Vol 43 issue 19

UofT responds to Trump ban

Respecting fellow students

In touch with our root

UTM leads TEDxUofT

The sport fanatic

News, page 2

Opinion, page 5

Arts, page 7

Features, page 11

Sports, page 15

UTSU adjusts its spring election dates UTSU calls for emergency board meeting following UTMSU’s announcement of its election dates MENNA ELNAKA NEWS EDITOR WITH NOTES FROM MARIA CRUZ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF UTSU has decided to reschedule its spring elections after a dispute over the dates with UTMSU. Following UTMSU’s online and in-print announcement of its spring elections date to be held from March 7 to 9, UTSU’s VP professional faculties Ryan Gomes sent an email to UTMSU’s president Nour Alideeb on January 28 to discuss the dates, saying that it was not what the two unions had agreed on.

The discussion between the two union representatives over the Spring elections date emerged by January 18.

In a set of emails provided to The Medium by Gomes, Alideeb messaged Gomes on January 18 saying, “[…] we were hoping to have our voting days from March 21st to the 23rd.” She added that with additional student

OLIVIA ADAMCZYK/THE MEDIUM

UTMSU scheduled its spring elections from March 7 to 9. elections taking place, the beginning of March would be difficult for UTMSU elections. She asked Gomes if UTSU would be able to schedule their

elections for an earlier date.

On January 19, Gomes responded by telling Alideeb that UTSU also ran into difficulty with scheduling their

elections due to “conflicting elections and events from other societies in March.” He added, “I think it would be best for us to move our election

dates[…]specifically March 28th30th, so that you can still utilize the March 21st – 23rd dates.”

On January 24, Alideeb sent an email to Gomes requesting a phone call to “finalize the details” of the election dates. Gomes responded on January 25 by letting Alideeb know that “I did set the dates that I mentioned earlier (March 28th – 30th) at our ERC meeting last Friday,” to which Alideeb responded the following day with, “Okay not a problem—I just wanted to confirm dates.”

On January 28, Gomes reached out to Alideeb to question the election dates set by UTMSU. “You can imagine my shock and frustration to learn yesterday that the election dates UTMSU has set are not what was communicated to us,” Gomes wrote to Alideeb. “[…] I am unsure as to why you communicated such a blatant lie to us, and I am forced to conclude that this was done in bad faith.”

Dispute continued on page 2

Student-organized conference disrupted Professor Jordan Peterson and The Rebel’s publisher, Ezra Levant among interrupted speakers

MENNA ELNAKA NEWS EDITOR Protests disrupted a U of T St. George student-organized conference on February 4 that featured U of T psychology professor Jordan Peterson, the conservative-media The Rebel’s publisher, Ezra Levant, and additional speakers. The conference and protests were further disrupted by a fire alarm.

The conference was in collaboration between Students in Support of Free Speech and Generation Screwed, which are “two different groups” that wanted to come together over the issues of free speech and political correctness, according to the vice-president of SSFS, Geoffrey Liew.

The SSFS is a recognized ULife club at the downtown campus, and was created after the U of T Rally for Free Speech that took place in October 2016. Generation Screwed is a Canadian Taxpayers Federation group that aims “to inform and mobilize young Canadians who want to

YOUTUBE.COM/PHOTO

The conference was organized by Students in Support of Free Speech and Generation Screwed. save their economic future,” according to their website.

In an interview with The Medium, Liew stated that although he was warned prior to the event by the cam-

pus police about the possibility of a protest, he still did not expect it.

“I didn’t expect it at that point, because after what happened with the October 11 [free speech] rally and

with recent events,” said Liew. “It just seemed to me to be so infantile to resort to such tactics again, when it’s been proven time and time again that it’s inceptive, makes the disrupt-

ers look bad, and it really proves no point on their part.”

Levant, on the other hand, told The Medium in an email that he did expect the protests to happen, as February 4 was “a day of mass anti-U.S. protests, organized by professional left-wing agitators.”

An organizer of the protest that took place right outside the conference room asked The Medium not to credit their names with the fear of possible threats for their involvement in the protest. They stated that The Rebel “has a new strategy now where they will identify and get photos or information about people who protest them, and then they will put them on their website and offer bounties to anyone who identifies them.”

Levant refuted these claims. “The first lie is that their excuse is a lie. The only bounties we have ever offered were for actual criminals, and in all cases the police laid charges,” said Levant.

Protest continued on page 3

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«NEWS

THE MEDIUM 02.13.2017

Grievance filed against UTMSU Dispute continued from cover

February 2nd, 2017.

Medical Call.

Campus Police were called to attend a student experiencing medical distress.

February 4th, 2017.

Assault.

Campus Police were called to attend a residence where a fight was taking place. Parties fled the scene upon arrival of Campus Police.

February 5th, 2017.

Disturb the Peace.

Campus Police were called to attend a residence as a fight was happening.

Campus Police attended the area and all was in order.

February 8, 2017.

Police Assistance.

A UTM community member reported to Campus Police an incident of dangerous driving. The community member reported that a car drove straight through the cross walk outside the RAWC.

These reports are those that have been released to The Medium and do not necessarily constitute an exhaustive list.

Students can contact the UTM Campus Police at 905 828 5200, Peel Regional Police at 905-453-3311, or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).

U of T will extend application deadline

MESHA GHAYUR/THE MEDIUM

Deadline of the extended applications hasn’t been set yet.

KASSANDRA HANGDAAN ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR The University of Toronto is extending applications for academic enrollment to allow students affected by president Trump’s temporary ban an opportunity to study at the university.

There have been 1,425 undergraduate applicants from the United States this year in comparison to the 784 applications from last year. U of T has also seen an increase of applications from Iran—one of the countries affected by the ban.

In an interview with The Medium, Sandy Welsh, U of T’s vice-provost stated, “We’re part of a global academic community […]. We know many of our students and faculties are affected by this, and they’re attending conferences at the U.S. We effectively want to make sure to reach out to those who are affected.”

“Targeting and restricting the travel of individuals on the basis of their nationality or their birth place is not what U of T stands for, and is antithetical to our values,” she added.

In addition to the university, some departments at UTM have emailed their students regarding the effect of the ban. Edward Schatz, the chair of the Department of Political Science, sent out a mass email to political science students on February 7, citing

the importance of listening to one another, analyzing the recent incidents, and interacting with “compassion and understanding.”

“Please recognize that there are people in our UTM community directly affected by these actions south of the border. They need our understanding and our support,” wrote Schatz.

Schatz also conceded that students should reach out to Muslims as well as those who do not practice the same faith as them.

“We live in troubling times, but some things do not change: we are stronger when we take the time to understand each other,” he added.

“Whatever the outcome of that particular battle, there will be others in the future. Be educated, be prepared, be compassionate.”

According to Welsh, U of T “hasn’t made any decisions” regarding when the extended applications’ deadline will be, as of press time.

Besides U of T, according to a CBC article on February 2, “Students affected by U.S. travel ban can apply for free at University of Calgary,” the University of Calgary is taking measures to assist those affected by the ban. The University of Calgary has waived admission application fees, worth $45, for citizens of the seven countries affected by the U.S. travel ban.

Alideeb wrote to Gomes on January 30 regarding the timing of the election. “At no point in the emails I sent did I confirm the UTMSU election dates. I made a recommendation. You emailed me on Thursday, January 19th, when you knew I would have limited access to my email because I was away for the CFS Ontario General Meeting,” she wrote. “[…] I emailed you on Tuesday, January 24th asking to discuss this matter over the phone, before confirming them with my own EARC. But to my surprise and with no confirmation whatsoever, you proceeded to approve the following voting dates (March 28th30th) for the UTSU elections.

“I do not understand why you went ahead with so much haste considering that you would have been able to present the dates to your Board of Directors and still submit notice in February,” she added. “Now, your dates have already been ratified at your January board meeting which took place at UTM on January 27th. Had you waited for a confirmation from me, I would have explained a number of concerns I have with the timing of the elections.”

Alideeb, this year’s Election and Referenda Committee chair, emailed The Medium saying that she and Gomes did not “consult effectively,” which resulted in voting dates being set a few weeks apart.

“For my part, I was trying to consult with Ryan in order to find dates that would avoid voter fatigue and maximize voter turnout at both elections,” Alideeb told The Medium.

“Ryan and I did not consult effectively, and the voting dates got set a few weeks apart, with both parties perceiving that they were blindsided by the dates set by the other for their respective elections.”

In Alideeb’s January 30 response to Gomes, she expressed her concerns regarding the timing of the election.

Her concerns included “numerous

elections and events taking place in the month of March,” “Club and Academic Society elections take place throughout the entire month as we have over 100 clubs and 19 academic societies,” and “To avoid voter fatigue and to ensure maximum participation in both the UTMSU and UTSU elections, the UTMSU EARC proceeded with the voting dates listed on the flyer you sent me.”

According to Alideeb, Gomes proceeded to confirm the dates with UTSU’s Elections and Referenda Committee prior to confirming the dates with her.

In the email on January 30, Gomes wrote to Alideeb, “I’ll note that the onus was on you to ensure that you gave me feedback in a timely fashion.

“The Bylaws note consultation only with you [Alideeb], the UTMSU’s EARC chair, and not anyone else,” Gomes continued. “If you were able to provide misleading feedback initially and then backtracked without informing me, that is your responsibility.

“You provided me with dates and I followed through on that—to change them afterwards is deception, plain and simple,” he added. “These elections affect all of our 55,000 members, and I have to take all of them into account while honouring the Associate Agreement. I suggest you do the same now and moving forward.”

When asked why UTMSU decided on these dates, Alideeb told The Medium that the early date would allow students “a break” in between the UTMSU and UTSU elections.

“When speaking with UTM students, a number of individuals complained that last year’s [elections] were overwhelming because the UTMSU elections and UTSU elections were right after another,” Alideeb said.

“Both elections are of utmost importance, and they must be as accessible, open, and democratic as possible. We wanted to minimize voter fatigue and increase voter turnout.”

UTSU held an emergency board

meeting on February 3, in which they amended the date of their elections so that the physical and electronic campaign period will take place from March 6 to March 14 and 16, respectively, and the voting period will take place from March 14 to March 16.

Alideeb told The Medium that UTMSU expressed its concerns regarding the dates UTSU selected, which she said would “negatively impact” the “over 13,500 [UTM members].”

She also stated that UTMSU suggested another timeline for UTSU’s nomination period, but “the UTSU board decided to ignore that and voted to proceed with the dates that our UTM representatives spoke against.”

Alideeb added that the UTSU does not consider UTMSU in regards to elections and participation.

“It’s a shame that we were and continue to be ignored. The EARCs for both unions must work towards that instead of obfuscating UTM students and creating confusion,” Alideeb said.

“What it seems to us is that Ryan Gomes does not want UTM students to actively participate in the UTSU elections. He went around the Elections and Referenda Committee of the UTSU to change the dates as he saw fit.”

According to Article 1.4 of the Associate Membership Agreement between UTSU and UTMSU, each union has to agree to use its “best efforts to ensure that their respective annual general elections and by-elections are held concurrently.”

“By setting your dates contrary to what was communicated, you appear to have violated this agreement by falling far short of best efforts,” Gomes wrote to Alideeb on January 28. “I am not a part of the management committee, but this is most certainly the basis for a potential grievance.”

Gomes told The Medium that UTSU will be filing a grievance against UTMSU for breaching the agreement, but Alideeb stated that UTMSU hasn’t heard about it, as of press time.

Fee increase recommendations ALICIA BOATTO ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR The Quality Services to Students rejected to endorse a motion proposed by the administration at the Campus Affairs meeting last Thursday to raise the student services fee from $157.45 to $167.66. The meeting also discussed fee increases for student services and student societies.

