had sat just a handful of minutes before. Tribe describes the value of holistic admissions processes to capture the unique qualities of applicants like Craven, who Tribe says she saw star last year in Western’s Engineering Musical. Not all students, especially women, have had equal opportunities in STEM, but that doesn’t mean they won’t become talented engineers. Craven’s philosophy is that engineering is supposed to be about creative problem-solving, and her passion for art and music adds, not detracts, from her qualities as an engineering student. “A lot of people just think it’s like … math, formulas, science. So I really like that creative aspect of it, where I get to think a bit differently,” she says. Hailing from a small Alberta town where only around 10 per cent of her high school graduating class went to university, Craven decided to pursue engineering after seeing the incoming government discuss selling off provincial park land to use for coal mining. Frustrated with this decision, Craven went on what she calls a personal journey of figuring out how she could affect change, eventually settling on chemical engineering and applying to Ontario universities where she knew the focus would be less on the oil and gas industry. It’s not just Craven — students across the Faculty of Engineering, women, men and nonbinary students alike, are engaged and ready to make change. As Western Engineering looks to the future, closing the gender gap isn’t the only area of focus. Like how Trifon’s work in outreach involves events targeted at Black, Indigenous and 2SLGBTQIA+ youth in addition to women and girls, the faculty recognizes there’s a need for change in this area too. Craven, herself a queer woman, feels it’s not only important that women are in engineering, but that everybody is in engineering. “If engineers are supposed to provide solutions or things happening in the world, how are you able to provide a solution that works for everybody if the discipline isn’t representative of that?” she asks. Patel puts it more simply: “Girls are great. Period. Full stop.”

CULTURE | P6

Karma is the guy on the Chiefs: Swifties join the NFL RYAN GOODISON SENIOR SPORTS EDITOR

estern second-year health sciences student Angela Teoderascu never really cared about football — until Taylor Swift started dating Travis Kelce. As you’ve no doubt seen everywhere on the internet, Grammy award-winning musician Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs’ tight-end Travis Kelce’s relationship has caused worlds to collide as “Swifties” have joined together to watch football — many for the first time. Teoderascu recently got into football when the relationship became public. She and her friends have found themselves watching Chiefs games when Swift is supposed to be in attendance. “I think the Swiftie committee is so big that now the [NFL] is going to get probably millions of viewers that they didn’t have before who didn’t show an interest at all,” says Teoderascu. When Swift made her first appearance at Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium, Kelce jerseys saw a 400 per cent spike in sales, putting him in the top five for National Football League players. When the Chiefs took on the New York Jets at the beginning of October, the game peaked at 29 million viewers on television as Swift and her friends watched the game from a booth in MetLife Stadium. “If you go on any social media platform, during or after the game, you’ll see [Swift] inevitably, so

you don’t really have to try too hard to look for it,” Teoderascu says. But despite the media sensation around Swift and Kelce’s relationship, this isn’t the first time a relationship of this calibre has brought new attention to professional sports leagues. The NFL has seen something similar when New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady began dating Brazilian model Gisele Bündchen. Broadcasts would often show Bündchen multiple times when she was at games, just like Swift. Ryan Bruce, a popular music studies professor at Western University, also recalled when soccer player David Beckham began dating Victoria Adams of the Spice Girls, it was common for Spice Girls fans to take interest in Beckham’s games and for soccer fans to take interest in Spice Girls’ music. “It’s that there was this heightened story, and it was about amplifying something about the relationship that became interesting,” says Bruce. A big difference in the cultural phenomenon caused by Swift and Kelce’s relationship versus Beckham and Adams’ has been social media exposure rather than tabloid magazines. “What I find interesting is that we’re starting to see that Taylor Swift fandom actually kind of spilled over into the public space, where it’s much more visible than what we’ve seen before,” says Bruce. But not everyone is happy with the attention that Swift has been getting. Many NFL fans have

