Volume 44 issue 11

Posters removed at UTM

Read up on your dank memes

Let’s take a look at Twelfth Night

About the Flint Water Crisis

Read the side of the box

News, page 2

Opinion, page 5

Arts, page 7

Features, page 11

Sports, page 15

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11.20.2017

White nationalist posters found at UTM The posters by Students for Western Civilization advocates for the preservation of “European values” ALICIA BOATTO NEWS EDITOR

Posters from a group called “Students for Western Civilization” were put up across the University of Toronto Mississauga last week, advocating for the preservation of “European values”.

The posters had been promptly taken down, from the UTM campus after they were found on Monday, November 13th.

The posters depicted animated white males standing against various backdrops of Toronto and various statues of European soldiers. The posters were captioned with phrases such as “Europa forever,” “Europe Eternal,” and “For today and Perpetuity.”

According to SWC’s site, the group is based out of Toronto and claims to be made up of students and alumni from Toronto universities. It advocates that Canadian universities “are corrupt” and “have become subverted by an overwhelming leftist bias.”

The group also believes that universities perpetuate “an extreme antagonism and hostility towards white people.”

“We are aware that many, if not

STUDENTSFORWESTERNCIVILISATION.COM/PHOTO

The posters were promptly taken down on November 13th. most, if not the vast majority of European-Canadians support maintaining these symbols, but are afraid to speak up due to an intellectual climate wherein assertions of “white” or European identity are heavily policed and oppressed, and that those who dare to object face great social, finan-

cial, and even legal risk in doing so,” the group’s site states.

“This is why European-Canadians require formal institutions and representatives to speak on our behalf.

Students For Western Civilisation aspires to fulfill that need by continuing to advocate for the cultural and

political interests of European-Canadians and European Civilisation wherever it exists,” it adds.

As stated on SWC’s Facebook page, the posters are part of the group’s 2017 poster campaign, with one image featuring the word “Enlist.”

Their recent campaign states that

“Students for Western Civilisation’s latest poster campaign is a protest against recent threats—some of them realized—to remove or tear down a number of symbols of European-Canadian history, culture and identity.”

The post refers to recent debates over the removal and renaming of statues and buildings that were named after controversial Canadian figures, such as renaming schools named after Canada’s first prime minister, John A. MacDonald.

“We see these attacks as among the first of many in what will become an ongoing process of ethnocide against European-Canadian culture. Ethnocide is defined as ‘the deliberate destruction of the culture of a people,’” a post on their website reads.

“In each case, the perpetrators provide their rationales, usually by citing notions of ‘diversity,’ ‘inclusion,’ or the idea that the land does not, or did not always, belong to European-Canadians. But we feel no obligation to engage with the arguments of those who aspire to destroy us, because our destruction is not debatable,” the post continues.

Posters continued on page 3

Ulrich Krull installed as UTM’s principal Krull received the robes of the principal after taking the Oath of Office during last week’s ceremony ALICIA BOATTO NEWS EDITOR

Professor Ulrich Krull was officially installed UTM’s ninth principal in a ceremony on November 16th after taking the oath of office.

Krull was led into the room by a bagpipe procession and other highranking University officials such as UTM’s vice-president academic and dean Amrita Daniere and U of T’s president Meric Gertler.

Gertler presented opening remarks regarding the history of the Mississauga campus and its growth over the last fifty years.

“UTM has grown from a small college within the faculty of Arts and Science to a multi-faculty campus that is larger than many universities in Canada. It is now a truly academic hub of the Western GTA. A crucial engine of economic and social prosperity in the region. And a vital component of the U of T unique tricampus system,” Gertler said.

“Ulrich Krull brings to the role a long history of leadership in this vibrant academic community and an exciting vision for its future. He ex-

OLIVIA ADAMCZYK/THE MEDIUM

Fakhry and Banerjee replaced Krull’s academic regalia with the robe of the principal. emplifies UTM’s commitment to excellence in teaching and research and he’s an outstanding advocate and participant in its civic partnerships for which it’s so well known,” he added.

Gertler then administered the oath of office to Krull after which UTMSU’s president Salma Fakhry and the

president of the UTM Association of Graduate students Arjan Banerjee, replaced Krull’s academic regalia with the robe of the principal.

Professor Andrea Sass-Kortsak remarked that “UTM fuels economic and social prosperity in the surrounding community and well be-

yond. It is also an important source of innovation and diversity and strength in our tri-campus system. In the past decade alone, change has been key to our tri-campus growth.” Sass-Kortsak also remarked on the recent growth of the Mississauga campus, in terms of new departments as well as ongo-

ing capital projects.

“I’m sure that I speak for all the faculty, librarians and staff, when I say that we are happily anticipating the new directions in which you will take this campus over the next few years,” said Daniere, addressing Krull.

Following the greetings from the guest speakers, Krull presented a speech about the future of the campus and UTM’s role within the City of Mississauga, as well as establishing a global presence.

“We are celebrating ourselves, we are celebrating a community, this is something we do because in a sense we are celebrating what we are and who we are,” he said, “It is a significant impact that this campus has made, that the faculty and staff and students have made together.”

Krull stated that he approaches the future through priorities outlined by president Gertler’s vision for U of T, specifically referencing the reinvestment in undergraduate education, establishing relationships within the local community, and creating a global sense of impact.

Krull continued on page 4

11.20.2017 THE MEDIUM NEWS

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Posters “antithetical” to U of T values

November 9th, 2017 Police Assistance A student was experiencing a medical emergency. The student was later transported to a local hospital for further assistance.

November 10th, 2017 Theft Personal property was stolen from an unlocked locker at the RAWC. November 11th, 2017 Suspicious Person A suspicious person was reported in residence area. The male left the area prior to Campus Police arrival.

November 13, 2017 Assault A student reported a minor assault.

No injuries and no suspects.

November 14, 2017 Mischief Unauthorized posters were posted in various location on campus. The posters were removed.

November 14, 2017 Ambulance Assistance A student sustained an injury while

playing sports. He was transported a hospital for further assessment.

November 10th, 2017 Suspicious Person Two non-community members were on campus asking for money and handing out pamphlets. They left before officers could speak with them.

MESHA GHAYUR/THE MEDIUM

Similar instances have occurred at the St. George campus.

November 10th, 2017 Trespass to Property A male was engaging in prohibited activity in the pub and was subsequently asked to leave and trespassed from the establishment.

November 11th, 2017 Police Assistance A student was experiencing a medical emergency. They were transported to a hospital via ambulance.

November 13, 2017 Mischief UTM property was damaged as a result of mischief. No suspects at the time.

November 14, 2017 Motor Vehicle Collision A vehicle collision occurred in a parking lot. No injuries.

Posters continued from page 2 SWC outlines three main goals on their website: promoting Western Civilizations, advancing the “interests of European peoples,” and to discuss ethnic and cultural politics in an open forum.

UTM’s principal Ulrich Krull responded in an email to The Medium saying, that all posters have been removed and an investigation has been launched by Campus Police and that Peel Regional Police have been informed.

“As a general rule, posters that do not comply with procedures regarding postering on campus are removed by caretaking and grounds staff,” Krull stated. “Repugnant messages like this are part of campaigns around North America that are antithetical to the University’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, which are among our core values.”

“Actions in response to this incident may appear low key. While there will be work behind the scenes, our response will be measured so that we

do not give this group the publicity they crave,” Krull concluded.

In March of 2017 similar instances occurred on the UTM campus with swastikas being drawn inside the Davis elevators, which had been removed by campus police. A similar incident took place at the St. George campus on November 2nd, where “white supremacist” posters were found.

A representative from the SWC group did not respond to The Medium’s request for comment, as of press time.

AGM to vote on greivance bylaw New bylaw is meant to streamline the complaint procedure

These reports are those that have been released to The Medium from Campus Police 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 gets electric vehicles’ investment KAYVAN AFLAKI The University of Toronto Electric Vehicle Research Centre (UTHEV) has obtained a large investment to support collaborative research into next-generation electric vehicle technologies with its founding partner, Havelaar Canada, as well as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

The investment will finance research and development for two projects. The research projects will be led by both Havelaar and professor Oliver Trescases and professor Peter Lehn. Trescases and Lehn have also received financial support for their research from U of T’s Major Research Project Management fund.

Tony Han, alumnus of U of T’s Department of Engineering and the CEO of Havelaar Canada, initially partnered with the U of T to launch its Havelaar Electric Vehicle Research Centre in 2016. Over four years, UTEV has received $9.1 million dollars through awards from the NSERC and industry contributions from Havelaar Canada.

Among some of the products generated by Havelaar Canada that have been designed and tested in Canada are the Havelaar Bison E-pick-up, which was both designed and tested at U of T, and is meant to be both practical and a sign of strong commitment to the environment.

The research projects will be led by both Havelaar and Professor Oliver Trescases and Professor Peter Lehn According to a U of T news release on November 10th, UTHEV is currently expanding its research laboratory with a research centre in the faculty’s Engineering Annex building.

This dedicated space will include power test infrastructure for battery management and prototype development for a number of technology ventures. The facility is expected to open in 2018.

OLIVIA ADAMCZYK/THE MEDIUM

UTMSU’s AGM will take place on Thursday, November 23rd.

ALICIA BOATTO NEWS EDITOR UTMSU’s Annual General Meeting will discuss proposed bylaw changes including the addition of Bylaw XVII pertaining to grievances, along with the addition and removal of several committees.

Bylaw XVII Grievances states that the UTMSU will be implementing procedures for members of the union and the community to voice concerns regarding a violation of the UTMSU bylaws.

“Any alleged violation of the administration or procedures of the Union’s Bylaws by the Directors may be dealt with by filing of a Grievance by any member of the Corporation.

Any such Grievance shall be put in writing and addressed to the Grievance Officer, who shall be the President of the Union,” reads the bylaw.

It explains that a grievance needs to be stated to the Grievance Officer within 30 days of a violation occurring, after which a written response from the person in contention is required within 14 days of the grievance. The officer is then required to

meet with both parties in order to establish a “mutually satisfactory resolution of the matter.”

UTMSU’s bylaw amendments state, “Depending on the manner of grievance, the Officer will pass the complaint onto one of three (3) committees to discuss the matter. i. Any complaints on staff of the union is sent to the Executive Committee ii.

Any complaints against an Executive are sent to the Executive Review Committee of the Board. iii. Any complaints against a Division I, II, III, IV or V would be sent to the Executive Committee. iv. Any complaints regarding any personnel of the Union that violates the UTMSU’s Operational Policy on Harassment, Sexual Harassment and Discrimination shall follow the procedures within said policy.”

Any resolution will be decided upon through a majority vote of the committee members present at the AGM. UTMSU and its members will also vote on amendments concerning the addition of a Campaigns and Advocacy Commission.

The commission would be re-

sponsible for conveying to the union members issues regarding “external bodies” such as outside student organizations and the university.

“The purpose of this Commission is to take an intersectional approach however different Commissioners can focus on different aspects depending on the priorities of the Union,” the bylaw reads.

Slight changes to the procedure for removing executive positions were also put forward. Bylaw X section 4, Removal of Office, has taken away the procedure for removing the vice-president of part-time affairs.

Formally, the removal required no less than a five per cent vote from the part-time student membership in order for the board of directors to hold a vote. The alteration of this by-law is due to the VP position being removed in 2015.

Besides the bylaw amendments, UTMSU’s AGM will review the unions financial statements, as well as the appointment of auditors for the 2017/2018 year.