Student services on campus include the health and counselling fee, the athletics and recreation fee, and student services fee. The student services fee involves programs such as the shuttle bus, Student Life Initiatives, and the Child and Family Care Centre.

The family care centre is a nonprofit organization at UTM, subsidized by both students and the campus, and holds about two-dozen children, according to Mark Overton, UTM’s dean of student affairs and the chair of Quality Services to Students.

“Based on the current year’s bud-

get, the ELC [Early Learning Centre] at UTM is primarily funded by user fees (from family users) of $209,000; $193,000 from the Student Services fee, and a UTM subsidy of $76,000,” wrote Overton in an email to The Medium.

UTMSU’s president Nour Alideeb stated during the meeting that members of QSS ultimately disagreed with the student service fee pertaining to the Child and Family Care Centre.

Alideeb told the Campus Affairs Committee that instead of denying the fee increase outright, the QSS wanted to work on a new fee structure of student service fees instead.

Overton also reviewed the fee amounts that QSS recommend, some of which include a vote to raise the health and counseling fee by $6.28 per session for a session total of $44.72, which is the maximum amount that is permitted by the University. The athletics and recreation fee was also recommended to be raised by $3.51 per session for a session total of $178.71,

while the maximum raise permitted is up to $183.72.

The QSS consists of 11 staff members and 11 student members, including two UTMSU executives, four students appointed by the union, two student representatives from UTMAC, two representatives from the Residence Council, and one from the Association of Graduate Students.

The Campus Affairs also recommended motions to raise select fees pertaining to student societies. UTM hosts a variety of student societies such as UTMSU, Residence Council, Athletics Council, The Medium, CFRE Radio, and the MMPA Society.

Another motion was carried to increase the U-Pass by $7.08 for each the Fall and Winter sessions, and $3.78 increase for summer session for full time students.

The Campus Affairs committee also reviewed the cost of capital projects such as UTM’s parking deck.

Fees continued on page 3

02.13.2017 THE MEDIUM NEWS

Unexpected parking deck costs

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3

»HOW TO GET THROUGH MIDTERMS?

SAMUEL KAN/THE MEDIUM

Additional information about the parking deck will be brought to the Academic Board for approval.

Fees continued from page 2 Gilbert Delgado, the chief of university planning, design and construction presented that an adjustment cost was needed to the parking deck expansion.

Unexpected costs during construction appeared, such as the need to build a third stairway, instead of the originally-designed two stairways, due to site conditions “such as testing and removal of contaminated soil,” according to the item’s agenda.

To accommodate the time used up by these extra expenses, the university paid acceleration costs, according to Delgado. The new total cost for the project was considered during an incamera portion of the meeting, which was not open to non-members of the committee.

Delgado also discussed revision for

the capital planning and projects, like those of the parking decks or greenhouse constructions. Capital projects are divided into three cost categories: Level One projects have a cost from $3 million dollars and less, Level Two projects range from $3-10 million dollars, and Level Three projects are over $10 million dollars.

According to the item’s agenda, approval of capital projects less than $3 million on the UTSC and UTM campuses are “delegated to the UTM Space Planning and Management Committee and the UTSC Campus Design and Development Committee established by the Principal and Vice President of the respective campus.”

The Planning and Budget Committee at the St. George Campus, along with the Campus Affairs and Campus Council committees at UTM and the Scarborough campus, consider capi-

tal projects ranging from over $3 million to $10 million, and recommend it to the Academic Board.

Any project exceeding $10 million dollars has to be approved by the university’s Governing Council.

Delgado proposed raising Level One projects to $5 million, Level Two projects to $5-20 million, and Level Three to $20 million and above. He said this is intended to provide the university with more flexibility when planning capital projects.

The recommendations made by QSS and the administration regarding student services and student societies are expected to be carried onto the Campus Council meeting for approval on March 2. As for the parking deck’s additional information, it will be brought on to the Academic Board for approval on March 16.

Basant Ali Life science

Paulo Tuy Poli-Sci and philosophy

After I’m done, I tell myself that I’m going to watch a lot of Netflix.

Perspective betterment is enough of a motivational tool for any student.

Chris DiPietrantonio Chemistry

Edman Abukar Forensic biology

I like to work out, play intramural sports, and take breaks in between studying.

I work out at UTM and see friends.

Fire alarm was pulled amid conference Protest continued from cover “The second lie is their real reason: anti-Semitic cowards don’t want to go on the record as Jewbashing, gay-bashing racists.

They’re ashamed of themselves.

Same reason they wear masks at their riots.”

According to the event organizer, what they tried to do was called “no-platforming”, which is “an anti-high-fascist tactic, aimed at, if someone is trying to spread hate speech or fascism or violent rhetoric, […] you deny them the platform to actually express those views,” said the protest organizer, who further explained that the protesters joined outside the conference room when Levant started his speech.

The chants included “Fuck white supremacy,” “Fuck Climate Change Denial,” as well as chants against Trump and a “fascist USA.” “None of those words apply to me—I’m not American, and I’m not a fascist,” wrote Levant to The Medium, in reference to the chants. “But the people dressed in black, wearing handkerchiefs over their mouths, carrying sticks, flipping over tables, and threatening a peaceful meeting on campus— those are actually fascists by definition.”

Liew claimed that the protest was rather against the conference itself, more than in it being against Levant.

“When they started chanting and shouting, it just seemed so idiotic to me, because they were shouting things like ‘Fuck White Supremacy’ or ‘Fuck Climate Change Denial’ […]. I kept trying to shout back ‘Why am I white supremacist?’” said Liew.

“I was rather perplexed, and I came to understand [that] their protest is a form of mindless solidarity—rally against an enemy which they perceived to be something else other than what we actually are,” Liew added, “We’re reasonable people who have disagreements amongst ourselves and have perhaps controversial opinions and definitely have a lot of disagreements, but to them [the protesters], we’re evil […].”

According to the organizer, they “frankly do not really pay those claims in mind.” They conceded that the conference organizers would defend themselves as advocates for free speech.

“When they speak to media, they are just going to say that we’re a group that’s interested in freedom of speech, we’re just expressing our opinion, […] but the reality of the situation is that

these are people who are specifically involved in promoting hatred against minorities,” said the organizer.

The organizer also criticized Levant, claiming that he wanted to spread on The Rebel that the shooter of the Quebec City mosque was a Muslim “rather than a white nationalist Trump supporter.”

The fire alarm was pulled during the protests amid Levant’s speech, and the conference room had to be evacuated.

“It’s an anti-Semitic lie,” responded Levant to the allegations.

“One hundred percent of The Rebel’s contingent at U of T that day were female, Jewish, black or gay.

One hundred percent of the fascist protesters against us were white Aryans, many wearing masks.”

The organizer also conceded that the group of protests, which they state included roughly 20 people, decided it was “not acceptable” for Levant to speak at the university.

The fire alarm was pulled during the protests amid Levant’s speech,

and the conference room had to be evacuated from the back door toward the exterior of the building. Levant continued his speech outside, while the people formed a circle around him, according to Liew.

“While we are disappointed that a small group of protesters caused panic and unnecessarily burdened first responders by pulling a fire alarm, the majority of yesterday’s event went smoothly and uninterrupted,” wrote Aaron Gunn, the executive director of Generation Screwed in an online statement on the group’s website.

Liew explained that although the campus police had asked them then to shut the event down, “at that point, there wasn’t really much that we as organizers could do to make Ezra stop speaking or make people stop listening to him, so we just packed up our things, while he continued to the end of his speech.”

The organizer of the event stated that they didn’t see who pulled the fire alarm. “I don’t know whether that was them or us or a random student pulling a prank,” they said.

The organizer also added that after the campus police responded to the fire alarm by evacuating the speakers and audience from inside the conference room, and the pro-

testers from outside the room, the protests still continued outside the building.

Among the protesters was also Cassandra Williams, UTSU’s vice president university affairs. She expressed in an email to The Medium her disappointment in having “such an event” at the U of T downtown campus.

“It is disgraceful that such an event would be held on our campus, especially less than a week after the University’s Administration spoke at a vigil for the victims of the Quebec Mosque Shooting,” she wrote. “Our community has a responsibility to stand up against threats to our rights, safety, and dignity, and to the rights, safety, and dignity of our peers.”

Levant explained that his speech at the conference was first going to be about Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau, as he has a new book about it, but he “spontaneously” changed the topic to be about free speech.

According to Liew, topics that other speakers discussed at the conference included post-modernism versus modernism, politics in Canada, what it means to be a politician in Alberta, energy, and how “Ontario hydro was misusing taxpayer money.”

02.13.2017

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EDITORS

It’s time to ditch superiority

Editor-in-Chief Maria Cruz editor@themedium.ca

Being a student at U of T shouldn’t encourage us to act with arrogance

MASTHEAD

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When I was in high school, I remember sitting with my friends in my English class and talking about where we would be applying for university.

I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was a 17-year-old scared to death of becoming an “adult.”

My best friend at the time wanted to go to York for psychology and sociology. Upon hearing this, a girl in the front of the class laughed and went, “What’s their slogan? ‘If you can eat with a fork, you can go to York.’”

God-awful rhyme aside, the girl beside her chuckled and agreed. Apparently, because they were applying to U of T, they were allowed to speak with authority on what school other people were planning to attend.

I was sitting in the back with my best friend, and we didn’t really know how to reply. There wasn’t really an insult for people going to U of T. Before going to York, I also applied to other schools, including Ryerson and U of T for psychology.

My math and science grades weren’t high enough to be welcome into the program at U of T. They did, however, send me an acceptance letter for other programs, including English. But I was convinced that I would grow up to be a psychologist, so I went to York.

Though, when I was there I couldn’t stop thinking about what the girl in the front of class said. I walked into my first psychology class—a class of about 300 students crammed into one room—and wondered if this was a poor choice of school. I wondered if our marks were lower. If our incomes were lower. If we were lower.

Suddenly the excitement at being accepted into a post-secondary institute got diminished.

I mentioned this in a previous editorial about how my mind was constantly on English and writing. I couldn’t care less about the psychology program once I actually got there, and I knew that I wanted to be somewhere else. My best friend completed his degree, but I left before my first week. The program just wasn’t for me, and I wanted to be doing what I loved, which was reading and writing. So, I took a year off and worked to get some money before applying again for U of T’s English program.

I remember getting my acceptance letter and crying on the phone to my mother. I was so excited to get accepted into a school that was as prestigious as U of T. I even had U of T alum as my teachers in high school who told me how happy they were for me.

Though, once I got to U of T, I could already feel the sludge of superiority slowing me down. My friend would talk to me about his courses from York and I would dismiss them.

What did he know? How could he

possibly talk about hard work when he went to a place like York? The nerve.

My ignorance stemmed merely because I went to U of T. That was it. A different school and all of a sudden I was better than people.

This is something that has been on my mind a lot these past few weeks. I think it stems from the fact that I’m about to graduate and I can reflect on how far I’ve come from my first year.

You can compare statistics between places like U of T and York or U of T and other Canadian universities.

It’s not hard to see that our school tops the list more often than not. But, somewhere along the way, students at U of T got it into their head that they were allowed to belittle or insult others because we go here and they go there. They act as if our acceptance letters are stamped with a message, “Use this to treat others like crap.”

And, yes, before I get hit with the “not all U of T students” argument, I will agree that no, not all students are like this. But, an unhealthy amount of U of T students do hold an air of superiority over others simply because they go here.

I get the argument. How can we not act like U of T isn’t a big deal when professors like Patrick Gunning are working on cures for cancer? When we have students who will speaking at TEDxUofT? When we have graduate students who have gone on to make incredible films?

Well, I think the answer is pretty simple. Rachel McAdams graduated from York University. So did Joseph Boyden. Jack Layton, too. Debra DiGiovanni graduated from Humber College. Darren Barrett did too.

