Volume 32, Issue 2 (January 16, 2014)

raffiti

January 16, 2014

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2013: The year of Beyoncé Page 17

Martin Najdovski

Toronto: A Frozen Wasteland Page 10

VICE: Let’s talk about sex Page 6-7

How We Vote Charlotte Corelli

Some may claim that a population’s reaction to natural disasters or acts of terrorism reveal the most about them. But what about the results of an election?

Every year, a lot of work is put into deciding the three charities of which North Toronto students will vote from. Looking at thirteen of the past charities that NT students have selected from these shortlists reveals quite a bit.

Before exploring the types of charities NT students tend to vote for, we need to acknowledge that this past year, only one in eight students came out to vote for their favourite charity. One in eight. That is the number of women that will get breast cancer in their lives, or the number of people who suffer from hunger. While the number of voters is up by a long shot from previous years, this poor statistic points toward a growing concern expressed by some staff and students alike: that students are only interested in the amount of money raised and not learning about what our charity actually does.

For the votes that are cast, here are a few trends that stand out after examining thirteen of NT’s past charities.

We will begin with the locations of charitable work done. Looking at the map, eight of thirteen past charities work in Canada, four work in all or part of Africa and one works in developing countries all around the world. Did you notice that South America looks pretty bare?

An interesting connection can be made here. Each year, grade 12 students taking non-fiction English, have to read a book written by an international author. While students were selecting their books this year, Mr. Zohar noted that very few, if any, of the books are from South America. This is a trend that he sees every year. For an entire content to be almost exclusively excluded, both within class work and extra-curriculars, there must be a cause.

But what is it?

Through explaining why she voted for the charity she did, Elizabeth O’Sullivan demonstrated that she is most likely to vote for a charity working to tackle an issue that she knows about.

Starting in kindergarten, Canadian students learn about the harmful effects of cancer, about mental disorders, about the struggles facing Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples, and about HIV/AIDs, malaria, war and an abundance of

other issues spanning across the African continent that cannot be counted with ten fingers and ten toes. We aren’t taught in school that some of the worst living conditions are directly south of Canada. Nor do our Sunday morning commercials show children in South America who need your help...NOW.

It is evident that while not intentionally, students are turning a blind eye to issues that they aren’t exposed to within their schools or the media. Does this defeat the education purpose of charity week?

Finally, one third of the thirteen selected charities had something in common, indicating what NT students view as a successful Charity Week. We will start by looking at last year’s charity, Blessings in a Backpack. This charity provides food for the weekend to children in the GTA. The cost for one child to be in the program is $100. Next, 2012’s charity, Spread the Net. Co-founded by Rick Mercer, Spread the Net works to raise awareness of, and tackle the issue of malaria in African countries by providing bed nets. One bed net costs $10. A few years ago, students voted for the charity Sleeping Children Around the World. They provide bed kits to children in developing countries around the world. Each kit costs $35.

Do you see the pattern? NT students are drawn toward charities where the impact can be easily tracked. We seek how many bed nets, or how many backpacks, or how many bed kits we can supply if we raise x amount of money.

This year, our charity indirectly falls into this category of “trackable-impact” charities. While each wish granted

by Make-a-Wish is of a different value, all money raised will result in a measurable quantity of wishes.

When compared with the other options- the Douglas Wright Foundation, raising money for melanoma research and prevention, and Interval House, a

place to help women escape abusive situationsMake-a-Wish’s “track-ability” score ranks the highest, as does the student body’s knowledge of the issue being tackled.

Overall, when it comes to voting, some students are simply not interested, and some don’t even mind which charity is supported, but students like Sam Xiong “didn’t even know the voting was happening”. Would it be better if we didn’t vote and supported the same charity every year?

“I like that we always support United Way,” said Leila Juriansz, a student from Northern. “We get to know what [the charity] stands for.” She adds though, that “each year it is a goal to raise more money than the last year,” returning to the concern that supporting a charity is all about the money and not the cause.

However, a goal like this certainly acts as an effective incentive, as does supporting a charity with a “trackable” impact. Is there anything wrong with that?

The good news is that NT students are casting their votes wisely. If they don’t know about what they are voting for, they won’t vote for it. Furthermore, the extent of the work done by charity week committees such as the Education Committee has grown the past few years.

This helps to ensure not only that students understand where their money is going, but that they end up learning more information about an issue.

Graphics by Laura Pitt

Table of Contents

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Internal News

Page 4

External News Features

Page 9

Page 13 Muse

Arts & Culture

Page 14

Page 17 Sports

Page 22

Opinion & Humour Page 25 Horoscopes

Page 27

Letter From the Editors We’re all about sex and pizza.

Just kidding. This issue (or VICE, really,) is all about sex. But we’re all about pizza. Seriously. We are so serious about our pizza that we order it at 4:00 in the afternoon so we have an entire layout-filled evening to savour its beauty.

As charming as our hot...okay, it’s lukewarm now...date with pizza is going, we do feel the need to address something other than its wonders, and that is VICE. To clarify, sex isn’t a “vice,“ at least not technically. Except for niners. Ew. Stop that. However, sex is something a lot of the young’uns are doing these days. The 2005 Canadian census reported that 43% of 15-19 year olds are sexually active. Look beside you. Your classmate has probably engaged in some kind of sexual act. (Go get ‘em, tiger.)

All the jokes aside, sex is a serious topic that we believe should be covered from a variety of perspectives, whether that be what your health class didn’t teach you about sex, to “spicing things up” with a long-term significant other.

With certain, unnamed, not quite “school affiliated” functions right around the corner, this issue’s VICE spread could be no more relevant than it is right now.

Stay classy North Toronto, Hannah and Rachel

Graphics by Laura Newcombe

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HOROSCOPES

Aries (March 21st-April 20th) You just have to juggle it all. School, friends, work, fashion show, two loves…wait did you say two loves? Damn man, that’s rough. All I can say is good luck, and you know, what one doesn’t know won’t hurt them…

Libra (September 24th-October 23rd) I get a sense you don’t feel complete. You know why? You’ve been overlooking that one person who is your missing puzzle piece. Check out the person sitting three seats left and one up from you. Yeah, that’s right, you’re welcome.

Taurus (April 21st-May 21st) Your hair is impeccable. Your female counterpart wants your hair. So prepare yourself, things are about to get THAT much better for you. Oh, and your hair.

Scorpio (October 24th-November 22nd) School sucks right. WRONG. Let me tell you, school is where you’ll make that 10 fall for you.

So don’t forget your deodorant, trust me, it’ll save your life. Good smellin’=good lovin’.

Gemini (May 22nd-June 21st) You felt it. They felt it. It’s NEVER too late to pursue that not-to-be-forgotten grade nine love. We all need to heat it up in this cold dead winter. Tsss…

Sagittarius (November 23rd-December 22nd) That “person” has been right under your nose all along…but they don’t smell bad, so you haven’t noticed. You know, prom is just 5 months away, so get on it bud.

Cancer (June 22nd-July 23rd) Don’t surrender when people yell at you in the halls. Hold your own. Yell back. Don’t yell too loudly on the third floor though. The editors are trying to sleep.

Capricorn (December 23rd-January 20th) Your face seems lonely...grow a beard. Everyone will want to be with you, but more importantly, everyone will want to be you. Stay burly, stay fierce.

Leo (July 24th-August 23rd) Ice, ice baby. Be cool, be fresh, and embrace that one special someone. Just don’t slip and fall, cause, ouch.

Aquarius (January 21st-February 18th) You obviously already noticed but your birthday falls right around after party. So go full out. Like go big or go home style. Cause, Laith Goldie…

Virgo (August 24th-September 23rd) You know how 43% of Canadian youth have had sex? Well, you’re probably that 57%. No rush, no worries, you’re just THAT much more desirable.

Pisces (February 19th-March 20th) Pisces…fish…water…hot tubs! That’s where it’s at. I mean we all love a good soak, so go for it.

But remember, stay classy friends.

The Burnout of Disney Stars Ema Ibrakovic

It started with a cute blond girl, playing a “Mousketeer” in The Mickey Mouse Club.

Just 10 years later, this precious, innocent little girl named Britney Spears came out with her hit song (which I’m sure you all know the lyrics to) “…Baby One More Time.” This single, arguably the highlight of her career, debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 and went twotimes platinum. It broke records all across the world, selling 10 million copies and playing in the Walkmans of teenagers everywhere. Sadly, this is where the sanity ends. 2001 marked a strange, awkward choice to wear an albino python around her neck and feature a caged tiger at her VMA performance. Next was a poorly thought out decision to kiss both Christina Aguilera and Madonna, which was over-publicized and blown up for months afterwards. After a series of professional and personal disasters (such as a breakup with Justin Timberlake so bad that they haven’t spoken for 10 years), Britney went on to the famous umbrella incident.

For those who don’t know (although, everyone does), the infamous umbrella incident consisted of Spears shaving her head and then breaking a car window with a green umbrella. Sure, Spears may have attempted to bring back her reputation with an uncomfortably-sexual album or two (despite being a mom to 2), but we all know that her reputation is tainted forever.

Next came the High School Musical duo: Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale. Although they appeared innocent on screen, these two were dying to break out of their immature Disney shells. Hudgens thought, “What better way to do this than to take naked photos?”

Surely, within hours, they were leaked on the internet for everybody to see. She did break out of her Disney shell, but unfortunately not in the right way. Tisdale followed shortly with her own naked picture scandal. But don’t think it ends there; soon after, the two HSM actresses both stripped down again. Hudgens had her own sex scene in Spring Breakers, and Ashley Tisdale released a weird music video for her “song,” “Crank It Up” featuring her in a skin-tight black suit and gigantic black birds wings (she doesn’t pull them off). Sadly, these good girls gone bad did fit the Disney mold, despite speaking out against it previously.

It’s not just the girls; the boys of Disney can get just as bad. Jesse McCartney, who many might know from his early 2000’s hits such as “Beautiful Soul” and “Because You Live,” did in fact, write a few songs with Disney and act in a few of their shows. Sadly, this one-hit wonder recently tried to revive his lost teen-pop career with a new album titled Departure in which instead of singing about a girl’s “beautiful soul” (at least it was cute), he sings about the most

common topic in recent music history: sex. With discomforting lyrics such as “give it up, up,” it’s evident that not even he could escape the downward spiral.

So why is it then that we’re shocked about Miley Cyrus’s recent actions? All Miley’s doing is filling a mold that has been set for her for the past 20 years. First, she had her hits in her early teenage Disney years (hers being Hannah Montana and everything that went along with it), then sought to break the mold by getting more sexual than she had to. First, there were the half-naked photos. Then, there were the drugs and grinding with old men at nightclubs. After witnessing Britney’s mess, why were we so shocked to see that Miley had (nearly) shaved her head? Why were we so shocked to see her strip down in Wrecking Ball? Since her and Liam have split (bad break-up, check), all that’s left is her mental breakdown and her “comeback” album. We’re continually shocked by everything she’s doing, yet we know that it’s happened many times before. No doubt, in 20 years, it’ll happen again with a new star, but we’ll inevitably fall for it again. Some might say what she’s doing is crazy, but it seems that when it comes to being a Disney star, she’s doing just fine.

Top Ten: Boys’ Bathroom Louise Castonguay

The other day I went into the boys bathroom. Don’t worry, I wore a mask. There weren’t really any surprises in there- soaked counter, dirty mirror, unflushed toilets and giant balls of dirty, wet toilet paper plastered to the ceiling. No there weren’t many surprises–OTHER THAN THE LARGE AMOUNT OF SPACE THAT THEY HAVE TO DANCE IN. They only have two stalls to make space for the urinals lining the wall (hence the dance floor), so I guess what they dominate in space and filth, we make up for in clean mirrors for #ntbathroom pics and cleanliness. Hell ya ladies.

26 From the Eyes of a Fourth Grader Alyssa Joynt

From seeing depictions on television and in movies, many younger kids think they know what goes on inside high schools. Fourth grader Kylan gets his ideas from Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and was eager to answer questions on his perception of high school.

Inside a high school locker, Kylan thinks he’d find mirrors, study notes, class notes, pencil markings, and the walls spray painted. Inside a backpack, he expects, “those little mirror packs with makeup in them, phone, textbooks, love notes, gum, maybe spray paint.” If he were to walk in on an English class in session, Kylan thinks he would find books, a teacher, a Smart Board and desks, and the students would be get-

ting their phones confiscated, sleeping, sending notes, and maybe, just maybe, they would be listening.

After school, according to Kylan, high school students text, study, have friends over, and go on dates. Dates? After texting to make the arrangements, there would be “dinner and a movie like Catching Fire or Skyfall.” But first, the guy has to impress the girl by buying a car and being good at skateboarding.

Kylan is “looking forward to the sports teams, but not the homework.” While NT has lots of sports in which he can look forward to participating, he will likely have a fun and challenging time avoiding homework.

Alyssa Joynt

A Most Important Test George Chang

New year; new beginning. By now, you’ve probably already forgotten everything about those exams you wrote before the winter break.

What’s the difference between a function and a relation? What were rhetorical devices? What was the name of the group 1 elements on the periodic table? Don’t remember? Oh well, time to learn everything all over again.

Back in December, before the exams were to start, you could probably have answered these questions in a flash. In those days leading up to exams, I had observed in many of my classmates, as well as personally experienced, an interesting psychological phenomenon, a mental state that might be described as mild paranoia (I didn’t take psychology, so pardon me if some of the conclusions I make here turn out to be incorrect). These paranoid thoughts are, of course, all about the exams.

The pre-exam period is the time when one’s Facebook chat becomes flooded with messages such as “Will this or that be on the exam?”, “How do you do this or that problem?”, and “What does this or that mean?”. Teachers are bombarded (more than usual) with dreaded “what if” questions which, if answered, would render putting the subject of said question on the exam pointless. It’s when the most irrelevant, trivial and obscure topics on the textbooks are committed to memory – just in case!

Here’s a definition of what I thought to call exam paranoia (Guidance probably has a better term for it); it is the temporary psychological state a student enters when, in the course of studying for exams, he or she begins to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information to be processed, yet is compelled to process it all because he or she paradoxically feels that excelling on the exams is an absolute must. Naturally, when you begin to believe that success is impossible but imperative, symptoms begin to emerge; your head starts to hurt, and no matter how much or how hard you study, you don’t feel you’ve grasped anything to a sufficient degree.

Exams are, arguably, the strongest incentive there is for committing mostly dull and redundant facts to memory; at least temporarily. The more effort we make to cram those facts into our young minds, the greater – we hope – we’ll be rewarded, in the form of grades on our report cards. The exams are more than a test of knowledge. Everything we work towards is rewarded with a numerical value. That numerical value is the summary of our accomplishments and appear as obvious indicators of our self-esteem. So in the end, I suppose it’s not too uncommon to think every once in a while that marks alone determine the course of our future and where we have the potential to go. That is very much so, when everything we do in school seems to be graded (even how we act in class – learning skills, remember those?).

My word to teachers: have sympathy for us young people. It is true that we sweat over more than we should on things we shouldn’t be sweating over, but we are only looking for what we believe will reassure us of our capabilities; with some support and guidance, we’ll figure it out eventually. And to those of you who don’t care as much about your marks: never give in, never take it too seriously, and don’t doubt your judgment; it’s already too late for the rest of us.

In the bright, distant future, when we are all well-off and successful, we may look back and see marks as a mere footnote in the building blocks to our success. However, as long as that distant future remains distant and brightly indistinguishable, exams will be stressed over, perseverance will be tested, and marks will be, for now, a matter of 95 and death.

Charles Rachel Katz Wu

Top Ten: The Locked Area on the 4th Floor Jessica Carradine

Although I unfortunately was not able to enter the padlocked, master-key-locked, extremely mysterious room on the 4th floor across from Mr. Kinoshita’s classroom, there are enough rumors to sift through and enough educated guesses made that I think we can try to figure out what is inside.

If we look at the maps found taped on the walls in the hallways, there are 2 classrooms drawn in as Rooms 412 and 413 in this area. There are classrooms on the floors underneath, so we know that the space exists, and it is not simply a mapping mistake. We have to assume that there is something there, but what could it be?

Some say that the classrooms are abandoned, which makes sense based on the map, but why would the school not use them? Why would they not have doors built in so that those classrooms can be accessed and used? The list of questions goes on, but I think we can agree that having empty rooms would be pointless and inconvenient, and that the school must have a better use for the space.