The AGM will take place this Thursday at 6 p.m. in the Council Chambers in the Davis Building.

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«NEWS

THE MEDIUM 11.20.2017

UTM’s Sexual Violence Centre opens

»WHERE DO YOU SEE

YOURSELF IN 10 YEARS?

The centre is meant to provide support for assault survivors

Andrea Aghasi 2nd year, Forensics

Naiem Akhtar 1st year, Management

“Hopefully a police officer in forensics.”

“Going to grad school, become a physician, or married with one kid.”

Brian Tidomo 4th year, Finance

Diana Petcheva 2nd year, Comp. Sci.

“Working at a bank.”

“I want to have a family with two kids, maybe a cat.”

KASSANDRA HANGDAAN/THE MEDIUM

The HCC hosted an open house for the grand opening of the Sexual Violence and Support Centre.

ALI TAHA

The Health and Counselling Centre held an open house for the grand opening of the University of Toronto Mississauga’s Sexual Violence Prevention and Support Centre last Monday, November 6th.

The centre has two main mandates: providing support to individuals who have experienced any form of sexual violence and educating the community on prevention to sexual violence.

The centre’s main coordinator, Paula Lam, described sexual violence as a “really broad term that is used to refer to any form of physical or psychological harm that is caused by targeting someone’s sexuality, gender identity, or gender expression.” Such examples of sexual violence include sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking, indecent exposure, and intimate partner violence.

“People can come and see me and we can discuss different options, whether they want to report, we can go through the options of reporting to police, or reporting to the university,” Lam stated, “We can also look at coping strategies, self-care

strategies, helping identify needs and exploring options, really taking that survivor-centric approach to the work in figuring out what it is that they’re looking for and how can we support them.”

The open house featured guest speaker, Samra Zafar, who arrived in Canada as a child bride in a forced marriage. Zafar said that through the support she found through weekly therapy sessions at UTM, she was able to overcome these obstacles.

“The biggest barrier to getting out or healing from any kind of trauma, or any kind of abuse, is fear of loneliness, lack of support, shame, and stigma. That human connection, and support without judgement, is priceless. You cannot put a price tag on it, because that is what people need to heal and succeed from any kind of trauma,” she said, “It breaks my heart that there are thousands of lives in Canada, even locally here, that are impacted. People that are held back from reaching their full potential because they are shamed into believing that is somehow their fault. They feel lonely because they can’t reach out for that support or connection.”

Zafar ended her speech by stressing the importance of support.

“What we exist in this world for is human connection. If we can help each other in some way, even the smallest action on your part can have a profound impact on someone else’s life. It is essential to create that safe space and tell people that they don’t deserve to be treated with anything less than a 100% love and respect for any reason, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or anything else. We all deserve that respect and love.”

UTM’s principal Ulrich Krull also spoke during the event about the idea of respect and being able to prevent sexual violence through education.

“This is really the time to learn how to socialize and learn what respect is all about. It is not something that is taught, but is something that is assimilated over time. Sexual violence is happening right now,” Krull said, “It’s happening to our students, to our faculty and staff in some cases right on this campus, right now. This idea with having prevention is something that I believe is essential.”

The Sexual Violence Prevention and Support Centre is located in the William G. Davis building, room 3094G.

College strike ends Liberals legislated faculty back to work

Krull reflects on UTM’s future CAREY HAO/THE MEDIUM

Bill 178 legislates college faculty back to work this week.

ALICIA BOATTO NEWS EDITOR

OLIVIA ADAMCZYK/THE MEDIUM

Principal Krull emphasized the importance of UTM’s relationship with the city of Mississauga.

Krull continued from page 2 Krull stressed the importance of improving student communication and the creation of a new procedure that focuses on developing student communication throughout their programs.

“What you’ll see over the next year or two is the implementation of new protocols that will allow us to focus on some of the skill sets that sometimes are integrated into our programs but sometimes are not,” he said.

Krull also emphasized the impor-

tance of establishing relationships and working in conjunction with the city of Mississauga and other municipalities.

“The relationship we have as UTM with the city of Mississauga and the region of peel is something that is rather special,” Krull stated, “They understand the significance that our graduates will have in driving forward the social-based and economic base of the city, and we take a responsibility to serve the city in that sense.

This is not just done by holding our hands out asking for money. We take

full responsibility for fulfilling that particular mandate.”

Krull questioned UTM’s responsibility within the tri-campus system and how UTM can pay homage to U of T’s overall vision and reputation, primarily through research and innovation. “You need to understand that the celebration we have today is a celebration of each and every one of you and the contributions you make in your own areas, because it’s a collective, that really creates the future.”

The ceremony concluded with a reception in the Innovation Complex.

The provincial wide college strike came to an end on Sunday, November 19th after the Ontario Liberal government passed Bill 178, “The Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology Labour Dispute Resolution Act,” to legislate college faculty back to work by Monday, November 20th.

The legislation serves to end the five-week strike by college faculty after negotiations between the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and the College Employer Council reached an impasse.

“The Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology Labour Dispute Resolution Act, 2017 governs the labour dispute between the College Employer Council [CEC] and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) college academic unit,” reads the press release by the Ministry of Labour. “All outstanding issues are to be referred to binding

mediation-arbitration. The College Employer Council and OPSEU have five days to agree on a mediator-arbitrator, or one will be appointed by the Ministry of Labour.”

Approximately 500,000 students were affected by the strike and will be expected to return to classes on Tuesday, November 21st. UTM students in joint programs with Sheridan have been impacted by the strike and will be returning to classes this week, as well.

“The government has also instructed colleges to establish a dedicated fund with net savings from the strike. The fund will be used to support students who have experienced financial hardships as a result of the strike, and its parameters will be developed in direct consultation with students,” the press release continued.

Sheridan has extended the fall semester to December 22 in order to accommodate for the loss of class time.

11.20.2017

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EDITORS

Dank memes and political schemes

Editor-in-Chief Mahmoud Sarouji editor@themedium.ca

With fake news, many internet users will have to start fact-checking their memes

MASTHEAD

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To contribute, email editor@themedium.ca

Memes are the new political cartoon—every political issue has a meme. Some memes are funny because the ideas perpetuated are ridiculous, but these memes are not meant to create any kind of impact.

Other memes may focus on important issues with an ironic or sarcastic perspective and can shine light on a modern issue. With the rise of these memes, it is essential for everyone to understand meme culture to avoid the perpetuation of memes as fake news.

At the height of the early 2000s, memes were the Philosoraptor that asked the deep, existential questions of the century, like “If the opposite of pro is con, is the opposite of progress, congress?” Memes were the troll face with the iconic “Problem?” slogan used to identify oneself as a troll.

Memes were Doge saying “wow” because why not?

But today, memes are no longer just cartoon characters.

In 2017, every social media platform is plastered with memes. Although memes are still born overnight, shared globally, and buried to never be spoken about again, the way they impact individuals has changed.

“I’m sure I contribute to the younger demographics’ awareness of world events, particularly politics

and disasters. I’m not going to try to argue that I’m doing the world a service, but I’m sure there’s some level of meaningful impact, albeit a small one,” said a regular reddit poster on r/ politicalmemes, r/dankmemes, and r/ dankchristianmemes, in an email.

Memes are now political and we, as citizens, have a responsibility to educate ourselves on what we see on the internet—meme or not.

Many long-term meme-posters believe that memes are meant to be ridiculous, light-hearted, and unimportant.

“If you’re taking memes at any value I think you’re too dumb to be on the internet,” Buttchocolate, a regular meme poster on Reddit and Facebook, said in an email.

“I don’t take memes seriously because I only internalize their format...

I don’t bother fact checking them since I’ve forgotten the content by the time I scroll down,” carmenmistry, a regular meme poster on Twitter and Facebook, said in an email.

But as memes get mixed up with other content on social media, sometimes people don’t realize that what they’re seeing is a meme.

In early October 2017, a meme started circulating the internet with an image of Republican politician, Michele Bachmann, on what appears

to be Fox News’ Fox and Friends and a text overlay.

“I’m not blaming the victims of the Las Vegas incident,” the meme quotes, “but if they were observing the Sabbath like Marcus and me at home reading their bibles, they would have been safe. I’m not blaming the victims, but it is their fault.”

The internet exploded.

Internet users harped on Bachmann and used the incident to discredit the Republican party and Trump.

However, Bachmann hadn’t recently been on Fox and Friends. In fact, she never said any of those things.

Memes are funny for two reasons: they are a new funny format, or they perpetuate an old format, like how Buttchocolate describes it: “beat the dead horse more and more and more.”

When people see a meme with a familiar layout, they react to it as though it is a continuation of the old meme.

A common meme is a political figure with a text overlay of their controversial or ridiculous quotes. The quotes are either obviously fake or assumed to be true. Naturally, when individuals saw the meme of Bachmann, they took the quote at face value because it wasn’t over-the-top.

Fact-checking site Snopes marked

this incident as false, but as more political memes begin to surface, individuals will have to make more conscious decisions about what they should believe on the internet.

“I see memes becoming the primary online language to communicate,” carmenmistry says, “With people moving to try and add more memey words and phrases to English.”

There now exist a select amount of memes that are fake news. When individuals believe those memes, it doesn’t have anything to do with how smart they are. The best of us can misjudge what’s real and what’s not.

Memes travel faster and are more widespread than the traditional form of news. They appear out of nowhere and rely on shock value.

Memes are now weapons.

As individuals, we need to stay educated about the issues that are important to us to protect ourselves and to protect our minds.

FLORENCE CAO WEBMASTER

CORRECTION NOTICE The Nov. 13 articles “CUPE bargaining with U of T” have been corrected.

Can art really be separated from the artist?

Ultimately, analysis of the product cannot be fully detached from the process It’s a topic that has been covered heavily by news outlets these past few years. Sexual assault—whether it’s happening at high school or on college campuses—is becoming a wholesale issue. Recently, the profile of this issue has been raised in the art world.

Prominent entertainers like Louis C.K., Harvey Weinstein, and Kevin Spacey, to name a few, have had allegations of sexual assaults raised against them.

Despite the misdeeds of these artists, there is a question of whether their art should be evaluated differently given their personal misconducts. Some say yes. Those who say no state that the merit of their performances and works should be evaluated independently from their personal lives. But, can the art really be separated from the artist? Ultimately, I think not—the analysis of the product cannot be detached from the process.

First, I think it’s important to have a rough understanding of the mindset of those who perpetrate sexual assaults. When these men in Hollywood acted in such abhorrent ways, the questions that pop into my mind

are, “Do these men not have mothers?

What about little sisters?” It confuses me as to why certain men, particularly men in positions of authority, feel entitled to act this way towards women, given that they would most likely vehemently object to the same treatment displayed towards their female family members. There’s an underlying hypocrisy here.

The answer is not an easy one, but perhaps it would be helpful to look into the psychology of rapists. Recently, in one of my political science classes, a professor mentioned that he read an article detailing the psychology of rapists. In this article, “What Experts Know About Men Who Rape,” by The New York Times author Heather Murphy, there is a claim that rapists tend to deny self-responsibility for the act of sexual assault—and this is most likely a reflex stemming from human nature.

One of the doctors in the article, Sherry Hamby, who is also the editor of the Journal of Psychology of Violence, explained that “studies of incarcerated rapists—even men who admit to keeping sex slaves in conflict zones—find a similar disconnect. It’s

not that they deny sexual assault happens; it’s just that the crime is committed by the monster over there.”

Hamby emphasized that in denying the assault, rapists actually demonstrate a feature of humanity of trying to preserve a positive self-perception.