Dina Pugliese and George Stroumboulopoulos graduated from there too. So, I guess the next time we see them in the street, we can scoff at them too because they didn’t go to U of T? Because we’re all as famous as Rachel McAdams, right? We’ve all accomplished at 24 years old what Jack Layton did during his adult life, right?

I’m not here to say that the accomplishment of being welcomed to this school isn’t something to celebrate.

If you feel good that you’re here or proud of yourself, you should. I think it’s wonderful that so many of us worked our butts off to get here and to keep being here, especially when the competition is so high. There are editors in this very newsroom who are applying for medical school. How can I say that that isn’t a huge accomplishment? Being here is a big deal.

But, being here is just that. We attend a well-ranked school—we don’t get to bonk people on the nose with our diplomas because they went to George Brown.

I think this superiority complex needs to stop for additional reasons.

One of the most important reasons would be that you have zero clue what people are doing with their lives. A single mother who comes from a low-income family attends DeVry University. A student who wants to work as soon as they’re done school goes to George Brown for welding.

An 18-year-old student who wants to chase their dream goes to Western University for a Bachelor of Arts major in popular music studies. Wow, what losers, right? They’re not in U of T. Just terrible. God, do you even know the difference between “their” and “they’re”?

I will admit that I came from this pretentious thought process. But, as I became more aware of it, I began to reflect and wonder why so many of us continue to do this.

I remember that I once had a professor tell our class that “20 pages of reading isn’t a lot because we’re not at ‘Slumber College.’” He then went on a spiel about how he used to teach engineering students who would go to their department head to complain about him because he gave them too much work. He even disclosed to us that some of his students would cry.

Naturally, there were students in my class who questioned how acceptable it was to push students to the point of crying simply because they went to U of T. Yet, my professor stood his ground that because this is U of T, students needed to be pushed that hard. This happened as recently as last semester.

I can see where he was coming from in the sense that this school will obviously hold students to a higher standard. However, I stand with the students in calling him out for his teaching methods simply because we go to U of T. Twenty pages may not seem like a lot, but stepping outside the bubble of one classroom, when students have to read over 200 pages for English courses, it obviously then becomes more than 20. And, even if students are only reading 20 pages a week, does that make them slackers?

Who decided that?

I understand that there are professors here who are accomplishing incredible things. There are students here who will go on to become leaders or titans in their field. While their accomplishments are the result of a lifetime of work, we as a collective get to experience the joy of their accomplishments. They will serve as sources of inspiration for those of us still attending U of T. They will always have that title to their name, too. It’s hard not to be psyched when someone from U of T does something amazing. But, newsflash. U of T isn’t the only school where people are working to become something in their field. Just because our school is ranked higher doesn’t mean we need

to throw away our respect for others.

Imagine a scenario for a moment.

You come here and prop yourself atop a high horse simply because your diploma will be stamped with “University of Toronto.” But, what happens if your grades drop? If something causes you to take a step back for a year or two? Do you honestly want someone from to walk up to you then and go, “Ha, we’ll you’re not in school anymore. At least I could stay in school. At least I kept my grades up in my university.” So, someone with no knowledge of your situation is allowed to judge because they go to school and you needed to take some time off? I sincerely doubt that people would like that happening to them, but it’s okay to poke fun at others for their institution? Even if wasn’t happening to you, I’m relatively certain that you wouldn’t want that to happen to someone that you cared about either.

People who go to this school should be proud of all that they have accomplished and all that they will accomplish. But, it’s important to remember that we should keep ourselves humble when we leave this place. We should remember that we’re all students while we are in university. Our acceptance into U of T does not automatically diminish what others have done with their lives. It’s a pretty sad way to live if we honestly convince ourselves that this kind of behavior is acceptable. Have we not learned in these past two weeks with the pumpkin as president that we have more strength when we stand united? We shouldn’t single others out just because our school is ranked higher.

So, the next time someone tells you that they go to a school with a lower reputation than this one, we should just accept their decision and congratulate them on being in an institution that some people can only dream of attending. We should remember that treating each other with respect and understanding isn’t something we sweep under the rug because we go to different schools. They worked hard to get where they are, and it’s important to acknowledge that. We should stand together as a collective unit of students who accomplished something like graduating from a post-secondary institute. Don’t belittle people just because they went to another institute—as an undergraduate or a graduate student. We shouldn’t live life thinking that we’re better than people. An essential lesson we should learn as we get older is that we’re stronger in numbers and respect for your fellow man will get you way further in life.

YOURS, MARIA CRUZ

02.13.2017

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How to reclaim Toronto’s origins Susan Blight discusses the importance of Anishinaabe language in annual Hancock lecture SAHIBA SHAH

Last Tuesday, Susan Blight delivered Hart House’s annual Hancock Lecture, titled “Land and Life in Tkaronto: New Solidarities Toward a Decolonial Future.” Blight is an Anishinaabe artist, filmmaker, arts educator, and activist from Couchiching First Nation. She is nationally recognized for her work in language revitalization.

Blight is also a presidential appointee to the Hart House Board of Stewards, and organizes U of T’s annual Indigenous Education Week.

As the country celebrates its 150th anniversary, Blight sheds light upon Toronto’s 15,000 years of history. She began the lecture by introducing her clan and origins, acknowledging the Indigenous territory that we occupy.

The intent of Blight’s lecture was to promote Anishinaabe land, history, knowledge, and particularly, the language—Anishinaabemowin.

In 2013, Blight co-founded The Ogimaa Mikana Project with Anishinaabe writer and educator Hayden King. The project consists of Anishi-

CHEN GONG/THE MEDIUM

Susan Blight is an Anishinaabe artist and activist seeking to preserve Toronto’s Aboriginal origins. naabe activists and artists working in Toronto to reclaim the streets and landmarks of Anishinaabe territory with the use of Anishinaabemowin.

The main objectives of the project are reclaiming and renaming. This is done by replacing official street, park, and landmark signage with the origi-

nal Anishinaabe versions. For example, “Spadina” would be changed to the original Ishpadinaa.

“At the centre of the project is the revitalization of the Anishinaabemowin,” noted Blight, “[…] as a pushback against the settler-colonial system in Canada—a system whose

objective with regards to Indigenous peoples has not changed.”

Blight acknowledged the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their land and resources, and how the state’s assimilation policies resulted in devastating effects on Indigenous languages. The Ogimaa Mikana Project

aims to remind non-Indigenous people of their place on Indigenous land.

It also seeks to reinforce awareness of Indigenous presence in Canada.

Moreover, the project hopes to initiate communication with other Anishinaabe in Toronto—a city that can feel alienating to Indigenous peoples with its endless signage that represents the settler-colonial system.

Blight is interested in resurging Toronto’s Indigenous presence by returning these signs back to their original names. She emphasized that although Mississauga, Etobicoke, and Toronto all have associations with Indigenous languages, the history of the words are not recognized today.

Blight quotes Métis artist Christi Belcourt, who calls these names “empty references bereft of the burden of Canada’s colonial history.”

The name “Toronto” is derived from the Mohawk word Tkaronto, which translates to “the place in the water where the trees are standing.”

“When I think of Toronto […]” said Blight, “I think Tkaronto.”

Tkaronto continued on page 9

Artists create meaning through media Necessary Gestures at Visual Arts Mississauga showcases talent of 11 emerging artists NICOLE SCIULLI STAFF WRITER

With the rise of the digital age, younger generations have an increasing number of platforms and outlets to express themselves. In turn, emerging artists have a greater scale of themes to ground their work. Visual Arts Mississauga offers an opportunity for these artists to share their work and social commentary in Necessary Gestures.

Necessary Gestures features 11 emerging artists aged 18 to 30 from the GTA. The exhibition focuses on the experimental process in which artists use both traditional and new forms of media to create art.

Several artists on display use their work to speak about identity. Amrita Virdi’s “Displacement of Memory” depicts multiple scenes in a collage format. The scenes in this painting include a waterfall with a man lying underneath a tree, what appears to be the Taj Mahal, an elephant draped in a red cloak, and a shack that stands on stilts above the ocean. Virdi often experiments with varying shades of dark blues and warm yellows.

Virdi uses oil paint, collage clippings from magazines, and encaustic

CHEN GONG/THE MEDIUM

VAM’s new exhibition displays a compilation of both traditional and new forms of media. wax to achieve her style. Yet, Virdi’s diversity of mediums flow throughout the painting, appearing as if all the scenes relate to one another.

Virdi’s fragmented imagery mirrors how memories do not follow a linear order, but are seemingly random moments interwoven together in our minds because of the emotions we attach to each memory.

Topics of identity also appear in Žana Kozomora’s “Sac,” a hand-cut

vinyl sheet carved with intricate lace designs that represent Kozomora’s Bosnian heritage. Kozomora traced the designs from her mother’s crotchet table runner. Aside from this piece, Kozomora uses printmaking, drawing, video, and media installation to form a commentary on space and identity. Her work depicts feelings of both cultural displacement and cultural exchange.

Moving through the gallery, other

pieces adopt a more abstract style.

Kenneth Jeffery’s “Ecdysis” is a sculpture built from a drying rack and inkjet printings of a Michael Jackson Thriller poster. Jeffrey creates his installations from disposable material, commercialized products, and mass media imagery. He combines unrelated materials into a unified object, offering a commentary on the digital age. Jeffery attaches a QR code to “Ecdysis” that directs viewers to a website

where different images are displayed every day, emphasizing the changing trends in popular culture.

While Necessary Gestures offers an array of talented work, my favourite pieces include Amanda Baron’s “Paisley Island,” “Starshine 4,” and “Sunspots.” Baron’s mixed media pieces involve layers of painting, collage, drawings, threads, stickers, and glitter. Her imagery displays fairy-tale and mythical scenes using warm, sunset-like colours.

In “Paisley Island,” Baron depicts different types of flowers in pinks, purples, and reds with a background of mountains in deep blues and purples. Baron’s work intends to create a world that exists within ourselves.

Her imagery expresses a state of being in our minds, rather than a physical space. Baron’s work conceptualizes how mixing traditional and new media can work harmoniously in evoking a response from the observer.

Whether it’s painting, digital collages, or sculptures, the artists of Necessary Gestures demonstrate how different forms of media can contribute meaning to society.

Necessary Gestures will be on display at Visual Arts Mississauga until February 19.

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THE MEDIUM 02.13.2017

U of T Drama Fest celebrates 25 years HAILEY MASON A&E EDITOR This year marks the 25th anniversary of the U of T Drama Festival. From February 9 to 11, Hart House Theatre and the U of T Drama Coalition hosted a series of one-act productions. The festival offered a platform for the UTM Drama Club and many St. George theatre collectives to share the plays they wrote, directed, and designed.

David Yee, a Toronto-based playwright and actor, adjudicated this year’s festival. At the end of each night, Yee offered a brief public adjudication to the audience. In his adjudication, he addressed the strengths and opportunities for each performance. He provided more extensive feedback to the teams after the show.

The first night consisted of three plays: Family Portrait by the St. Michael’s College Troubadours, Swipe Right by the Woodsworth Innis New Drama Society, and Just the Fax, Ma’am, Just the Fax by UC Follies.

The evening began with Family Portrait. Written and directed by Kat-

OLIVIA ADAMCZYK PHOTO EDITOR

Friday evening marked the second night of Drama Fest, with another three shows: Mama, by the UTM Drama Club, A Lullaby and an Apology by the Woodsworth Innis New Drama Society, and Suzanne by the Trinity College Drama Society.