Others argue that it is used for storage, which would be a logical argument if the teachers could get in. However, after trying and failing to enter the room with a teacher, I know that their keys do not open the padlock on the door. The caretakers have a storage room just around the corner, so they are not using it either. The school would not store things that they never use, so we can draw the conclusion that they are not using it for storage.

The only other likely possibilities are that the space is used as Mr. Gorenkoff’s house, a dungeon for the students the teachers don’t like, or the secret holding place for the Grad Couch that is so special that only a student who wants to find the Couch–find it, but not use it–would be able to get inside.

Graffiti Editorial Board

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EDITORS IN CHIEF Hannah Karpinski Rachel Katz

SENIOR EDITORS INTERNAL

EXTERNAL

FEATURES

ARTS & CULTURE

SPORTS

OPINION & HUMOUR

Lu Chen Jack Denton

Charlotte Corelli Annie Robinson

Declan Lawrence Kyle Tarder-Stoll

Lauren D’Angelo Devan Wang

Jane Bradshaw Louise Castonguay George Chang Neal McAuley

COPY EDITORS Ariana Crispin-Frei Mira Laws Valerie Preminger Jonathan Zhao

MUSE HEAD Sam Xiong

ADVISORS

Jessica Carradine Trent Erickson Liat Fainman-Adelman Fayed Gaya Caitlin Heffernan Kyle Mastarciyan Katherine Quinn

BUSINESS MANAGERS Hamie Ahmad Hannah Ewen

ILLUSTRATION HEAD Charles Wu

GRAPHICS HEAD Laura Newcombe

APP DEVELOPER Anfa Abukar

COMING SOON!

Stay tuned for our app!

STAFF ADVISORS Ms. Bulgutch Mr. Zohar

WEBSITE EDITOR Laura Pitt

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INTERNAL

Charity Week On The Brain Jack Denton

Charity Week on the brain. That might be the term a doctor would use to diagnose the buzz happening all around us at school. NT Idol is revving up for its second day of performances, the highly-anticipated homeform events are ready and raring to go for next Monday, and Charity Week in its full-bore form will hit us in just four days. And all of this excitement, for just one charity.

But what is it that causes so much fervour? Just like any sort of large-scale, mass-involved event, whether it’s a government election or waiting in line for a concert, there’s always excitement controversy. Many have voiced their opinions over Charity Week, and everyone has one. Some have critiqued Make-A-Wish, others defend its cause vehemently. But interestingly, few people voted for the charity. Few people voted at all, though the ramifications of their choice to do so are huge. The charity that is picked to receive our earnings from Charity Week is guaranteed a sum in the tens of thousands of dollars. The school has raised upwards of $50,000 in years’ past, and even over $30,000 during a compromised Charity Week last year.

This year saw three charities on offer for Charity Week: Make-A-Wish Canada, Interval House, and the Douglas Wright Foundation.

“All three charities received support,” Mr. Da Silva, the staff advisor to Student Council, told me, speaking of the results of the voting process. This year’s vote, like every year’s, only saw a turnout of between 150-200 students. That’s abysmally low, about 11-15% of the school’s population. “Those aren’t fantastic numbers,” Mr. Da Silva readily admitted. So why don’t people vote? “Apathy,” one Grade 10 student laughed when I asked him. “When was the vote?” asked a Grade 11. Though we may have Charity Week on the brain, it seems that the polls are at the back of our minds.

Of course, this is no real fault of the organizers of Charity Week…it’s just a sad fact that school turnouts for elections of any sort tend to be low. Though Isabelle Sanders, a Grade 11 student, loves the idea of the voting process: “I think the idea of students voting on the charity is really great. It encourages more students to get involved with Charity Week early on and it helps them understand that Charity Week is less about fun homeform events and Fashion Show,

and more about the amazing charity that will be receiving the money raised.”

It certainly is dangerous ethical territory to try and answer what makes one charity better than another. No one can concretely say that one cause is more deserving of money than any other cause. In the student vote, MakeA-Wish won by a “comfortable, but not huge” margin, according to Mr. Da Silva. I asked grade 12 student Brandon Yong why he didn’t vote for Make-A-Wish. His answer: “I think all of these are great charities and contribute to good causes. I won’t say that one is better than another, because each person has his or her own opinion on that. In 2012 Make-A-Wish had $11,585,829 of revenue to work with, Interval House had $2,705,558, and I guarantee you that the Douglas Wright Foundation had even less.

Based on those numbers I decided that Make-A Wish has the least need for a donation from our school.” That’s a fair point, considering that in the past, NT has seemed to have an obsession with quantifying our impact with a charity. But is it all about money?

Make-A-Wish has come under fire for the amount of money it spends on granting wishes (about $10,000 per wish). “Ultimately,” said Ryan Alizadeh, our Senior Vice President, “Make-A-Wish is a lot more than allowing a child to meet Lebron James, or travelling to the set of Sesame Street. A wish provides hope to the child, and any other children in the same situation. It is not the material value of the wishes that makes the charity excellent; it is the effect of the wishes on the child, their family, and everyone else.” Now, take a look around your homeform classes. Somewhere in that room should be a poster about a child who’s received a wish from Make-A-Wish, a child whose life has been altered for the better because of the work this charity does. Reading those posters, it’s impossible to disagree with Ryan. This isn’t just about money; it’s about something much, much more.

“But,” as Mr. Da Silva said, “this is still a fundraiser. We want to give them a cheque at the end.”

The one message that no one wants lost in Charity Week is that of education. There’s an entire Charity Week committee dedicated to educating students about Make-A-Wish’s work.

amount of money and making sure people understand he message; and when this balance Charles is struck, one certainly helps the other: “Al Wu Ryan understands that a balance needs to be struck between pulling in the maximum though we always assign a dollar value to Charity Week, and it is nice to see a big number on the large check, the education is far more important. This is because if the education is done properly and effectively, the money will follow.”

If the education portion of Charity Week has a big enough impact, Make-A-Wish will stick in all of our minds for years to come. Every charity that has been involved in Charity Week has a need for volunteers in one way or another.

Mr. Da Silva hopes at least that students will “be more involved than just bringing in their money and spending during Charity Week. That’s not a vision of effective philanthropy, to just give money and say ‘well, I’ve done my part.’ The education part is very, very important.”

Charity Week hits us in full force next week. As we walk through the halls, we will hear calls from the homeform events that line the walls. We will be talked into buying Fashion Show tickets. What we must do, above all else, is remember the cause we’re raising money for.

It’s true that the voting turnout was abysmal this year, but we can get over it. As Mr. Da Silva told me, “the best charity is the one that 1,300 students can get behind and support.” I know NT. We can rally around a cause and drum up school spirit like no other school around. And there’s certain poetry in that the inevitable fervour that will reverberate through the halls, the excitement that will abound, will be raising money for children who really need some light, some joy, in their lives.

15 Days... 14 Days...

Diana Ghidanac, Tamar Tabori, Yuan Yuan Zhang

“I need this to be more FULL OUT,” is a phrase one often hears echoing through the practices of Fashion Show Chroma. As rehearsals are tripling, late nights and early mornings are becoming the norm for our execs, dancers, performers, and everyone involved in the show.

In just two short weeks, on January 31st and February 1st, the masterpiece envisioned by yours truly will illuminate on stage full off dynamic choreography and exquisite designs.

It has been a one of a kind journey, with a few unexpected bumps along the way. Director of Coordination, Diana Ghidanac says, “ It was really hard for me to accept all the changes implemented into Fashion Show at the beginning. I maintained a very narrow and traditional view of how the show would run, so when we had to separate ourselves from this I was unsure of how it would turn out in the end. However,

and I am trying to say this with the least bias as possible, but I have a very strong feeling Chroma will set a new bar for Fashion Show at North Toronto.” Dealing with change is never simple, however with the help of our extremely dedicated executives, we believe it has made Chroma for the better.

One of our main intentions with the show is to express the true artistic talents of NT students through the choreography, design, set design, accessories, photography, videos, and other creative outlets. Taking all the separate aspects of the show and being able to showcase them on stage as a finished product, will leave you completely blown away as you remind yourself: such art was re-created by students. With an incredible diversity of movement, shape, style, class…Chroma will grab you, shake you, and leave you hungry for more.

Laura Pitt

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OPINION & HUMOUR Inanimate Objects Cause me Great Stress Caitlin Heffernan

This is why, I think to myself, I don’t stand near toasters that are in use.

Things that pop are probably best avoided entirely - like balloons. Once, I was eating lunch and some people near me were kicking a balloon. I tried to discreetly plug my ears, because I didn’t want to look like someone who is afraid of balloons or something, but finding that impossible, I just had to sit rigidly and brace myself. Apparently I was not the only one who was horribly vexed by the balloon kickers, as someone walked up to them, took their balloon, and declared “I am going to pop this balloon.” Even with this warning, I still jumped as she popped it. Yes, I jump a lot. I can even jump while sitting.

Stress balls cause me a lot more harm than good. One time I had to hold one for someone, and I also had to hold a bottle of juice – Charles Wu those are also pretty stressful, especially because this juice was dark purple. If I spilled it I’d never

Half asleep, I slip a couple pieces of bread be able to get the stain out. That’s a lot of presinto the toaster, push the handle down, and run sure, you know. So I put the stress ball under as if I’ve just lit up a pile of dynamite. After a my arm because I was thirsty and needed a free while, I forget about it and go back to the kitchhand to unscrew the cap. Then the ball slipped en to get a plate and a butter knife. Just then, away from my arm, and rolled under some desks the toast pops, and I jump, nearly shattering my (this all took place in an office, so I didn’t want plate and miss stabbing my leg by a centimetre. to stain the fancy carpet with grape juice). The

guy sitting at the desk then threw the ball back at me and said “DON’T BE STRESSED!” Thanks man.

Busts are so creepy. They’re basically decapitated sculptures. And as if inanimate busts weren’t enough, people feel the need to animate them as well! Remember that kids’ arts and crafts show, Art Attack? And the talking bust? It would just bob its head around like it was no big deal, but it WAS a big deal; dismembered body parts aren’t supposed to move! I believe that would be simple biology, or anatomy, or logic or something, right?

Coins really make me overthink everything. Like, how many people have touched them over the years? How many of those people actually wash their hands after using the washroom? How many times have they been accidently dropped into the garbage can? So many unpleasant possibilities! It gives me the same type of fear that walking into a huge store with too many options gives me.

Take this as a cautionary tale. Don’t sweat the small stuff, don’t be deranged, and DON’T BE STRESSED.

Christmas is All Around Us Logan Ross

This Christmas was a good one for me. I got some nice clothes, a few books, chocolates, money for spending, and money for saving. The best thing I got though, was a realization. What is Christmas today?

I’m not a religious person. The only reason I haven’t come out as an Agnostic is because if I’m wrong, there’s no way I’ll have a crack at getting into heaven, so I’m playing it safe. However, I love celebrating Christmas! The tree, the sweaters, the food, all the presents, what’s not to love?

Why do I get to celebrate it though if I’m not religious? I’m sure as hell not celebrating Jesus’ birthday here. Plus, I don’t get the logic. If it’s his birthday, why are we the ones getting all the presents?

With the increasing number of Atheists, Agnostics, and people who don’t label themselves as anything, I’ve asked myself why some of them continue to celebrate Christmas. The realization I’ve come to is that it’s because today, Christmas is the product of adaptation; it doesn’t hold the same meaning it had before.

It might sound so incredibly cheesy, but Christmas really is about so much more than just religion. Christmas is about giving and receiving, it’s about love and thought, it’s about happiness and togetherness. My friend Ryan

(you’ve probably been inside his house if you’re in Grade 12) did something before Christmas that really struck me. For no good reason, apart from feeling the Christmas spirit, he gave a group of all us some really thoughtful presents, and it really baffled me. Nobody was expecting it at all, but in that moment, the group of the 10 of us all felt Christmas between us. Jews, Christians, halfsies, Persian, it didn’t matter; we all felt this special connection.

It’s also all a bit wishy-washy when it comes to who does and who doesn’t celebrate Christmas these days. I’ve been in a situation where I’m not sure whether or not to ask someone if they celebrate Christmas more times than I can count; it’s really turned into somewhat of a lottery because of religion. I’ve had answers ranging from “Uh, ...yeah?” to “Uh, ...No?” both spoken in arrant sassiness. You win some, you lose some.

If Christmas became something untied to a specific religion, these problems wouldn’t exist. Allow Christmas to be free for anyone to celebrate however they want, including the traditional way. Don’t limit the most wonderful time of the year to a certain group of people, Christmas is something everyone should be able to experience if they want to. At least this way

we could stop faffing around with all this ‘Happy Holidays’ nonsense; I’ve hear rumblings that Hanukkah isn’t that great. So next year, just say Merry Christmas even to non-Christians, and at the very least, be thankful for the Boxing Day sales.

Hannah Karpinski

Top Ten: The Alumni Room Jane Bradshaw

The second floor houses the library, a perfect place to study, your typical English classroom, and the darkroom wedged between the art classrooms.

However, there is one room we all seem to forget about, across the hall from 215. A single rectangular window lines the wall of the hallway, decorated with memorabilia from years past. What could this room hold? Maybe it holds all the students’ records from the 100 years of North Toronto’s existence. Or perhaps this is where the teachers hide the exams! It’s so tempting to open the door–just a crack–to see what mysteries the alumni room will hold. It seems so magical when you open the door and see…a conference table…and some chairs.

24

Fantasy Sports Studs and Duds Daniel Kolominsky & Declan Lawrence March Madness Predictors:

The Madness is on the horizon and the month-long epic tournament filled with prolific triumphs and devastating defeats is bound to live up to all the expectations. It’s safe to say College Basketball comes in a safe second to College Football in popularity during the regular season, but come March, College Basketball reigns supreme to any another sport.

Studs: (For college basketball only; stud teams and players to pick have been done.)

That Time Of Year

For those who are interested in joining any Madness Brackets and are looking for four safe picks to make it to at least the sweet-sixteen, check out Syracuse, Michigan State, Wisconsin, and Butler. If you’re looking to be daring, look at Baylor, and Virginia State Shockers.

Smart All Around

One of the most well rounded basketball prospects all over the world, Marcus Smart, a 6’4” 225 lb Guard playing out of one of the top schools in the nation in Oklahoma State is on his way to a very promising NBA campaign. Smart chose to stay in school and finish his full four years at Oklahoma State to receive his degree in History. Staying in school is not the most common play nowadays for big nam prospects. The term “one and done” gets thrown around a lot, meaning one year of college, then straight to the pros. However, Smart chose to take a different path and really work to develop his game over a four year stint at college. The move has paid off and he’s become one of the top 10 college hoops athletes in the United States. Not only is he great on court, but also in the classroom as he boasts a 3.74 GPA out of 4.

Fantasy Sports studs and duds returns. With the football regular season over, college basketball has swept the ranks of those online GM’s. Basketball and Hockey continue to run along smoothly in their respective seasons, with Baseball on the horizon. Daniel and Declan return to help you along with your own great and heroic

Fantasy Hockey Studs: Twinkle, Twinkle, Great Star

Jamie Benn’s season thus far can be summed up in one simple word: stellar. The newly minted captain, who only gained the title at the beginning of this season, has performed at such an unreal pace that after not being invited to team Canada’s August training camp he has now made the Olympic team. Benn’s ice time (TOI), +/-, and points scored increased every year during his first three seasons in the league before the lockout last year derailed that streak. This year though, Benn has put up an almost point per-a-game pace and is set to break his career highs for goals, assists, and total points. Benn has been a pleasant surprise so far this year, after being named to the Canadian national team owners might be more likely to hang on to him, but if he is available for trade, or for whatever astounding reason is a free agent in your league, get him – now.

Duds: The Wild Choice

Minnesota Wild Goaltender Josh Harding is a great story. After beginning the year as Niklas Backstrom’s backup, he turned in to the perennial starter when Backstrom was placed on injured reserve early in the season. He put up eye-popping numbers as he rose to be considered the number one goalie of the first half of the 2013-2014 season and there was talk at a chance of cracking the team Canada squad. Alas, all good things must come to an end – Harding was left off the Canadian roster heading to Sochi, and has been placed on injured reserve two times since December 12th. The cause of his current injury is unknown.

