VOL. 4 NO. 1
October 2015
P1
The Race to the Cure by REBECCA WONG
O
n 30 September 2015, all students at MGCI, along with millions of others throughout Canada, took part in the annual Terry Fox Run, celebrating the legacy of the man who ran 5373 km across eastern and central Canada to raise money to find a cure for cancer. This year marked Canada’s 35th Terry Fox Run; 35 years after Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope. Having been in charge of the school’s run for the past 11 years, Mr. Fox ran this year’s event as well. The run began at 9:30 am, when students were called down by grade to the cafeteria. There, they watched a video about Terry’s life and listened to a brief presentation by the MGCI Cancer Society. Afterwards, the students walked or ran the 3 km route that went through the valley next to the Ontario Science Centre, through ET Seton Park, and back to the school. Students of the Grade 11 Leadership class helped run the event by directing students along the route, and encouraging runners along the way. One of the leadership students, Afra Patel, supports the cause because Terry Fox “did a lot for Canada. He spent his dying months raising money for cancer research.”
Students run in support of the Terry Fox foundation. Photo: Cindy Cui
See TERRY FOX on P2
Fixing Canada’s Elections
Scholarships – An Unequal Playing Field
OP-ED by DANIEL PEKAR
by DAVID HAO
T
here has been much talk of reforming Canada’s voting system on a federal level. The current system is “First Past the Post” (FPTP). The riding candidate with the most votes wins, and the party with the most winning candidates forms the government. Seems fair, right? That’s what Stephen Harper and his Conservatives would want you to think. Harper has been the most opposed to change because he has the largest chance to succeed only in an election broken by FPTP. Since 2006, they have kept a minority rule, where a minority of people have a majority of the power, and they are attempting to do it again. Imagine an election between three candidates where the vote is split 34% to 33% and 33%. The candidate with 34% wins and has 100% control despite 66% of votes being against them; this is not proportional. Only once in the last 35 years has representation in parliament been within 10 percentage points of the popular vote for the government [1]. Voters are also encouraged to vote strategically for larger parties as voting for smaller parties is worthless when they inevitable lose: the spoiler effect. FPTP doesn’t represent what Canadians want. See ELECTIONS on P5
Girls’ Field Hockey by CHENG CHENG LIN
O See INFOGRAPHIC on P2
ART on P7 and P8
n 6 October 2015, the MGCI Girl’s Varsity Field Hockey team played their first game against Humberside Collegiate Institute at the Cherry Beach Field, ending with a final score of 4-0 for Humberside. The first half of the game began roughly, with Humberside scoring their four goals throughout the period. However, the girls came back stronger in the second half, even obtaining three runs down the sidelines. See HOCKEY on P2
E
very year, universities and foundations lay out the red carpet to handsomely reward the next generation’s leaders and humanitarians. A few keywords always recur in the application criteria for scholarships. Leadership, community involvement, and initiative consistently top the list of phrases used to describe a desired candidate for major scholarships. It is clear, then, that being a successful public figure is the ticket to success. But what about the rest of us? If scholarships exist to reward deserving students, then their current design is flawed. Scholarship criteria overlook a significant pool of talent and strongly favour candidates of a very specific breed. There is strong bias towards extroverts over introverts, even though a significant portion of the population identifies with the latter. Anyone who doesn’t fall into the cookie-cutter definition of an ideal candidate won’t stand a chance in the system, regardless of their actual merits and personal achievements. The criteria for Canada’s largest and most prestigious scholarships, such as the Loran, TD, and the National Scholarship all have one thing in common: they want someone with strong academics, who is a leader that has made an impact on their community. While that’s fair, a student may be talented in many ways that don’t fall under these categories. For example, a student may be a very insightful writer who maintains a blog with many readers, or a talented artist whose work has never been properly exhibited beyond his or her own workspace. How-
ever, because the achievements of these students are not as publicly prominent, their response to prompts such as “Describe your most significant volunteer contribution” may not be as impressive as the response of a peer who is the leader of multiple clubs. You may argue that we’re attempting to compare apples and oranges, and that these other students should just seek out offerings that are more appropriate for them. However, the solution is not as simple as this, because there are simply far fewer opportunities for these students compared to opportunities present for the “ideal candidate.” To illustrate this point, we’ve scoured various institutions and universities across Canada for scholarship offerings, ranging from academic to artistic, and created a word cloud based on the keywords of their application criteria. In a word cloud, the more frequently a word appears in the source material, the larger the word. As you can see, “community” is the largest, followed closely by “leadership.” “Involvement” and “entrepreneurial” are two other prominent words. Scholarships for students with less visible talents do exist, but they’re far less common than those that cater towards the typical extrovert. The bias towards Type-As and extroverts is embedded in our society. We consider people that keep to themselves secluded and anti-social, and laud “people people” for their natural ability to socialize and converse. Scholarships are a reflection of this. See SCHOLARSHIP on P4
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