Mama, written by Shaquille Pottinger and directed by Fuschia Boston, began the night. The play follows two sisters, Vera (Jahnelle JonesWilliams) and Augusta (Richelle Nelson), who meet again after their mother’s funeral 10 years ago. The sisters catch up in Vera’s living room, and their conversation eventually culminates with a shocking reveal from Augusta: prior to visiting Vera, Augusta worked as a nanny for the son

REEM TAHA

The final night brought three more plays: A Perfect Bowl of Pho by the Victoria College Drama Society, Touch by UC Follies, and Monsters by UTM Drama Club.

A Perfect Bowl of Pho, written

by Nam Nguyen and directed by Abby Palmer, was a brilliantly written postcolonial musical—they had their own band—that explored political and socioeconomic questions through music and comedy. The play turns the bowl of pho into a platform to discuss cultural imperialism by focusing on the mispronunciation of “pho” by English speakers. The Vietnamese pronunciation sounds a lot like “fuck,” and the play makes use of the pun over and over again, in addition to other linguistic Vietnamese puns. The play was meta-theatrical, as it broke the fourth wall to directly address the audience.

There were many hilarious and clever scenes. It’s impossible to mention everything, but one of my favou-

erina Hatzinakos, Family Portrait depicts the relationships between members of an immigrant Greek family in Canada. At the centre of the family is Memos (Rachel Hart), a husband, father, and grandfather who wants nothing more than to spend time with his loved ones. However, ALS has confined Memos to a wheelchair, and he feels he is a burden on his family.

Despite his feelings of doubt, Memos remains positive and loving towards his wife, children, and grandchildren.

Family Portrait expresses the idea that families do not act the way they appear in their photographs—there’s always a complication. All families have flaws, but feelings of love and kinship will ultimately prevail. That being said, Family Portrait delves into some seriously clichéd themes. Yet, I appreciate the unique perspective in this production, framing the story through the lens of Memos. Hart remained on stage throughout the entire play, sitting in the wheelchair at the kitchen table. The stage lights dimmed and then reappeared to signify the days passing. Family members moved in and out of the scenes,

while Memos remained static.

In his adjudication, Yee praised Hart for her role as Memos. Hart skillfully adopted the persona of an elderly man, including a deep, masculine voice and grandfatherly mannerisms. Yet, Yee disagreed with the physical placement of Memos; Hart sits upstage, forcing the other performers to face away from the audience to speak to her.

The second production of the evening, Swipe Right, had the audience laughing from beginning to end.

The production was written by Savana James and Mackenzie Stewart, and directed by Nicole Bell. Swipe Right tackles issues of political correctness through crude humour. The story follows the dating lives of two best friends, Aidan (Cy Macikunas) and Clementine (Khadijah Salawu).

The pair both feel pressured to start a relationship, so they decide to test out the dating app “swipe right.” Yet, both their dates turn out to be intolerable stereotypes. Aidan’s date, Richard (Kenley Ferris Ku), is a flamboyant gay man who rudely interrogates Aidan about his transsexuality. And

Clementine’s date, Susan (Rachel Bannerman), is a zealous feminist who insists on eating a fair trade diet.

Swipe Right brims with social commentary, executed with humour so offensive and vulgar that you can’t help but laugh. Beyond the humour component, Swipe Right expresses important values about identity and relationships.

Yee complimented the humour and relatability of this production. He commented on the likeability of the protagonists and the skill with which the performers brought their characters to life. In his critique, however, he explained that Richard and Susan appeared a little too despicable. He believed their negative attributes were overwhelming to the point where it was too easy to side with Aiden and Clementine. Yee suggested downplaying Richard and Susan to make it easier for the audience to sympathize with them.

The night concluded with Just the Fax, Ma’am, Just the Fax. Written by Lucas Loizou and directed by Denis Başar, this production consisted of only three characters, Chris (Leslie

Durward), Jonah (Julia Balm), and Neve (Fateema Miller). The story was abstract, with no intention of following a cohesive storyline. Essentially, the protagonist, Neve, searches for love, companionship, and purpose in her life. She longs for the fax machine repairman, Jonah, who she shares several tap dances with. But when she learns that Jonah is actually a fax salesman, she feels betrayed and abandons her notion of love. The play ends with a scene that’s both clever and funny: the lights darken and a single spotlight shines down on the stage. Neve holds a microphone stand and, in a moment of comedic relief, struggles to place herself in the spotlight to deliver a monologue.

To quote Yee, this production was “like Beckett on acid in a car with Wes Andersen, who is also on acid.” Overall, Yee admired UC Follies’ ambition for undertaking a production that veered from a naturalistic style. As an opportunity, he advised the team to remain consistent with this abstract strategy and try to avoid dipping into naturalistic moments, as the production often did.

of a man who raped her years earlier.

She was fired from her position and secretly suffocated the baby to death in a moment of fury. The play ends with this surprising news.

Such a disquieting close to the production was an effective way to leave a lasting impression on the audience.

I spent the 15-minute intermission contemplating all the information that was revealed in the last moments of the show. My problem with this, however, was the lack of turbulence that existed prior to the momentous end. Augusta’s arrival at Vera’s house, for example, could have been more moving, given that the sisters hadn’t seen each other in so long. Nevertheless, the play was successful in eliciting shock in the end.

The second show of the night was A Lullaby and an Apology, written by Cy Macikunas and directed by Maher

Sinno. The play revolves around a group of four friends—Trevor (Ezera Beyene), Danny (Asad Jamal), Carola (Carling Wong), and Morgan (Rachel Bannerman)—who go on a camping trip in an attempt to reconnect with one another after some years apart.

But instead, the trip becomes an opportunity for arguments and confrontations among the friends.

If there was a main point to take away from this play, I didn’t catch it.

I thought the focus was supposed to be the revival of the group of four friends. Rather, the play showcased the individual struggles of each character to a greater extent. Additionally, their struggles, although relatable, weren’t well-developed. The character tropes became tiresome.

However, what was commendable were the flashback scenes of a young Trevor (Jess Camarda), a young

Danny (Armon Ghaeinizadeh), and a young Carola (Nicole Bell), who were filled with such enthusiasm that a smile instantly lit up on my face. It was wonderful to be reminded of the purity and curiosity of young minds.

The third and final show of the night was Suzanne, written and directed by Jonathan Dick. The play focuses on the unexpected arrival of Sophie (Katerina Hatzinakos) at the home of Emma (Jocelyn Kraynyk).

Sophie received a heart transplant from Emma’s love, Alex (Ryan Falconer), who died in a car accident a year ago.

This play was easily my favourite of the night. Yes, the organ-receivermeets-loved-one-of-organ-donor plotline isn’t original, but the play’s profound effect on me lied in the convincing acting. I easily felt Emma’s anger when she found Sophie peering

through Alex’s belongings, or her sadness as she recalled memories of Alex.

I was particularly moved by Emma’s regret for not driving Alex the night of his death, as she worked on her dissertation instead.

In the end, the use of Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne to close the play with Emma and Sophie in an embrace brought me to tears. The song choice was certainly an effective way to leave a lasting memory of the play.

Yee’s adjudication of all three plays ended the night. He provided general comments about the importance of projection and enunciation in a space like Hart House Theatre, in addition to the value of finding your light when on stage. He concluded by saying that the crucial questions of all three plays were “Why today? Why now?” The answers to these questions were the driving forces behind each play.

rites was “Pho is the new Ramen,” in which Americans discover pho as a new invention—a “new trendy food” from San Francisco—and they interview a white chef at a restaurant for a pho commercial. The chef gives some advice on how to eat it, as well as how to use chopsticks.

Yee praised the performance for being charming and compelling. He also complimented the great music. However, he believed the design lacked uniformity. Another comment he made was that the actors continued with the performance when there was a lot of laughter and applause, causing the audience to miss parts of the conversation. Yee praised Nguyen, the playwright for having great talent, and being “too clever.”

The second play, Touch, was written and assistant directed by Marium Raja and directed by Melissa Anne Fearson. This production depicts the lives of U of T students. The protagonist, Florence (Khadijah Salawu), struggles with social interactions.

The play opens with a monologue by her, which led me to believe the

play would be about mental health.

It remained unclear to me whether she suffered from social anxiety or whether she was just an introvert; not much information was given on this matter, other than her being nervous about being at a party for the first time. At first she’s awkward and uncomfortable, but then she’s able to make friends.

While the play is probably meant to be about Florence, for me it was about the individual and collective experiences of university and living in the city. We’re all going through similar things, but we’re completely isolated.

We cross each other’s paths without fully acknowledging the existence of other people. We forget that in the end, we all have stories, and we’re more similar than we think we are.

Yee complimented the stage and lighting design in this production.

However, he critiqued the depiction of Florence; while we’re told that she’s awkward, she comes across as glamorous and articulate. The audience is being told about her character, rather than being shown.

The final play of the night was the most poignant and the most triggering, with several disturbing scenes thrown into the mix. Written by Mackenzie Burton and directed by Kaitlyn White, Monsters explores rape and rape culture. The play begins with Julia (Holly Rees-May) being touched all over her body by three monsters that live under her bed. She wrestles with the monsters as they whisper things to her. But as long as she’s awake, she cannot defeat them.

The play traces Julia’s story from grade three, where she’s poked and touched by a boy, and always told that “boys will be boys”—the famous sentence that is the root of rape culture. When Julia goes to her first homecoming, this same boy gives her a drink, walks her home, and rapes her. The monsters in Julia’s head tell her to blame herself, her clothes, and her drinking, presenting the consequences of victim blaming.

Yee praised UTM Drama Club’s creation of theatrical space, but he critiqued their use of narrative style and interplay on stage. He also commend-

ed the acting.

Yee concluded the evening with an announcement of the awards. First, he presented the Audience Choice awards, in which one play was selected for each night of the festival.

The winners included Swipe Right for Thursday, A Lullaby and an Apology for Friday, and A Perfect Bowl of Pho for Saturday.

He then announced the Awards of Merit. The winning plays were Swipe Right, Just the Fax, Ma’am, Just the Fax, and Monsters. The winning individuals were Cy Macikunas and Carling Wong.

Finally, Yee announced the winners of the remaining award categories: the I.A.T.S.E. Award for Technical Achievement went to Monsters, the Donald Sutherland Award for Best Performance to Katerina Hatzinakos, the Robert Gill Award for Best Direction to Kaitlyn White, the Robertson Davies Playwriting Award to Jonathan Dick, and the President’s Award for Best Production to A Perfect Bowl of Pho.

02.13.2017 THE MEDIUM ARTS» 9

Surviving with fiction AVLEEN GREWAL

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill is based on a historical document kept by the British naval officers during the American Revolution. The document contains a list of approximately 3,000 slaves who were escaping Manhattan to settle in Canada.

Set in the 18th and 19th century, The Book of Negroes narrates the life of an 11-year-old girl from Bayo, West Africa named Aminata Diallo.

She dreams of learning Arabic prayers and earning an education, like her father. But after Aminata witnesses her parents’ murder, slave traders capture her and she is forced to walk naked in a crowd of strangers for several days before being shipped to Charleston.

Aminata is a figure of resistance.

She fights against unwelcome attention from men and the obscene orders from her owners to show her body. She preserves her Black/Muslim identity, while other slaves in the plantation don’t mention it. Although she’s only 11, Aminata survives the ship journey to Charleston, where numerous slaves died. She also survives the strenuous physical labour at the indigo plantation. Through the figure of Aminata, Hill shares the horrors of

the slave experience. Hill interestingly includes the white enslavers’ justification: “[They are] educating slaves and saving them from the threatening Africa where they would have killed each other.”

Hill also raises several themes that were considered controversial in the 18th century. Despite her status as a slave, Aminata learns to read and write in English. She resists the socalled values instilled by the white enslavers. She talks back to her owners, she works on her own, and she becomes a leading figure to help her people get back to Africa to start a new colony named Freetown.