Apparently he has an illness, but Harding suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, the reason for his first trip to the bench. There is the possibility that a problem with his medication caused him to return to injured reserve, and if that is the case, there would be no timetable for his return. With only 3 wins in the past month, and an unknown timetable for a return, things look bleak for the once soaring netminder. If you have Harding, drop him, at least until he has proven himself to be a legitimate goalie (wait a couple games) after his return.

Fantasy Basketball Studs: Show Stopper

Up until now, DeMar DeRozen had always been knocking on the door of the all star team, due to his unbelievable potential and talent, but was never able to separate himself from the rest of his team from a statistical point of view. This year, he has elevated his game to new heights, even more so during the “post Rudy Gay era.” Since Rudy Gay had been traded on December 8th DeRozen’s numbers have begun to increase across the board: Points, Assists, Rebounds, Steals and Minutes. In the month of December, after the trade, DeRozen has registered 25.1 Points Per Game, as opposed to the 17.1 Points Per Game he put up while Gay was on the team. Not only has this move been great for DeRozen, but also been great for the Raptors Organization. They have now taken control of the Atlantic Division and are looking like a team that should be in the playoffs, a main reason for this being DeRozen himself. All this making DeMar an absolute stud.

Duds: First Overall…Meet the Bench

The biggest surprise of the NBA Entry Draft, Anthony Bennett, is going number one overall to the Cleveland Cavaliers; the biggest mistake of the NBA Entry draft, Anthony Bennett, is going number one overall. Never in the history of the NBA has there been a number one overall pick that has put up worse numbers than Bennett has through his first 30 games in the NBA. Averaging 2.5 Points per Game, 2.1 Rebounds Per Game, and shooting 28% from the field: not stats one would expect from a first overall draft pick. The 6’8” 269 lbs. physical specimen has the body to be a force down low, but instead he seems to be emulating the former first overall pick of the Toronto Raptors, Andrea Bargnani, by choosing to stay around the perimeter and shoot jump shots. Unless Bennett somehow breaks out of this atrocious slump, he will likely go down as the biggest first overall bust of all time. Sorry, Matthias Ong, but this one was a bad move by a Cleveland Organization.

Top Ten: The Green Roof Lauren D’Angelo

It was star of the show when the new North Toronto first opened its doors. It gets auctioned off at every charity week without fail. It is the absolute creme de la creme of city living.

So where is this green roof, anyway?

On some patch of roof, somewhere outside of the school, lies the epitome of our eco-friendly school: the green roof. I myself was unfortunately unable to visit the roof, however one can just imagine how truly awesome it must be. I’ll give you an idea of just how amazing our lovely green space must be to warrant it being included in our school: Imagine. You step out a door, and are immediately blinded by the light, as the sun miraculously comes out from behind a cloud just as you cross the threshold. You are quickly struck by the smell. No, not the smell of car exhaust and greasy fast food rising from Yonge street, but the smell of a fresh Toronto breeze. You swivel your head and admire the view; the grey roofs of surrounding buildings create a fascinating mosaic that documents human architecture at its finest. Your skin tingles as your brain registers the height that separates you, free as a bird, from our neon green field. One can only imagine the beauty.

Ironically, our neighbouring condo friends get to enjoy our little roof are far more than we students ever will, as the vast majority of NT students will never get to appreciate the view. Want to be one of the lucky few who feel Toronto’s city breeze playing with their hair on the magical green roof?

Empty those pockets at the teacher auction in charity week and bask in the glory of true urban paradise.

5

Student Profile: “The Intellectual” Mira Laws and Lucy Rosciano

We all have that one friend who doesn’t have to study to do well. That one friend who doesn’t have to try to effectively get by in life.

But can that same friend recite all 151 of the original Pokémon and name all 196 countries? Does he/she read books with titles ranging from: “Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (The Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way)” to “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (interesting cases of neurological disorders)” to “The Complete History of the Garden Gnome?” Yeah, that’s what I thought. The word “intellectual” can be defined in many ways.

When I think of an intellectual, I think of intelligence, wit, acumen. I think of Lucy Rosciano. Although she may not be acing every subject in school *cough* physics *cough,* I still consider her a genius. She knows more words in the English language than I was aware even existed. Although she collects dinosaurs and draws Pokémon with crayons in her spare time, I cannot think of a person in my mind who better fits the title of an “intellectual.”

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Nonexistence.

Uh, I peed on a fire hydrant once.

What is your greatest fear?

Butterflies.

If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? would it be?

What kind of a question is this I’m f***ing Probably a sloth or a panda. One of those animals that perfect. spends 20 hours a day eating and sleeping and minimal time moving. Or maybe a cat in 2000BC. Who says time is linear?

What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Conceitedness.

Where would you What is your most treasured possession? most like to live?

What is your greatest extravagance?

Complete Friends Box Set Seasons 1-10.

I’m a nomad.

I own an inordinate amount of socks.

What is your current state of mind?

Empire.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

The one where you do things.

On what occasion do you lie?

Which living person When I’m bored.

What do you most dislike about your appearance? do you most admire?

Bill Watterson.

The fact that I do not currently possess a tail.

Which living person do you most despise?

This bitch who stole my tricycle in pre-K. What is the quality you most like in a woman?

Ephemerality.

What is the quality you most like in a man?

Ephemerality.

Which words or phrases

do you most overuse?

Apparently I have too many “moral objections.”

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

It’s all relative.

What is your favourite occupation?

The people who tell you when it’s safe to go at the top of the water slide. I think they play a very important role in our society and my life will forever be indebted to

What is your most marked characteristic?

Yeah I’m not great at following rules.

Who are your favourite writers?

Hemingway, Chuck Palahniuk, David Foster Wallace, Dennis Cooper.

Who is your hero of fiction?

Tyler Durden.

Which historical figure do you most identify with?

If Florence Foster Jenkins had a cat.

Who are your heroes in real life?

This old man who held up traffic so that a caterpillar could cross the road.

When and where were you happiest?

The days before being thrown into the education system.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?

Betty Crocker.

What is it that you most dislike?

The misuse of “literally.”

Which talent would you most like to have?

I wish I could whistle.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

Having a tail would be nice.

Top Ten: Girls’ Bathroom Trent Erickson

Zoe Zimmerman

What is your greatest regret?

Answering this questionnaire.

How would you like to die?

Asp bite.

What is your motto?

Allons-y.

The other day I went into the girl’s bathroom. Don’t worry, I flushed. I always thought that the girl’s bathroom would be a lot cleaner than the guy’s and while I wasn’t completely wrong, I wasn’t right either. In the girl’s bathroom there aren’t pictures of crudely drawn fiddly bits on the wall; I guess girls don’t share the same artistic passion that boys do. However, both sexes seem to love throwing wet, balled up toilet paper; there are two balls of hardened toilet paper stuck to the ceiling of the third floor girl’s bathroom. But above all else, there is one more shocking difference.

The lack of working soap dispensers at NT is a well documented hardship that I assumed both boys and girls went through. I thought that in the spirit of equality, both sexes would have to put up with the occasional grimy-handed afternoon. Apparently not! In the girl’s bathroom on either side of the sinks hang two auxiliary soap dispensers, fully filled with what I can only assume to be extra special soap exclusively for girls’ hands.

The girls at NT are sitting in their luxury bathrooms living like queens! Using soap! A mere ten steps away we boys languish in our standard bathrooms, often soapless, like animals! The girls probably know we don’t have soap; they probably laugh at us! Do I smell a conspiracy between the caretakers and the girls? Is this a scheme by the TDSB to give girls an academic advantage? Boys, it’s time we got the soap we deserve. DOWN WITH GIRLS! DOWN WITH GIRLS! VIVE LA REVOLUTION!

6

Each issue, VICE examines a common but taboo subject at North Toronto. This time, we’re hopping into bed with sex.

What Sex Ed Should’ve Taught Us but Didn’t Tamar KB

Sex education has always been an uncomfortable subject to study. Sitting in class with your friends while your teacher rambles on about the zoomed-up and overly descriptive picture of STD-ridden genitals isn’t exactly a party.

Thinking back to grade 9 Health Class, past all the cringes and awkward giggling, I really didn’t learn anything I hadn’t already known before, and a lot of things were left untaught. That isn’t to say my teacher was inadequate—the information was.

While the health education in Canada is a LOT more informative than the sex-ed in America, it’s still pretty much sucks. The topics that should be taught in health class are delicate topics—not just sex, but relationships, mental health, bullying, rape and drugs. But did you know that Ontario’s Health curriculum hasn’t been updated in 12 years? That’s like...older than Facebook. And gay marriage rights.

Ontario needs to update to a better, more informative curriculum. Because the one we have now isn’t cutting it.

At the most basic level, sex-ed should have taught us these things:

They should have been honest about the risk of pregnancy. Sex-ed programs have a tendency to be alarmist when it comes to getting pregnant. Obviously, there’s a risk, and we’re all trying to prevent accidental pregnancies in women and girls who just aren’t ready. But through the whole “Don’t have sex. Because you will get pregnant and die.” approach, or telling people that whatever contraception they use, they’ll probably get pregnant, sex-ed has created women who have no idea what they’re doing when it comes to protecting themselves, and are just huge balls of anxiety who are petrified that every sexual encounter will lead to a positive

pregnancy test.

They should have taught us about all the gross/embarrassing/weird parts of sex. You know what you never see in movies? The part after sex—where they throw away the condom, or grab tissues for a post-coital clean up. I had no idea what happened to cum after sex before I actually started doing it. I thought it just magically disappeared or cleaned itself up. Sex-ed needs to teach us about the icky parts—not getting wet enough, erectile dysfunction, etc. All the awkward stuff—so that we don’t freak out when it happens.

They should have taught us about the emotional side of sex. In grade 9, we learned the names of every sexually transmitted disease, but no one ever spoke to us about relationships.

Teaching us that sex is more than just a reproductive act will make us understand and respect it a whole lot more. Because there’s more to sex than biology: sex education, as it stands today, is more or less diagram after diagram of the biological ins and outs (and back ins, oh yeah baby!) of human reproductive behaviour. Humans are uniquely sexual creatures; we screw each other far more often and in far more elaborate ways than pretty much every other species on the planet. For humans, sexual activity is more than a mere biological urge; it has psychological significance and a social magnitude. We screw for pleasure, for recreation, for passion, and for revenge. We screw people we like and sometimes people we don’t. We screw because we’re happy and because we’re sad. We screw because we’re bored. We screw because we feel alone. We screw because we’re in love. And yes, we screw to make babies, too. Although in our high school world, that’s not the motivation so much as the consequence. So why does sex edu-

cation focus solely on the consequence of having a baby? Sex-ed should account for the recreational, social, and emotional reasons for sex… and their consequences. It should discuss the interpersonal meaning of intercourse, setting clear expectations and boundaries, communicating desires, dealing with feelings of shame and awkwardness, and of course, being responsible about protection and privacy.

They should have taught us about homosexual relationships. I don’t remember homosexuality coming up once in any of my sex-ed classes. This sucks because people start to see gay and lesbian sex as this weird, scary thing that they know nothing about. It’s also horrible for any LGBTQ students who have to sit through feeling isolated and uninformed. It’s important that we learn about pregnancy and how to reduce our risk of getting STDs, but it’s also just as important to learn about sexual orientation (bicuriosity), sexual identity (gender experimentation) and healthy relationships. No-brainer here, but worth repeating for anybody still living in 1957.

They should have taught us about rape.

They should have taught us that it’s okay to say no, and what consent really is, and what to do if rape happens. They should have taught us about sexual harassment, and daily sexism. They should have told male students all about this too.

They should have taught male students not to rape, and not to believe that they’re entitled to sex.

I could go on for forever about what I wish I’d been taught and what I hope future students will know, but the point is, Ontario Ministry of Education, it’s time to change it up.

intercourse (the sexual partner being the person you killed). So what’s wrong with that? Sex is a natural, even healthy, part of many teenagers’ lives. Intercourse, from the way in which it helps foster relationships to it’s more enjoyable aspects, seems to be on the opposite end of the spectrum of murder. However, it’s not sex that is the problem. The problem is the callous, degrading, and victimizing nature of the analogy. For you see, getting the ‘K,’ as absurd as the connection between sex and killing is, holds many sinister associations. And what allows these associations to exist is the unequal way in which the use of this word has been divided between the genders. As I walk the halls of NT, seldom have I heard one of my female friends utter, “Ye I got mad K’s last night! Brrp.” Actually, I’ve never heard that. Realistically, this sexual abbreviation is used entirely by males, and the people they reference/kill are entirely females. What’s wrong with that? Well, by the very nature of the metaphor, the person who get’s killed is the victim.

They are the helpless, receptive, and unfortunate party in the partnership. In essence, when this

metaphor is used to represent intercourse, it’s basically calling the females victims. It implies that the initiation, the control, and motive rest with the male. And the females are left powerless victims. Pretty messed up. As if the crude nature of this analogy weren’t enough, the very structure of the phrase, “the ‘k,’” is demeaning.

The nonchalant shortening to a single consonant is the epitome of laziness and casualness, and it is the connotation, which belittles one of the most sacred moments in many teenagers’ lives.

To label sex with this trivializing name not only degrades the quality of it’s… well, awesomeness, but also any semblance of honor or pride one might have in it. Sex is pretty cool. And I mean, its probably alright to be proud about having it.

Not ready, haven’t found the right person, nervous- that’s cool too, don’t rush it. But don’t, for the love of god, taint this wonderful union with your demeaning idiosyncrasies and your chauvinistic swanking. We get it. STOP THE MURDER, NO MORE KILLING. But by all means, continue having sex.

K’s on K’s on K’s Sean Bradley

WIDE SPREAD K’s AT NORTH TORONTO. Be warned. Murder: the act of taking another human’s life with intention. A deed that revels in cruelty, which is birthed from evil. A deed, which mongers such hate, it could never be admissible in any paradigm, universe, or educational system. So why the hell is getting kills so damn popular at NT? In fact, why is getting kills so god damn popular in every high school across the western hemisphere (albeit the Catholic institutes)? You would think murder is bad, wouldn’t you? Getting kills? So callous, so vile.

Well, unfortunately it is… just not in the way you might think it. These sought after murders, these planned out kills; they don’t take lives. For lack of a less cliché line (and pressing deadlines)they take respect. The ‘K.’ The oh-so alleged ‘K,’ which represents the hallmark of masculinity and the badge of accomplishment. The ‘K,’ being an abbreviation of the aforementioned ‘kill,’ is a recent invention of the western culture’s adolescent vocabulary, and it’s new meaning is almost as sinister as its colloquial one. The ‘K,’ simply put, means the act of having sexual

OFSAA: What were They Thinking?

23

Louise Castonguay

On November 20th, NT’s Senior Girls Basketball team travelled to Windsor, Ontario to compete at the 2013 OFSAA Basketball Tournament. Before getting on the bus, we were given a package of rules and by-laws from Ms. Rough, who received them from OFSAA that morning.

The package was extensive and we learned that the tournament was serious about each of the rules inside, including the obvious ones about “equal treatment without discrimination based on race, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, creed, physical or mental ability, sexual orientation, or sex”, so we all read them without a rebuttal and had a nice long bus ride with our driver Diana, Ms. Pyper, Coach Cameron Hall, and Assistant Coach Bill Doyle. OFSAA had organized a nice banquet for all the players and coaches before the games began the following day. We were welcomed into the dining room and were shocked, not only by the massive number of six-foot tall Amazon ladies walking around, but by the clump of 20 boys our own age standing in the corners all dressed up. What were they doing here? The festivities began with an opening address by the OFSAA commissioner Bob Loebach awarding a player on each of the visiting teams with a True Sport Award for sportsmanship and leadership- our very own Chloe Hall won the award and walked up to the stage to receive her trophy. When they called out each girls’ name though, a boy’s name followed.

One by one, a boy from the crowd in the corner took a True Sport winner on his arm back to her seat and joined her for dinner. An escort? Now, I don’t call myself a feminist because the word sometimes sounds extreme to me- I wouldn’t burn a bra or stop shaving my armpits to prove a point- but I expect equal treatment between men and women, and I speak out when I feel like I am, or another is being mistreated because of their sex. Today, this is feminism. What happened in the late 19th and 20th centuries as well as the 1960’s were drastic measures that resulted in drastic changes. Feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. In all honesty, the definition applies to every Canadian that I know, because I have always been treated equally here and have felt supported as a woman by my peers, teachers, coaches, and strangers-people standing up for women’s rights and advocating for us in political, social and economic debate.

