September 27, 2017 Issue by On the Record News (Formerly the Ryersonian)

Gallery: Sundown Festival ryersonian.ca

Cheap eats near campus page 8

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2017

yersonian R

ryersonian.ca Volume 72 Number 3

Produced by the Ryerson School of Journalism

Massive new research on housing costs for students MAGGIE MACINTOSH and KIKI CEKOTA RYERSONIAN

As housing prices continue to skyrocket in Toronto, a joint research study between the city’s four universities is trying to learn how unaffordable housing is affecting students. The reserach initiative is dubbed StudentDwellTO. Urban planning professor Shelagh McCartney says it will compare average rental prices to students’ income and the choices they have to make in order to meet rent. The project was announced in late August and brings together

nearly 100 faculty and students from Ryerson, the University of Toronto, OCAD University and York University. McCartney, the project lead for Ryerson’s StudentDwellTO chapter, says their findings will be used to inform universities on how to address the student housing crisis. She says student participation in their open focus groups during the next two years will be vital to the study’s success. “If people don’t talk to us, then we don’t know exactly what’s happening with students,” she says.

Check out ryersonian.ca to read about Ryerson’s new Real Institute location, and our opinion columns about mental health

Please see STUDENTS page 5

TimberFever at Ryerson Architecture and engineering students from across Ontario came to campus last week to compete in building life-sized wood structures. The structures can be seen on Gould and Victoria Streets. Pictured here is Woven Haven, the second place winner. JUL U IE FAY AYE GER A ERM RM MANS ANSKY KY | RYER RYER YE SON YE NIAN AN

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News

Roads and public health page 4 Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Wellness centre to open next semester Ullah blames 6Fest refunds for year-long wellness centre delay AIDAN MACNAB RYERSONIAN

After a year-long delay, renovations that violated building codes and thousands of dollars paid by the Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU), a mental health support centre will finally open next semester. Former RSU president, Obaid Ullah, said that the current administration is accusing the previous one of fumbling with the renovations for political reasons. He said the code violations were due to the work not being completed, as he and former vice-president of student life, Harman Singh chose to pause the renovations in order to pay back students for the 6Fest debacle. Last year’s RSU decided to turn the space that was formerly a used book room into a student wellness centre. The location for the new centre is the basement of the Student Campus Centre. But a year has passed and while the used book room has found a new home online, the physical space remains empty. Last year, the RSU spent $36,874.97 on the wellness centre. The current RSU has proposed $36,200 for this year. Singh was in charge of the renovations. The contract was given to Onta-Reno Construction Ltd., which was paid $19,000 out of the budget for its work. After this shoddy work was completed, the site had to be assessed for building, safety and fire code violations. In July, the RSU approved new renovations for another $18,000.

JUL ULIE IE E FAY FA E GERM GER E MANS AN KY | RYE ANS Y RSO SO ON NIA IA AN N

The Ryerson student centre, located on Gould Street, will be home to the new wellness centre that is set to open next semester.

“What happened last year was folks did renovations, but they weren’t up to code, so we had to spend a lot of time over the summer doing the actual layout, getting architects to come in, getting actual licensed people to check out the space,” said RSU president Susanne Nyaga. Nyaga said the space is now fully renovated and ready for the centre and that she will work with vice-president of equity, Camryn Harlick, to develop programming before it opens. “There were some finishing touches that needed to be made and at the time the whole board was really focused on refunds because the refunds issue was a university campus issue at the

time,” Obaid said. He said they were told that they did not have to get Ryerson facility and property management involved when they began the renovations, because of the nature of the work. “There was no structural change, it was a facelift,” he said. Singh said via Facebook Messenger that they did not need to check the renovations with Ryerson facility and property management because they were not removing beams, altering weight distribution or the electrical or plumbing systems. “Since that room was under the Ryerson student centre and there were no structural changes, we were allowed to make those