Hill introduces a variety of characters in his novel that bring out the catastrophic impact of captivity and forced labour. Some women murder their newborns and some drown in the Atlantic Ocean for their babies.

Some men lose their ability to talk and some turn into murderous rebels.

Hill wants the readers to understand this gruesome part of history and the darkness of slavery that white enslavers guised with moral justification.

The Book of Negroes immortalizes the struggle, courage, selflessness, and determination of the slaves who both died and survived.

REWIND AISHA MALIK

One of Robin Williams’ most memorable performances is his role as John Keating in Dead Poets Society. Directed by Peter Weir, the film explores themes of identity, family, friendship, and coming of age.

Set in 1959, the film begins on the first day of school at the elite, all-male Welton Academy. The story centres around Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard), Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke), and their group of friends as they’re introduced to the unconventional teaching methods of Welton’s new English teacher, John Keating.

Keating addresses his class for the first time by uttering a line from Walt Whitman, “O Captain! My Captain!”

This line became an iconic phrase after the release of Dead Poets Society.

It repeats as the film progresses, foreshadowing the ending.

Keating encourages his students to seize the day and make their lives “extraordinary.” He inspires them to become free thinkers and to live life on their own terms. Keating tells his class, “Poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” He forms a bond with his students, and inspires Neil and Todd to recognize their interest in the arts. The boys gain an appreciation for poetry and revive the Dead Poets Society—a

secret poetry club that Keating belonged to when he was a student at Welton. During club meetings, the boys gather in a secret alcove in the woods to read poetry to each other.

The film raises many important themes, namely identity. Through Neil’s character, the film depicts the struggle of embracing art as a practical job pursuit. Throughout the film, Neil’s father (Kurtwood Smith) dismisses Neil’s passion for writing and acting and pushes him towards medical school. Without his father’s knowledge, Neil performs in a school play after being encouraged by Keating to pursue his dreams. Neil’s conflicting desires to pursue his passions and obey his parents is a relatable struggle.

Although Dead Poets Society contains thought-provoking, and often troubling moments, the quirkiness and wittiness of the characters create an overall feel-good experience. The bond between the students and Keating is inspirational, as Keating continuously poses ideas of embracing life and not doubting yourself.

Dead Poets Society tells a story of a teacher who motivates his students to find their place in the world and appreciate their worth. As Keating says, “No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.”

NEWSOFTHEARTWORLD.COM/PHOTO

Artist Walid Raad discussed past and current art projects in his talk “Can Fiction Replace Reality”?

REEM TAHA

“One must need fiction… Fiction is a place for the emergence of certain facts.”

Thus, Walid Raad concluded his talk, “How Can Fiction Replace Reality?” at the Isabel Bader Theatre. Raad is a Lebanese artist living in New York. He’s currently a professor of art at the Cooper Union School of Art. In his talk, he discussed two of his three main projects: “The Atlas Group” and “Scratching on Things I Could Disavow: A History of Art in the Arab World.” His other project, which he considers the most difficult, is “Sweet Talk: Commissions (Beirut),” which is a production of photographs in the city towards the end of the civil war.

“The Atlas Group” is an attempt at a historical recollection of the war in Lebanon. Initially, it started as a think-tank and then became an archive. It’s a foundation to think about how to write the history of the wars in Lebanon and the history of the past 30 to 40 years. Raad produced fictionalized photographs, videotapes, notebooks, and lectures. The archive also includes real and imaginary documents and stories, which means his project oscillates between a false binary of reality and fiction.

Raad was neither interested in writing a chronology of massacres nor the psychobiography of the participants in the war. To him, these elements seemed reductive. Instead, he wanted to explore the ways in which memory and trauma could dictate the writing of history.

Raad’s work and his lecture are

both dominated by humour, which I believe is his coping mechanism in the face of trauma. Being Lebanese myself, I am positive that humour is the only way we have survived all the wars as a community.

After leaving Beirut at 15 and returning at 22, Raad encountered objects, smells, and spaces that triggered his memories of the war. At the time, he was interviewing prisoners in South Lebanon who were tortured and imprisoned by the Israeli army.

The way they told their narratives struck him, for they were factual, objective narrations that always sounded the same: “I was born in… I joined on… I was captured that day, etc.”

These stories intrigued Raad. The way language structured these experiences particularly mattered to him.

He wanted to be able to tell a history that was not didactic and pedagogical, which drove him to a creative reconstruction in his archive. These pedagogical narratives posed the essential questions that he tried to explore in his art: How does one experience the passage of the present when this present involves extreme forms of physical or psychological trauma?

Why are some memories available to conscious recollection and others only available through encountering objects, scents, spaces, and people?

According to Raad, you could see traces of war everywhere in Lebanon, but the narrative of the war was unaccounted for. He wanted to tell that narrative, but he had to think of an alternative way of recounting history without being pedantic. According to Raad, “The story one tells oneself and that captures one’s attention and

belief may have nothing to do with what happened in the past, but that’s the story that seems to matter in the present and for the future.”

Factual events do not matter as much as our memory of them, which is where fiction enters his work. The lines between reality and fiction are blurred because history exists in our personal recollection. History must be fictionalized to resist conventions of historiography.

How do we distinguish truth from fiction? Is it even possible? In a land torn by civil war, where reality is characterized by destruction, fiction is Raad’s method of producing a historical narrative.

Raad’s other project, “Scratching on Things I Could Disavow: A History of Art in the Arab World,” moves away from the war and examines the recent emergence of art in the Arab world, specifically the new “Happiness Island” (Saadiyat Island) being built in Abu Dhabi that will house the Guggenheim Museum and the Louvre. His project explores the ways in which economic and military conflicts affect art.

During the lecture, Raad mentioned trauma various times, as well as survival, but it struck me that the word “healing” was never mentioned.

This made me question whether we actually heal from trauma. Raad’s artwork, as well as the accounts of the wars in my community, makes me believe that we will always carry this trauma with us; the important part is to survive, because healing seems so far-fetched in the face of intense, collective trauma. Fiction and humour are our means of survival.

Relanguaging the city Tkaronto continued from page 7

Toronto is known for its multiculturalism, with more than half of the population consisting of foreigners. But Blight highlighted a lesserknown fact about Toronto—it is home to approximately 27,000 Indigenous people.

The Ogimaa Mikana project intends to reach this population, spreading awareness of the Indigenous people and their struggle, and encouraging partnerships between Indigenous people and other com-

munities. Blight mentioned feelings of solidarity between Black Lives Matter Toronto and Indigenous activists during the protests regarding the police shooting of Andrew Loku in 2015. Blight named Turtle Island as a site where Indigenous and nonIndigenous communities could unite in an act of “shared oppression.”

Blight discussed the importance of Tkaronto as having the potential to work across cultural differences and build relationships across different groups.

“The goal is not for everyone to

merely swap spots on a settler-colonial triad,” she explained. “[…]The goal is to break the relentless structuring of the triad.”

Blight emphasized how different groups can live in peace, as long as they respect each other’s rights to mutual autonomy and respect the land that they occupy.

“All of us living in Tkaronto eat out of the same dish, but it only has one spoon […] we are responsible for making sure that the dish is always replenished, and we must reject greed by sharing that one spoon among us.”

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THE MEDIUM 02.13.2017

When internet dating goes wrong Vigilante hunter Justin Payne tracks down online predators in recent Vice Media documentary ADELAIDE ATTARD ASSOCIATE A&E EDITOR

Internet dating websites and apps have become a popular and successful way to meet people. But as exciting as this new method of dating might be, it’s also dangerous, as anyone has access to these interfaces. Anyone can make a profile, even if they are under the age of 18, and unfortunately these young users may attract adults. Old adults.

On January 13, Vice Media released a documentary called Age of Consent.

Directed by Shawney Cohen, Age of Consent follows vigilante pedophile hunter Justin Payne as he tracks down and captures the older men who go after young users. How does Payne do this? He disguises himself as a 13-year-old boy named Christopher.

Payne operates in the middle ground of the law. He attracts pedophiles online, meets with them, and reports them to the police. But before reporting the men to the police, he leaks the videos he records while catching them. Payne posts these videos on social media, asking the men why they came to meet a 13-year-old boy. Unfortunately, when Payne reports these pedophiles, almost nothing is done because Payne’s tactics have no legal oversight.

Age of Consent starts with Payne

VICE.COM/PHOTO

Justin Payne poses as 13-year-old boy online to attract and capture pedophiles in Age of Consent. and Gerry O’Brien, his accomplice and camera operator. The pair sit in Payne’s car as they call one of the pedophiles. Payne then acknowledges the severity of his actions when he says, “I have sympathy for these people, in the sense that they could lose their jobs [because of what I’m doing]… they could lose so much based on a video. But at the same time, where I wash that all away is that they came to meet a child. For sex.”

Payne talks to these men over dat-

ing apps, pretending to be a child. In one instance, one of the men offered to pay for pizza. When the man arrived, he was not greeted by a 13-yearold child, but rather, an angry vigilante hunter. To achieve a quick capture, Payne does not like to wear shoes; he wants to be quick on his feet in case he needs to run after the pedophiles.

O’Brien always accompanies Payne for safety purposes.

Once Payne and O’Brien meet with these men and ask them their inten-

tions, they usually deny everything, in between a lot of anger and swearing.

One of the men even admitted, “I have a lot of respect for kids. I have two of my own.”

Throughout the 50-minute documentary, we follow Payne on a journey to exposing four pedophiles—a small number compared to the hundreds he has already caught.

The third pedophile Payne caught was a man he met with at a gas station.

Payne confronted the pedophile and

asked why he came to meet a 13-yearold. As usual, the man denied his intentions and inched away when he saw cameras. At the gas station, Payne shouted, “Everyone stay away from this guy, he likes to meet 13-year-olds off the internet.” This comment attracted gas customers, who gave their opinions about the man.

The man later called Payne and begged him to take the video down, as he feared he would lose his job. Within a few hours after posting the video, it reached almost a million views. The individual left Payne a message, crying and repeating, “Justin, please stop the video, I’m dying […].”

Payne admitted, “It’s this part where I’m uncomfortable, because this is somebody’s life.”

Near the end of the documentary, Payne sits with a host from CityNews.

She asked him if he would ever give up vigilante hunting. He replied, “No way, never. There are too many of these guys out there and not enough of us doing this.”

“I want to see people punished, not dead,” he adds. Only two out of Payne’s 300 confrontations have resulted in police convictions.

Vice Media’s documentary is now streaming on vice.com and is available for viewing on YouTube.

02.13.2017

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11

The team behind TEDxUofT’s magic This year, TEDxUofT has a renewed focus on making sure the ideas are “worth sharing” FARAH QAISER FEATURES EDITOR

Next Saturday, TEDxUofT’s fifth annual conference, with the theme “Open,” will take place at the Isabel Bader Theatre, located at the University of Toronto’s downtown campus. The conference will feature various speakers, including many of UTM’s finest, such as chemistry professor Patrick Gunning, spokenword poet Tobi Ogude, computer science professor Sanja Fidler, and digital enterprise management student Yannis Guibinga.

It is a day-long conference, featuring speakers and performers who are using the TEDxUofT platform to share their inspiring ideas to not only the 500 attendees sitting within the Isabel Bader Theatre, but to those who may be tuning in through the livestream too—and potentially the rest of the world when the talks go online.

Behind-the-scenes, there is a team of 13 different executives (across all three of U of T campuses), and an even larger army of volunteers, who are hard at work to coordinate the logistics, marketing, and communication behind this

MAHMOUD SAROUJI/THE MEDIUM

This year, the theme for the TEDxUofT conference is “Open,” and it features speakers from UTM. event.

THE CHAIR Pierre Roquet, a fourth-year UTM CCIT student (specializing in the digital enterprise management program), is the TEDxUofT chair this year.