I was immediately disturbed by the

Courtesy of Dillon O’Neil

audacity of OFSAA - what made them think that Chloe needed an escort? She is perfectly capable of walking herself back to her seat and doing anything else by herself for that matter. She is a strong, independent young woman who quite frankly, is six inches taller than this poor boy anyway. What could he possibly do for her that she couldn’t do for herself? Later we found out that not only would he eat dinner with us that night, but he would have to sit on the bench with us at all of our games! Our poor escort Dillon had to endure all of our loud cheering and girly banter late at night and early in the morning when he could be in class or out with his friends. It wasn’t only an insult to us, but an inconvenience to him.

The LAST thing that I expected from politically correct OFSAA, whose by-laws outline a requirement of “Respect for others; all participants have the right to freedom from harassment (as defined by the Canadian Human Rights Commission), equal treatment without discrimination based on race, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, creed, physical or mental ability, sexual orientation, or sex.” But the organization “providing” us with boys to escort us around the tournament was a blatant display of unequal treatment. You could say that I am being unreasonable with my accusations, but in the spring of 2013, the OFSAA Boys’ AAAA Soccer Championship was held at our own school and the visiting boys weren’t escorted

by any of our female or male students. So what makes OFSAA think that they can have boys escort us everywhere because we’re girls? We are at OFSAA to display our skills as athletes and compete for the provincial title. Wouldn’t you think that people as determined and talented as us would be considered strong and independent by our hosts?

After doing some digging on their website, I found some even more outrageous statements.

- “Our main values as leadership, commitment, respect, equity, growth and development.” EQUITY?

- “We also take a proactive role in dealing with issues that affect students, coaches, schools and communities.” LIKE MY RELATIONSHIP STATUS?

- “Our main priority is to work with volunteer teacher-coaches to provide 46 provincial championships and five festivals for Ontario’s student-athletes; however we offer other programs and services that enhance school sport in the province.” SUCH AS SETTING ME UP WITH A 15 YEAR-OLD FROM WINDSOR? YEAH, NO THANKS.

I am quite sure that OFSAA had the best intentions (although I can’t think of any right now), but maybe they should have thought about the blowback that their choices would make before they boiled every girl competing in the tournament down to arm candy.

22

Running in Ballet Shoes Cynthia Jing

Evolutionists believe that our love of dance is a leftover instinct from our ancestors’ desperate attempt to mate. Because of this, many people underestimate dance. To them, a ballet class is about pretty girls in skinny leotards showing off their long legs and tiny waists. One anonymous Internet user even commented on Deabte.org that the “only thing they do to sweat, is stretch”.

But there’s so much more to dance than doing splits.

It’s a sport.

Edie Shaw, a professional dancer, offers some insights into this elegant sport. According to her, professional dancing is truly a physical activity. “Some dancers can undeniably perform physical feats that may require equal or greater physical prowess than a highly trained athlete.”

Leaping and tumbling aside, even a bit of dissection into a pirouette will show you the different layers behind such a “simple” move. There are the soleus and gastrocnemius muscle to help the dancers rise to their toes; there are the hamstrings and quadriceps to help the dancers keep their legs straight; and, most importantly, there’s the abdominal muscle to help the dancers stay balanced on those spinning tippy toes or point shoes. Only when all these muscles work together at a tremendously high level can a dancer look so effortless on stage. Or else, Swan Lake might just as well be named Bear Pond.

Like other sports, dance also requires absolute dedication. Sophia Lucia, the 10-year-old Guinness record holder for the most consecutive pirouettes, trains 40 hours each week (27 hours more than average athletes). Even an amateur dancer sometimes spends more than 20 hours a week beside the ballet bar.

But dedication doesn’t just mean sacrificing one’s time and energy – it also means not

SPORTS hours a week of strenuous dance classes” year after year.

According to the International Olympic Committee, a sport also has to involve some “elements of competition.” So how does dance match this criterion?

“The field of professional dance is extremely competitive,” says Ms. Shaw. There is a constant tug-of-war between dancers even in their own studios. Who’s featured in the group dance? Who gets the solo? These are all mind-boggling questions that set a dancer on edge. Then, there are auditions. A regular dance company only takes in a handful of new dancers every year. Within Toronto alone, there are at least 150 dancers entering the professional field each year, cat fighting in audition rooms for that precious tenure.

Interestingly, dance competitions are all around you. Just to name a few: So You Think You Can Dance, Dance Moms, and America’s Best Dance Crew are all popular dance-inspired competition shows on TV.

After examining all aspects, it is safe to Kienna Shaw conclude that a dancer in her pink velvet leotard giving up even after suffering injuries. with a bow in her hair is just as much of an ath Whether you dance professionally or lete as Tom Brady in his bulky football suit.

Yes, they are artists, but they are also recreationally, bruises and ankle sprains are athletes. unavoidable. I still vividly remember my pathetic attempt at a knee drop during my Grade 9 Fashion Show audition, which landed me a bruise that eerily resembled a discoloured map of Canada.

But these are nothing compared to what many other dancers have to endure. Isabelle Sanders, a current Grade 11 student from NT, tells a heroic tale with her 8-year-long experience as a highland dancer. Her medical history reads as such: Achilles Tendonitis, Plantar Fasciitis, shin splints, Knee Bursitis, and dislocated hips...

Even so, Isabelle still “[shows] up for twenty

Memoirs of a Leafs Fan

Kienna Shaw

Kyle Tarder-Stoll

PREGAME 1:06 PM: January 1st. Half the fans are hungover – and most likely all the players. This is Michigan. Let’s get this going.

1:08 PM: Don Cherry looks like a 40s news reporter. (*thumbs up* THERE YA GO, KIDS) 1:10 PM: Mike Babcock’s a hoser, eh.

3rd Period 04:41 Bozak scored, yeah yeah, but Dion Phaneuf has TWO assists. Now that’s $7 million well spent.

14:28 You’re a smart kid, Abdelkader... but so am I (catch that allusion to Max Keeble’s Big Move). 2-2.

19:00 Colton Orr hasn’t even gotten into a fight...

1st PERIOD ...

04:23 Nothing’s happening. Not even one person has been shot. I thought they were playing in Detroit. ...

11:04 Joffrey found a... loophole (Lupul)... in the plan. Two minutes for cross-checking. Thank you.

16:21 *$7 million a year for 7 years for *being Dion. *Dion Phaneuf *Holding

SHOOTOUT Through the snow, I sense that we might have won. That’s purely speculation though – the weather was bad. 3-2 Leafs. Final.

INTERMISSION: DON CHERRY, EH? WHAT A BEAUTY, KID OUT OF KINGSTON, ONTARIO (THUMBS UP).

2nd Period 13:14 Alfredsson’s a hoser, eh? 1-0.

13:20 What a clown that Alfredsson is...

13:54 I dislike Daniel Afredsson with a strong passion. I have a burning desire to sign Daniel Alfredsson and immediately waive him.

16:02 Gardiner? I hardly know ‘er!

19:23 1-1. Suck it, Alfredsson.

8 Stress: Archenemy Turned BFF Jillian Li

Your eyes launch open. Uh-oh. You look at your always-fails-to-wake-you-up alarm clock to see that you’ve slept, snoozed, and snored 37 minutes past 8:15 am. You’re late for school.

Those 37 golden minutes robbed from your treasure chest of time cause you to break away from your comfy covers and race out the front door at a supersonic speed. Beyond the annoyance of a rushed morning, you’re prepared to lose your cool because of the overwhelming stress that’s already burdening your mind. As you race to your first period class, you have just enough time to form a mental to-do list for the day: study for a math test in between classes, patch up the tension between you and your friend Nancy, work an extra shift slouching over the Sobeys cash register, and write a 2000 word essay...that you haven’t started. And that’s only the first page of a traumatic sob story. Your heart thumps like a giant’s foot against your chest. Your breathing is as heavy as an asthmatic bulldog’s. Your hands begin to cry with tears of sweat. The reality pops up like a special bulletin but it’s old news: you’re stressed. But you’re not alone. In fact, stress is prevalent among many teens. According to Statistics Canada, 34.6% of teens ages 15 to 19 reported noticeable stress in their daily lives in 2012. As much as stress produces negative feelings of angst and anxiety, what teens fail to realize is that it can also be beneficial. A positive embrace of stress can actually benefit your health and turn this supposed enemy into your new BFF.

Dating thousands of years back, when we were hunters and gatherers, stress was merely the result of the fight or flight response.

It was activated by the brain stem if and when a hunter would stumble upon a ferocious bear roaming the forest. In fact, this stress response was vital for these hunters, allowing them to seek out opportunities of attack and bring home a delicious dinner. Or in most cases, hunters used this stress response to simply prevent themselves from being devoured. The forest of modern society has transformed trees into ad-plastered office buildings, dirt paths into traffic jammed highways, and peaceful sounds of rustling leaves into the honking of car horns or the pinging of iPhones. No longer are roaming animal-foes the only concerns that trigger a stressful response. “There’s always something to do and somewhere to be,” remarks a Grade 12 North Toronto student, who’s been feeling the recent pressures of university applications.

Stress has become entwined in today’s culture,

The Real Edmund Park

woven into our webs of endless tasks and frantic “let-me-check-my-schedule” lifestyles.

This stress must be harmful, right? Not necessarily.

Stress behaves like a match. Once it’s struck, there’s little doubt it will fuel a fire of physical, psychological, and emotional symptoms. Dry mouth, depression, difficulty making decisions – whatever the symptoms are, you have a burning desire to get rid of them. Fast.

But no matter how hard you try, those stubborn symptoms still flicker. Soon, you begin to stress about your stress, fanning the flames even more.

In fact, family doctor Janet Star tells me, “It’s no shock when a patient visits and his or her final diagnosis is a direct cause of stress. Often times, stressed-out people spend more time trying to get rid of stress, rather than focusing on what needs to be done.” People tend to light the stress match and set themselves afire, rather than view the flame as an advantage and use it as a tool to, for instance, light a fireplace and keep themselves warm.

Take Sarah and Alison for example.

Both are defined as your typical “overachieving students” at Earl Haig Secondary School. Both are highly involved in their academics, extracurriculars, and social lives. A single glance at both their agendas, scrawled with meeting reminders for the Heart and Stroke committee and rehearsal dates for the school’s production of Macbeth, will make you wonder how they stay afloat in their sea of responsibilities.

Although both ranked their stress level a 9 out of 10, Sarah claimed her level of happiness a 6, while Alison stated hers to be an 8.5. Why

Charles Wu

the difference? Simple: it’s in the way they each perceived stress. Sarah shared, with a hysterical tone in her voice, that she views stress as the “worst thing” and that it “makes life so much harder than it needs to be.” On the other hand, Alison viewed stress as a “challenge,” motivating her, much as to how hunger can motivate you to eat. “I feel more relaxed and ready to focus, compared to most other kids at my school,” adds Alison.

You may argue that these two high school girls only represent a grain of sand on the shores of the high school landscape. Specifically, Alison is only one person whose health has improved because of her positive outlook on stress.

However, a study that tracked 30 000 Americans over the course of 8 years produced interesting results of stress as a motivator. Participants who experienced erupting volcanoes of stress suffered a 43% increase risk of dying, confirming that stress can indeed impose negative effects.

However, this whopping 43% risk increase was only for participants who had a pre-existing and consistent belief that stress was harmful to their health. Participants who had the same volcano of stress, but painted it as a diamond-spewing machine in their minds had the lowest risk of death. Even lower than participants who reported not having any stress at all. The key may be in our blood vessels. In a recent TED Talk, psychologist Kelly McGonial reveals that when people are taught to view stress as helpful, their blood vessels remain relaxed, as opposed to constricted, which is a major cause of cardiovascular disease. These relaxed blood vessels, reported with a positive view of stress, are similar to blood vessels found during precious moments of joy and courage.

The hormone oxytocin is also released in the brain when reacting positively to stress. Like a shield, it protects the heart from stress-induced damage. A shield that propels people forward, transcending their personal boundaries in order to reach out and form social connections with those around them.

Is stress inevitable? Of course. Is stress always the enemy? Definitely not. Perceiving stress in a positive way is a simple, yet fruitful tactic that can transform your life from a traumatic sob story into an encouraging “it’s alright” lifestyle. It’s time to think positively about stress. It’s time to welcome stress with open arms and embrace it. It’s time to treat it as a building block for good health. It’s time to control stress rather than let it control you.

top. His calculated plans all led up to one event, the 2012/2013 student council elections,

Is the self-proclaimed “friendly neighbourthe highlight of his life, and the realization of hood president” Edmund Park, leader of the forhis fantasies. His strategy had paid off and Edmidable NTCI student council, really as ‘friendly’ as mund Park was victorious. He took this news in he says he is? His rise to the top was not unexpected. the graceful, humorous manner we’ve come to He had been planning his ascent to power for years, expect from his carefully crafted persona. waiting in the shadows for the right moment to take But who is Edmund Park really? Despite over. Edmund began with a stint on the student his social butterfly persona, Edmund describes council of Deer Park Middle School. Although he himself as an introverted guy, and says, “Real considered the position rather beneath him and people make me feel uncomfortable.” With his didn’t bother to attend any of the meetings, it was passion for British panel shows and documenhis first step towards holding the ultimate of high taries, this guy has some quirks. For example, school titles: School Council President. he always orders an Orange Tangerine smoothie

When he arrived at NT, he continued to cul- from Tim Hortons. He lists Grade 10 Civics as tivate his persona as the smart, reliable, everyman one of his all time favourite classes; I mean, who while serving as class representative. Then, in Grade actually likes Civics?

10, he used his reputation combined with a cutting

Unlike most NT students, Edmund sense of humour to seduce the student body into takes a different approach to handling the stress electing him as Secretary. of high school…he puts everything off to the This was his in, the final step on his journey to the last minute so he’s only stressed right before due

Elizabeth Batchelor & Maddie Wieler

dates. Although the power of his new position seems to have gotten to him; he’s plastered posters of his face in the school hallways, and avoids the boys’ bathrooms at all costs. He even admits to going home in his spare (a 45 minute commute) in order to use the washroom there.

But despite his elitist sensibilities he doesn’t let his ego take over. He doesn’t want personal glory from his time in office; he wants to be remembered as a President “who made assemblies just a bit more fun, also one that wasn’t exceptionally bad.” He would be satisfied if his reign can be described as “forgettable.”

Edmund admits he would be willing to come to school on the weekend to attend one of Mr. Butler’s classes. His affection for those around him shines through in all he does.

While there is a lot we don’t know about Edmund, we can know one thing: with Edmund as President, NT is havingits most entertaining year yet!

Marshall Bruce Mathers is Back Jane Bradshaw

Marshall Bruce Mathers the third. His name seems pretentious, like it belongs to someone who inherited wealth along with his title.

However, that idea is far off from the real background of Marshall Bruce Mathers the third: he is more commonly known as Eminem, a.k.a. the real Slim Shady.

Eminem has famously illustrated his horrific upbringing, in both his songs and his movie, “8 mile.” His mother had him when she was a teenager. She fled from her abusive husband and headed for Detroit to escape her family. While he was a kid, Eminem was thrown into multiple schools each year, since his mom had trouble settling down, and he was moved back and forth between Detroit and his mother’s home in Missouri. He was bullied throughout his childhood (just listen to “Brain Damage”), and he lived with his mom and her many foster kids in trailer parks. He met Kim in a trailer park and they started their toxic relationship (if you’re brave, listen to “Kim” to hear some vivid remarks about their terrible time together) and had their daughter, Hailie Jade Scott. Not only was Eminem able to eventually escape his poor living condition, drug habits, and abusive marriage, but he overcame adversity to become one of the most celebrated white rappers of all time.

Now, at age 41, Eminem just dropped his eighth studio album, “The Marshall Mathers LP 2,” in November. Dubbed one of the most

anticipated albums of 2013 by MTV, Eminem’s newest release includes tracks like “Berzerk,” “Survival,” “Rap God,” and the popular “The Monster,” featuring Rihanna.

Although his previous albums received flack from the music world, there has been an overwhelming amount of positive feedback for MMLP2. The Guardian gave Eminem a perfect five-star rating, applauding his “confidence and maturity…introspection and regret” and his “dazzling” play on words. Rolling Stone remarked that Eminem is “playing his best character, the demon spawn of Trailer Hell, America, hitting middle age with his middle finger up his nose while he cleans off the Kool-Aid his kids spilled on the couch.”