changes,” he said. The RSU approved the new renovations to fix problems with the electrical system, including sockets and light fixtures that had been damaged or covered up, and to install cover plates. Four doors and frames were replaced and the room was painted, according to a quote from Lewis Selva of Limited Building solutions. According to Daniel Lis, vice-president of education, the main problem hindering the renovations was that the repairs were done for doors and hardware. Electrical fixtures needed replacing or fixing and there were some design fixes and paintwork still to be done. Lis said that when the motion

to redo the renovations came up, it was passed without much discussion. The RSU’s general manager and wellness centre co-ordinator, Sid Naidu, presented their plans along with feedback from building inspectors. “They need to make sure it’s up to code, and so this was straight from the building inspectors that they needed to see in the room in order for it to be considered valid and operational,” said Lis. “They had gone about getting quotes from businesses.” Naidu did not respond to requests for comment. @AidanMacnab

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News 3

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

STUDENT PUBLICATIONS

The Varsity launches in Chinese Chinese version of some stories will appear on the newspaper’s website IRIS ROBIN RYERSONIAN

Students at the University of Toronto can now read their campus news in simplified Chinese. The Varsity announced the publication of its Chinese website on Sept. 18. The pilot project is the brainchild of Celine Liu, a U of T graduate from China and founder of a non-profit organization called Listeners. After experiencing mental health struggles, Liu created Listeners as a peer support group run by and for Chinese international students. Liu’s first project was to offer one-on-one conversations with students in distress, which sometimes lasted for two or three hours. “As I talked more, I listened to what they really struggle with a lot. I find that there’s a disconnect between what they know and what the school offers,” Liu said. “I wanted to bridge the gap between what the school can offer and what international students really know about in their daily lives.” Liu approached The Varsity in June and the two groups worked together to pull off the ambitious feat. The newspaper began developing the website and Listeners

IR IRI RIS ROBI RIS OBIN | RY OBIN OB YERS E ONI ER ON AN N

Celine Liu launched the pilot project.

started recruiting translators and a manager on WeChat, the most popular social media app in China. “This whole project to put together the Chinese website has been really exciting,” said Jacob Lorinc, editor-in-chief at The Varsity. He explained that the translators chose the 13 articles currently on the site from stories in the paper’s first issue of the year and the frosh handbook. Going forward, Lorinc said that the plan is for The Varsity to continue to put out its weekly English paper on Monday and then have the translators start work on Tuesday to release the Chinese versions in the same week. Due to the sheer volume of content that the paper produces, not every story will appear in Chinese. “We know that we want to keep some of the niche content of The Varsity about student politics or the administration, stuff that you can only really get from varsity news,” Lorinc said of the way the paper will decide which stories appear on both sites. One of the project’s biggest challenges is ensuring accuracy in the Chinese articles. “Since I can’t read simplified Chinese, I can’t personally confirm that the writing is correct; however we’ve put in a quality control system to do our best in order to make the translations as (accurate) as possible,” Lorinc said. Liu and Lorinc based the translation process on The Varsity’s existing copy editing system. This system has three stages before Liu and another Chinese-speaking manager with a background in journalism approve the final product. “That’s really as best as we can do, we haven’t really found the perfect way of translating it,

The new website will be updated every Tuesday following the publication of the English-language newspaper.

knowing that the end result is going to be the exact same as the English result,” Lorinc said. “In a sense we have to take a bit of a leap of faith. But knowing that other publications have done this, the New York Times, for example, we are willing to take this risk.” Liu said that the initiative has been well-received among the Chinese international student community. “There were a lot of people who really wanted to take part of it and help us to promote it,” she said. “They’re really excited about it. We’re planning to have a mar-

Some commenters praised the initiative and others wondered why the newspaper chose simplified Chinese over other languages — like French, for example. In previous years, there have been informal conversations about the idea of publishing The Varsity in French, but these ideas did not flourish due to lack of resources. “This project certainly wouldn’t have been able to happen if (Listeners) didn’t approach us and say ‘not only do we want to make this happen, but we also know a bunch of people who

I find that there’s a disconnect between what they know and what the school offers. — Celine Liu keting campaign on WeChat to recruit more people and make this spread out more.” On Facebook, responses to the Chinese Varsity site were mixed.