“No one thinks they are a bad guy,” she said.

Why should artworks be immune to their creation? In most cases, the judgment we make on a product is never wholly detached from the process. We make these biased judgments all the time. In the 1990s, protestors boycotted sportswear stores like Nike, when it was revealed that the company employed child labor. In terms of dietary habits, some vegetarians don’t eat meat based on ethical reasons. So, just in the same way that our dietary and consumer evaluations change after we understand how our food or clothing are made, our artistic evaluations should change, as well, after factoring in how a piece of art work was created.

One could argue that maybe an artist’s misdeeds didn’t affect the creation of his or her artworks. Thus, it would be unfair to judge the art in

conjunction with the artist’s personal life, since ones’ personal life was not part of the artwork’s creation, anyways. Maybe on this understanding, the artwork should remain detached from its creator.

It’s hard to ignore that, sometimes, the process of creating artworks is in fact influenced by the artist’s misdeeds directly. For example, in Last Tango in Paris, actress Maria Schneider was not informed of the infamous rape scene. While filming for this scene, Schneider actually thought that what was being done to her was real. She admitted that the tears she had shed during the movie’s scene were real—they weren’t fake, and she wasn’t acting anymore.

In cases like Last Tango in Paris, it’s hard to view the work solely on artistic terms—part of the movie’s creation was brought about through immoral means. As a result, it’s not longer just a movie—it becomes video footage documenting a crime, and our evaluations of this particular scene in the movie should reflect that.

KASSANDRA HANGDAAN A&E EDITOR

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«OPINION

THE MEDIUM 11.20.2017

What does Peterson have against humanities?

Jordan Peterson needs to criticize his own academic discipline before attacking other studies on campus I’m as tired of seeing Jordan Peterson’s name plastered everywhere as much as the next person According to the U of T website, Peterson is a professor in the Department of Psychology. Depending on what school you go to, psychology can be in the arts department, the science department, or if you go to U of T, in arts and in science. The dichotomy that Peterson is trying to create between the seemingly rational and logical disciplines of “hard” sciences against the “soft” sciences and humanities is utterly ridiculous. Not only is it a waste of time, it also ignores the vast body of interdisciplinary research and literature conducted between different disciplines. These divisions of science and arts are arbitrary. This arbitrary division fits under the framework called social constructionism, which is a postmodern framework that looks at how meanings are constructed through interactions. It is a postmodern framework, the same one that Peterson critcizes.

Each discipline in the arts, and any discipline in academia, really, contain their own relevant frameworks from which the theories within the discipline are examined. These frameworks act as a lens—they make whatever is being studied clearer and understood through a different per-

spective.

You may have heard of some of these frameworks through the courtesy of Dr. Jordan Peterson, such as Marxism, feminism, and postmodernism. These words carry a large legacy of rigorous academic study and have stood up to scrutiny throughout times—these are not some random buzzwords invented by a professor making YouTube videos in his spare time. People have devoted and continue to devote their lives in these disciplines, many of them making use of the aforementioned frameworks.

So why do Peterson’s audience, who supposedly stand for rationality, dismiss decades of research in favour of a short YouTube video?

The biggest irony in this debacle is that Peterson’s own area of expertise, psychology, is rooted in philosophy, a humanities discipline, as are most physical and social sciences. Even mathematics and computer science majors are required to learn the philosophy of logic during their academic career.

Last week, The Globe and Mail mentioned the complaint that the women and gender studies department brought forward, which stated how Peterson is going to build a website that lists which courses and faculty at U of T are “postmodern”—a

word that Peterson uses interchangeably with “social justice warriors” and the like. This explicitly targets the humanities discipline, which often uses the postmodern framework in their critiques, along with the social sciences that use Marxist theory, and feminist theory which is heavily utilized in women and gender studies. These theories are not in isolation and they are not trendy words to be thrown around—these are lenses to examine phenomenon.

Would we ever throw around the theory of quantum mechanics and call it bogus in the same manner as we do to these other disciplines? I don’t think so. Why are they afforded the respect of being “legitimate” fields, whereas Peterson gets away with discrediting and insulting disciplines and frameworks with decades of rigorous research behind them? Physical sciences are seen as more “rational” and “logical” due to their heavy use of statistics and other mathematical formulae, leading to seemingly “concrete” answers, even though this is not always the case. It is also a maledominated discipline, and everyone knows it’s easier to pick on “soft” female-dominated disciplines, such as women and gender studies. Society enables this by using the rhetoric of “hard” and “soft”, in addition to what

legitimizes scientific rigour.

However, if the question is about scientific rigour, then maybe Peterson should start with his own discipline: psychology. One of the main principles of the scientific method is reproducibility, or the ability to replicate an experiment or study to independently arrive to the same results. This principle is meant to provide validity to the research.

However, the Reproducibility Project, dedicated solely to investigating the validity of research in the discipline of psychology, concluded only 36 per cent of studies in the sample were replicated successfully, albeit with statistical significance. However, the result that only 36 per cent of the studies were replicable shows the bias that even seemingly “rigorous” academic disciplines can hold. If psychology has a problem with holding up one of the main principles of the scientific method, then why won’t Peterson focus a significant portion of his rants to that? This would make more sense considering he teaches psychology.

Scientists often manipulate statistics, and even make them up, in order to get the results they want, as exemplified in 2015 LaCour and Green study on gay marriage, who were graduate students in political science.

This leads us to the question—is it really scientific rigour that Peterson is worried about? If so, wouldn’t he devote his focus equally to disciplines other than humanities?

He despises the humanities so much that he makes nearly $50,000 per month in crowdfunding, providing rants to his YouTube following, according to the Toronto Star. He is also planning to start his own online university that teaches the humanities—a funny coincidence. How can one devote that much time and money into ranting against the humanities while simultaneously wanting to teach the humanities?

If Peterson can’t make his mark in the field of psychology, it’s alright, because he definitely knows how to make money and garner fame through other means.

Most people would call this successful marketing, and I’m sure a professor with an expertise in psychology knows how to tap into their audience to get exactly what he wants, even if it means making up about disciplines he has no background in.

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A second perspective of Twelfth Night Theatre Erindale’s Twelfth Night alternates between two casts in the performance of the play SHARMEEN ABEDI STAFF WRITER

Theatre Erindale presented a very captivating and witty spectacle of William Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night. The play follows shipwrecked Viola’s (Esther McLachlin) arrival at Illyria, where she disguises herself as a boy named Cesario to serve Duke Orsino (Mussie Berhane). What follows then are cases of mistaken identity which result in some characters getting their happy endings while others are left in misery.

The performance was incredibly spectacular, especially considering the small size of the room and the limited number of props used. Similarly, in Shakespeare’s time, the stage was physically small and so the actors compensated for this constraint through the use of props.

The opening scene showed Orsino sprawled on the table, pining for Olivia’s (Gillian Lonergan) love. In general, the script stayed true to the Shakespearean text. However, some lines used in this performance incor-

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Theatre Erindale’s production of Twelfth Night included minimal props. porated modern colloquialism.

For example, in the opening scene when Feste the Dool (Aria Sharma) inhales Orsino’s drug. Orsino turns to him and exclaims, “Yo!” Theatre Erindale’s production of this play emphasized a gendered interpretation of the Shakespearean text. Toby Belch (Kyra Keith), Antonia (Nicole Bonder), and Feste the

Fool are all characters that are men in the script. However, the cast that plays them are women. There is a clear gender reversal here.

The character Antonio’s change to Antonia is especially interesting because in the play, Antonio seems to be deeply in love with Sebastian. However, there is no room for homosexual feelings in the world that Antonio

lives in. By making Antonio a woman, the performance made her romantic feelings for Sebastian painfully clear, and it is made all the more obvious when Antonia is left disappointed in the end when he marries Olivia.

Similarly, portraying Toby Belch as a woman brings a different perspective to the play as she and Maria (Mo Zeighami) have a romance from the

start which culminates in their offstage wedding.

The costumes used were completely modern attire, and it worked well along with the other modern elements in the performance, such as the use of cellphones and a laptop in place of letters. In one scene Antonia gives Sebastian (Lucas Blakely) her “purse”, which in this interpretation was a credit card. I liked how similar the actors playing Sebastian and Viola looked. In the last scene when the identity crisis is finally solved, both characters were dressed exactly the same.

The most amusing performance was the pompous Malvolio (Cameron Doherty), who is Olivia’s steward. His uptight nature and self-righteousness cause other characters to trick him into dressing up in yellow stockings with cross-garters. This role was done extremely well; from the comical way that Malvolio ran, to his exaggerated facial expressions which accompanied lines like, “To be Count Malvolio!”

Second continued on page 10

Two casts, two performances, one show Cast members reveal the underlying gendered interpretation of the original Shakespearean play KASSANDRA HANGDAAN A&E EDITOR

Theatre Erindale’s latest production of Twelfth Night takes on a gendered-focus interpretation of the Shakespearean play. The cast members from the show draw from the third-year theatre and drama studies class. Cast members Yona Epstein Roth and Kyra Keith, who are also part of the third-year theatre and drama studies class, weighed in on the production’s development.

Notably, Theatre Erindale’s production of Twelfth Night includes two different casts. The two casts are titled “A CAST” and “1 CAST” for identification purposes. Each show night, these two casts alternate in the performance of the same play. Epstein Roth is part of A CAST and Keith is part of 1 CAST. Epstein Roth and Keith are counterparts: they both play the role of the drunkard Toby Belch.

Epstein Roth and Keith revealed that having two different casts were matters of practicality and artistry.

In terms of artistry, they emphasized that having two casts will

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Kyra Keith and Yona Epstein Roth both play the role of Toby Belch. draw emphasis and focus on character development.

“There are ten parts in the show and twenty-one members in our class. So, we distributed the roles practically. Also, this way we could work on the same show, but have two different interpretations. We can learn and watch from each other,” said Epstein Roth, regarding the practical nature of the casting.

“The blocking and technical interpretations were the same,” added Keith, “but the ways in which each person interprets the character is so different. You get two different, and unique, takes on one Shakespearean character.”

For the third-year TDS class, their involvement in the play will be evaluated for their coursework. Epstein Roth and Keith explained that

the play is to help expose the class to the process of a production.

“In the play, our class will get a sense of what it’s like to work in a professional production from beginning to end. The mounting of the show is not the main goal,” said Epstein Roth.

“For the third-year class, we focus on the process in which an actor goes through. So, we can learn

table work and working together with our classmates. The goal is to learn from the process of putting on a show and to work as a collective,” said Keith.

Meredith Scott, the play’s director and an affiliate of Sheridan College, took a leave of absence from her role following a teaching union strike at Sheridan College. Since this October’s reading week, the cast has had no formal director.

Keith explained that the class continued on despite Scott’s leave.

“For a week, as a class we had to work together to push the production program. We did runs and tried to get used to our lines.”

“We wrote music for the show.

Most of the music in the show, other than the transitional sounds, are original student works written by our cast members,” Keith added.

In terms of the gendered interpretation of the play, Epstein Roth and Keith explicated that in the play, gender is a fluid concept. However, gender is not the emphasis; rather, the emphasis is on love and how a person falls in love with another.

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Walking into the world of Russian film Renowned Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s style is vivid and rich in character development VICTORIA DANESI STAFF WRITER

This past Friday, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia (1983) was screened at the TIFF Bell Light Box, as part of TIFF’s series of Russian cinema.

Tarkovsky is considered the most influential post-war Soviet film director and Nostalghia does not disappoint by displaying the iconic elements of the auteur.