I love Eminem, and I have since I heard his song “Stan” featuring Dido, when I was around ten years old. Maybe the content of his music wasn’t appropriate for a ten-year-old, but I was immediately drawn to the energy he exerted in his music. His anger could sound so poetic, which was something I never expected to hear in the fast-paced flow of his raps. Overall, I have liked the body of his work, with the exceptions of a few vicious, revenge-filled tunes. However, his new album really impressed me, going above and beyond my expectations.

Firstly, his stories have matured over the past fifteen years of his career. He has the ability to rap over any type of track, and has taken a

21 different perspective on topics that he first explored on his earlier albums. Furthermore, after many years of anger, his new tracks are more light-hearted and enjoyable, with humour hidden within the wickedness of his raps. He is able to have originality in his skews, mocking both himself and others. He is still rapping from deep within his scary soul, spitting out homophobic slurs and misogynistic fantasies, but he wouldn’t be Eminem that people love, or love to hate, without the rage. His technical power, wordplay and beats come together to create a unique storytelling that only a rap god can offer.

This leaves me with only one question for Eminem: when are you coming to Toronto?

Opera for a New Generation Erika Sakaguchi

“Opera is boring,” is a phrase that everyone has heard or maybe even said themselves.

Yet, to generalize an entire genre of musical theatre is truly unfair. One could say that all movies are poorly written, but many would use their favourite films as an example to refute this argument. So, why should opera be any different? Why does it have a bad reputation? Is it an association with snobbery, or prolonged running time? Is it too old-fashioned? These myths that swirl around opera have led its popularity into a steep decline. If they gave it a chance, however, most people would discover that opera is not only accessible, but extremely entertaining.

The image that many people connect with opera is that of rich, stuffy-looking ladies wearing opera gloves and long black gowns, while holding little opera glasses and handkerchiefs as they turn their noses up at everyone else. Opera is not actually the stereotypical droning diva sporting a Viking helmet and singing in Italian. In fact, operas are sung in a variety of languages, including English. Attending an opera is not a sign of snobbery: it is a sign of sophistication. In history, opera was often intended for the affluent who had the luxury of spending their time and money on entertainment. Even though opera tickets can still

be very expensive, there are many opportunities to see performances at reasonable prices. Many opera companies offer student rates, as well as package deals for groups. The Metropolitan Opera in New York City makes their performances easy to access by providing showings in various select movie theatres. Some of the great performances can also be found online.

“Attending an opera is not a sign of snobbery: it is a sign of sophistication.”

Although many operas seem very long, most are about the same running time as a movie. If you do not have much spare time, do not despair: there are even shorter operas, such as Gianni Schicchi, that are about only fifty minutes in length. Generalising that all operas are long is like saying all movies are long.

Even though opera originated in the 16th century, the subject matter of opera nowadays is usually relevant and relatable to modern audiences. All operas were originally meant to entertain, yet it now has the mistaken stigma of doing just the opposite. Of course, there will be “boring” operas, just as there are “boring” movies. Many operas are so riveting, however, that

the audience can be reduced to laughter or tears, and left hungry for more. There is an opera for every mood and occasion. Gianni Schicchi, for example, is the hilarious story of a family who attempts to change the will of a dead man in their favour. After stuffing their lately-deceased, wealthy relative in the wardrobe, they convince family friend, Gianni Schicchi, to impersonate the departed in order to make a new will.

My personal favourite, Carmen, is the story of a very saucy and fiery gypsy whose actions lead her into a dangerous love triangle. It encompasses everything a viewer could possibly want: romantic serenades, the most amazing musical dance numbers, and jealousy and murder. The music is so famous that almost everyone has heard it, even if they cannot distinguish it as being from Carmen.

If you are willing to take the time to learn more about opera, you may discover a whole new world of entertainment. Try to find out which operas are available in your area.

Read the synopses provided for each opera and figure out which tale enchants you. Most importantly, remember that you cannot judge an opera until you have actually experienced it; it may end up being delightful and well worth your time.

Top Ten: The Auditorium Rachel Katz

As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time in our school’s fine auditorium, its nooks and crannies have lost some of the lustre they once held for me, but I remember days before that was the case, when the auditorium was full of mystery.

The auditorium’s control center, better known as “The Booth,” is a cozy cement bunker that experiences the same degree of temperature changes as a menopausal woman. Sure it’s jam-packed with cables, microphones, and lost dreams, but it’s also where the majority of the technical magic happens for events like fashion show. (It’s also one of the cooler places to hold club meetings.)

Another barely visible gem is the catwalk. Its official use is for hanging stage lights and orchestrating balloon drops, but apparently its dizzying height of 40-60 feet is more than enough to give it a reputation as the most badass place in the school. Fear not though acrophobes, for the catwalk is outfitted with sturdy railings to prevent any accidents. Due to the gates present at either entry to the catwalk (and the constant semi-darkness), this part of the auditorium isn’t much of a hangout space for Stage Crew.

20

Girl Code

Lisa Cumming

The stigma against female developers was not fostered with malicious intent; rather, it was most likely meant to protect the fragile female from the big, scary world of computers.

C’mon, it’s the 21st century. The times are a-changin’, and, to be perfectly honest, I probably spend much more time on my computer than some of my male counterparts do.

Welcome to the generation of “Girl Coders.”

Their message is simple, their motive is clear: We want more.

What do you picture when you hear the words “web developer”? I used to picture my dad. I pictured him hunched over a glowing computer screen with Dr. Frankenstein-esque hair and squinty, beady eyes, his fingers moving at 100 kilometers an hour. Not even the song of a siren could distract him. Now, picture this: the exact same setting, but replace the man in the image with Cinderella. These visualizations are not completely unlike one another, yet the latter seems to be the “obvious” unrealistic image.

Eight Average Nights (Passover is where it’s at)

Kyle Tarder-Stoll

Since the dawn of computers, there has been a stigma upon women in the industry, precisely because of that image. Women have always been princesses, not computer nerds.

I challenge that notion. Why can’t women be both?

The Internet has been hacked, changed, redone and re-envisioned since its commercial release in the late 1980s. Would it surprise you to know that, despite the fact that the faces of many big technology- and internet-based companies are men, a lot of the legendary innovations were created by these so-called “princesses”? Yes? Well, tell that to Radia Perlman, Meg Whitman, Sarah Parmenter, Elizabeth Naramore, and Ligaya Turmelle. I doubt these names mean much to you, but they mean a lot to me.

Individually, these women are “the mother of the internet”, the President of EBay, and the development skills behind Readr. United, they are the leaders of a battalion of female programmers and developers.

Yes, these accomplishments are impressive, but a Girl Coder doesn’t have to have her name in flashing lights. I’m just trying to

prove a point. Women do exist in the world of internet development. In fact, the beloved site called Tumblr, which many of you, I’m sure, consistently log on to every night, houses a vast number of female web developers. The complex themes designed by these Girl Coders allow the stigma to fall flat on the ground. Some of the most impressive design work I have seen is made by women, on that website.

So, who is to say that princesses can’t be web developers or computer nerds, as well? Let’s chip away at the stigma until it no longer exists.

If Cinderella can code, so can you!

Hannah Karpinski

White Chocolate Should Be Tried for Fruad Jane Bradshaw

Whether it’s during Halloween, Hanukkah, Easter or a seemingly endless day of We're all consumerists, and without excuse school, chocolate has sweetened the lives of It's the capitalist market that gives us holiday blues. all its consumers. With countless variations, there is a brand or flavour for everyone’s palBut am I a consumerist for the sole gift of gift giving? ate. A classic confection is white chocolate; Or is Hanukkah our commercial product of Christmas?

Of Thanksgiving? who doesn’t love indulging him or herself in a delightful white chocolate macadamia nut I sit quietly, sternly cookie from Starbucks? Or a delectable HerEager smiles by my side shey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme bar? This pale chocoNo presents under my tree late is so good, and tastes so much sweeter Have they been robbed? A modern day Bonnie and Clyde? than cocoa-coloured chocolate. How can that possibly be? Well, the appalling truth is that Who bears gifts tonight? white chocolate is a big, fat(tening) lie!

Nothing for me

I know it may be shocking for some, Not even socks, a Toblerone but white chocolate is not actually chocolate; it’s more like the annoying, wannabe sibling A book to prepare for my Master's Degree?

(Jewish parents have high expectations) that desperately tries to be chocolate. The main ingredient is cocoa butter, a vegetable fat So what's the deal? that comes from the cocoa bean but doesn’t The consumerist Ferris Wheel actually contain the chocolate ingredient.

That spins round and round It is extracted when the cocoa bean is being In giving, what goes up, must come down ground into a chocolate liquor. The cocoa butter is no longer needed to make milk or dark Hanukkah, the quintessential fabrication of the chocolate, so it is used as the foundation of commercial world white chocolate.

The wrapping paper given gone unfurled Sometimes, when used for decoration or as Your newly acquired James Bond action figure sits there a coating, white chocolate can be made from Shaken, but, oh, not stirred various solid hydrogenated vegetable fats that What is Hanukkah without Christmas? aren’t even from the cocoa bean. In this case, Just another Jewish holiday to eat without gift only milk solids and sugar have to be added To chuckle with Uncle Moishe in order to make the delicious, decaffeinated Or pretend you're clever like Jonathan Swift (I try) derivative of chocolate.

The first white chocolate bar dates So what's the purpose of the excessive gift giving back to the 1930s, when the Swiss company To all the children like Eli... and his tefillin!

Nestlé made it as a response to the powdered milk surplus they It's Christmas after all that is the grand scheme experience after World War One. For Jews, it's the High Holidays and Passover that steals Then, in 1945, the bar was introthe theme duced to North Americans when As for Hanukkah...

Kuno Baedeker developed his I'll light the candles, and wait for no gifts own version, while working at the I'll simply go for another serving of latkes, it's my fifth Merckens Chocolate Company, as a way to efficiently use the excess I'll enjoy the comfort of family cocoa butter. The chocolate was Only the memories will I take away promoted during the warmer And on that last day of Hanukkah months, as it had a higher melting I'll end this poem with a cliche. point, and therefore a longer shelf life during the sunny weather.

Nowadays, almost every major chocolate brand has their own version of this treat, ranging from pure white chocolate bars to whiteand actual-chocolate layers that create barks or even Kinder Egg Surprises.

Now, do not fret too much over this revelation; white chocolate does have benefits for being a fraud. It is decaffeinated, and does not contain any of the chemical compounds to which people and their pets are commonly allergic (nevertheless, it is always a good idea to check with your vet before treating your cat or dog to huge heaps of white chocolate). In addition, the quality of the chocolate is easily identifiable. The colour of the bar should be that of rich ivory, rather than stark white. The whiter the chocolate, the more likely it is to be artificially coloured or made with vegetable oil in lieu of cocoa butter.

For many years, pastry chefs around the world have been using white chocolate to create a variety of decadent sweets. It is particularly enticing for professional patissiers, as it can be used as a base for coloured chocolates, as well as other decorative flourishes.

The versatility extremely of this treat is limitless; from inside cookies to on top of cakes as frosting, or covering cake-pops to flavouring popcorn.

White chocolate has been keeping its secret hidden from people for many years.

Even now, after the truth behind the unfathomable wonderfulness of white chocolate has been revealed, it is still impossible to resist the alluring aroma of this pearly delight.

9

EXTERNAL The End of Canada Post Madeleine Wieler

When was the last time you sent an actual, pen and paper, through the post, letter? For most, it was probably quite a while ago, and it is easy to jump to the conclusion that the post is a superfluous and needless part of Toronto. Despite the decreasing amount of non electronic mail being sent, however, the post actually does serve a number of important roles in the community, making Canada Post’s announcement that it plans to phase out home delivery in urban areas, rather shocking.

Canada Post recently announced that approximately 5.1 million Torontonians currently receiving home delivery mail will lose their service in the next five years, according to the Globe and Mail. Actions are being taken to prevent an expected loss of 1 billion dollars by 2020; Canada Post has been losing money consistently as a result of fewer letters being sent. Transport minister Lisa Rait says, “The Government of Canada supports Canada Post in its efforts to fulfill its mandate of operating on a self-sustaining financial basis in order to protect

taxpayers.” But this is a subpar solution, considering people are now going to be even less likely to correspond through mail because they will have to leave the comfort of their own homes in order to receive and send it.

Oddly, Canada Post will be stopping home delivery in urban areas, areas with the highest concentration of people. Rural mail is more costly to deliver and rural post offices serve fewer people than urban ones. The price to send a letter or package reflects the fact that urban customers will, because of the distribu-

tion of population, always subsidize the high cost of rural mail delivery. Essentially, the urbanites will continue paying for the rural dwellers to receive their mail, and will receive less service in return. Coincidentally, the Conservative party relies on those rural voters, whose votes actually count more because of the distribution of population and seats. Canada Post’s upcoming changes seem to have the Conservative Party’s ‘fiscal values’ at heart, rather than the needs of ‘ordinary’ Canadians.

Much will be lost and missed with the end of home delivery, and numerous concerns have been raised about the new system. For example, many of the letters Torontonians receive are from important places or people such as bankers, doctors, or government officials, and are often confidential and private. The recent onslaught of Internet security breaches, specifically to government emails, makes snail-mail seem the safer option for communicating sensitive information. Additionally, more and more people are opting for online shopping, a service that requires home delivery. Not to mention the simple, sweet nostalgia of receiving a hand written letter or card.

What about Real Politics?

Miranda Wiseman

From the moment Rob Ford admitted to the allegations of smoking crack, he became all the buzz in the media. His story has travelled far beyond Ontario borders to become international news. The media shines the spotlight on whatever story will get the most attention from a wider audience, and Rob Ford has absolutely taken the cake; the media avidly follows Ford has he bumbles over his words and acts like a clown, and as a result, very minimal light is shed on other issues in Canadian politics that will affect the country’s well being much more than our city’s crack-smoking-drunken-baby-mayor.

Tensions in the Senate are running high. As a recap, in late 2012, four senators of the Canadian federal government, Mike Duffy, Mac Harb, Pamela Wallin, and Patrick Brazeau, used money from public funds to pay for their own personal expenses. They did repay their debts, but none of these senators are currently working in the Senate. But the story doesn’t end there. In February of 2013, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Nigel

Wright, paid off Duffy’s expense of $90,000 using money from his personal funds in secret.

This rather shady business between Wright and Duffy was confirmed on May 15, 2013, and the following day, Duffy resigned from his position.

Though Stephen Harper stated not to

have known about the transfers made by his colleague, Wright, there is debate about whether or

not his claims are true. This conflict has brought up many arguments about Harper’s integrity, as well as how the Prime Minister’s office should not have been involved in covering the expenses of any senator, especially when they had been taking from public funding.

As students who rely on public funds to receive our educations, it doesn’t seem just that we, as a student body, should be uninformed on these recent events. Although it may sometimes seem like everything else in the news is put at a stand-still when there is a story as scandalous as that of Rob Ford’s, the truth of the matter is that there are other far more important situations that remain unresolved and out of the public eye.

Just because something does not receive as much coverage as other more frivolous stories does not lessen its importance.

Top Ten: Greenhouse in Room 431 Devan Wang

Looking for the sunniest spot in school? Look no further. We’ve all seen our school’s green roof, but who would’ve thought that our school has its very own greenhouse? Tucked inside the back of science/biology classroom 431 is a small room with glass walls unbeknownst to most NT students. It is in the greenhouse that the magical process of photosynthesis occurs most abundantly among all other rooms in the school. Inside this little rectangular prism filled with high amounts of oxygen, you will find many organisms from the plantae kingdom.

If you venture into this bright and warm room during lunch hours, chances are you will find grade 11 Olivia Yoshimoto, the unofficially appointed keeper of the plants (dubbed by Mr. Roche). She is the one woman army who harnesses the power of the sun to grow and raise many of the plants you will see inside the greenhouse: shasta daisies, foxglove, cacti, tomatoes, and beans.

The plants’ green colours make the little room appear much livelier and are sometimes taken to other science classrooms to spice up the interior decorating as well. Upon speaking with Mr. Roche, he also plans to grow some of the materials used for his biology classes inside the greenhouse, a very efficient use of NT’s natural resources. (NEAT would be proud.)

So many schools have a green roof, but how many have a greenhouse? Take a look at NT (with permission of course).