would be able to help translate,’ ” Lorinc said. Liu said that The Varsity publishes in simplified Chinese because of its prevalence in

mainland China, but that there is potential for it to expand to traditional Chinese as well. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, whereas simplified Chinese is more common in Mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore. For now, Liu and Lorinc are monitoring the project’s success in its first month. If it gets off the ground, Lorinc would like to see the system work the other way around, with reporters pitching and writing in Chinese and that work being translated for the English site. For Liu, translating The Varsity is just one of many ways to improve university life for international students. Listeners is working on training new peer supporters and trying to get authentic, high-quality Chinese food into U of T residence dining halls. Disclosure: Iris Robin was the news editor of The Varsity in 2015–2016. @iris_robin

44 News

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

R yersonian

Striving for a greener Toronto MANSOOR TANWEER RYERSONIAN

Smaller streets, green spaces and more accessible public transit could give Toronto an

environmental facelift. Florian Mayer, who was a research intern at Ryerson last summer, is going to present his recommendations to the 54th International Making Cities Livable

Conference in Santa Fe, N.M., on Oct. 2. Mayer now lives in Denmark, but he came to Canada to research ways to improve city infrastructure, namely roads,

Students, faculty, staff – all members of the Ryerson Community are invited to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the role of Ombudsperson at Ryerson University.

Wed., October 4th, 12:00pm – 6:30 p.m. It’s a Fairness Festival! Drop by the amphitheatre in the Student Learning Centre (first floor), for cake, pizza, popcorn, professional magic tricks and illusions, fairness games, and conversation. Celebrate two decades – 1997 to 2017 – of confidential, fair, independent and impartial complaint resolution. To find out more about the event or our office, contact the office of the Ombudsperson at RU at:

Oakham House, OAK 215 416-979-5000 ext. 7450 ombuds@ryerson.ca www.ryerson.ca/ombuds @OmbudsatRU

with a public health angle in mind. “Our aim was to basically do research on the interaction between public health and the urban fabric,” said Mayer, who specializes in urban geography. Mayer focused his study on one neighbourhood in Toronto: Flemingdon Park, the North York neighbourhood that runs right next to the Don Valley Parkway. A recognizable landmark in the area is the Ontario Science Centre. The people living there are mostly working class immigrant families, making them a special area of interest for Mayer’s research. “We picked Flemingdon Park because it was a priority neighbourhood. The people are poorer there. They are socially and economically vulnerable,” said Mayer. The main challenges residents face are the area’s roads. Unlike Mayer’s very walkable native country of Germany, the general layout of Toronto is very car-centric, and Flemingdon Park is no exception. The design of the neighbourhood forces residents to take cars instead of walking, which, in turn, is harmful. “Driving is really bad for our health. We sit a lot, we are not doing any physical activity,” said Mayer. The lack of physical activity is one negative health effect. Pollution is another. There are residents in Flemingdon Park who live within less than 50 metres of the Don Valley Parkway. There is a large amount of scientific literature talking about the effects of noise and particulate pollution from cars on mental and physical health. “If you are asthmatic and you stand near big roads, it is not good for your health. Also, aerosols can also cause lung cancer,” says Mayer. Dr. Ray Copes studies the phenomenon for Ontario

Public Health. He knows the exact mechanisms of how these aerosols get absorbed by the human body. “What we do know about these ultra-fine particles is that not only do these get inhaled into our lungs, but these ultrafine particles get taken across our alveolus in our lungs and get into the bloodstream where they circulate around the body,” said Copes. Copes said he walks through downtown Toronto by taking side streets to avoid the noise and exhaust pollution of the city. Coincidently, Mayer explored the possibilities of recommending the concept of a smart city to Toronto. “If you have, for example, apps and if you look at the concept of a smart city you can actually enable people to choose their routes. If you are asthmatic and you want to go to work in a healthy way… You can look at your app and say ‘OK, say this street for example, is full of aerosols and air pollutants, I shouldn’t take this route to work,’” said Mayer. In a written statement, the Ministry of Transportation said that they are putting in place measures to mitigate pollution from cars. “The ministry is rolling out a suite of programs and policies to further support green technology, transition to lower-emitting vehicles on Ontario’s roads, and create more opportunities for cycling in the province,” said senior media liaison officer Bob Nichols. “These policies.... will help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, help to manage congestion, connect people to jobs, improve the economy and quality of life for Ontarians, and put Ontario on the forefront of the clean, green technology sector.” @MansoorTanweer

R yersonian

News 5

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

STUDENTS cont’d...