“I joined [the team] in second year,” says Roquet. “I wanted to just

have portfolio pieces when I joined TEDxUofT as a junior designer. But I never had a foray into design before that role, and I ended up moving away from that role anyways. I ended up doing more photography, videography, and the actual stage set-up, which led me to become the technical design director for the

years after, where I would organize the live-streaming services, and the photographers—how they would move around the stage—and get the media down to a main hub for people to upload instantaneously.”

As the chair, Roquet is currently responsible “for pretty much everything.”

“I supervise everything—I make sure that most of the stuff is done on time. It’s really difficult because you’re working with students on difficult schedules. […] As a chair, I have to supervise a lot of the departments and subunits, making sure to communicate with each other efficiently and quickly.”

Roquet has found finances to be a challenging part of his role, along with finding suitable meeting times for everyone. “When you organise a meeting time, and a quarter of the team cannot make it, it is very discouraging,” he says.

This year, the conference is scaling down from a 700-person event to a 500-person audience, and the tickets are also cheaper.

“We are scaling down the importance of the food and the venue.

We’re really focusing more on the speakers, because the feedback we got the year before was that the venue was excellent, the food was excellent, the whole program was good—but the talks themselves didn’t feel like they were the top of U of T. So we really focused on making sure that TEDx really was ideas worth sharing.”

TEDx continued on page 12

Eyes set on the Miss World Canada crown Rudrakshi Chakrabarti was recently crowned Miss Vaughan at the Miss World Ontario pageant JESSICA CABRAL ASSOCIATE FEATURES EDITOR The Miss World slogan is “beauty with a purpose,” and for Rudrakshi Chakrabarti, a third-year UTM student with a double major in biology for health sciences and psychology, pageants offer contestants an opportunity to showcase their outer and inner beauty. This past January, Chakrabarti was crowned Miss Vaughan at the Miss World Ontario pageant. This summer, she will compete in the national contest in hopes of winning the Miss World Canada title and representing the country at the international Miss World pageant.

Chakrabarti explains that the Miss World Ontario pageant was her first experience in the beauty pageant world. When her mother suggested that she take a break from studying and enter the contest, Chakrabarti agreed to sign up.

“In December, during Christmas break, my mom came across an ad where they were searching for girls to

OLIVIA ADAMCZYK/THE MEDIUM

Chakrabarti recently had her first experience with the beauty pageant world. compete in the Miss Ontario World, and she said, ‘Hey, you should sign up because there’s no height restriction.’ I’m not the tallest person as you

can see,” Chakrabarti laughs.

However, Chakrabarti wasn’t sure about the pageant. She had never participated in anything like a pag-

eant, but her mother advised her to try.

“I think she’s more into that kind of stuff; she never got an opportunity

to do it when she was younger.”

After registering, a pageant director did a Skype interview with Chakrabarti to get a sense of who she was and what her platform was going to be. Chakrabarti was then sent a package and began preparing for the pageant.

The Miss World Ontario event was held in Mississauga at the Novotel Hotel on the weekend of January 21, 2017. On the first day of the competition, the contestants met each other for the first time. They then spent the rest of the day choreographing group dance numbers that would not be judged, but would instead be entertainment for the audience. They also learned how to stand when being crowned and how to exit the stage.

Chakrabarti explains that this day was dedicated to organizing and planning all the aspects that contestants needed to master before the actual event. Despite the tension of competition, the contestants bonded over the weekend.

Beauty continued on page 13

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THE MEDIUM 02.13.2017

Are protests effective?

TEDxUofT returns

A rise in the number of widespread protests has occurred

TEDx continued from page 11

MAHMOUD SAROUJI/THE MEDIUM

Protests offer a means to display discontent.

AISHA MALIK

If you have been following the news lately, it’s hard to miss the abundance of protests and demonstrations occurring globally.

In protest close to home earlier in the academic year, U of T students rallied up against psychology professor, Jordan Peterson. Initially, Peterson had made comments stating that he would not recognize genderless pronouns, which led to protesters questioning his ability to teach in an institution as diverse as U of T. Regardless of the protest, Peterson returned to teach in the winter term.

Between January 21 and 22, the Women’s March on Washington took place. The event was planned almost entirely through social media. But Washington was not the only city that marched. Sister marches occurred on all seven continents, including places such as Sydney, Brussels, Copenhagen, Paris, Tokyo, and several other locations, including Toronto. More than 600 marches reportedly took place worldwide, where individuals banded together across the globe to protest the U.S. president, Donald Trump. They peacefully marched to protect women’s rights, immigration rights, LGBTQ rights, and freedom of religious expression. However, Trump responded to the protest by tweeting, “Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just had an election!”

A few days later, several more protests occurred against the travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries, consisting of Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Syria. The ban halted the entry of individuals travelling to the U.S., including those who possessed green cards. Dozens of people arriving from these countries were detained at airports. But once again, hundreds of people stood up and took to the airports, such as Los Angeles International, Dallas/Fort Worth, and O’Hare, to demand the release of the individuals detained.

They chanted phrases such as “let them in” and “no ban, no wall.”

Several immigration lawyers also found themselves at the airport to offer their services. Within hours of

the ban, lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union filed a legal motion deeming the ban to be unconstitutional, which granted a temporary stay (a halt in legal proceedings) on the ban. As some individuals were cleared, several demonstrators welcomed them at airport arrivals.

Lawyers and demonstrators worked together to display their discontent with the ban, and offered their help to those being detained.

“Skeptics say that protests are futile when a government is not listening and a president is too busy tweeting[...].”

—Sida Liu Similarly, here in Canada, several solidarity marches and vigils took place for the victims of the Quebec City mosque shooting, in places such as Toronto, Mississauga, Charlottetown, and Halifax. Marchers gathered together to mourn the victims and to come out against islamophobia. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also attended a vigil in Quebec City, where he showed his solidarity with the Muslim community.

But are protests effective? I contacted sociology professor Sida Liu, whose focus includes sociology of law, globalization, and social theory among others.

Liu explained that protests are an important factor of a democratic society. The protests in the U.S. not only show discontent with the president, but also reflect on larger global concerns, such as discrimination and the rise of xenophobia. Liu stated, “Skeptics would say that these protests are futile when a government is not listening and a president is too busy tweeting, but they at least raise the collective consciousness of people regarding some vital aspects of our social and political life.”

He went on to explain that protests connect over time, and sometimes only manifest after a longer period of time. Protests rarely have an immediate effect, but they are not isolated events either; rather, they need time

to become evident.

In regards to solidarity marches for the Quebec City mosque shooting victims, Liu said that they “demonstrate the Canadian society’s openness, diversity, and care for religious and ethnic minority groups.” They also allow communities to come out and condemn violence against innocent and unarmed individuals.

Liu cited Émile Durkheim, a founding father of sociology who argued, “Punishment on crimes is an indicator of the solidarity of a society.” He further explained, “In this sense, solidarity marches also constitute a form of resistance to the symbolic and physical violence of gender and racial discrimination exercised by xenophobic white males.”

Sociology professor David Pettinicchio, whose focuses include political sociology, social policy, and social movements, also spoke of the impact a protest can have.

Pettinicchio explained that protests allow awareness of issues that don’t seem to be focused on by political leaders. Political activism is important especially now. He stated that “protests help galvanize people around important issues and they can indirectly shape policy directions. “[Protests] alone may not be enough. For mobilization to be successful moving forward, it requires thinking about long-term and shortterm goals and objectives, as well as the use of a multi-pronged approach that can include direct action, as well as systematic efforts to monitor policy, contact policymakers, and for regular citizens to remain engaged in the political process in the long run,” he continued. “The effectiveness relies on unity of ‘political elites’ movement and organizational leaders, activists and regular citizens.”

While it is hard to give a definitive answer on the effectiveness of a protest, their effect sometimes only becomes apparent after some time has passed. Although they alone are not enough, they are a great starting point. They also display unity and provide an outlet to peacefully portray discontent with a certain person in power or to protest discrimination against specific groups of people.

This meant that Roquet and his team focused on finding the “best” speakers possible, and following up with them to ensure that speakers were rehearsing and polishing their talks—and not making it sound like a lecture.

To host a TEDx conference, organizers must apply for a license from the original TED, which can take up to three months. Details such as the theme, projected date, and projected audience must be shared during this process. There are also guidelines to abide by, such as no sponsorship materials can be present on stage, speaker introductions must be under three seconds, and all talks must be under 18 minutes. There are also guidelines around sponsorships—one guideline discusses who is not allowed to sponsor a TEDx conference. This year, the main sponsors are TD and Manulife, as well as others such as MailChimp and Eventstream.

“This year, the theme is ‘Open’, which is broad and open to interpretation. It can be open-minded or open-sourced.”

One of the speakers for this year’s conference is Gunning.

“I really wanted to get him in—even though he already gave a TEDxMississauga talk. He was super keen on representing the university in more than just the Mississauga region, and so he jumped on board instantaneously. Since he had already given a TEDx talk, and wanted to make a lot of changes here and there, he thought that the talk could be a lot better than the one he gave in Mississauga.”

Roquet has recently taken interest into artificial intelligence and machine learning, and this is reflected in two of the speaker choices (such as Fidler). In fact, according to a recent article in the Toronto Star (“Canadian tech firms optimistic in face to Trump’s immigration restrictions”), Canadian cities, such as Toronto and Montreal, are becoming a major hub for artificial intelligence.

Once the actual event is over, there are several administrative tasks to complete, such as finalizing invoices, tallying up the finances, polishing media, and offering feedback to sponsors—and then repeating it all for next year’s conference.

Roquet believes that the most rewarding part of the conference has yet to come: the event itself.

MARKETING Justin Lee is a third-year statistics and economics student at U of T who is currently completing a co-op. Lee is also the sole marketing director for the team, where he coordinates with various team members (such as the multiple digital marketing editors, graphic designers, and speaker relations representatives) to reach as many students as possible.

Lee joined the TEDxUofT team because he wanted to do an extracurricular in marketing which involved people and his “creative side.”

“I oversee all the marketing […] that includes emails and social media channels,” says Lee. Lee’s marketing strategies are based on data from last year’s conference titled “Edge.”

“We look at the data from last year.

We check to see where the people are coming from, the ones who buy our

tickets. We saw that about a third of our tickets sold came from Facebook last year,” says Lee. “We also have emails—people who subscribe to our list get early bird tickets.”

While MailChimp email subscribers (almost 2,000 people) had the chance to call first dibs on tickets, once the tickets (a total of 500) were released to the public, they sold out within the day.

“People can still live-stream, so I’m still trying to reach as many people as possible, and get them to tune in.”

Lee says that the hardest part of his role has been managing and coordinating tasks across the entire team, but that the most rewarding aspect has been “getting to know new people” and “working with a team that’s very good at what they do.”

LOGISTICS The TEDxUofT team features two logistics directors: Ellie Warsmann and Serena Gasparitsch. Warsmann is a third-year student based at the St. George campus, completing a double major in physiology and global health, and a minor in psychology.

For Warsmann, the decision to join the TEDxUofT team originally arose because of her friend’s experience.

Her friend previously volunteered for a TEDx conference, and found it to be very fun, which inspired Warsmann to volunteer not only in first year, but also in her second year.

“This year, they were hiring for logistics, and so I applied,” recalls Warsmann.

Logistics is a very broad term—and in Warsmann’s words, she and Gasparitsch are “essentially everything that goes into organising the day.”

A large part of it involves the two co-directors finding the most suitable venue and catering options, as well as effectively mobilizing volunteers for the conference.

When it comes to selecting a venue, Warsmann comments that while a large venue is preferable, the intermission period is also an important thing to consider: “In the intermission, we want people to come and be able to mingle with each other—and the speaker. That really limits our options. For example, on campus, we only have two options for that.”