10 Days of Darkness

Ice Storms Wreak Havoc on The Province, Thousands without Power Jack Denton

On the evening of December 20th, a massive ice storm ravaged Toronto. By the morning of December 21st, the Winter Solstice and the darkest day of the year, over 600,000 households across Ontario were sitting in darkness, and they would be for days. Water had fallen from the sky and quickly froze on trees; the limbs, weighed down by the heavy ice, fell and took out scores of power lines. Toronto Hydro CEO Anthony Haines put the severity of the storm into context: 40% of the city’s power lines were affected by the storm (that’s enough cable to cross Canada—twice); in addition, 47,000 metres of cable had to be put back up in the air.

“At first, it was kind of fun. We got to play with these gigantic candles left over from the last major power outage, back in 2003,” grade 11 student Lydia Zhou told me. Lydia was among the hardest hit, without power for one week, from the early hours of the 21st to the 28th. But, “as the days went by and other people were getting their power back, I became increasingly mildly annoyed.”

Lydia echoes the sentiments of thousands of other people across Toronto during the outage, myself included. I was relatively lucky, only being without power from the 21st to the morning of the 24th. My family counts ourself well-prepared for power outages; with a cottage on windy Georgian Bay, we’ve had outages up to a week more than a few times. But we too struggled to combat the cold, and barely were able to stop our frozen food from spoiling. We bought half a dozen bags of ice within the first day to pack our freezer. Many were unable to save their food, though, and into the New Year, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne struggled to roll out a big enough compensation program to help those who suffered dearly from spoiled food stocks.

For many, the outage brought feelings of fear and isolation. A grade 11 student, Isabelle Sanders, whos power returned early on the 24th, recounted her initial feelings: “in my house, I honestly felt so isolated. The dark, lifeless streets

were intimidating and I felt like I was in a poorly written, post-apocalyptic teen book. We couldn’t use our Wi-Fi, we couldn’t use our phone; it felt like we were the last people left on Earth.”

Around the Humber River and into Etobicoke was one of the areas most badly hit by the floods and power outages of this summer. My dad and I headed down into our basement uneasily on the 21st, nervous to see if there were similar floodwaters that had greeted us in August. Not quite, but water was close to the top of the well that contained our sump pump (rendered useless without electricity), which pumped groundwater out from around our house into the sewer. Together, we began to bail it out; one of us would use a cooking pot to fill a bucket with the dirty (and icy) water, and the other would constantly run buckets out to the sink in the other part of the basement. By the end of the day, the water was again almost at ground level.

So we bailed again, the well constantly being filled by the pipe that led from the deep trenches around the foundations of our house. All in all, by the morning of Christmas Eve, we’d bailed and carried through somewhere around 3,500L of water from the well to the drain.

I was lucky, my house didn’t get too cold. We ran our gas stovetop burners nonstop, which generated enough heat to warm the main floor and keep the water pipes thawed. However, Lydia wasn’t so lucky, and, as she explains, “my mom decided that we were going to live at a hotel downtown for a few days. At that point, our house was at 6˚C.” Isabelle found bearing the cold difficult: “I just slept in my Canada Goose to keep warm. Not only that, but I also slept under two duvets, a fleece, and a thick sleeping bag. Hey, you do what you have to do when the temperature of your bedroom is 0 degrees.”

There was yet another thing that plagued citizens of the dark Toronto: what to do during the days without power. Daniel Liu, a grade 11 student who was out of power for 3 days, describes his strategy of “staying in bed, reading

Rachel Katz

Adam Opara

a book when there is sunlight, and conserving battery on my phone so to be able play games to alleviate the boredom.” For Isabelle, it was less about boredom, and more about getting away from the ever-present, biting cold: “During the days, I was never in my house. I went to movies, Starbucks, friends’ houses—basically anywhere that wasn’t cold and had an outlet.”

Opinions differed on the handling of the crisis. Daniel is harsh in his criticism, saying: “as far as I saw, the Hydro repair crews did not act accordingly to the situation.” He went on, describing how all work ceased on his street once night fell: “why is it that one of the most developed nations on Earth did not have the equipment to restore power during the night? In a situation where over 300,000 people are without heating in the middle of a Canadian winter, those responsible for fixing such issues should be working 24/7 to return power ASAP.” Lydia is more forgiving and sympathetic to the Hydo workers: “all things considered, the city worked pretty fast. I feel really bad for the Hydro workers who were out there working their butts off in the cold all day every day.”

All in all, power’s been restored to Toronto. The last enclaves of darkness in the city were illuminated by the first day of 2014, Toronto Hydro reported. But surely the city won’t forget these days of darkness for quite a while.

Noah Philipp-Muller

Adam Opara

Rachel Katz

19

Democracy: The Sham Judy Al Khalid

What is a national anthem? Is it a way to express patriotism for one’s country, or is it simply a way to swear one’s allegiance to a dictatorship? Is the sweet sounding “O,” which bellows out from school classrooms around the country, really just the cry of submission to tyrants?

Throughout our lives, we’ve been told to appreciate what we have; after all, we are the nation next to the land of the free. We have the blessing to freely express ourselves – well, sort of. We’re fortunate enough to have our own opinions, our own outlooks, and our own votes – well, sort of. We “sort of” have a lot of things.

But do we actually have anything? Do we actually have all of the rights we believe we hold?

Does our supposedly democratic system even exist, or is democracy merely an unachievable ideal?

Let’s backtrack a few thousand years, to the birthplace of democracy – Athens. Athenian democracy consisted of men gathering in a room to discuss issues. These concerns would then be voted on. The whole system was based on individuals voicing their beliefs; rule by the citizens (i.e. free men born in Athens) was the key. Currently, however, our version of democracy doesn’t follow the same structure. Think about it: we cannot possibly gather 35 million people in the House of Commons to hash out issues. So, the democratic dictatorship was fashioned. All democratic societies run on the same principle: elected individuals govern the collective. Our only participation in this system is in our vote. Our only form of democracy comes in a single piece of recyclable paper, pre-filled-in of course.

The foundation for the undemocratic democracy starts in our colour-filled, babyproofed, mat-littered kindergarten classrooms.

The oh-so-lovely Ms. Joy teaches us how to blindly obey our elders. At this stage, we are only mere proles, learning the ropes of the totalitarian society into which we are shoved.

We are subdued by the learning of many new tasks: how to join the collective, how to sing the national anthem, and how to obey. There’s absolutely no time to question any of it. We are being conditioned. We are being programmed. We are being moulded into our future selves at the hands of our school systems. As we transition into high school, we become more and more

distracted: tests, assignments, and university applications cloud our minds, so, once more, there’s no time for defiance. At this stage, we’ve moved up in our ranks; we’ve been inducted into the outer party. Hence, it is now crucial that we remain as “just [some] other bricks in the wall.” Any act contradicting the collective could send a teacher, a member of the inner party, headed our way. Students must not question anything they are told. In other words, students must remain the silent citizens of a dictatorship.

Mr.Apex*, a member of North Toronto Collegiate Institute’s inner party, agrees. When referring to the organizational systems of classrooms, he say, “[A classroom] is a dictatorship.”

Ms.Lock*, another member of the same party, acknowledged the power she holds, because of this dictatorship. She said that, while at school, she could correct any behaviour she deemed indecent, because “[she holds] keys, and the keys give [her] power.”

“We don’t make our own Kool-Aid. We get someone else’s nasty, old, been-in-thebowl-too-long Kool-Aid, and we’re forced to drink it.”

Inner party members in schools across the globe are all the same: they know that they can do whatever they want in their classrooms.

After all, when the door closes and the safety curtain is drawn, there’s nothing students can do. If they speak up against maltreatment, their grades are in the toilet. If they act out (against the inner party), a suspension will blot their permanent records. If they talk to their peers, they will be asked to keep quiet so that others don’t get into trouble. It’s truly rare to find a student who hasn’t been scathed by a landmine on the way to freedom from the dictatorships of schools.

But, eventually, it will end and we’ll all leave those terrifying prison-grey walls behind with only one concept we can truly understand: democracy is fictional; we are bred in dictatorships. Our schools breed us to think like the collective. So, how will we be able to formulate our

own votes in the future? As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “the real safeguard for democracy is education.” But if education is now the safeguard for dictatorship, how can democracy prevail?

Wherever we go, our ideals are preformed for us. Wherever we go, our votes are predetermined. Our ideals are the ideals of someone else; they’re passed down to us by our parents, and to our parents by our grandparents, and to our grandparents by our great grandparents. Think of it like this: once upon a time, someone thought about what he/she believed in; ever since then, we’ve all been drinking that person’s favourite flavour of Kool-Aid. We don’t make our own Kool-Aid. We get someone else’s nasty, old, been-in-the-bowl-too-long Kool-Aid, and we’re forced to drink it.

Democracy does not exist. It is supposed to be based on education providing us with the resources we need to understand democracy.

It is supposed to be based on our own votes, which we choose by our own accord. None of this, however, occurs in actuality. Our education systems teach us to be obedient members of a dictatorship; the people who surround us plant and foster all of our doctrines; our position in the economy is predetermined by the government we live in and the party we vote for.

Democracy is a sham. Democracy is supposedly a form of government in which the people choose their leaders, yet the people never choose their leaders. The people cannot make their own decisions. The people cannot formulate their own ideas. The people must be told what to think. Thus, democracy will never prevail. It will never prevail until we’ve changed the entire way in which our world functions. How can we change the world? How can we truly have democracy? We cannot achieve the unachievable until we have surpassed the insurmountable, yet we cannot surpass the insurmountable until we have achieved the unachievable. NT, I challenge you to look outside of your homes, classrooms, communities and country, and discover what YOU believe in, what values YOU hold dear and whom YOU trust. Maybe then, the “O” in “O Canada,” will ring a little truer.

*names have been changed

Don’t Take your Vitamins Jane Bradshaw

Rachel Katz

You can often find me scouring the health section of any grocery store, looking for the latest and greatest vitamins to maximize my well-being. It wasn’t until a recent, very uncomfortable encounter with a pharmacist, who insisted that a daily intake of Tums would give me enough calcium, that I began to question my habits.

I’ve always thought that the more vitamins, the better. But are the vitamin supplements actually benefitting me?

The truth is, probably not. We need vitamins to help us convert food into energy and prevent us from catching diseases like scurvy.

Fortunately, most people get enough of the required vitamins in their diet. Some people need to take certain vitamins, like pregnant women taking folic acid or vegans consuming vitamin B12; however, if you don’t have a specific need for them, popping these pills can be damaging.

The biggest myth in the vitamin world is in regard to vitamin C. Despite being vital for the health of your skin and the body’s absorption of iron, vitamin C will not cure your cold once you have already “caught” it. The scientific research of two-time Nobel Prize winner, Linus Pauling, disproved the idea of vitamin C alleviating a cold, but it was a long time before his findings were widely spread. He was told by a man with two years of college level chemistry

that the vitamin will help with his health.

Furthermore, scientists have found that an excess amount of vitamins – especially vitamin E and beta-carotene – can lead to increased mortality. In the study, those who were given supplements for vitamin E or beta-carotene had a higher chance of dying from lung cancer or heart disease than those not taking any supplements at all. In addition to this, scientists have discovered that regular, high doses of vitamin A increase the chances of bone fractures later in life. This, particularly, is a threat to women, who are already at a high risk of osteoporosis.

As well, the supplemental vitamins, added to the natural antioxidants that our bodies make, can disrupt the balance in the process of converting food to energy. This leads to a weakened immune system.

So, for those of you who vowed to make 2014 your “year of health”, and spent a fortune stocking up in the vitamin isle at Noah’s, it may be time to think twice before popping a vitamin pill as a way of being “healthy.”

18

Christmas: Post-Santa Claus Trent Erickson

I’m writing this article quite a while before you’re going to read it. It’s December 18th, and I have a Data Management exam tomorrow.

It’s a shame that Christmas and exams are at the same time; one of them has to lose out. For me, exams end up losing to Christmas movies a lot of the time. After all, they’re only on TV once a year.

Last night, my family and I watched Home Alone 3. I wanted to leave half-way through the movie, because, frankly, it’s not very good. I should have left and done something else (like study), and, if it were any other movie, I would have. But I stayed. I finished that crappy, 4.0-rated-on-IMDB movie, because I was obliged to. Walking out on a Christmas show feels just plain wrong - they’re too charming. You feel like the lawyer trying to persecute Santal or Mr. Potter stealing the $8,000. I have a certain loyalty to Christmas movies that I have for very few other things.

Leaving the movie would be to admit that I’ve grown up. That I don’t love every single movie I see. It would be to realize that I’m no longer Charlie from The Santa Claus 1; I’m now Charlie from The Santa Claus 2 - and that’s a scary thought. As you get older, your Christmas experience changes; the sense of wonder starts to fade. On your sixth Christmas, you’re running outside excitedly to “put up the Christmas lights!!”; on your sixteenth Christmas, you’re walking outside slowly to put them up, vaguely recalling how you felt when you were six.

We all have an element of that in our Christmases, don’t we? We want to bring that wonder back. We want to be as excited as Ralphie and as caring as Linus. But above all else, we want to believe in Santa again.

In grade three, I remember being in the after-school daycare. It was nearing Christmas, and the two kids I was playing with asked me if I believed in Santa Claus.

“I want to,” I replied. “But I don’t.”

I miss the days when I could have a completely serious conversation about the reality of Santa Claus. The exact same answer I used then would now be a sarcastic one: “Yes, of course I believe in Santa. Doesn’t everybody?”

Santa represents everything that has changed with Christmas since we were kids.

Santa represents the wonder and the unwavering belief in something unprovable that we don’t have any more. Before we learned that toy companies make millions at Christmas, we thought Santa made the toys out of generosity, each one crafted specially for you. He cared about you.

Santa is the single biggest figure of Christmas, and, for everyone over the age of ten, he’s not truly there. Christmas without Santa is a sugar cookie without frosting; it’s fruit cake without maraschino cherries; it’s skating without listening to Vince Guaraldi’s song Skating.

It’s no wonder that we want to believe in Santa again, like the kid in The Polar Express. But, unlike that kid, no matter how many times we close our eyes and say “I believe”, we won’t believe. We’re past believing, and, once you’ve stopped, you can never go back.

So, of course, I watched a crappy Christmas movie instead of studying for exams.

Watching a crappy Christmas movie during the holiday season means everything to a kid. It’s loving something like it’s perfect, even when it’s only mediocre (your cooking has improved over the years, mom; don’t worry) and it’s enjoying everything that’s around you. Exams lead to

work and worry and stress. They lead to university, which leads to jobs, which leads to you working on Christmas Eve. Exams are adulthood.

But exams are also lending a calculator to someone who forgot theirs; they’re comforting someone who’s crying because they ran out of time on the English exam; they’re wearing a bathrobe to class to cheer everyone up a little.

Exams give you a chance to be the caring, generous person that Santa is.

First, you believe in Santa, and then, one year, you don’t. You lose some of the magic of Christmas when Santa “stops being real”, but you gain something else at the same time. You realize that, even though Santa’s made up, he can still exist in little ways. For a few weeks of the year, you get to be Santa Claus. You get to make everyone’s lives a little more filled with spirit and joy. That’s what Christmas is truly about.

Charles Wu

Chris Lilley is King Jane Bradshaw

If you haven’t heard of the hilarious Australian actor, Chris Lilley, please stop reading this article and Google him right now.

Maybe watch a few YouTube highlight reels of “Mr. G.” I promise, you will never laugh as much at a TV show as you will at Chris Lilley.

Featured in his previous humorous series “We Can Be Heroes” and “Summer Heights High,” Lilley has brought Ja’mie King, a mean high school girl, back to the screen; this time, in her own mockumentary “Ja’mie Private School Girl.” The HBO hit displays Jam’ie in her natural habitat: Hillford Girls Grammar School. Not only has the show become a sensation with its witty one-liners and hilarious plot, but has also coined some authentic Aussie slang. Hillford’s hair-flipping, boy-crazy, slightly psychotic head girl throws around a new dose of teen dialect like it’s confetti.

Grade 11 Georgia Mahoney-Webster notes that Ja’mie King herself has become a catchphrase: “Jam’ie is a character known throughout teens today that is seen as funny

by everyone. I hear people quote her almost every day.”