Students complain of poor living conditions

MAGGIE MACINTOSH | RYERSONIAN

A mouse trap sits in the corner of fashion student Clara Purdy’s kitchen.

Ryerson researchers are likely to hear stories about abusive landlords and student houses, pest infestations and leaky appliances. The Ryersonian found high rental prices force many students to sacrifice their health and safety if they choose to live in the downtown core. The average price of a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto reached $2,000 a month in September, according to data from apartment hunting website Padmapper. The website studied 5,418 of their Toronto listings to collect

this month’s data, including both long-term and short-term accommodations like Airbnb. “I’m not sure how anybody can afford that,” says Charlie Bossy, a Ryerson grad. Bossy says he frequently lived without heat in his cramped apartment in Cabbagetown. The apartment was simply unbearable in the winter, he says, when the pipes would often freeze and leave him and five roommates without hot water. Bossy paid nearly $800 in total each month to live in a windowless, eight-by-eight foot room in

the six-bedroom apartment. He says the apartment was originally built with only two bedrooms. Clara Purdy, a fourth-year fashion communications student, pays $522 a month for rent, including utilities and Internet, for a five-bedroom apartment in a co-op on Gerrard Street. In exchange for cheap rent, she’s continuously dealt with loud construction, multiple roommates and kitchen grime, she says. “I don’t like hearing the mice run in the walls,” Purdy says. “It still bugs me, even after four years.” Despite her work order requests and annual moves to new units, Purdy’s mouse problems have remained consistent. Maesha Ahmed, a Ryerson business management grad, says she missed hours of school and work while living in an Annex house in 2015. At the time, she and three roommates thought they had scored with rooms costing about $525 a month, not including utilities, while the landlord was applying for permits to demolish the property.

ATTENTION ALL FULL-TIME STUDENTS

ALL STUDENTS MUST OPT-OUT ONLINE

The Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) provides you extended Health & Dental Insurance, but if you have comparable coverage, OPT-OUT for a refund by October 6, 2017 @ 6pm.

OPT-OUT ONLINE AT www.rsuonline.ca/services or www.mystudentplan.ca/rsu

Did you opt out last year in 2016-17? No worries... You’re automatically opted out - no need to apply every year for the refund of this fee If you opted out of the RSU health and dental plan in the previous year (2016-17), you will NOT receive a charge for the RSU health and dental plan on your RAMSS account. Please refer to information about “Changing your Status” for any OPT IN requirements go to: RSU site at www.rsuonline.ca/services

DEADLINE to OPT-OUT, OPT-IN or ADD DEPENDENTS:

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2017 - 6pm There are ABSOLUTELY NO EXCEPTIONS to this deadline Need Info? Contact Member Services Office, Student Centre Lobby or email health@rsuonline.ca

She says she suffered from perennial sickness, caused by an extension on the house that froze over during winter months. “We literally couldn’t even walk downstairs without a jacket on,” said Ahmed. “One of my roommates had to sleep in a jacket because her room was downstairs.” They put up with poor central heating in the winter, no ventilation and what Ahmed believes was black mould in their bathroom. “You never really find rent like that in Toronto,” says the 2016 grad. “So we had to put up with a lot of shit.” But the housing problems students face aren’t just contained within their walls. Bossy says the Moss Park and Cabbagetown area by Ryerson’s campus, where many students live, is “a particularly rough neighbourhood.” He once stepped outside his apartment to find paramedics zipping up a body bag on his neighbour’s front lawn. Allan Macdonald, Ryerson’s director of student health and

wellness, says an individual’s physical surroundings and safety have a major impact on their well being. “We see students all the time where housing is one of the main things contributing to their concerns,” he says, from an oval table in his office at Ryerson’s Centre for Student Development and Counselling. Bossy says coming home every day to his windowless accommodation had a huge impact on his stress levels. “That sort of period in my life ... was where my mental health was at its worst,” said Bossy. @macintoshmaggie @kcekota

A NIGHT TO O SHED

AN EVENT IN SUPPORT OF THE SICKKIDS CENTRE FOR COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH

Join us to help bring b i awareness to t tth the he challenges adolescents lescents with mental health issues face every day so that they can get the support they need.