The history of Soviet cinema is laced with government interference, meaning that artists were restrained in what they could portray. After the 1960s, artists had more autonomy in their creativity, but they could not disparage their homeland and would still battle with censorship. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian cinema opened more themes that could be explored, while still reflecting on the country’s past.

Tarkovsky’s legacy is tied to the consistent elements utilized in his entire filmography. The use of dream sequences, long tracking shots, and tackling of philosophical themes are only a small number

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Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia screened as part of TIFF’s Russian cinema series. of elements the director is known for. In Tarkovsky’s sci-fi thriller masterpiece Stalker (1979), the director’s distinct style of switching colour is displayed with the shift between sepia tone and colour.

Tarkovsky had a difficult relationship with the Soviet Union as many of his scripts were censored by the government for indecency against the country. When he was

filming Nostalghia in Italy and the financing from a U.S.S.R. film company was revoked, he never returned home because of the constant interference of authorities.

Nostalghia is the first film Tarkovsky directed outside of the U.S.S.R. It follows writer Andrei Gorchakov (Oleg Yankovsky) in Italy collecting research on a famed Russian composer. While

quarreling with his translator Eugenia (Domiziana Giordano) he meets the local outcast Domenico (Erland Josephson) who shares his feeling of loneliness. Gorchakov quickly abandons his research and falls into a state of isolation as he longs for his family back in the U.S.S.R. and attempts to fulfill Domenico’s odd request he says will save the world.

Nostalghia is rich with religious iconography. At the beginning of the film, Eugenia enters a convent filled with frescos of the Madonna and Child. She has a lengthy discussion with an onlooker about her lack of connection to this symbol and the theme of faith is displayed throughout.

Nostalghia is daunting to watch as it lacks consistent plot and dialogue. Gorchakov quickly abandons his research project to talk with Domenico momentarily. He proceeds to sulk around the Italian village and does not communicate his feelings. His thoughts are expressed through dream sequences which are very nuanced and symbolic. The film’s underlying themes are not outwardly expressed, and it is not uncommon to watch the film twice to catch these themes.

Although the plot may not be as straightforward at times, I found myself being engrossed with the visuals.

In Nostalghia, Tarkovsky’s renowned elements are on full display, and shows the legacy of the legendary filmmaker.

Watch out for this rap group tripartite Dill The Giant, E.GG, and Steve form the Manitoba-based tripartite underground rap group 3Peat KASSANDRA HANGDAAN A&E EDITOR On the group’s conception, Texeira stated that each member of the group had been a student of rap for as long as they can remember.

“We formed 3Peat because from an early stage, it felt very organic when we make music and rhyme together.”

One of the group’s most played tracks on SoundCloud, “Rain,” has a 90s beat that is reminiscent of Biggie Smalls’ style. Although I’ve played the track multiple times, and have even downloaded it, I have to confess that the lyrics escape my comprehension.

The song opens up with sounds of a basketball crowd, cheering for Michael Jordan in a game against the Portland Trail Blazers. Jordan scored 35 points in the first half of that game. In the background, a commentator for the game can be heard saying, “This is the greatest performance, maybe ever.” After which, the beat of the song drops. “‘Rain’ is a fun song and actually the first song we ever recorded as 3PEAT. The song is called rain because after I produced the beat and it came time to save it, I simply named it ‘Rain’ because there is a rain stick throughout the beat.

The hook is an homage to the clas-

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3Peat is an underground Canadian rap group hailing from Manitoba. sic, and one of my favourite tracks, “The Blast” by Reflection Eternal.

Coincidentally, it’s also raining in the music video for that song,” said Texeira.

The group has recently appeared during Canadian Music Week 2017.

On CMW’s website, the group was interestingly described as a “triangle offence.”

In terms of the group’s experience during CMW, Texeira noted that it has been a positive one: “Canadian Music Week was awesome.

Being able to leave Manitoba for our first out of town band experience in a city like Toronto is really an eye-opening experience. You always hear people talk about the opportunity in big cities but when you see it for yourself it’s something else.”

Another song from the group “Sentimental Mood,” had a music video released by Innervision in September 2016. Layco takes on the first verse of the song, and in the music video, the camera fol-

lows him through streets in Manitoba. Layco raps about his upbringing and his family’s struggle with financial stability, which in the song, he described as “the struggle for the pesos.” Texeira and Morgan’s verses subsequently follow.

A strong component of the music video were the jarring transitions between scenes as they were following the group in different urban settings of a city. “‘Sentimental Mood’ is directed

by Tom Elvers and Cole Dyregrov

of Innervision, a local-based media company owned and operated by some of our closest homies. That video happened very spontaneously. Only thing planned was the day. We walked around Downtown Winnipeg at 2 a.m. and just rapped, hung out and filmed it. I feel like it captured our essence as people pretty well,” said Texeira.

When asked what fans can expect from the group in the upcoming months, Texeira said that the group will be focusing on creating another record along with solo projects.

“I think the goal this year is to make the most of what we do. Seize opportunity as it’s presented,” said Texeira.

At the moment, the group has been posting their music on SoundCloud. Their most listened song is “Rain,” with over five thousand plays. Other notable tracks include “Lazy Afternoon,” “Jive,” and “Vitamin D.” Previously, 3Peat has performed during the 2017 Canadian Music week in April. The performance was held at Longboat Hall in Toronto.

On November 24, 3Peat will be performing at The Good Will Social Club in the evening. The event will involve a free cover and drinks.

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Exploring the world of pick up artistry Jennifer Lawint’s exhibit at The Art Gallery of Mississauga investigates the role of pick up artists AYESHA TAK COPY EDITOR

The Pick Up Artist is an exhibition by Jennifer Lawint, featured at the Art Gallery of Mississauga. The exhibition has an investigative nature: it delves into the world of pick up artists, or men who use manipulative psychological strategies as a means to solicit sexual favors or attract potential romantic partners. The exhibition uses video and text in order to convey its investigation.

The exhibit, albeit small, was made up of many artworks that spanned from an interview of someone who was a victim of a pick-up artist’s technique, to a YouTube clip of what pick up artistry is all about, and even footage from a 1992 talk show where a pick up artist (PUA) and a men’s rights activist (MRA) addressed an all-female audience.

The pick-up artistry movement is composed of a community of men who, according to Lawint, often use tactics of “manipulation and misogyny” in order to pick up women. After her relationship with a PUA, Lawint conducted an investigative art project going undercover in PUA forums to find out what PUA masculinity consists of, and how to challenge it.

This project ultimately became the

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Lawint’s exhibition delves into the world of pick up artists. exhibit which I was looking at.

Upon entering, I saw a screen playing a video of a woman who was talking about her experiences with PUA and MRA doxxing. This artwork was called “Vanessa” named after the woman in the video. Vanessa is an artist who spoke out against PUA mastermind Roosh V. A PUA forum singled her out and doxxed Vanessa and her mother. Doxxing is a term that describes publishing private information about a person on the internet, usually done with harmful intentions.

Vanessa spoke about waking up to a flurry of texts and abhorrent comments about her from PUAs and MRAs, mixed with questions from friends and family wondering about her safety. She described her mother also being harassed in the same manner. After Vanessa explained how a PUA forum decided to get a hold of her to harass her into silence, her mother’s first responses were “What did you do?” and “You must have done something.” This was only the first obstacle Vanessa had to face in getting the world to believe her.

After Vanessa explained to her mother the notorious world of PUA forums, her mother was baffled and understandably so. She experienced victim-blaming again when reporting this incident to the police as well.

Vanessa found herself, yet again, educating the police on things like doxxing, cyber harassment, PUAs, MRAs, pro-rape, and more. This Internet phenomena “can have an impact in real life,” according to the placard under the monitor playing the video.

The bulk of the exhibit, and the

most eye-catching, was the collage of screenshots from a pick-up artist forum where Lawint, disguised as an alpha PUA guru, gave advice to men on how to pick up women. This piece, was entitled “The Forum.”

Lawint went undercover in PUA forums under the username “Jay Lay.” Lawint’s intentions were noble—she went on this forum to make the guys rethink their actions, guide them toward genuine respect for women, and encouraged them to work towards self-improvement for the greater good instead of picking up girls, while using the PUA rhetoric.

The idea of men feeling entitled to a women’s attention and sexuality was a strong theme in this exhibit.

This idea permeates not only pickup artistry, but also the sex scandals oozing out of Hollywood’s underbelly into the limelight. With corroborated reports ranging from Louis C.K. coercing women into watching him masturbate, all the way to allegations of Weinstein being accused by women of harassment, assault, or rape, still being debated in forums and comment threads under news articles, we continue to blame the victim.

The Pick Up Artist runs at the Art Gallery of Mississauga until January 1, 2018.

Who was the voice actress behind Caillou?

Bryn McAuley voiced young Caillou for the show’s first season in the late 90s while living in Ottawa KASSANDRA HANGDAAN A&E EDITOR For those who grew up watching cartoons, Caillou is a hallmark of a Canadian child’s educational series. The main character, who is a four-yearold boy named Caillou, and his eponymous TV series has garnered backlash surrounding Caillou’s perceived obnoxious personality. The Medium spoke to Bryn McAuley, who voiced the main character Caillou for its first season which ran from 1997 to 1998, for insight into the production and reception of the show.

In terms of first getting the role, McAuley described her auditioning process. McAuley stated that she has forgotten particular details of preparing her audition due to the long period of the time that has elapsed.

“I auditioned for Caillou when I was seven-years-old. This was my very first cartoon voice audition. I had only done acting on camera prior to that. Initially, I was supposed to audition for Rosie, Caillou’s little sister. When I got to the audition, they asked me to read for Caillou as well. […] I can’t really say how I prepared, it was a long time ago and I was just a kid. When you’re a kid, you have an amazing imagination so auditions are more instinctive and fun. I know I prepare very differently and much more diligently now,” she says.

At the time of production, which was based in Montreal, McAuley lived in Ottawa. To make the recording sessions for the show, McAuley’s mother or family members had

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Bryn McAuley was the voice of Caillou for the show’s first season. to drive her to Montreal. McAuley explained that after the first season of Caillou ended, she moved to Toronto.

After this, the production replaced her due to the “unfeasible” distance.

When asked about the challenges she experienced while on set, McAuley stated that the experience has been generally positive.

“I don’t think faced many challenges outside of the travel for the job. I was one of the only kids on the show, so I mostly remember having a fantastic time and being treated really kindly by everyone on the production. I do remember being stuck in an

insane snowstorm on the drive home from Montreal one time and my mom and I had to stop at the closest motel to spend the night there. There was no heating in the room and we slept in our winter coats.”

However, the backlash on Caillou, particularly on online forums, has been saturated with caustic comments labelling him as “whiny,” “bratty,” and “entitled.”

In an article to the Huffington Post, Brittany McGee also disparaged the coddling nature of Caillou’s mother. More specifically, McGee said, “My hate isn’t even because she

raised that awful spawn [Caillou]. It’s because no matter how horrible he is, how rude he is to that poor little Rosie [Caillou’s sister] or the fact that he is four years old and still bald… she keeps her cool.”

When I asked McAuley what she thought about the online accusations branding Caillou’s character as a brat, she replied that she agrees with some of these negative perceptions. She described Caillou to be “quite a whiny character,” and said that she understood why some parents have an issue with the show.