The untold tale of goose poop at Western DANIELLE PAUL SENIOR CULTURE EDITOR

estern’s picturesque grounds are fighting a silent battle against bright green poop. Anyone who’s been to Western University can see the large number of geese on campus — and the large amount of poop they create on its pathways. “On the sidewalks, especially on campus, there is a lot of geese poop and it’s quite obvious because it’s very bright green,” says Selena Varghese, a third-year health sciences student. Geese are almost exclusively vegetarian, eating grass, roots, seeds and weeds. Estimates suggest that geese poop a few times every hour and up to 20 times every day. Geese are abundant at Western because they have adapted to urbanized and human modified environments. They love hanging out in large grassy areas such as University College Hill, the Health Science Fields and even the football fields around Western Alumni Stadium — which means their poop will be there, and they poop a lot. For the university’s Facilities Management, cleaning the goose poop off of pathways is simply a part of their weekly cleaning tasks. “It’s definitely something that has an aesthetic impact to the walkways and a comfort impact to people walking on the walkway,” explains Mike Lunau, manager of Western’s landscape services. Staff use power washers in the summer and fall to clear the poop off of the walkways. But, in the winter months and going into spring, they use a ride-on collection sweeper unit to clean the pathways. The team works mainly in the newer and “core” campus areas such as UC Hill, Kent Walk East and North — the new pathway in front of the Physics and Astronomy Building to the Social Science Centre — as well as the pathways around the Music Building and Talbot College. They also use the

PARUM PATEL GAZETTE PHOTO COURTESY OF EVA RINALDI

quickly grown tired of the artist, citing her as a distraction from the game. Bruce explained we often see in music fandoms a sense of ownership that makes fans defensive when outsiders try to join — a similar idea to what is happening in the world of football. Teoderascu understands why sports fans might be upset about the amount of attention Swift is

receiving, but for her it’s clear why the NFL keeps showing the musician — money. “I think all the sports channels know they can make a profit off of this, or they’re just taking advantage of it,” says Teoderascu. The real question is, how long will it be before Swift gets her own Super Bowl halftime show?

Western student champions CPR education after father’s death TAYLA DOYLE CONTRIBUTOR

ARISIA QARRI GAZETTE

ride-on collection sweeper in some perimeter areas of campus. “Definitely takes some time and resources to try and keep the accumulation at a manageable and reasonable level,” says Lunau. When stepped on, the goose poop can be gross and leave shoes dirty. Varghese enjoys buying and collecting shoes, but she often sees a lot of goose poop on campus and finds it hard to avoid. Not only that but the feces can also post a health risk. Goose poop may contain parasites and bacteria within them. If ingested or inhaled, it can pose risks to humans in terms of transmitting this bacteria. “On the grass it’s obvious [goose poop] is gonna be there and that’s fine,” she says. “Sidewalks are something that should be cleaned because it is kind of slippery so if you step in you might fall or something.” Stepping on goose poop is unfortunately a rite of passage for many Western students. Don’t let pretty photos of campus fool you, the bright green goose poop is everywhere.

he death of Danijela Jelich’s father sent her on the path of teaching others how to save lives. Danijela, who is currently taking a year off from Western University, is raising awareness for cardiopulmonary resuscitation — commonly referred to as CPR — and automated external defibrillator training by sharing the story of her late father, Steven Jelich, who died of cardiac arrest in March. Danijela says her father’s condition was misidentified as a seizure by a 911 dispatcher. “Unfortunately, the 911 dispatcher did not ask enough questions and failed to recognize that he was in cardiac arrest despite my mom repeatedly asking if she should do CPR,” says Jelich. She adds that the dispatcher dismissed her mother’s questions. It takes only about five minutes before a person experiencing cardiac arrest becomes brain-dead without CPR. On World Restart A Heart Day on Oct. 16, Danijela and her family set up a booth at Western Natural Sciences Centre. There, they trained over 300 people on how to perform CPR,

COURTESY OF DANIJELA JELICH Danijela Jelich raising awareness about cardiac arrest as part of World Restart a Heart Day, Oct. 16, 2023.