Saturday, October 14 at 6:00 p.m.

Holiday Inn Toronto Downtown Centre 30 Carlton Street

¾ŃĐŘĞƭơɎ ʐȐȏȏ ɦUŦĐśƵėĞơ ó ďƵȅĞƭ ėŃŦŦĞƙɏ plus two host tickets for drinks. There will also be a silent auction. To purchase tickets, visit: tinyurl.com/helpshedlight

STUDENT DISCOUNT AVAILABLE! For more information, email Bevy1969@yahoo.ca

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Features

R yers

‘Lucid’ state of mind –

‘What if you could go into a space or you could wear something that wa

COURTESY ZACH SILVERSTEIN

Lucid is a dome-shaped tent with reflected coloured lights made of white material with an immersive sensory experience that is meant to deepen the state of a user’s meditation. AIDAN MACNAB RYERSONIAN

Seven years ago, Aaron Labbé was unable to go outside without being stricken with intense anxiety. He said he could not escape from an overwhelming sense of despair at how badly people treated each other. His condition led to a “major nervous breakdown resulting in heart arrhythmia,” he said. Now, along with other things he needs to do to maintain peace of mind, he meditates. Labbé was living in Buffalo at the time he sought medical help. He had a long list of diagnoses, like borderline personality disorder, bipolar 1 disorder, panic anxiety disorder and substance abuse. He was prescribed 15 different medications until one was found to be effective. The trial and error of his treatment was not without consequences; one drug put him in psychosis, for which he was institutionalized. A music student at the time, he was forced out of the music program at the SUNY Fredonia School of Music in Fredonia, N.Y.

“My symptoms, since they were in several different categories of diagnoses, they (doctors) gave me a bunch of pills until I reacted well,” he said. “It was a very difficult process. It took me years to recover.” Many students are like Labbé and deal with clinically diagnosed mental illnesses requiring medication and psychotherapy. Others deal with conditions which, although they don’t make life completely unmanageable or put their lives at risk, still limit their achievements. Depression, anxiety, pessimism, fear and lack of self-esteem exist in people on a spectrum of severity with a variety of causes. Ryerson’s counselling centre is the go-to place for students to secure help when balancing daily life challenges becomes difficult. To supplement its service, the RSU closed the used book room in 2016 to create a student wellness centre. But a year later, it is still not open. Aside from help from the university, there are scientifically sound methods for improving mental health. There are resources for those not in crisis and who do not want to go to the trouble of waiting for scheduled appointments. These people

tend to not realize their academic potential and are struggling socially, or are just not enjoying life. In March this year, Diana Brecher and co-creator Deena Shaffer piloted Thriving in Action. The program is part of ThriveRU, a Ryerson initiative headed by Brecher that aims to optimize students’ abilities by training them to develop life-coping skills. Brecher said the program is designed to support students on academic probation who require academic accommodation or are on the wait-list for the counselling centre. The two-hour weekly sessions are meant to combat poor study habits, bad time management, social anxiety, negative thinking, self-perception and other stresses by using positive psychology, meditation, cognitive behavioural therapy and other holistic methods. “It’s saying how do we go from neutral, where things are OK, to things are really great.” Brecher said. The clinical psychologist has worked in the counselling centre for most of her 27 years at Ryerson. Now, she runs ThriveRU full time, offering training for faculty and staff