However, when further questioned

whether Caillou is supposed to be an example for kids, McAuley said that “Caillou is not supposed to be an example for kids. I think he is just very relatable. He has a lot of the same frustrations, fears, and anxieties that the audience of the show has. Caillou is targeted at a preschool audience, so kids who are two- to six-years-old.

Caillou’s feelings are relevant to that age group.”

At the moment, McAuley is in her final year studying history and politics at Ryerson University. Commenting on the time she has spent at Ryerson University, McAuley explained that it enlarged her perspective in life to something “much larger than just the film and T.V. industry.”

“However, my studies have also made me enormously grateful for my work as a voice actor, and the respite it gives me from the intensity of my studies,” said McAuley, further expressing gratitude for her acting career and the nature of her job.

“My job is to prepare unique character voices and then walk into a studio to make people laugh. Last week I played a zany squirrel and a yogaobsessed head of lettuce. I mean what?! Who gets to do that!? I feel very lucky,” she said.

McAuley’s has most recently played the role as Mavis on Hotel Transylvania: The Series, which premiered on Teletoon this past September. Additionally, she played the role of Bea and Shirley Squirrely on Top Wing, which premiered on November 6 on Nickelodeon.

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Fashion photography 101

KASSANDRA HANGDAAN A&E EDITOR

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Fashion photographer Raad Rahman offered personal anecdotes in his workshop.

PAULA CHO STAFF WRITER

At a workshop hosted by The Commons Photo Studio last Tuesday, fashion photographer Raad Rahman talked about making his mark in the demanding industry and offered advice to aspiring photographers through personal anecdotes.

Based in Toronto, Rahman has shot clothing campaigns and editorial spreads featured by internationallyrecognized magazines, such as British Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Rahman is a completely self-taught photographer.

According to Rahman’s website, he graduated from the University of Manchester with a degree in Economics. He is also stated to have experience in investment banking.

His online portfolio features works from beauty editorials, menswear designer, and womenswear designer. He also does work on personal projects and journals on his website.

When he was nineteen years old, Rahman bought his first camera during Christmas time. During the event, Raman recalled trying to replicate

photos off Pinterest and “blasting everything on Photoshop afterwards.”

Soon, Rahman quit his job as an investment banker and started a career in professional photography.

Rahman claims that almost all professional photographers struggle with income. Presently, he is not paid for 85 per cent of the work he does, which includes shoots with freelance models whom he takes the initiative to reach out to. He says that a couple years ago, an extra bottle of water was cost-prohibitive and that he only had enough income to pay his rent.

When asked whether it’s feasible for emerging photographers to make a living off solely their photography, he replies that only if one is willing to dedicate enough time to the craft.

Rahman said, “Photographers are paid based off credibility and their repertoire of work. My best advice?

Just go shoot.”

To beginner photographers, he suggests creating a concrete pitch for a shoot and learning photography with friends. Once, he wanted to take a photo with his subject in water, so he asked one of his friends if she would pose in a spring in her prom dress. An online magazine took note

of his photos and used them for its feature spread the next month.

Another tip he suggests is to go on trips to photograph someplace new. One of his favorite locations to travel to is Montreal and the countryside of Quebec, because it pushes him outside his comfort zone of being in a studio. According to Rahman, a photographer’s work can easily “get repetitive unless something tangible changes like the background.” He also emphasizes how composition can make or break a photo. Photographers and magazine photo editors “see things whereas a normal person wouldn’t,” even if said things are unfocused in the photo.

The last piece of advice is on marketing and style. Rahman explains that everyone should have a personal style. Being inspired by and trying to “emulate photographers you look up to is great,” but Rahman emphasizes that photographers seeking to stand out must have a unique personal style.

Rahman concludes his workshop leaving us to ponder on his favourite quote regarding photography: “It has little to do with what you see and everything to do with how you see them.”

Revisionist History is a podcast by Canadian journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell. Currently in its second season, each episode analyzes a historical event or person that Gladwell thinks has been “overlooked or misunderstood.” The aim of the series is to educate. The bonus is that this aim is achieved through an entertaining well-crafted story.

The topics covered aren’t meant to be sensational: “One week, I’m going to talk about a car crash just outside of San Diego. Another week, I’m going to take you back to a secret Pentagon project in Saigon. The tagline of this show? ‘Sometimes, the past deserves a second chance,’” said Gladwell in the opening of the first episode. The importance of re-evaluating these past events, according to Gladwell, is to question whether we understood them in the first attempt.

In the first episode, Gladwell presents the political implications of the artwork Roll Call. Roll Call was painted by Elizabeth Thompson, a woman. During its public reception at the Fine Art Society, attention was given just as much to the artwork as to Thompson’s gender. Women were not welcomed in the art world at the time.

When she underwent an election to gain access into the Royal Academy of Arts, an exclusively male society by precedence, Thompson lost by two votes. The Academy later emphasized that membership to the society was to be for “men of fair moral character.”

In effect, this was an implicit disparagement of Thompson’s gender.

Following Thompson’s near election, will her trailblazing history of stepping into the old boys’ club of the Royal Academy of Arts improve

its accessibility for other women painters? According to Gladwell, not necessarily. Here, he introduces the social psychology term called ‘moral licensing.’

“The idea is that past good deeds can liberate individuals to engage in behaviors that are immoral, unethical, or otherwise problematic,” Gladwell said in explanation of the term.

Gladwell further explained that the Academy felt entitled to disregard the next generation of women painters trying to gain artistic recognition in the society. The Academy proved that they were progressive by considering Thompson, a woman, into the society.

By virtue of moral licensing, this entitled them to perpetuate gender discrimination for future membership.

Apart from the podcast itself, I should first note that Gladwell truly embodies what it means to be a natural-born storyteller. His works cover dense academic theories. In his published works, such as in Outliers, he attempts to explain why hockey players born in the early months of a year are more likely to be successful, or, more generally, how individuals master a craft. When telling these cases, Malcolm’s sentences are crisp and organic. His style effectively transforms a seemingly monotonous case study into a story.

His enticing written style, I think, carries over equally as well in his speaking. He knows how to time his dramatic pauses—just enough so that the listener waits with bated breath, but not too much that the silence drags on awkwardly.

At the time of this article’s publication, the series sits among Apple’s top 50 most popular podcasts. If anything, this series’ popularity seems to suggest that Gladwell is doing something right.

Two variations Let’s talk about gender Second continued from page 7 His role started out comically, yet ends on a more tragic note when he is locked in a dark room by Toby and the others. Theatre Erindale did a very good job of demonstrating how unfairly Malvolio was treated, and how the play has grave undertones. Similarly, Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Derek Brockbank) had many comical lines like “What is ‘Pourquoi?’” which prompted laughter from the audience; yet he too was left disappointed and alone in the end.

Dr. Holger Syme, director of drama studies, stated in the Program Note how Twelfth Night is a comedy about lonely people, and contains a number of “abandoned and crushed lovers for whom noone spares much of a thought.” This is present throughout the play and especially in the last scene where Antonia, Sir

Andrew, and Feste are the ones left alone on the stage, after a distraught Malvolio has walked off swearing he will get revenge.

Theatre Erindale did a very good job of demonstrating how unfairly Malvolia was treated, and how the play has grave undertones.

Overall, the performance was outstanding and thoroughly entertaining. It is clear that there was tremendous effort put into bringing the play to life. Not only were the characters, plot and dialogue true to Shakespeare, but also the themes that the play involves.

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Theatre Erindale’s production of Twelfth Night includes two casts.

Gender continued from page 7 To illustrate this emphasis, Keith explained, “I play a female character and I fall in love with another female.

Having a lesbian couple on stage changes the relationship, makes us ask the question, that, in our world and in Twelfth Night, what does female power mean?”

Epstein Roth plays a male character and falls in love with a female Malvolia, whereas in the original Shakespearean play, Malvolio is a male character. Malvolia wields more

power and influence than Epstein Roth’s Toby. For Epstein Roth’s role, then, the questions that arise are “Does gender define power?” and “What does it mean when a woman wields more power in a relationship?”

In the end, Epstein Roth and Keith gave a clear answer to these questions.

Gender is not the reason behind certain characters gaining power over others. Instead, their power is attributed to their personalities and idiosyncrasies.

Seeing the play come to fruition, for both Epstein Roth and Keith, is a

satisfying feeling.

“We worked all summer for these auditions. From the beginning, our class didn’t know where we were going to go with this, but now it’s exciting that we know what it came out to be,” said Epstein Roth.

“In the beginning, I had jittery nerves. Looking at it now, I feel so comfortable with the people I’m working with.” Keith continued, “It’s a bittersweet moment. I feel accomplished since the process was great and we learned so much. But, at the same time, I don’t want it to end.”

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A clean environment: a commodity?

Special assistant to the attorney general of Michigan, Noah Hall, spoke about the Flint water crisis MARYAM FAISAL ASSOCIATE FEATURES EDITOR Last Wednesday, the Political Science and Pre-Law Association at UTM, with the Society for Geography and Environment, hosted law professor at Wayne State University and special assistant to the attorney general of Michigan, Noah Hall, to discuss the Flint Water Crisis. His lecture was prefaced by an introduction from environmental management professor at UTM, Dr. Andrea Olive. Noah Hall spoke about indicting actors who had a role in the Flint water crisis, along with discussing the crisis in the context of the history behind environmental protection laws.

Hall began with a simple statement: “I hope you care because you’re a human being and so the suffering of human beings is a concern.”

He explained, “What we’re seeing in Flint is both telling and representative and perhaps has some lessons, both good and bad, for work in many other areas legally.”

Among other things, he emphasized that this discussion is in the context of environmental justice

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Hall, special assistant to the attorney general of Michigan, spoke about the Flint water crisis. because “at its core,” the Flint water crisis is “an environmental injustice.” Environmental injustice, Hall described, is the “distributive and procedural injustice of how environmental goods are distributed in

society.”

In the early 90s, when Hall began to enter this line of work at the University of Michigan, researchers there were the first to begin documentation on environmental injus-

tice and statistics associated with it.

According to Hall, people in academia began to recognize the “reality on the ground that depending on the colour of your skin, the amount of your paycheque, or the value of

your house, you were more or less likely to live with pollution, with unsafe air or water or with landfills nearby.”

He paused before stating that, in retrospect, it was “horribly naïve on our part [to think that] if we can just document how inequitably environmental goods and protections are distributed around society, we’ll just fix it.”

“I don’t know what we were thinking because all we were describing is the reality of how most people live, we had this idea that if we could show that there’s a correlation between neighbourhoods that are disproportionately minority with pollution, that people would notice and would solve the problem.”

He reiterated that this was a problem that the government system in the U.S. has never wanted to do much about. He said that his work has “shifted” from simply understanding and documenting environmental injustice to “doing something about it place-by-place as [the injustice occurs] and lean into it and fight it.”

Flint continued on page 12

Monstrosity is in the eyes of the beholder Professor Koenig-Woodyard from the Department of English and Drama speaks about monsters DELANEY ROMBOUGH

On Tuesday, November 14, the English and Drama Student Society hosted a guest lecture with senior lecturer in the Department of English and Drama, Dr. Koenig-Woodyard. The talk, titled “Every monster has a story,” questioned ideas about monsters and monster studies, specifically in the novel I Am Legend (1954) by Richard Matheson.

According to Koenig-Woodyard, scholars have been studying monsters since forever: “What’s interesting about monsters is they break taboos and they break rules. Monsters kill. Monsters eat each other. We like what we see in monsters but we don’t imagine it ourselves.” KoenigWoodyard presented novel ways for thinking about monsters in literature: narratively, philosophically, and scientifically.