So, for those of you who are looking forward to enhancing your lingo in 2014, start by looking to Ja’mie to vamp up your vocabulary. For example, when you want to see how little something matters to someone, ask what the person’s “care factor” is – this Ja’mie-ism is quite “Ja’miezing.” Want to brag to your friends that you went to a wild party on the weekend? Lilley’s language uses the term “to go off” as a synonym for having fun. If you chat about who did what over the break, you and your friends are discussing the “goss.” A few other novel terms heard throughout the halls of Hillford are “pash” (to kiss – with tongue), “povo” (impoverished, poor), “random” (describing something off topic) and, the fan favourite, “quiche” (incredibly attractive – a step above hot).

It’s time to leave the “YOLO,” “swerve,” and “twerk” days behind, because Chris Lilley is king, and he is changing our language.

Top Ten: Photocopy Room Louise Castonguay

One dark evening, after paper-jam rage and tears, I gained access to the photocopier room in the main office. It was the eve of my RAG day, and the copier in the staff room broke. No, it wasn’t me… I think… Anyway, I got all situated in this new room at like 5pm and had virtually no time to print 350 copies of the RAG, but I didn’t know that at the time because who knew it would take two and a half hours to print some words on paper? I ended up spending most of my night in there and discovered all this cool stuff! Some old exams were in there and there were like ten 3-hole punchers and there was a paper shredder and some fire extinguishers! Up on the wall were pictures of everyone who had allergies and all of their EpiPens were in there. Then I found the Holy Grail. The computer that runs the slideshow on the television in front of the office was in there and I seriously considered taking a selfie and putting my face on a slide because how jokes would that have been? *cough #gradprank2014 cough*

11

Sochi

Declan Lawrence

The Olympics. Two words that generate deep national pride for members of all of the countries involved. Whether people are competing or simply watching from the stands or from afar, the feeling of satisfaction at seeing one’s country excel on the international stage is exhilarating. However the upcoming Olympics have been marred by controversy for the past little while, with many people questioning actually travelling to watch the games.

The host country for the 2014 winter games is Russia, the actual location being the small town of Sochi, located off of the eastern shore of the Black Sea. With a population that is smaller than Brampton, the choice of Sochi as host, which occurred in 2007, was an interesting one. For Russia this will be the first time it will host the Olympics since the breakup of the USSR. With successful bids to also be a host city for the 2018 world cup and site for one of the races of the Russian Grand Prix, Sochi has tried to present itself, and Russia, in a light that shows how far they have progressed since the days of the Soviet Union. As people have learned through many media outlets, the development of Russia into a more progressive country has hit more than its fair share of snags in the months before the Olympic torch is lit in Fisht Olympic Stadium, the $603 million dollar complex built for the opening and closing ceremonies.

The many troubles that have been uncovered include: beaten workers, terrorist attacks, the passage of an anti-gay law, increased spending, displaced people from construction of Olympic infrastructure, and ever more vast amounts of escalating issues.

The cost of these Olympic games have already reached an astounding $50 billion dollars, and construction currently remains underway, leading some estimations to state that the grand total could reach upwards of $60 billion. This has led the Sochi 2014 games to be dubbed “the most expensive games ever” by the Globe and Mail. For perspective, the last winter Olympics in Vancouver cost around $7 billion, meaning that the 2014 winter Olympics could cost anywhere from 7-8 times more than when Canada hosted. Rates of inflation may be applied but even so, with an annual 6.5% inflation rate in Russia, the cost still should have been somewhere around the $9 billion mark.

One of the many reasons for the high tab has been security. With about $3 billion diverted to security efforts, and 80,000 plus, soldiers, policemen, and intelligence agents working in the area Sochi should be considered, well, secure. Recent attacks in the nearby town of Volgograd have shaken that thinking though.

Security measures are sure to be ramped up even more as the two explosions in Volgograd killed at least 34 people, and a car bomb in Pyatigorsk, just east of Sochi, killed at least 3

more. While the violent events that have preceded the Olympics might have been unrelated to them, the simple fact that they occurred so close to the games is a great concern. International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach remained supportive of the host country in the wake of the attacks stating that he had written to Russian president Vladimir Putin to convey “our confidence in the Russian authorities to deliver safe and secure Games in Sochi.” These problems though have concerned the global community in regards to the safety and well being of the country’s citizens as they travel to Sochi, and have dissuaded many who were thinking about attending the sporting events.

Another major factor that has caused people hesitation when considering commuting to the games is the recent passage of a law banning “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors.” By “non-traditional sexual relations” the law means gay or lesbian relations,

“It seems as though no thought has been put into the effect these games will have on the average Russian.” and by propaganda the law explicitly states that: “Propaganda is the act of distributing information,” and presents four scenarios in which the law can be broken through propaganda.

1) [Propaganda] is aimed at the creating of nontraditional sexual attitudes, 2) [Propaganda] makes nontraditional sexual relations attractive, 3) [Propaganda] equates the social value of traditional and nontraditional sexual relations, or 4) creates an interest in nontraditional sexual relations. Any Russian that breaks these rules is subject to a fine of up to 5,000 rubles ($162 CND), public officials can be fined of up to 50,000 rubles ($1,620 CND), and registered organizations can be either fined up to 1,000,000 rubles ($32409 CND) or be ordered to stop operations for 90 days. If you break the law through media or social media the consequences increase substantially to fines of up to 100,000 rubles ($3241 CDN) for individuals, 200,000 rubles ($6482 CDN) for public officials, and for organizations, up to 2,000,000 ($64819 CDN) rubles or a 90-day suspension. Non-Russian citizens can be incarcerated, fined, or deported, including foreign media personnel. These sanctions severely contrast with the rest of the world in terms of gay rights; many countries, states, and governments have implemented laws allowing same sex relations and marriages. In passing this law, the Russian government has alienated

itself from much of the populous of the world and also started a debate that will include many organizations and people travelling to Sochi simply to protest.

The recent laws passed by the Russian government are not the only thing they have done to hinder their own festivities. Workers were brought in from around the country, and left without pay; it seems as though no thought has been put into the effect these games will have on the average Russian. Reports from international news agencies stated that Russian workers were “threatened” and “being tortured by Russian police” when all they asked for was to be paid what they had been promised. Workers that were part of unfinished Olympic complexes, such as the Fisht stadium which was supposed to be completed in August but construction is ongoing, were told by President Putin that they would have no holidays; their Christmas and New Year’s Day would be another day at the office. The problems for the people of Sochi do not stop there. In 2012, the guardian reported that “at least 1500 families” had their homes destroyed and ongoing building of venues since that time suggests that even more have been relocated since. Although some people that have been allocated have been pleased with their new residences, others have been displeased, with some having their houses knocked down while they still lived in them.

These games are most definitely an in depth look into the Modern Russia that President Putin wanted the world to see the former USSR as, just not in the way that he had anticipated.

As public scrutiny mounts, more and more issues become evident, and in some cases turn out to be not minor but extremely prevalent. Even the choice of Russia as a good host country has come into question. The issues the country and city face cannot be solved in time for a change in host of the Olympics; just remember what’s happening across the Ocean while you watch, and cheer on, whichever country you support.

Top Ten: The Basement below the Basement Jack Denton

Prepare for your mind to be blown; mine sure was. There exists in NT a basement below the basement. I first was introduced to this strange subterranean space last year, as part of NEAT. Doing a Waste Audit involved collecting the school’s garbage, which is stored in big bins in this deep basement. Emerging from the elevator, there’s a huge academic storage room, but the real excitement lies behind a set of double doors, through which there’s a massive (like…3 stories high massive) space of about half a football field. Apparently the condominiums’ parking garages can be accessed through this area. In the distance I could see doors that led to who-knows-where and tunnels that stretched around the corner. In November, I was lucky enough to return to the deep basement, carrying items from the Music Department to be kept in that academic storage room. This time, George was present, and as I stared out in wonder again at the grotto below the grey floors of the basement I thought I knew, he said to me, with a twinkle in his eye, “and you haven’t seen the half of it.” My heart beats in anticipation for my next trip down to the immense chamber that is the deep basement; and next time, I will find whatever secret or treasure or cryogenically-frozen Norseman that must exist somewhere - somewhere down there.

12 Bat-Kid

Anfa Abukar

There he goes, fighting crime and cleaning up the streets of Gotham, as well as a lot of controversy. Yes, Bat-Kid, five year-old Leukaemia patient Scott Miles whose one wish was to be Batman; the fan-boy roamed San-Francisco disguised as the fictional Gotham City, fought villains like the Infamous Joker, solved crimes and puzzles from the Riddler and even saved a damsel in distress.

The pinnacle of Make-a-Wish Foun-

dation’s dream genesis was an elaborate one, involving actors and volunteers to setup and run the day, tens of thousands of spectators throughout the event, Oh, and $105,000 USD. Personally, I thought that what happened for young Scott was great; I thought the collaborations between so many parties of 2013 were quite amazing and selfless. The city of San-Francisco, Make-a-wish as well as multiple other corporations responsible for supplying for the day (most notably the several Lamborghinis donated by a local citizen), however all the road blocks, stage props, special effects, and promotions from the President shouldn’t go unmentioned. But I can’t help feeling that the money could have been better spread.

On average Make-a-Wish grants a single wish once every 38 minutes to a terminally ill child, with an average wish costing $7,500; 14 kids could have gotten their wishes granted during the duration of Bat-Kid’s event including Scott’s. With an average of 39239 Leukaemia patients meeting Make-a-Wish’s requirements of age and severity, it would cost $4,120,121,775 for all of the patients in America alone to have a Bat-Kid-esque experience which, to put in perspective, is around 1Billion over Bill Gates’ annual salary; and Make-a-Wish stated that

they would be trying to reach every one of those patients.

Relating back to North Toronto: NTCI raised a collective average of $41151 per charity week in the past six years. Our entire fund would either comprise 39% of Bat-Kid’s wish, or make 5-and a half separate wishes come true; it is important to consider this seeing as it is the charity we’re sponsoring this year.

The next logical question would be: why?

What made Bat-Kid different from the other 39 thousand patients? Well, nothing. Scott has no reason to be more or less special than anyone else; he just dreamt big and got his reward, which is what Make-a-Wish is all about. That just happens to be the underlying beauty of Make-a-Wish. But how big is too big? Make-aWish has restrictions on the wishes it can grant but is vague on what constitutes under its no-go zone, which again is understandable.

When it comes to Make-a-Wish, I get it; believe me, I do. Make-a-Wish took a little Scott Miles and made him and his entire family the happiest people on the planet for an entire day.

When it comes down to it, that’s what really matters, but if everyone’s wish can’t be transformed into a 105K spectacle, then a common ground should be found.

Take a Stand Devan Wang

“We’ll never forget our brother.”

In Halifax’s Irving Shipyard, flags are flying at half-mast.

Three hundred Irving Shipyard employees walked off the job on November 28th, 2013, after news broke that a long time coworker had committed suicide because of being put on permanent probation. Peter MacKenzie, who had been employed at Irving Shipyard for 38 years, was in his sixties. After a recent changeup in management, he was constantly bullied and harassed by his new employer, who was trying to force him out of his job as well as out of his many earned benefits from his 38 years of working for Irving Shipyard.

“They harassed him, they were after him,” third-generation shipyard worker Adam Herse said. “The man couldn’t even have a cigarette without them getting in his business.”

Many workers told the media that they believe older workers are being “pushed out.” New management recently took over Irving Shipyards and protesting workers directly connected this change to an increase in workplace bullying.

Other workers said the atmosphere at the shipyard has turned dramatically after new managers were hired.

“They have been firing boys left right and centre,” said one worker.

“Management thinks they are gods in there -- that is the problem.

This was the last straw for our co-worker,” says Clarke, another worker, to Halifax Media.

You’re coming back after a 30-day suspension and they tell you that you are on probation for the rest of your life,” Clarke said.

Clarke also doesn’t think the persecution is an isolated incident.

“It’s bullying, it’s intimidation; that message was not just for that worker, they’re trying to tighten the nose on that entire workforce,” Clarke said.

This is not only bullying and harassment, it is also discrimination.

Targeting and harassing an employee with seniority in your company

Benjamin Ye solely because of the financial disadvantages to the company is unethical.

The employee has provided many years of hard work to the company and deserves his/her earned benefits.

The actions of the Irving Shipyard workers should be widely applauded. The workers have united to tackle a big obstacle in all of their lives – a new threatening management. Instead of running away from their problems, they confronted them. Bullying doesn’t just end after school is over. It is present in everyday life situations. The workforce gathered together and put their foot down; they made it clear that they were not having it. United they will stand, divided they will fall. For this, we applaud them. No worker should be individually targeted and unfairly pressured to leave by their employer.

Top Ten: Server Room Charlotte Corelli

They’re watching you. Every move you make. Every time you walk down the hall, throw garbage on the floor, and pick your nose. Okay, it is unlikely that anybody is watching your every move, but in one small room that can’t hold much more than two chairs, lies a front row seat to all over the school. Welcome to the Server Room.

This second floor room is where footage from all of the security cameras scattered throughout the building and the surrounding property can be observed. I must admit, it’s not like the mall security rooms you see in movies with screens everywhere. There is just one computer. And wires. Wires everywhere.

And what is done with the footage? According to George, everything is automatically sent downtown and recorded. And yes, the cameras have been used to catch students before.

Aside from all of the wires, there is one other pop of colour in the small, dark room: a discarded art project. “It looked too nice to be thrown in the garbage,” said George.

ARTS & CULTURE Louise Castonguay

2013: The Year of Beyoncé

On the night of December 13th, I was curled up in bed with some highlighters and my notes on the Arab Spring, preparing for the Global Education Exam which I would write the next morning. I opened my computer to check for any last-minute posts in my class’s group on Facebook (a.k.a. to procrastinate). Suddenly, my heart skipped a beat. No, I didn’t have a pre-exam panic attack because I saw that I had forgotten to study something important (not yet, anyways). Instead, I saw a post from Beyoncé on my news feed about a visual album that was just released on iTunes. With so many year-end lists already written, queued, or published, everyone figured that 2013’s music was over, right? There were no pre-release singles or big business promotions; not a peep from the dancers, models, songwriters and producers who all played a part in it. So after all that secrecy, how did the Internet react when BEYONCÉ arrived out of the blue?

It went insane.

By 12:30 a.m., the Internet had morphed into a moving, breathing, shrieking mass of Beyoncé fan girls–one of which I am not ashamed to be. Under her spell, we no longer knew what was happening. Who could remember life before this album?

I, for one, took my first breath only after the album was in my library.

The surprise release went on to earn Mrs. Carter her highest debut numbers and platinum status in less than a week, with no marketing or fanfare other than a press release and a banner at the top of the digital music store. The visual album blew up on Twitter and Facebook, and, according to Billboard, sold 80,000 copies in three hours. Although stars such as Justin Timberlake and David Bowie have announced surprise releases throughout the year, none have dropped them on the spot, until now. The self-entitled album, BEYONCÉ, came out exclusively on iTunes, so she could work with Apple employees to maintain secrecy and not have to negotiate in advance with others retailers.

Beyoncé recorded the album during the summer, welcoming the hottest songwriters and producers, including Justin Timberlake, Sia, Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic, Frank Ocean, Miguel, Shebibm Drake and The-Dream, to stay with her and her family in a Hamptons beach house to collaborate with them. Every artist knew only that Beyoncé wanted the album to drop before Christmas, but none of them knew that is was actually being released on the 13th. It wasn’t just the public that was surprised; even the people behind the music were, too. Beyoncé really did blow everyone away.

When the rest of humankind awoke from its clueless slumber on the morning of the 14th, everyone caught up with the magnificence that was BEYONCÉ, and the reactions came rolling in. While the rest of the blogosphere was debating whether Beyoncé’s work was “feminist or not,” I was debating whether it was more beneficial for me to study for the rest of my exams or to watch “Blow” for the twenty-fourth time. Work, in a world with a new Beyoncé album just having been released, can simply not be done. It’s not that Beyoncé stopped time – she just, sort of, well, stopped time?

In the past twelve months, Beyoncé has dominated the pop culture world with acts of triumph, love and talent. To name of few, the 32 yearold artist gave birth to her first child, Blue Ivy Carter on January 7th (the pregnancy announcement in August of 2012 holds the record for the most tweeted-about event in history); sang at President Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 21st (her second inauguration performance during Obama’s presidential career); performed at the XLVII Super Bowl Halftime Show on February 4th (the second most tweeted-about moment in history); won a Grammy for her Original R&B Performance of Love on Top; was interviewed by Oprah on the first episode of Oprah: The Next Chapter; directed and starred in the autobiographical HBO documentary, Life Is But A Dream; stole the cover of nine international fashion and entertainment magazines; performed since April in The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour; was the honorary chair at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala; was the voice of the animated character Queen Tara in the children’s adventure and fantasy movie, Epic; to top it all off, is now the first female artist in history to have her first five studio albums debut at #1. It’s safe to say that Beyoncé Knowles has had a good year.