AED usage as well as basic skills and knowledge about cardiac arrest. There are around 7,000 cardiac arrests per year, 85 per cent occurring outside of the hospital — this statistic was a motivating factor for Danijela to get involved in World Restart a Heart Day and training individuals in defibrillation use and CPR. One of Danijela’s most significant takeaways from meeting students on World Restart A Heart Day is that many people don’t know where AEDs are on campus. Danijela also wants to advocate for the university to have an AED in every building on campus. “If you’re in cardiac arrest in the Natural Sciences building and the closest AED is in the gym, nobody is getting it in time,” says Danijela. Danijela also emphasizes cardiac arrest can happen to anyone at any age, good health or poor health. Her dad had suffered a heart attack five years prior and received a clean health check from a cardiologist just nine days before his passing. Looking to the future, Danijela is interested in creating an event on campus where students can become CPR and AED certified. She is also pushing for Bill 141, which requires AED units in every public area and outlines new requirements for the maintenance and availability of AEDs. Ontario passed the bill in 2020 but has yet to fulfill it. While there are many life-saving interventions available across the province, they can be challenging to track down because they are not listed in a shared database. Danijela explains an AED registry can better help 911 dispatchers provide the closest AED location to callers. “I’m very passionate about this topic, and it touches home for sure,” Danijela says. “I want to be part of the change, and that’s what I want to move into next with this.”

OPINIONS | P7

EDITORIAL

Universities should not take political stances on conflicts

ajor conflicts often create divisions around the world. As a microcosm of the wider society, conflicts create divisions at Western.

Conflicts around the world such as the Israel-Hamas war have brought support and protests to both sides. Since the war began on Oct. 7, Western University students have organized gatherings, protests and calls for universities to make statements from both sides. Some of these asks have included the immediate release of Hamas-held hostages or calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza strip. In an ideal world, Western should adopt universally-recognized beliefs about justice, like condemning racism and 2SLGBTQIA+ discrimination. But when conflicts are divisive in a diverse community, Western is responsible for supporting students of all

backgrounds and ensuring they feel safe and protected. The last thing Western should do is take political stances on world conflicts. As an institution with students from diverse backgrounds, Western has an obligation to educate students on how to think as opposed to what to think. Students come to university for an education. By issuing a political stance, it is telling students what is right and what is wrong in a divisive global issue, as opposed to challenging students to think critically of the issues at hand. When a university issues a political statement, who does the statement actually represent? Is it the opinion of a diverse student population, the faculty or just the administrator? In a school with almost 40,000 students, there will always be disagreement. In-

stitutions do not have emotions themselves, and therefore should not have any political opinions. As a research-intensive university, Western can promote and brag about their research. A university is not a government and does not have diplomats in the country of the dispute. By making a statement without witnessing the actual situation, no matter what stance it takes, the university would be promoting incomplete claims. In addition, Western has an obligation to ensure students feel safe and welcomed on campus. By making a political stance, it could alienate students who view the contrary and can cause a rise in hate crime targeting students with different beliefs on campus. Hate crimes and incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia have already skyrocketed since Oct. 7.

By taking a neutral stance, Western should encourage debate and protests on issues for students to voice their opinions. Western should promote peace and issue statements condemning hate to ensure all community members feel supported and welcomed. Students have the complete freedom to share their voice on conflicts through demonstrations and protests — and they have. Western should be serving as the forum for discussion and encouraging it peacefully, not the overbearing voice for what the discussion should be. Large conflicts are not black and white, and therefore an institution should not make political statements, but instead support students and condemn hate.