I Am Legend, and Matheson’s other works, Koenig-Woodyard mentioned, have had a profound influence on the horror and sciencefiction genre, influencing books, movies, and video games. Since the

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Koenig-Woodyard’s lecture questioned the monsters present in I Am Legend. novel first came out, there have been around 160 print editions and several movies that have been made based on the book.

In the context of narrative, the setting, conflict, plot, characters, the protagonist, and the antagonist, are all elements present in I Am Legend.

However, as Koenig-Woodyard highlighted, Matheson does some-

thing fantastic—he flips the protagonist and the antagonist, which are made clear at the end of the novel.

“If you look at Neville, the vampire slayer, through the eyes of the vampires, he’s the gothic entity. He’s the monster.”

Philosophically, Koenig-Woodyard described, I Am Legend presents the idea of post-humanism. In

the novel, post-humanism is woven through the inter-species romantic relationship between Neville, a human, and Ruth, a vampire. “In so many ways, the novel deconstructs the binary that we know about vampire novels,” said Koenig-Woodyard, “Humans kill vampires, you can’t live with them. You can’t be attracted to them.” But in the novel, Ruth leaves

Neville a love letter, which explains that the vampires are going to rebuild society slowly but surely. The letter also says that upon the advent of their new society, the vampires will probably have to kill him, but she still loved him. Although Ruth is a different species, Neville still feels a romantic, sexual attraction towards her and other female vampires, which is wrong in his mind.

Scientifically speaking, throughout the novel, Koenig-Woodyard described there is much discussion around the source of the vampire virus. They suggest things like germ warfare, bombings, viruses, mosquitoes, and even superbugs. Eventually Neville figures out it’s an airborne virus and spreads through insects.

Koenig-Woodyard also mentioned that this book was influenced by the fear of pandemics and the American government’s interest in mass vaccinations for diseases, like polio in the 1950s.

Another aspect of the book KoenigWoodyard was interested in was how many vampires Neville kills.

Scare continued on page 13

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The systemic construction of poverty Flint continued from page 11 He began the next part of his talk by posing a question to the audience: “Why do we have a persistent problem of environmental injustice in the United States?” and then said pointedly, that it is not a “shortcoming” of the system, but the result of the system “by design.”

As Hall described, it was only after the civil rights and social movements of the 1970s that North America began to address environmental problems. Before that, there was no environmental protection and not much attention toward the creation of environmental laws. The legal system then created this “new public good [environmental protection] which was something the government was going to work to provide to its people,” he said.

“The deal we made with the devil though, which is perhaps now destroying the entire system, was that when we created this good of environmental protection […], we did not create it as a public good that everyone is entitled to, we did not establish it as a constitutional right,” Hall stated, “Instead, it was a new good that would be provided by both the political system and the market.” As Hall explained, this was a problem, because if a new benefit to society is going to be introduced, “we’re going to pile it onto the existing political and economic system […]. We made environmental protection something that had a price tag to it. […] We destined it to be another source of inequity.”

Approaching the subject of Flint,

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The Political Science and Pre-Law Association hosted the lecture by Hall last Wednesday.

Hall began by explaining that Flint was on the losing end of the global economy and of politics. It has “everything from the typical voter disenfranchisement to all indicators of poverty and sickness” and this “of course, is the type of place where environmental injustice occurs all the time.”

The state of Michigan, which assumed government over the city of Flint, Hall described, meant that citizens were cut out of democratic decision-making and no longer had power in their own communities.

Hall added that the city turned into a “fiefdom […] essentially a city where

the people of Flint had no recourse, no accountability [and] no voice.”

“If you have a benevolent government, then maybe losing your vote won’t be the end of the world but the reality is that the government by no means had their best interest in mind,” he commented. Flint lost its political voice in 2013 and then again in 2014.

“The way citizens lose their democratic voice in the U.S. is through their economic circumstances.” As Hall elaborated, if you live in a city in the U.S. that is poor, in need of social services, and have lower property values—which may not be because

the city is corrupt, but because they simply do not have the resources— you are going to have a difficult time meeting budgets. The lawyer also described, “This is a fake problem to create because once you take a portion of society, isolate them, and make it sound like it is their problem to solve all their issues themselves, they will always come up short. Nobody has all the solutions; this is why we have communities and larger systems.”

“We took these cities, and we isolated them, put a political boundary around them and said they’re broke,” he further emphasized, “They’re broke because of the boundary we put

around them. If you gave these cities the resources they needed to provide social services, education, and transportation, they wouldn’t be broke.”

The design, according to Hall, is to turn an imbalanced budget into a loss of political power. “It’s the final step in commodifying democracy, and once you lose the right to vote, then it begins to unravel.”

This is what happened in Flint. Previously, property taxes were invested into running the local government, but soon after, the state started taking property taxes and redirecting them to the general state budget. As expenses of the city of Flint began to accumulate, in 2013, the city “became broke in the eyes of the state,” according to Hall.

“Even the term broke city is a construct that was created […]. Poverty isn’t something that just happens, it is the result of decisions [at the state level],” Hall added that this law that allowed states taking over cities was even challenged successfully in Michigan. They voted down the law and the next day, the legislature “reenacted the law […] which means it is no longer subject to a citizen repeal.”

The voice of its population was completely disregarded and the city of Flint’s water source was switched from Lake Huron to Flint river. The river, as Hall described, “was not bad […] but not great,” he said, “From an environmental dude’s perspective, the blame is not on the Flint river. We could absolutely have taken that river, [treated it] and made it clean, safe drinking water.”

Flint continued on page 13

Gender and ideology in Arabic languages Last Monday, the Linguistics Brown Bag speaker series hosted UTSC professor Atiqa Hachimi ZEAHAA REHMAN

Last Monday marked the third presentation in the Linguistics Brown Bag Speaker series, hosted by UTM’s Department of Language Studies.

Students and faculty from the Department of Language Studies gathered in IB240 at 11 a.m. to listen to sociolinguist and Arabic specialist, professor Atiqa Hachimi, and her ideas about gender, style, and Arabic language ideologies in a digital world.

Hachimi has been with the University of Toronto since 2009. She currently teaches undergraduate courses at the Scarborough campus, under the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, and graduate courses at the St. George campus.

“I shall be talking about the hierarchy between North African Arabic varieties and those [Arabic varieties] spoken in the Middle East,” Hachimi explained at the beginning of the talk. Her research on sociolinguistic hierarchy in the Arabic-speaking world is part of a larger project on Arabic language ideologies and politics of gender and identity in the

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Professor Hachimi discussed ideas about gender, style, and Arabic language.

Arab-speaking world.

“People from North Africa and the Middle East, when they come together, who accommodates to who?”

This is the question that guides much of Hachimi’s research work.

Language ideologies, as the sociolinguist mentioned, refer to the attitudes and beliefs people hold about language. “We have all sorts of ideas about language, about its

correctness, about its presumed purity. What counts as a pure linguistic form?” She questioned.

“We are agents of language policing,” said Hachimi, “We are policing language. This is how we divide what language is, what it is for, and what it is worth. There are some language varieties that are [considered] more valuable than others.” She went on to explain when and why language

policing mattered. She mentioned that a person speaking non-standard English or French during a job interview would likely not get the job, especially if the job interview required standard English.

“Language ideologies are never ever only about language. They are always about something else […]. It’s either national identity, gender [or] what counts as moral or immoral,”

explained Hachimi. The Arabic specialist elaborated that policing a way of speaking goes beyond policing language; it polices morality, sexuality, and gender relations, which is why language ideologies are very important for sociolinguists to consider.

The professor then shifted gears towards Arabic, her area of specialty.

“There is no one who speaks standard Arabic as a native language,” she informed the audience, “We just don’t. There is no one who does that.

What we speak are these vernacular varieties.”

“If you use it, then you’re either a foreigner and you will be laughed at […]. It’s like growing up speaking Shakespearean English,” commented Hachimi.

According to Hachimi, most countries have their own dialects of Arabic. These dialects vary depending on the region; there is Nigerian Arabic, Syrian Arabic, Gulf Arabic, and Moroccan Arabic, to name a few. Hachimi’s research focuses on Moroccan dialect and its place in the hierarchy of Arabic varieties.

Arabic continued on page 13

11.20.2017 THE MEDIUM FEATURES» 13

Decisions driven by race and money Flint continued from page 12 The city of Flint, Hall mentioned, is surrounded by ten largely affluent suburbs, and the new water treatment plant for them cost $75 million. For the city itself, however, the state took an old building that had been there for 102 years and had “written on the outside of it: Water treatment plant and that’s as much of a water treatment plant as it really was. It made this room look good,” he said motioning to Spigel Hall. The plant had not been used to treat water in 50 years, but Hall said, “They opened it back up […] in an attempt to meet the most basic drinking water requirements” and began sending it out to the citizens.

The citizens immediately began to see problems and gathered in town halls, where they collected water samples and notified the media. “It did not work,” Hall shook his head.

The first people who were affected, the first who noticed and the first who wanted to do something about it, Hall mentioned, were black folks.

However, he said, they were also the first people the government disregarded. “Perhaps the ugliest telling of it was that in hundreds of emails from the state government, they referred to the complaining citizens of Flint as the brown water people,” Hall said this twice to emphasize the underlying implications of that label.

“Once you have a label for it, it’s real easy to undermine and ignore.”

The next levels of citizens in Flint disenfranchised by the government were women. “In the case of environmental injustice, […] women tend to

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The water supply in Flint had been poisoned with lead. be on the front line of both the harm of environmental problems and the first folks who see the effects,” said Hall, mentioning how almost all of the citizen activists were women. But essentially, in the emails, he added, the “language used to demoralize, cabin, degrade the concerns of women is disgusting.” He stated that they used labels like hysterical and uninformed,. “Essentially saying what you’re experiencing, seeing with your eyes and tasting and smelling, doesn’t count. You don’t count and you don’t deserve any better.”

“There’s also a professional bias throughout all this. The environ-

mental law […] has clothed itself so much that we’ve become arrogant in effect that until we see statistics or concrete data, we disregard the problem. We completely ignore the experience of other people who are being affected. […] In universities, we teach our students to almost ignore the individual human elements, try to see the big picture […] but somewhere, then, we must have lost our way, right?” He mused, “If the system’s not doing what it needs to do for the people who are most affected, then it’s not working.”

“They did it all, and then you see how the state, by design, discredits

every aspect of it.” One interesting fact he brought up is that when he went through the emails on Flint, most of the response from the state was driven by the state’s public relations people. “The folks who are making the decisions are not policy makers, they’re state’s press secretaries.” At the end of the day, “What’s their goal? It’s not to protect public health. It’s not to enforce the environmental laws. It’s certainly not to acknowledge that there is a problem or an injustice occurring. They have every incentive to say things are great.”

How did this happen and why

does environmental injustice perpetuate and get worse? As Hall answered, “The phrase is cost-benefit analysis […]. The government, in providing services on a limited budget, probably also needs to use cost benefit analysis to make sure that what you’re spending money on makes sense but then the system goes off the rails when it has to protect human life, because in order to do a cost benefit analysis involving people’s lives, you have to put a dollar value on people.”

The second problem, he said, is the “reality of how America developed.” The U.S. has “tremendous segregation, physically […]. It’s blatantly obvious. There’s a black side and a white side.” Along with divisions in cities, there is also a political line in between, in which “conveniently, on one side are the poor and the minorities, and on the other side are the wealthy and white, and that is by design.” This is what occurred in the city of Flint, a city of 100,000 people surrounded by the ten wealthy townships, which meant “they get different water of course, because by piling the environmental protection system onto a local government system that is segregated, you’re going to get segregated unjust outcomes of environmental law.”