After Beyoncé casually Instagrammed a picture of vegan cupcakes (‘cause, you know, that’s what you do when you drop one of the biggest albums of the year), a follower commented: “Whew you a bad bitch. God bless you.”

Amen.

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Hannah Karpinski

This year, Toronto celebrated a white Christmas. Snow (and ice, mostly ice) frosted over the landscape, which made lazing around inside pretty much the only option. My family took complete advantage of this, and we cooped up to watch the new Beyoncé album. Over.

And over. We did not look outside. We did not care about the snow. We celebrated a Beyoncé Christmas.

Beyoncé blessed the whole world with an early Christmas present and, in a matter of hours upon its release, her self-titled album blew up. People were buzzing about what was being called her most feminist work yet, praising the artist for her especially youth-positive politics.

Obviously, this new image was intentional because the videos begin with a track called “Pretty Hurts,” in which Bey denounces the cost of beauty, crying, “Perfection is a disease of a nation…It’s the soul that needs the surgery.” However, these lyrics are paired with a display of the artist’s own, undeniably beautiful body, as well as her powerful sexuality, so while young girls are hearing “the pain’s inside and nobody frees you from your body,” they’re seeing Beyoncé’s body…and everyone wants Beyoncé’s body.

On the surface, Beyoncé put out a fun, cohesive, and also somewhat feminist album, but, underneath it all, the new release is full of subtle—as well as some notso-subtle—contradictions.

Arguably, the most significant contradiction comes when, to no one’s surprise, Beyoncé collaborates with her husband, Jay-Z. However, to many peoples’ surprise, Jay-Z laid down a pretty shocking verse on what is supposed to be this empowering, feminist album. He raps on “Drunk in Love,” a song about the couple’s sex life, and makes a reference to Tina and Ike Turner’s abusive relationship, in the verse, “I’m Ike Turner, turn up/Baby know I don’t play, now eat the cake, Anna Mae/Said ‘Eat the cake, Anna Mae!”

On an album that has been widely praised for its empowering, pro-girl content, Jay-Z walks in and raps such a disgusting segment?

For those who somehow don’t know, Ike Turner was the violent, abusive husband of rock and roll icon Tina Turner. This isn’t exactly a casual reference for a seemingly loving husband to drop on his wife’s album. It goes against every pro-female, sex-positive verse that Beyoncé sings, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. It just doesn’t make sense.

Critics have been split between glorifying Beyoncé as a feminist icon, and dismissing her feminism altogether. However, the real question should be, what do artists feel is appropriate to compromise when making “feminist” statements, and when does one draw the line? It is difficult to write off an entire album based on a few misogynist lyrics, but these lines are hard to ignore, because they simply do not fit.

In the past, Beyoncé received some criticism for her blatantly sexual videos, but, by dropping the whole visual album by surprise, she managed to avoid backlash from feminist critics, while also catering to her teen audience. Her wide variety of content stretches from “Blow,” a song about cunnilingus, to her pump-up track, “***Flawless,” on which she samples a TEDx talk by Chimamanda Adichie that quotes the definition of a feminist: “a person who believes in the social, political, economic equality of the sexes.” This, in itself, is a carefully crafted contradiction that pacifies as wide an audience as possible.

At NT, Beyoncé has an incredibly strong following. When Grade-12 student Louise Castonguay, my fellow diehard Bey fan and writer, heard someone in the halls say, “I don’t really get what the big deal about Beyoncé is,” she marched up to “that insignificant little gnome and said, “TAKE THAT BACK OR YOU’LL DISAPPEAR LIKE LETOYA LUCKETT. YOU KNOW NOTHING,”” caps locks and all.

In the end, no matter what kind of criticism is thrown at Queen Bey, she is, as Grade-12 student Danka Hrsum says, “the most talented, hardworking, ambitious, bold, eye-catching diva in Hollywood.” And she is, arguably, a feminist. She employs more women than any other pop artist in the music industry, and her songs have become anthems for young girls, everywhere. Her surprise album drop was just another way for her to take control of her music, and to tell her audience that they can consume it—but only on her terms.

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Math is Failing Rachel Katz

Canada has done it again. According to the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), our rankings in math, reading, and science have fallen once more, especially in math. In PISA’s 2009 test, Canada ranked 10th for math, with a score of 527 points. In 2012, we came 13th, with a score of 514. While these scores are both above the OECD’s average scores of 496 and 494 respectively, the 13-point slide has people up in arms about the state of math education in Canada.

PISA’s findings were published on December 3rd of last year. In the week following, education reporters went to town, demanding a makeover of the education system and citing so many percentages and facts from the study that they made our heads spin.

In Canada, our problems don’t lie in PISA’s rankings themselves, but rather three other areas: teacher training and curriculum changes, the media’s hand-wringing and this leads to the third problem: a lack of actual action.

Over a month has passed since the story broke, and relatively little action has taken place. It was not until January 8th that Ontario Education Minister Liz Sandals made an announcement that changes would be made to the amount of math training teachers receive. No curriculum changes were promised for the near future, and many believe this to be a mistake.

Quebec seems to be the one province doing something right, for their math scores are significantly higher than elsewhere in Canada.

This lies largely in their approach to teacher training. Anyone wanting to be even an elementary school math teacher must have taken 225 hours of university level math courses. Compare that to 36 hours required by Ontario’s Bachelor of Education program. That’s roughly a third of the time a Grade 9 spends in math class. (A high school math or science teacher requires a back ground in their chosen specialty prior to entering a B.Ed program.) In August, Ms. Sandals said, “The academic background of a lot of our elementary teachers is more in the arts – they

Rachel Katz don’t necessarily have an extensive background themselves in math and science.” Quebec’s math scores show that their method of training teachers translates to more effective math instruction.

There are also issues in how the math curriculum is delivered. Ontario, like many other parts of Canada, uses the “discovery method” of math education. This means students are expected to creatively solve problems before they master basic skills and learn fundamental rules and formulas. Dr. Mirsoslav Lovric of McMaster University said that, “[Arithmetic] skills have decreased over time.” He also said that “students need to have better developed routine skills [in areas such as] fractions, square roots, and exponential functions. It’s not just that students don’t know [material]. Some [know] it but are too slow to finish tests on time.

It has to be second nature.”

Dr. Lovric also added that a better balance of routine learning and discovery would help students in their post-secondary education.

Clearly, teaching methods need to be updated so they focus on concrete methods and not personal journeys.

When stories like PISA’s rankings hit the news, the outcry about our education system quickly rises. In the first week of December 2013, The Globe and Mail published no less than eight articles about the current state of our country’s education system, many of which focused on math. At first, this seemed positive; the issue drew attention and people seemed to care about the quality of education in Canada, regardless of whether they were students or parents. The news cycle kept turning, however, and

over the span of less than two weeks, the issue dropped off the face of the media planet.

While the hand-wringing and headlines fade away, the problems remain unresolved. The Ministry of Education and the various school boards know that all they need to do is find shelter during the brief media storm, but never need to actually change anything. Once math scores are bumped off the front page, people stop caring and the call to arms dies down.

On the Ontario Ministry of Education’s website, the most recently documented curriculum changes are from 2005. Nine years ago. The curriculum for any subject, whether it’s Grade 7 History or Grade 12 Calculus, should be revisited more than once a decade.

That said, the intent to make changes is a step in the right direction.

Ontario and other provinces are reevaluating how they train teachers, especially in math. New training methods implemented in tandem with regular curriculum updates should position students across the country to excel in the classroom. Ministries and boards of education should not fear change. If students are taught using outdated methods, their scores will continue to plummet, and, more importantly, their education will have little value in the real world.

Having higher test scores than other countries doesn’t change the fact that our scores are lower than they were three years ago. We need to stop patting ourselves on the back for not being at the bottom of the list. We should be working to improve our score for more than a gold star.

The Mystical Man Lisa Cumming

Stop crying. Be cool. Nobody likes a snitch. Don’t let your girl tell you what to do.

Get laid. Grow a pair. Man up. Be a man.

In our society, the social construct of masculinity has evolved to one where young boys no longer feel secure in their livelihood so, as a society, we constantly push them to prove themselves worthy of “being a man.”

The Representation Project, a social justice movement that uses mainstream media to expose injustices created by gender roles, outlines the effect. Dr. Judy Chu, a sociologist and an educator, explains that “within each peer group culture, each of [the boys] are posturing themselves after how the others are posturing, and what they end up missing is closeness.”

Starting at a very young age, boys are told these three destructive words that they will carry with them forever: be a man. But what does it mean to “be a man” in modern day society? What is “man?” Who is this magical, all powerful, dominating creature that has everything under control?

Imagine a helium balloon. Inside this balloon there are various pressures that keep it afloat. What if, one day, a little more helium

Benjamin Ye is added? Okay, the balloon can cope with the added pressure. Then the next day, more helium is added, and every day from then on. More and more pressure builds up inside until one day, BANG. The balloon can’t cope.

This is what many boys and men suffer from due to lack of emotional release. By constantly having this gender role of the “real man” dumped on them, the closeness of friends is lost, and emotional relationships are at stake because, apparently showing even one ounce of vulnerability is weak. The culture boys are growing up in seems to value masculinity far over empathy, caring, and, oh don’t make me drop the F-bomb, feelings.

Boys are more likely than girls to act out in a violent or aggressive manner. This can, and should no longer be dismissed as “boys will be boys,” because these are just symptoms of the

enforced gender stereotype boys have to face every day. A kid who acts out or has anger issues is not a bad kid. The issues stem from a lineage of men before them, each telling their sons to stop crying, man up, and be a man.

As Dr. Joseph Marshall, an education and youth advocate, says, in this culture “respect is linked to violence” So, boys grow up, every day, thinking the only way to be this mystical creature of “man” is to be respected. And how do they get that respect? Through violence.

Growing up as a guy is not easy. The expectations are too high and unfortunately no one gives awards for who is best at being a man.

So, why do we all care so much?

Enforcing this construct of the ultimate be-all, end-all man helps no boy or man in the long run. If “boys will be boys,” then let them be whatever kind of boy they want to be.

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FEATURES Transgenderism: Our Assumptions aren’t Glamorous Yee Sing Yeap

The sharp zigzag of lightning on Forever 21 tees flaunting the visage of David Bowie’s androgynous Aladdin Sane. The hazy billows of cigarette smoke behind television screens proclaiming the presence of Lady Gaga’s macho Jo Calderone. They’re bold. They’re glamorous.

They bend rules. We love it. These stylish, sequined pop stars have been dazzling us conventional, wrinkly-jeans-clad commoners for more than forty years.

The glitter blinds us. This ongoing art exhibition of outrageous, beautiful cross-gendered or genderless persons may have opened our eyes to the world of gender non-conformity, but we can’t seem to see transgenderism beyond that. Instead of accepting transgenderism as a profound, emotional pursuit to express identity, we expect it to be nothing but some dehumanized clawing up to the peak of glamour.

Am I blaming our stars? By no means.

Boy George’s fabulous hats, Annie Lennox’s sharp suits, Grace Jones’ angular buzzcuts, and Marilyn Manson’s painted lips deserve to be admired. They’ve changed our perceptions of gender non-conformity, but they represent only one of countless facets of transgenderism, which has eclipsed every other.

Our expectations also affect the people behind the stars. David Bowie gradually found it impossible to separate his off-stage self from Ziggy Stardust, the iconic character he had been portraying in concert. This “became very dangerous” and he “had doubts about [his] sanity.”

David could feel that the public was so obsessed with his androgynous, unearthly identity that his own, personal identity became overshadowed by Ziggy. He was adored for assuming an identity that wasn’t him, but unconsciously assimilating it to please his fans drove him close to madness.

We can all see something’s obviously wrong with being pressured to be someone you’re not for acceptance, but that’s what

transgendered people have to face every day.

We display costume after costume on faceless mannequins in glass cabinets, telling everyone: behold this champion who transcends gender stereotypes. Then, we go outside and expect all transgendered individuals to be gorgeous, redlipped mimes, caking themselves with makeup.

They are trapped in the closets society forces upon them, unable to get out because we reject other possibilities of transgender expression.

Chaz Bono, formerly known as Chastity Bono, was relentlessly attacked when he competed in Dancing with the Stars. Fans of the show boycotted it, insisting that Chaz was “inappropriate” for younger viewers. A man finally comfortable in his own skin after surgery, treatment, and suffering—both physical and emotional—viciously shot down by the public, who attacked his gender and his looks. Judge Bruno Tolioni called him a “fluffy penguin,” choosing to mock his size on national television instead of critiquing the performance Chaz painstakingly prepared for. He isn’t physically beautiful by our

Charles Wu

ridiculous standards, and we will never let him forget that we are disgusted by him.

This isn’t limited to looks. We expect transgendered individuals to act with the same audacity as our pop-stars. Miles*, a transgendered female-to-male person, says, “People ask all sorts of questions they wouldn’t normally ask a [cis-gendered] person. Knowing that we are open about our gender, they expect us to be open in all aspects.” We forget that transgendered people treasure their privacy too, and don’t have to be who stars channel on stage. While Lady Gaga gets to remove her wig after the VMAs, the spotlight forever glares at every blemish, every step, every human feature that happens to belong to a transgendered person, just so we can point out what we don’t like and bully them.

Unlike Gaga, transgendered people can’t choose their gender for the day, and whatever little they can choose, like their privacy, is bastardized by us barbarians.

Does this mean that new glamorous, gender-bending talent should be discouraged?

Of course not. Equally, though, we should cheer on new, transgendered talents who don’t have to be decked out in heavy costumes and makeup, who can bring a different, equally true aspect of their community to be celebrated. But here’s the most important bit: we’ve got to help ourselves.

We’ve got to see past the glamour and know that transgendered individuals are part of this world, not out-of-this-world. Just as how we can’t choose to look or act like Adam Levine or Katy Perry, we can’t expect transgendered persons to look or act like Prince or Patti Smith. Transgenderism isn’t limited to a single kind of experience; it’s a multi-dimensional range of identity and self-expression. Forty-one percent of transgendered persons in the USA have attempted suicide, and it’s not much different anywhere else. It’s society’s—our—fault. Stop assuming.

Stop expecting. Stop bullying. *name has been changed

Goldieblox: Engineering a Better Future Lisa Cumming

When I was younger, I would wake up with Barbies under the Christmas tree; dolls with long blond hair and unattainable bodies.

My male cousins would receive Lego. I found Lego fascinating; how all these little pieces could fit together and make something magical. There was only one problem. Lego wasn’t pretty. Had Lego been sky blue, purple, or pink, I would have been all for it, but Lego was a boys’ toy and I am not a boy. This is the stereotype that Debbie Sterling, CEO of GoldieBlox, is trying to eliminate.

GoldieBlox, in writing, is a toy company, but in reality it is so much more. Sterling had one goal when starting GoldieBlox: she wanted to get girls building. In the engineering industry where the number of male engineers vastly outnumber female ones, many young women often don’t even consider pursuing subjects like math and science. Sterling, who holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering and Product Design, wants to change that. By designing a construction toy specifically for girls she aims to, “inspire the future generation of female engineers.”

GoldieBlox’s famous slogan is “disrupting the pink aisle” and they are doing a damn good job. So far, the toy itself comes in three different designs: Spinning Machine, Spinning Machine (Collectors Edition), and Parade Float. The toys have a long wait-list of eager parents and children ready to get their hands on such a coveted

“The divide between males and females in the maths and sciences needs to close.” item. Inside the box you have an interactive book from the perspective of Goldie, a kid with a passion for inventing. The book follows a storyline where the builder will build simple machines with the pieces provided to solve Goldie’s problems.

This simple toy is a step in the right direction for young girls. The divide between males and females in the maths and sciences needs to close. GoldieBlox, in its own way, is erasing the

gap by providing girls with inspiration and “girl toys” that will allow girls to receive equal early childhood development with basic engineering principles as their boy counterparts. GoldieBlox girls understand Sterling’s message, a message that says they are more than just princesses; they are princesses with brains to boot.

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