“We’re a non-profit, and we’re all student-run. We can’t charge higher ticket prices, because they have to stay affordable to students, so that limits us. Obviously, there are bigger venues that have the space, but we can’t really rent those out because we’re not charging enough for the tickets.”

In terms of financial accessibility, the team has utilized all available options to keep ticket prices low, such as using an on-campus venue, which allowed for a 20 percent discount.

While there is no practice run of the conference, Warsmann points out that there is a rehearsal day the day before. “It depends on the venue,” says Warsmann. “This year, we are only going to be able to do a sound check.”

However, rehearsals—especially for the speakers—are carried out.

Warsmann has enjoyed “seeing everything come together.” When the conference tickets sold out in less than a day, Warsmann realised that with people buying tickets, “the event is going to be a thing that’s happening next week.”

02.13.2017 THE MEDIUM FEATURES» 13

UTM presence at UN Miss Canada next 14 students attend the UN’s 19th Winter Youth Assembly

JOHNNY VACAR/PHOTO

According to Karnik, a total of 93 countries were represented at this year’s Winter Youth Assembly.

VIBHOR ROHATGI

During the first weekend of February, 14 UTM students (including current students and alum) attended the UN’s 19th Winter Youth Assembly, which took place in New York. The Medium reached out to the attending delegates for their thoughts and insight on this experience and the whole assembly.

Christina Veiga (a third-year student completing an environmental management major), Eashan Karnik (the head delegate and a 2016 UTM psychology graduate), and Maria Povarova (a fourth-year environmental science specialist and environmental management major), were among the delegates who attended the assembly.

The Winter Youth Assembly, which took place at the UN’s headquarters, focused on the 17 sustainable development goals (SDG)—also known as “Global Goals”—set by the United Nations in collaboration with 194 member states from around the world. During this assembly, the focus was particularly on three of the goals: poverty reduction, quality education, and responsible consumption and production.

Given that this was a branch of the UN, the delegates got to spend their time with representatives from countries such as Philippines, Zimbabwe, Korea, and many more.

“In total, about 93 countries were represented at this year’s Winter Youth Assembly,” says Karnik.

Reflecting on the opportunity to network with and learn about so many different perspectives from around the world, Povarova adds, “Such a diverse group of youth was necessary for meaningful discussion on topics where insight from around the world can have different and important perspectives.”

According to Povarova, “The Assembly serves as a unique platform where youth from around the world can engage in discourse surrounding the SDGs, and to develop partnerships between private sectors, civil society, and the UN.” In line with the themes and focus of the assembly, UTM students had the chance to learn and contribute to the proceedings.

“We went to a panel about sustainable waste, and had the chance as a group to speak about ways we could deal with waste in our community.

Our group presented coffee cups as a current waste problem, as they are not recyclable and therefore end up sitting in landfills. Our group proposed to add a tax to the cups, therefore planning to encourage people to bring their own mugs,” says Veiga.

“Further notable conferences included ‘Quality Education for People’ and ‘Planets with Speakers’, from UNESCO and UNICEF, on the im-

portance of education and their barriers, offering ways to get more involved. [There was also a panel discussing] Instagram: using social media to make a positive impact; and the role of youth in Making Policy on how to be more involved in policy decisions that shape our future,” adds Povarova.

Considering the recently-proposed immigration ban within the U.S., there was a potential concern that the UTM delegates may have faced travel issues.

“No one faced issues directly related to recent immigration. However, there were delays on flights for other reasons,” comments Povarova. “[At the airport] the customs agent did ask us if we were going to protest, and of course we said no, and no other questions were asked,” Veiga recalls.

The UN Winter Youth Assembly gave UTM delegates the chance to learn about some of the most pressing issues about sustainable development extant today. These kinds of assemblies greatly foster global change by empowering youth to act now, for the future.

“We have seen at the summit that action starts at a grassroots level, and we must all be part of that change: #actionbeginswithyouth. This includes being more involved in the public and private sector, NGOs, and governments,” Povarova says.

Beauty continued from page 11 “There were a lot of girls. I was so nervous at first, because these were people who have competed in pageants before, and a lot of them were models, or in that stream where they’re acting,” Chakrabarti says. “I was a little bit intimidated, but I realized it got better as I started talking to people. It’s actually really interesting, because now I can say I have a best friend from Windsor —she was Miss Windsor.”

On January 22, the pageant was in motion. By the end of the event, the judges would crown 15 winners from across Ontario to represent their city and move onto the national pageant.

The girls competed in swim suit and evening gown portions, and were surprised when their director sprung on them an additional phase to the contest.

“The actual date came and everyone was really nervous and everything was so tight. We practiced the dance number and choreography a bunch of times. Then, our director kind of threw a bomb at us and said you have to go on stage and talk about your purpose in life,” Chakrabarti says. “We were given some time to think about it, which was nice, but we didn’t know it was going to be a thing. The audience needs to see that you can talk and communicate.”

Chakrabarti explains that she was excited to win the crown, but that proceeding to nationals comes with some financial strain. As of present, Chakrabarti isn’t sure about the details of the Miss World Canada pageant.

“My next steps are to find sponsors so I can pay for nationals. Nationals is a lot of money, so our directors suggested for us to get sponsors. I’m just waiting for the delegates’ package that tells us what is going on. I haven’t received that yet, so once I do, I’ll really know the format and what the contest entails,” she says.

But Chakrabarti has her sights set on more than just winning the international crown. Her goal is to attend medical school and to one day become a doctor. Luckily for her, most of the provincial pageant preparation happened during the Christmas break and didn’t affect Chakrabarti’s studies and other commitments.

“I’m doing an ROP with Professor Schimmack, and it is basically about how accurate statistical results in scientific journals are. There are a lot of things that are being published in articles that are not necessarily true, so it’s seeing how accurate they are. It’s a

lot of data collection and a lot of analyzation,” she says. “I work at a restaurant in Vaughan only once a week, so that’s not too bad. I also volunteer at Ellengale public school, where I help children from grades 1-3 read, I volunteer at Etobicoke General Hospital in the emergency department, and I also volunteer with the Accessibility Resource Centre at UTM, where I’m a peer mentor.”

To balance all of this, Chakrabarti believes it’s easier to manage multiple commitments.

“Most days, I find that the more you have, the easier it is to kind of go about it. I think the less you have, the more likely you are to slack,” she explains.

In an article in The Guardian from 2015 (“Beauty pageants are embarrassing—even if you name the right winner”), journalist Jessica Valenti writes “The contests are an antiquated reminder of exactly what we don’t want for women, and they should have no place in our future.” Valenti isn’t alone in her opinion. Critics often view beauty pageants as degrading, as they objectify the female body; however, Chakrabarti disagrees with this. She says that pageants help contestants with public speaking, build confidence, and offer women a place to voice their passions.

“Pageants were originally created as a platform where young women could have a voice and speak about matters that are important to them.

Even in applying, they ask: what is your platform? What will you do for your community once you win your crown? It’s a stage where you can voice what’s important to you and speak out, reach out to a lot of people, and talk about your platform. Mine was Internet addiction. Some were bullying, health, awareness for Indigenous people. Everyone had their own cause,” Chakrabarti explains.

“I don’t see how it could be negative, and I think people who see it as negative think that it’s just about beauty. But it’s so much more than beauty—it is inner beauty, competition between the best hearts, the best minds, not just the best faces.”

Chakrabarti would be honoured to win Miss World Canada, but her goal in life is to just be a good person all around. She hopes to keep her grades up, continue being a good volunteer, and a good sister.

For her peers struggling to balance their commitments and get involved, she advises them to get out of their comfort zone. “It’ll all sort itself out.

Get out of your comfort zone. Don’t say ‘tomorrow’.”

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THE MEDIUM 02.13.2017

UTMental returns with a fourth season The Medium contacted members of the HCC and UTMental’s current vlogging team to learn more about the UTMental initiative and what makes its fourth season different. The UTMental vloggers for this term are: Maika Seki, Camille Bou, Gurinder Cheema, and Kayla Dias. The following responses were received over email, and have been edited for both length and clarity.

FACEBOOK.COM/UTMENTAL/PHOTO

UTMental is an annual initiative which involves students vlogging about different aspects of mental health, once a week, for an entire month.

FARAH QAISER FEATURES EDITOR The UTMental vloggers for this term are: Maika Seki (a fourth-year biology specialist), Camille Bou (a fourthyear psychology and biology double major), Gurinder Cheema (a fourthyear psychology and biology double major), and Kayla Dias (a first-year Master’s student in cell and systems biology).

This article also features Vanita Clare (a third-year political science and criminology double major, who is also a HCC communications assistant), Kasia Krolak (a fifth-year psychology and biology double major, who is also a peer health education mental health team leader and is responsible for coordinating guest vloggers for UTMental), and Mary Anne Aliazon (a fifth-year biology and psychology double major, with a minor in biomedical communications, who is the UTMental project manager).

The following responses were received over email, and have been edited for both length and clarity.

The Medium: What made you decide to speak up about mental illness?

Maika Seki: It was the stigma that I felt for a long time—especially during high school when my state of mental health was the worst. Stigma keeps people from seeking resources, and I want to help change that.

Camille Bou: I hope that through [UTMental], I can prove to people that mental illnesses are valid illnesses that require just as much care and attention. Another more personal motivation is that recently my little brother was diagnosed with mild ADHD. I can already see his entourage putting him into a box with a label. I want him to grow up without having to worry about that label, that a label doesn’t define him and doesn’t limit his potential one bit. I feel like making these vlogs will help in this

matter by exposing how stigma limits people suffering from mental illnesses.

Gurinder Cheema: I joined UTMental to fight the stigma surrounding mental health so that individuals who are suffering in silence can speak up and get the treatment they require. I was someone who suffered in silence for quite a long time, and it was not great. I had serious lows, my grades were plummeting, and my relationships with my friends and family were being destroyed. I didn’t know if it was okay to feel the way I was feeling, or if it was because I was weak. I felt completely isolated from the world, even though there were so many people around me. So, through these videos, I want to offer my hand to those struggling, and let them know that what you are feeling is valid and that you are not alone.

Kayla Dias: The reason I joined UTMental is because of the challenges that people face when dealing with their mental states. I think it also goes beyond the mainstream disorders (like ADHD or bipolar or depression) to daily mental states (like stress and anxiety) that affect us. It is generally difficult to talk to about it because of the stigma that is attached, but initiatives like UTMental allow everyone to know that they are not alone, and encourage others who may be going through situations to join our conversation and seek the help they need.

[TM]: How does this season of UTMental differ from the last?

[MS]: I think that every season is different because of the diversity of vloggers. Each person has different knowledge and experiences to share.

Kasia Krolak: This season, every Friday, there will be a guest vlogger video posted, where different members of staff and faculty at UTM will be sharing their insight on mental health topics. Guest vloggers have been chosen from various departments to provide a diverse perspective.

[TM]: How are the vlogs structured? Are the topics decided beforehand?

[MS]: The general topics are decided beforehand, but we have a lot of freedom in the content. We meet and communicate with one another to share what we want to talk about, and to receive and provide feedback.

[CB]: Every vlogger has a specific day of the week assigned to them, and we will post a total of four vlogs (one each week): an introduction (which is already live), a video about stress, stigma, and resilience (the final video). This year, Kayla is on Mondays, I am on Tuesdays, Gurinder is on Wednesdays, Maika is on Thursdays, and we now have guest vloggers on Fridays.

Vanita Clare: The topics are indeed discussed beforehand, but they are reviewed from year to year and open to suggestions. We structure it so the vloggers have enough freedom to interpret what the topics mean for themselves. They can take their unique experiences, understanding, and various lenses to the broader topics. And we encourage creativity with their vlogs because we want to see the students shine, and we want to see their experiences shine because #UTMental is about the student voice.