When the state switched Flint from Lake Huron water to Flint River water, Hall elaborated, it did not spend the $80 million that the state’s experts and consultants said you needed to spend on water treatment plants.

Flint continued on page 13

A horror vampire story Scare continued from page 11 Koenig-Woodyard presented slides with mathematic calculations to come up with an answer: “If you assume he killed 47 vampires in four hours, that’s around one vampire every five minutes. If the vampires off-page are watching him, he’s starting to appear as a monster. Monsters kill with that kind of efficiency.”

“We can use monsters to understand that there are two sides to every story.”

-Professor Koenig-Woodyard These ideas lead to question: Who is the real monster in I Am Legend?

Neville or the vampires? From the vampire’s point of view, Neville is the monster—he has slaughtered hundreds of vampires in an effort to save himself. He alters his killing technique several times throughout the novel. He uses stakes through the heart, he tries to weaponize the es-

sence of garlic, he starts dragging the vampires out into the sunlight, and then he discovers that if he cuts their wrists deep enough, the vampires will bleed out and die. In Neville’s mind, however, the vampires are the monster because they have already destroyed the human race.

Koenig-Woodyard also mentioned that the language used to describe the vampires, “animalistic, demonic, and terrifying,” slowly starts applying to Neville. The senior lecturer explained that by looking at monsters through narrative, philosophical, and scientific lenses, we can use monsters to understand that there are two sides to every story, and maybe, those who we see as monsters are more than they appear, or they at least have a good reason for behaving the way that they do.

Koenig-Woodyard is currently working on a new website called monsterstudieslab.com, a digital space for discussing monsters in some capacity, whether it’s through podcasts, blogs, documents, or links.

Professor Koenig-Woodyard is teaching ENG239 next semester, a course on the fantasy, horror, and gothic genres.

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An alumni story of overcoming fears UTM alumni Mohammad Maxwel Hasan speaks to The Medium about his public speaking journey JESSICA CABRAL ASSOCIATE FEATURES EDITOR

Sweat beads form on your forehead and trickle down your brow. Your heart beats rapidly, you’re almost certain the audience can see it pounding through your chest. You clear your throat, approach the microphone, and begin your presentation. Does this sound familiar?

For many students, public speaking elicits feelings of anxiety, vulnerability, and fear. Individuals rank fear of public speaking as the most common phobia, placing it ahead of death, heights, and spiders. Despite his own struggle to combat the butterflies that accompany him on his presentations, Mohammed Maxwel Hasan, a 2015 graduate from the University of Toronto Mississauga, believes that public speaking is similar to exercising.

Similar to training a muscle, the skill of public speaking becomes stronger with increased practice.

Hasan first experienced public speaking during his final year of undergrad studies. At a case competition held by the Business Consulting Association, he and his team developed an idea, prepared their presentation, and pitched their product to prospective investors. Among the 20 other groups competing, Hasan and his colleagues received the second-place award. A few months later, Hasan, this time with only a partner, enrolled

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Hasan was introduced to public speaking in the final year of his undergraduate studies. in another business tournament. In the end, their impressive sales pitch helped them win the competition.

This success sparked a new desire in Hasan to create a club on campus catered towards public speaking.

However, after a conversation with a nutritionist at UTM who encouraged him to think of ways to reach a larger audience, Hasan instead began an initiative called Mirror Maps, where he produced online video content to help students with common struggles, such as budgeting and dealing

with receiving poor grades.

Hasan’s voyage into the realm of public speaking wasn’t always a smooth sail to success. While presenting a speech at a dinner event, he recognized that, for the first time in his life, the crowd was laughing at him, instead of with him.

“I will not sugar coat it and say everything goes according to plan,” Hasan admits, “[This experience] helped me learn two hard lessons when it comes to speaking. The first thing is that you either talk before

or after the food, people can’t digest their food and your thoughts at the same time. The second thing is that sometimes you have to taste failure to really appreciate success.”

These experiences inspired Hasan to self-publish his first book titled Can’t Escape in July 2017. The novella follows protagonist Oliver Masque on his journey to transform his dream of becoming a world-renowned public speaker into reality.

For students struggling with overcoming their presentation fears,

Hasan recommends that individuals must recognize that their physical and emotional reactions to public speaking, such as sweating, quickening heart rate, and fidgeting, are normal. Hasan suggests combating this bottled energy with some stretches or exercises.

Second, students should record themselves while preparing their speech. Hasan notes that video recording allows students to catch personal idiosyncrasies, such as physical fidgets or verbal crutches like “um,” “you know,” and “like.”

“When I first started, I never noticed how much I played with my hair. As a nervous habit, I used to constantly touch it. It doesn’t mean it’ll go away entirely, but it’s something you can work on. Recording lets you catch yourself and pause,” Hasan says.

Today, Hasan studies architecture at a college graduate program. Architecture allows him to combine his passions for public speaking, writing, and storytelling. He explains that buildings tell stories because they allow the people who inhabit them to create memories that last a life time. “[Public speaking] is a very important skill set no matter what program you’re in. Jobs require public speaking. It can be as simple as a one on one conversation with your employer and the same values [...] apply,” Hasan explains, “People who are effective communicators will always have opportunities open up for them.”

The agenda behind lead A cultural clash Arabic continued from page 12

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In 2013, the city of Flint “became broke in the eyes of the state.”

Flint continued from page 13 “As a lawyer, I need to do a better job of explaining to a judge or jury why this is so culpable […]. They knew what they were doing in Flint which is way too easy to do when you have segregated communities.”

The third reason that persists, he explained, is “within the environmental movement itself.” There are three main biases within the environmental movement that were specific to Flint and that caused the movement to essentially “ignore Flint for a year-and-a-half.” The implication is, as Hall emphasized, that being poisoned by lead water for 18 months meant the person is “ruined, their brain will never be the same again.”

The World Health Organization’s fact sheet for lead poisoning and health, updated August 2017, states, “At high levels of exposure, lead attacks the brain and central nervous system to cause coma, convulsions and even

death. Children who survive severe lead poisoning may be left with mental retardation and behavioral disorders.”

The second one is the racial bias which is “absolutely huge,” as Hall said. The environmental movement in the US “has a tremendous racist history that has yet to be resolved, and if we don’t fix it, the environmental movement is going to lose whatever remaining moral credibility it has, because if it’s not speaking for everyone, what good is it?” This includes disregarding environmental issues that affects minorities.

The third bias is that the environmental movement doesn’t think about the types of pollutions and harms that affect the people in their more “mundane and daily lives, such as indoor air quality, drinking water quality […]. We like to pretend within environmentalism that there’s a natural world out there, like a river we’re going to make clean. And

whether you’re breathing clean air or being exposed to toxins in your home, the environment has largely been second-tiered. This is a tremendous strategic flaw, because you need to know that the air in your homes isn’t giving you lung disease.” It becomes easy to disregard the individual because they’re focused on trying to “make the whole system better.”

He ended this portion of his talk by stating, “Once you see someone ignoring a problem, it becomes easy for the next person to disregard it.

All of us could’ve seen what was happening in Flint and done something about it. How did we ignore this? It’s even worse when the so-called professionals say the water is fine and that makes it okay for us to ignore it, which of course, it is not.”

Following this talk, there was a confidential portion concerning ongoing investigations, which The Medium was asked not to cover.

Morocco is a country in North Africa, and like many North African countries, the variation of languages spoken by residents is a mix, including Indigenous languages, Arabic, and colonial languages. In Morocco’s case, the Indigenous language is Berber and the colonial language is French. This mixing of language has given birth to the notion that North African language is inherently nonArabic. This has led to an unequal relationship between North African Arabic varieties and Middle Eastern Arabic varieties.

Hachimi recounted that people say to North Africans: “You’re not Arabic, you don’t speak Arabic; you speak this mishmash of French and Berber and Arabic so you’re not speaking real Arabic.”

This unequal relationship is seen where people speak North African Arabic on Pan-Arab shows. The North African dialect is subtitled in standard or Middle Eastern Arabic, where the emcees and judges of said shows predominantly speak Middle Eastern Arabic. North-African dialects, as Hachimi mentioned, become an object of mockery on these shows.

Hachimi explained, an expectation is formed where people who don’t speak “real” Arabic need to accommodate on Pan-Arab shows by con-

verging to a “real” dialect. Moroccan popstars who appear on these shows often do converge, and while this decision may garner the popstar more fans, it has also resulted in a lot of backlash from Moroccans.

“Language ideological debates [...] are not exculisively about language,” says Atiqa Hachimi Hachimi presented case studies of two female Moroccan stars, Dounia Batma and Mouna Amarsha, both of who appeared on Pan-Arab shows where they spoke in Moroccan Arabic to appeal to Moroccan voters.

However, they converged to other Arabic varieties—Batma to Egyptian Arabic and Amarsha to Gulf Arabic— after the shows ended. “Women are [considered] repositories of cultural authenticity and purity,” explained professor Hachimi.

“Anxieties about language ideological debates, whether implicit or explicit, are not exclusively about language,” says Hachimi, “They unravel—as I hope I have shown—the complex relationship between linguistic practices, morality, and today’s conceptualization of Moroccan national identity.”

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For health’s sake, read the ingredients Netflix documentary, “What the Health,” provides viewers with several tips on how to eat healthy MICHELLE MORIN

A series of studies and interviews with doctors in the Netflix documentary, What the Health, show how eating processed meats and dairy products lead to many negative implications on your health. The film highlights the importance of ingredient checking.

Mass-produced foods are typically made with dangerous ingredients to preserve the taste and colour of foods for longer-than-normal periods of time, so they can be shipped around with no quality loss. However, these ingredients can severely impact the quality of your health.

“We sent researchers into fast food and family restaurants. Not only were there carcinogens in every single restaurant, but we found them in every single chicken sample that we took,” says Dr. Neal Barnard in the film, as What the Health shows images of McDonald’s, KFC, and Subway. A carcinogen is a life-threatening substance that is directly linked to cancer, according to several online resources.

As UTM students, we tend to opt for cheaper food choices like Tim Hortons, Subway, or Pizza Pizza, be-

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The importance of ingredient checking is highlighted in the Netflix documentary What the Health. cause they are conveniently located on campus. The food tastes good, but could we know where the ingredients come from without extensive research?

“They’re made of propylene glycol, partially hydrogenated oils, liquid sugars, and artificial colours,” says nutritionist Mike Adams, in the documentary Hungry for Change. “You can

also use propylene glycol to winterize your RV—it prevents the pipes from freezing in the winter.”

The ingredients list for Subway’s chicken strips reveal they contain soy protein concentrate, sodium phosphate, potassium chloride, maltodextrin, and vinegar solids, as well as many other unhealthy ingredients. Just like most fast food restau-

rants, Subway isn’t good for a person’s health.

“Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients. The specific number you adopt is arbitrary, but the more ingredients in a packaged food, the more highly processed it probably is,” says Michael Pollan, author of Food Rules, in his book.

Also, look for fewer ingredients

with pronounceable, familiar words.

Whole Foods shares a list of “unacceptable” ingredients for food on their website. Some of which include hydrogenated oil, sucralose, high fructose corn syrup, and sodium nitrate/nitrite.

Always check the ingredients if you’re buying from a store, just as someone would with an allergy. Or simply, make your own food with ingredients you know and like.