Editorials are decided by a majority of the editorial board, and are written by a member of the editorial board but are not necessarily the expressed opinion of each editorial board member. All other opinions are strcitly those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Gazette, its editors, or staff. To submit a letter to the editor, send an email to hannah.alper@westerngazette.ca

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Western should take political stances on conflicts through action

e: Editorial: Universities should not take political stances on conflicts

Although I wouldn’t want an institution I work with to have a stance I wouldn’t agree with, I’d argue that they should still take political stances at times of great importance. And quite frankly, they already do. Academic institutions frequently show their stances through the actions they take, whether that’s letting go of a chaplain, or putting a coach on leave. And honestly, their actions are inherently much louder than their words. You can put out as many statements as you want about your commitment to sustainability, but refusing and blatantly ignoring calls to divest from fossil fuel companies is much more telling of your stance. Institutions don’t have emotions, but they can have emotional consequences on the people they employ and serve through the actions they take. If they don’t want to have a stance for the sake of adhering to diverse opinions of their bodies, they should refrain from any action that reflects a stance, like letting go of a chaplain for instance. Especially when the chaplain was employed for a specific

demographic, choosing to let them go and thus leave the community unsupported is very clearly a stance on a “conflict” that directly, and negatively, impacts members of our community. I agree that it is imperative to put student safety first, and am grateful that Western University has put out statements about safety and condemned hate on campus as it arises. But these statements come without taking steps to confront why students are feeling unsafe, or why hate is escalating on campus and in our community, and are simply followed by posting the same mental health resources every few weeks. Giving everyone the same tools to feel safe while not investigating why safety isn’t felt equally across campus is ignorant. It’s equating equality and equity which all Western Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Decolonization training highlights. By choosing to not have a stance for the sake of neutrality, Western is taking a stance of indifference. Indifference towards the pain being felt by specific members of a community, and indifference towards those feeling it the most. One of the more recent divisive stances Western and many other institutions took

was regarding vaccine and mask mandates. Although that’s not a geopolitical conflict, it was a divisive political argument in many cases — especially on campus. Numerous protests were held against vaccine and mask mandates. The actions that Western took employing these mandates reflected a stance that clearly wasn’t unanimous. If they had wanted to appear neutral to the somehow politicized discussion of disease prevention, they wouldn’t have had any mandates in place. Yet, regardless of its political implications, they took a stance and took action for the safety and health of their constituents. Mask and vaccine mandates largely helped immunocompromised individuals who make up a small percentage of students, but are still people who deserve to feel safe and supported on campus. It would’ve been just as easy to chalk COVID-19 prevention to personal responsibility and say “Hey! If you need resources and are stressed out because you fear that you or your loved ones will die due to this preventable illness, please utilize our mental health services.” While this example is clearly different than that of a geopolitical stance, it shows

Western taking a stance that firstly is political in nature, secondly not all its constituents agree with and thirdly is being done to create a safe environment for a vulnerable demographic. Western has the ability to take further steps towards health and safety, and in recognizing the causes of different crises, Western as an institution should do more, through action, to support its constituents. Western owes its students, staff and faculty this safety and support in a way that is specific to what they are going through. In its dedication to making everyone feel safe and welcome, Western can and should have community-specific supports to make sure members of its community feel supported as Palestinians, as Muslims and as Jewish people. — Emmanuel Akanbi, fourth-year honours specialization in epidemiology and biostatistics student

To submit a community opinions article, email hannah.alper@westerngazette.ca

Find A Way

ACROSS 1. Self-propelled boat 6. Colourful spherical treat 8. What a 23-across will give you a sense of 10. Spiced up version of a song 11. Put money in the bank 13. “It’s ____” (Buyer’s remark) 14. It can come before circle or automatic 15. Feeling of sadness 16. One of the “Tweedles” 17. When airplanes are predicted to come in, for short 19. What a sign might hang from 20. Put down new grass 22. Enemies 23. Give work away (to) 25. Navigational tool represented by this puzzle 26. Three-time Golden Globe winner Spacek

DOWN

1. Chemist and physicist Marie who won two Nobel Prizes 2. US credit card company, for short 3. CNN alternative 4. Main ingredient of horse food 5. Lindholm of the Calgary Flames 6. “Hold on a moment!” 7. People who are close 8. Meant 9. Enemies 10. Person with a paddle

12 14

19 21

22 24

25 26 JEFFREY MARTINOVIC GAZETTE

12. meal plan? 18. Individual acts 19. One who takes the blame

21. Singer Lovato with the hit “Confident” 22. Sheep sounds 24. Alternative to a 25-across

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