Mary Anne Aliazon: We wanted to ensure that the topics have significance and relevance to mental health and the issues surrounding it, and that it would bring about a great conversation-starter within the UTM community, and perhaps even outside the community.

[TM]: Have you thought about what you’ll be discussing in your vlogs?

[GC]: I want my vlogs to combine my personal experiences with mental health, things I’ve learned from those experiences, and things that I’ve learned as a psychology student and peer health educator at UTM. [KD]: I have an idea of what I’d like to cover in my vlogs, such as

an insight into the graduate student life—the ups and the downs and how that affects our mental health.

[TM]: What are you involved in outside of your studies?

[MS]: During my time at UTM, I have been involved in places such as the Womyn’s Coalition to satisfy my passion for striving towards social equity. I also love animals, so I have volunteered for the Toronto Zoo, and a conservancy.

[CB]: I’m currently a Peer Academic Leader on residence, and I am volunteering for various initiatives and projects, such as TEDxUofT, a Community Innovation Project with the Alzheimer’s Society of Peel, as well as the Community Engagement Team on residence (linked with the Centre for Student Engagement).

[GC]: I am a Peer Health Educator on the Mental Health Team, and I am also an undergraduate research assistant in a psychology lab on campus.

[KD]: I am part of a team that tries to improve grad student life and the grad experience on campus through the UTM Association of Graduate Students and Biology Graduate Student Society. I am also passionate about science education, and that’s another thing I work on in my spare time.

[TM]: What advice would you offer to students who are currently dealing with a mental illness or those who are afraid to speak out and share their struggles?

[CB]: For those currently dealing with a mental illness, I would say to keep talking about your struggles, keep sharing your stories, because you are amazing and it shows your strength. By talking about your mental health, you are helping reduce the stigma and the self-stigma that individuals might face. You’re inspiring others to reach out too. You’re indirectly building a community where people don’t feel so alone, where they feel supported, and where they know where to go when things get too much.

[GC]: My advice to these individuals is to find support or a confidant. It took me five years to go to my doctor and tell him how I was feeling, and the first thing he said to me was, “I am so glad you finally told me. I always knew something was wrong, but I wanted you to come and tell me.” I will never forget that moment because of the amount of relief I felt.

It felt as though all the pressure had been lifted off my shoulders and now I could finally get the treatment I required. I always regret not going earlier, because I think things could have gotten better sooner, but we all work at our own pace. So take your time, but know that when you are ready to share, there will be so many open arms waiting to embrace you and show you how much you matter.

[VC]: Mental health is a tough topic to talk about given the stigma associated with it, and often the selfstigma as well. So this entire initiative really tries to reduce that stigma and give a voice to those who feel like they don’t have a voice. We want to tell students that they’re not alone with this project, and that UTM is a safe, supportive campus that helps all our students to be healthy and well.

Resources available to all our students include Good2Talk (1-866-9255454), which is a free and confidential post-secondary helpline available 24/7 that is staffed with trained professional counsellors who can connect you to resources. The HCC itself also has counsellors available on campus to help students with any mental health needs that arise during their time here at UTM, and can also help connect them to resources.

They are available for appointments, with a new service this year that provides same-day personal counselling on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, with bookings happening on Wednesday and Thursday mornings.

The aim is to make a healthy and supportive campus. #UTMental and all the available resources are part of the vision for UTM.

02.13.2017

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Leaving the nest with stronger wings Austin Oude-Reimerink shares the lessons he learned through experience as a UTM Eagle ERIC HEWITSON SPORTS EDITOR Many players who score the gamewinning touchdown dream of being carried off the field by their team. Austin Oude-Reimerink, a fourth-year commerce and finance student at UTM, scored the championship-winning touchdown in a high school football game and was carried off the field—on a stretcher.

Oude-Reimerink was tackled late in the end zone by an opponent, which snapped his leg in half, making for an awkward and painful celebration.

That moment led Oude-Reimerink to stray away from physicalcontact sports primarily focused on physical contact, and try other sports; sports that would leave top Varsity Blues athletes envious of his talents. Throughout his time at UTM, Oude-Reimerink has an extensive list of intramural and extramural teams under his belt. He has excelled in flag football, basketball, and volleyball. He’s a four-time squash champion, floor hockey

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Oude-Reimerink has participated in an extensive list of intramural and extramural teams at UTM. specialist, and an indoor soccer champion. If you haven’t noticed his face, then you probably haven’t been to the gym enough. With all his experience at UTM, whether in

the gym or the classroom, he has a strong message to share with students looking to further themselves here at the place he’s happy to have called home.

The primary goal for Oude-Reimerink coming into university was to try as many sports as possible. He wanted his love of sports to mesh with his passion for meeting new

people and creating a student network. “There’s this sense of community here that I took advantage of early on,” he says. “I have a core group of friends that I’m always playing sports with and having a good time. If I’m having a bad day, it gets better after hanging out with good people and being active.”

On top of his busy intramural and extramural schedule, he finds time to lift heavy weights. “I try to lift weights every day. If I have a sports game that day, I’ll only work out for an hour, but if I don’t have a sports game, I’ll go for a couple of hours,” he says.

“There’s this feel-good aspect that’s associated with lifting weights. For me, if I don’t go a week without lifting weights, I don’t feel good, and I have an entirely different mindset. There is a night and day difference between not lifting weights and lifting weights. Then again, there’s always motivation for looking good,” Oude-Reimerink continued with a chuckle.

Eagle continued on page 16

An exciting time for co-ed volleyball Students who are passionate about volleyball are raving about the co-ed competition here at UTM

JESSICA CABRAL ASSOCIATE FEATURES EDITOR Last Thursday, the UTM Campus Rec Coed Intramural volleyball teams bumped, set, and spiked their way closer to earning a spot in the division playoffs. The intramural season is currently underway, and players with skillsets ranging from beginners to veterans come out to hit the courts. But what motivates players to participate in co-ed winter volleyball intramurals?

The answer was unanimous—a love for the game and an enthusiasm to build friendships.

Bryan Calucag, league commissioner for campus rec volleyball and fifth-year double major in psychology and anthropology, explains that during the regular season, each team plays two sets. The gym is divided into three courts, allowing six teams to play in the first hour from 5-6 p.m. on Thursday nights and another six teams to play for the second hour. If a team wins two sets, the win translates to six points, and if they win no sets, then they receive two points. At the

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The comradery among the co-ed volleyball players is evident. end of the season, campus rec awards the winning team t-shirts, and the players get a photo with their trophy.

For Calucag, volleyball has always been a significant part of his life.

Currently, he works for the Ontario Volleyball Association, where he is an official for beach volleyball and refs Ontario league games. Calucag brings his passion for the sport and his competitive spirit to the UTM

courts as well. “[The OVA] is serious competition, and I bring that into here. What I’ve done this year is I’ve contacted both of the school teams, men’s and women’s, to get as many players out to make their own teams and increase competition in the league,” Calucag explains.

Teammates and division two champions for the past two seasons,

Tajea Meredith and Tara Varela, agree that the best part about co-ed volleyball is the connection that playing on a team generates for its members.

“I love volleyball, and it’s fun just to play with the people I’ve grown to know a lot better,” says second-year forensic anthropology student, Meredith. “It’s good competition. It really pushes you to work hard, but it’s not professional volleyball, so the pres-

sures of being perfect all the time isn’t there.”

For Varela, a second-year double major in criminology and PWC, since winter volleyball is played indoors, it’s a lot different than beach volleyball.

“It’s more fun to play with six people. What motivates us is that it’s fun to play with your friends and to hit a really good ball,” says Varela.

Both women have previous experience playing volleyball with their high school or rep teams. They explain that their team, Spikers, typically practices whenever everyone’s schedules align and before a big game.

Luckily, Varela and Meredith don’t allow their athletics to interfere with their academics.

“For me, I think I don’t even have to balance it because it’s a part of your schedule. It’s a good stress reliever, it’s good for workouts, and it’s good to spend time with your friends. It’s not like you make time for this, it’s just part of your day,” Varela says.

Co-ed continued on page 16

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Dominating the RAWC Eagle continued from page 15 In high school, he knew of all the activities going on year-round, which initiated his competitive spirit and realization that he could network while having fun and live a healthy, active lifestyle.

Oude-Reimerink has a couple of best friends that drive him to be the best athlete he can be. You can see him hanging out with Varsity Blues football players like Nick Hallet and leaders of the UTM basketball team like Alessandro Tanzi. “I like people watching me, it’s what drives me to do well. I try not to carry that over to an ego aspect, but I do enjoy the feeling of a win. I feel like it can be seen as a bad habit, in a sense, but I compare myself to a lot of people, which at the end of the day motivates me to do well,” he says.

Learning what Oude-Reimerink does outside the gym and in the classroom, you wonder if he’s obsessed with work. He’s been part of the Undergraduate Commerce Society for the past two years, and has taken on the role as VP external.

“With marks, it’s the fear of being below the average, whereas sports are all about winning,” he says.

“With sports, I’ve always done well trying to beat the guy beside me, but when it comes to grades, I’m in this ongoing internal fight against myself. It’s about overcoming this guilt feeling and not letting people down.”

“I like to organize my schedule in such a way where I can make the most efficient use of my time,” he

adds. “It’s important to surround yourself with people who are doing the same things as you. Individuals who are doing great things in your field of study, and especially people who are doing better, are the people I want to surround myself around because they motivate me to do better.”

Next year, Oude-Reimerink is looking to get himself into finance sector. The five-year-plan is ambitious; he’s interested in private equity and analyzing data for significant acquisitions, eventually owning a company. When asked how he was going to accomplish this, he claimed that a couple of leadership qualities are going to be important factors to remember and employ.

“Adaptability and building up communication methods are important to me. Everyone you meet you can’t treat like everyone else. There are no two people you can handle the same way and get the same result.

It’s being able to adapt to certain situations and then seeing which strategy is most effective in dealing with that person.”

If you’re a student looking for different strategies for success at UTM—especially if you’re a firstyear—Oude-Reimerink would love to give back to the community and share the insights he’s learned along the way. “About 95 percent of the people you meet here are willing to share their knowledge and help you out. It’s all about having the confidence to go up and ask questions,” he says, humbled and appreciative for his four years as an Eagle.

Love for volleyball heightens competition

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A love for volleyball and enthusiasm for building friendships drive these athletes.

Co-ed continued from page 15 Other players recommend having good time management skills in order to balance commitments. Omran Sharifi, a fourth-year majoring in economics and CCIT, advises his fellow athletes to utilize their off-days to finish school work and to make sure they allocate time to train as well. Sharifi plays on both an intramural team and the UTM men’s D-league volleyball team.

His motivation stems from his environment and his teammates.

He believes that the best part about playing is the competition among

players.

“We all try to be on different teams and try to be as competitive as possible. Trash-talking is also a little bit of fun too,” Sharifi laughs.

“I bring a bunch of my friends who don’t play volleyball. They’re amateurs, but they’re getting better at it every day.”

Joel Mcleod, a first-year in social science, shares the same mindset as his colleagues. His love for the game motivated him to join intramurals, and he credits social media for helping bring his team together.

“It’s a lot of hard work. You just have to have time scheduled for

[academics and athletics]. Focus on both elements, focus on your health, focus on the enjoyment of playing the game, and focus on the part that’s going to catapult you into society,” Mcleod says.

Teams are categorized into divisions to ensure players face off against people with a similar skillset. Although players range in ability, the league places the top six teams into division one and the next six into division two.

“Intramural co-ed volleyball changed my experience at UTM,” says Varela. “You just create so many connections.”