Dr. Michael Greger and Dr. Michelle McMacken, interviewed in What the Health, suggest eating foods high in plant protein. You can get a high serving of protein from vegetables like peas, spinach, kale, broccoli, or asparagus, along with many others.

If you like meat, try buying from local farmers or markets that restrict the use of hormones and chemicals.

Picking up locally-grown foods also reduce harmful gas emissions from big transport trucks, so you double up on your consumer responsibility.

Some of these changes may be costlier, however looking after our health should be priority. Eating processed foods should not come at the expense of our health.

Women’s volleyball fights hard in game The UTM women’s volleyball team plays outstanding match despite loss against St. George Blacks VANESSA CESARIO SPORTS & HEALTH EDITOR

This past Sunday, November 19, the UTM women’s d-league volleyball team played the St. George Blacks in a well-fought match, taking place in Gym A/B. In the first set, UTM struggled to keep up with St. George. UTM’s Cheryl Chin was up first to serve where she successfully hit the ball over the net but a St. George player was quick to smash the ball back allowing her team to take the lead first. Following this play, St. George scored seven more points making it 8-0. UTM was doing well to keep a rally going but could not seem to gain any points from it. A St. George player served the ball into the net, giving UTM their first point of the game. Right after this, UTM made an amazing block making the score 8-2. However, this was short lived as St. George came back to make the score 13-3, allowing a 10-point difference. UTM’s team captain, Jessica Maltese, made an outstanding block gaining her team a point. This still was not enough for UTM as they continued to trail by more and more.

UTM was diving for balls, and working well as a team but it was no match

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The game’s second set ended in a very close two-point difference at 28-26. against St. George as they took the set 25-11.

The second set of the game was filled with excitement, intensity, and a desire to win from both teams. St. George served first in this set and unfortunately got a point as the UTM player bumped it out of bounds. The Blacks lead by two but this did not last long as UTM quickly came back to lead the set 3-2, putting them ahead for the first time in the game. Following this, Maltese tipped the ball over the net, getting another point for UTM. A lot of excitement was coming

from the UTM bench as the coaches and players cheered and encouraged their teammates and players on. St. George began to catch up making the score 7-6. However, UTM continued to keep their composure and work as a team. A St. George player served the ball into the net, giving UTM another point. Right after this, Maltese smashes the ball into the St. George end where they failed to block it. An amazing rally took place where both teams had players diving for balls and trying to keep their team in the game.

Unfortunately, Maltese ended the

rally by hitting the ball out of bounds but she quickly made up for it in the next play where she made her signature smash hit.

Frustration was building on the St. George bench as the coaches called for a time out in the hopes of calming their team down and allowing them to regroup. St. George began their comeback and even started leading the set 20-18. Fans were on the edge of their seats as there was only a few more points needed to end the set.

UTM’s coach, Bryan Calucag, called for a time out as he saw his team

slowly starting to fall behind. This did well for UTM as they collected themselves and came back to take the lead 21-20. The remainder of the game was a series of back and forth play with St. George scoring a point to tie the set, and then UTM scoring a point to lead the game. It was not until the score was 26-26 that St. George broke the pattern and took the lead 27-26. A UTM player unfortunately hit the ball out of bounds, allowing St. George to win the set and also the game.

A third set was played but this did not make a difference to the end result of the game since St. George won two out of three sets. St. George lead the set 4-0 until one of their players hit the ball into the net, making it 4-1. UTM players Brianna Webb and Madeleine Myers teamed up to make an outstanding block and get their team a point. UTM began trailing by eight points then ten points, before ultimately allowing St. George to take the set 25-11.

Calucag was very impressed with his team’s performance and said that “in the second set they came strong and played their game and they almost took the set.” He mentions that all of his players have been improving immensely and that is all he asks from his team.

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« SPORTS THE MEDIUM 11.20.2017

Eagles do well The perks of Tai Chi at nationals Tai Chi is a form of martial art that is said to improve well-being

AMRISH WAGLE ASSOCIATE EDITOR

PHOTO COURTESY OF KALE HEINO

UTM performed at Nationals last weekend in Québec.

VANESSA CESARIO SPORTS & HEALTH EDITOR UTM’s cross country team competed at Nationals last Friday, November 10 and Saturday, November 11 at College Lionel-Groulx in Québec. This is UTM’s fourth year competing in the OCAA, with the 2014-2015 season being their first year.

UTM’s Sophie Glanz placed fifth at Nationals, and earned UTM’s first OCAA rookie of the year and First Team All-Ontario honours, according to varsity program coordinator Jack Krist. The women’s team set a UTM record by being the first team to ever have an entire team be entered at Nationals. Krist says, “[this] speaks volumes to the high quality of runners that our women’s team has on the roster this year.” With Glanz finishing 15th overall as an individual.

Kale Heino and Haseeb Malik competed at Nationals for the third time in a row. Krist says, “[they] have been steadily improving since joining the team in 2015.” Heino finished forty-ninth overall at last year’s CCAA’s

where he moved up twenty-six spots by finishing twenty-third overall at this year’s Nationals.

Krist adds that head coach, Adam Hassan, and lead assistant coach, Sarah Fournier, worked hard to recruit Ayah Abdeldayem and Sam Dumcum, two former UTM Eagle cross country athletes, to assist in training and strengthening the team for competition. A great deal of credit is owed to these two assistant coaches for being a large part of the cross-country teams’ success this year. Krist adds, “The four coaches have been a great blend with each bringing their own strengths to the program and guiding our athletes to personal bests.”

“I couldn’t be more proud of this team from the athletes, to the coaches and even the athletic therapy team who all came together for a stellar performance this year,” says Krist.

The future of cross country at UTM is looking bright and the program is evolving with many runners returning. UTM is looking forward to another successful season for the crosscountry team.

Tai Chi has its roots in the ancient Chinese disciple of qigong—a martial art originally practiced for its applicability of self-defense and health benefits. Qigong is a system that uses various techniques of movement, breathing, meditation, and posture to cultivate a sense of peace and calm. One of its derivatives, Tai Chi, involves a complex series of slow and graceful movements that reflect a synthesis of meditation and yoga.

There are several key concepts that encompass this ancient martial art, including the notion of qi. Theoretically, individuals possess internal energy that flows throughout the body and acts as a life force. One of the most fundamental goals of Tai Chi is to allow this qi to remain balanced and circulating smoothly.

Hence, this delicate maintenance of qi is profoundly critical for health in terms of both physical and mental.

The principle of fostering one’s qi is best encompassed in an ancient Chinese proverb: “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” However, regardless of its existence, Tai Chi has been linked to tangible health benefits such as increasing energy, stamina, and overall vitality within an individual.

Tai Chi is also commonly associated with the concept of yin-yang,

which refers to the inherent disposition of duality in nature. Yin-yang is thus reflected in Tai Chi’s emphasis on balance and posture.

There are several forms of Tai Chi, including the most popular: Chen, Yang, Wu, Sun, as well as a combative form known as “pushing hands”. Although these forms emphasize different aspects of the martial art, they all provide some fundamental benefits.

Tai Chi has practical advantages over other forms of aerobic exercises, such as its low risk of injury, and low impact movements.

The majority of scientific research for health benefits encompass Tai Chi’s capacity for fall prevention. In fact, the leading cause of injury and death for older adults is fall-related, such as hip fractures.

As Tai Chi requires slow and mindful movements in coordination with shifting of weight and use of the vestibular and kinesthetic senses, many studies point to its benefits of improving balance. Other notable benefits include positive influences on flexibility, muscular strength, and fitness. Muscular strength contributes to many other health benefits, including protection of joints

and agility.

Tai Chi is most commonly known to alleviate stress, anxiety, and depression. It’s meditative nature of mindful movements and awareness of oneself provides a calm and tranquil mindset. Many studies provide considerable support for Tai Chi’s capability of cultivating serenity.

Furthermore, the immune system is dependent on psychological wellbeing. Ergo, better mental health leads to fewer illnesses, better sleep quality, a lower blood pressure, and better cardiovascular health.

Other studies point to deeper health benefits of Tai Chi for more severe illnesses, such as diabetes, fibromyalgia, chronic heart failures, and even cognitive impairments such as Parkinson’s disease, traumatic brain injuries, and insomnia.

Tai Chi has practical advantages over other forms of aerobic exercises, such as its low risk of injury, and low impact movements. Marvin Smalheiser, a historian of Oriental studies, states some Tai Chi masters in history were “able to throw an attacker effortlessly to the floor with the attacker and spectators unable to clearly see how it was done.”

Furthermore, he says, “Their movements [used] internal energy and [were] too subtle for most people to observe.” Tai Chi has therefore been most widely adopted within the demographic of older adults for its most basic form of meditative and mindful exercise.

A basketball loss we can’t be mad at UTM had a great showing against the Redeemer Royals where there was only an 8-point difference SARA AWAN

Last Saturday, November 18, the UTM women’s varsity basketball team played against the Redeemer Royals. Redeemer started off strong by gaining seven points quickly, but the UTM women were not slow to catch up. Within the first quarter, Redeemer took the lead with their strong layups and well-aimed free throws. The UTM Eagles displayed immense strength and admirable team work, refusing to lose spirit as they continued to play with great enthusiasm. Despite missing free throw shots and falling behind by 11 points, the Eagles cheered each other on with encouragement throughout the game.

The score at the end of the quarter was 23-12 for Redeemer.

The crowd watching the game started off small, but grew larger with the intensity of the game as students and family members came to show their support. The Eagles had many openings to score baskets, but the fierce defense of the Royals topped with the fast pace and tensions of the game led to a lot of baskets that al-

CHEN GONG/THE MEDIUM

The UTM Eagles displayed immense strength and admirable team work during their game. most made it—but not quite.

In the second quarter, Redeemer stayed ahead with the score at 22-9, at which point the Eagles Mascot joined the game, engaging the audience and providing entertainment. With the help of free throws, the UTM women started to catch up to Redeemer, putting themselves at 25-19. The Eagles played with strong defense as they blocked baskets from the opposing team, quickly turning the score

around as the second quarter ended with a tie at 33-33.

In the third quarter, Redeemer reclaimed their high score at 58-48.

Nonetheless, Eagle supporters, along with members of UTM’s own team, unremittingly cheered the UTM women on, chanting, “Let’s go Eagles, let’s go.” The school mascot also encouraged them on with a little dance of its own.

Both teams consisted of players

that were highly motivated and portrayed awe-inspiring team work. In the final quarter, more friends and family arrived, and there were some anxious moments in the game where the opposing teams seemed to get a little heated in their defense tactics.

Throughout the game, players from both sides put the game first as they sustained numerous falls, tumbling to the ground in order to secure the ball for their teams. One player from

Redeemer ultimately had to sit out for a good part of the game due to a substantial fall, as she tried her best to keep hold of the ball. There was also some apprehension displayed from viewers in the audience and the teams playing, over the credibility of certain foul shots that were called, though it was all in the spirit of the game and quickly subsided. Although both teams displayed immense determination to win, ultimately, with the help of free-throw baskets, Redeemer won the game with the score ending in 72-64.

Redeemer may have won the basketball game, but the Eagles celebrated a victory of their own. In a brief conversation with UTM’s head coach, Salee Johnson-Edwards, she said, “It was a tough loss for us but, overall, as a team we took a step forward and that one of the players went down with an injury during practice but everyone stepped up their game,” she continued, “Obviously we wanted the result in our favour, but we can’t be mad at a game like this when we played hard and the girls clawed their way back up, putting themselves in a position to win the game.”