sonian

Features

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

music and meditation

as unique to you in order to get you to a state of serenity or meditation.’ as well as students. Ann Rauhala has taught at Ryerson for nearly 20 years and brought Brecher’s philosophy to Ryerson’s Faculty of Communication and Design (FCAD). Rauhala ventured into meditation on her own and saw the need in her students. “My personal interest was very much founded by a feeling of concern and helplessness because I was seeing students suffer,” Rauhala said. She was witnessing the same issues in students: a desire to succeed and, despite talent and intelligence, coming up short. “A high school teacher once said to me that every student wants to succeed. So a student who isn’t succeeding is almost never choosing not to succeed,” she said. “We all find our ways of dealing with our challenges and some people could really benefit from just a little bit of help.” Rauhala helped organize an introduction to mindfulness meditation, open to all professors and staff in FCAD, after inviting Brecher to work with members of the journalism faculty. She and Brecher also presented to a Ryerson-wide faculty conference this spring. Meditation is studied widely in the scientific community as a method of dealing with mental health issues. In some cases it has been effective in moderately reducing anxiety, depression and improving attention. In one study published in the National Academy of Sciences, 40 undergraduate students were given five days of 20-minute

JULIE GERMANSKY | RYERSONIAN

Aaron Labbé works with Lucid during a facilitated meditation. The computer program mesaures brain waves to deepen meditation.

health-care costs significantly if used widely. Though Labbé’s treatment was rocky at first, he said he is in a better place now. Having determined the proper balance of medication, he still works to tame his mind. Meditation is part of his regime. After parting ways with the Fredonia School of Music, Labbé sought a bachelor of fine arts at Ryerson’s new media program. For his third-year project he wanted to develop a piece of music that had therapeutic effects. He used sounds that had been shown to reduce anxiety. In his user testing, he found his medley had this effect on many. Not everyone responds in the same way to the same stimuli, so for his fourth-year thesis project, he came up with a new idea. “What if you could go into a space or you could wear something that was unique to you in order to get you to a state of serenity or meditation,” he said. “That’s where Lucid was conceptualized.” Lucid looks like a dome-shaped tent made of white

A student who isn’t succeeding is almost never choosing not to succeed.

—Ann Rauhala

meditation and mindfulness training. Overall, the result showed a reduction in anxiety, depression, anger, fatigue and a “significant” decrease in cortisol, a stress-related hormone. Another Harvard study led by Dr. James E. Stahl offered an eight-week program of “different mind-body approaches, including meditation, yoga, mindfulness, cognitive behavioural skills and positive psychology.” The study found that people in the relaxation program used 43 per cent fewer medical services than they did the previous year, suggesting yoga and meditation could reduce

material. It’s an immersive sensory experience meant to deepen the state of a user’s meditation. Coloured lights are reflected, while the user listens to music and has their brain waves measured by an electrode-embedded headband connected to a computer program. The music and light changes, depending on the brain waves measured and what will induce a deeper meditative state. After a couple minutes, Lucid produces a personalized music track, which, based on the recorded brain waves, is supposed to have the same meditative effect when listened to at home. @AidanMacnab

R yersonian

Ryerson meets fashion week

Arts & Life

ryersonian.ca Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Great unsung lunches

A guide to unexplored bargain foods near campus

Afros and social stigma

EVAN MANNING ABIGAIL MURTA

RYERSONIAN

So you come to school every day and you eat the same food, huh? You spend money every week at McDonald’s? Ha, that’s funny. Burrito Boyz? Delicious if you’re a burrito lover (side note — burritos are nasty). Panera Bread? C’mon guys, spruce it up. It’s about time that you start allowing your eating habits to feel love. Excite your taste buds. Below, you will find spots to eat near campus that you may not have heard of. Most likely, you’ve never been to at least one or two of these restaurants. A lot of respect for Salad King, Banh Mi Boys, Ginger, and other Ryerson staples, but they’re just too well-known for this list. All restaurants are located between Bay to Jarvis going eastwest, and Queen to Wellesley going north-south. Best of all, visiting these spots will not murder your wallet. You will leave not only feeling pleasantly stuffed, but satisfied with the comforting thought of your bank account still being intact. So, without further ado, here are the top “lesser known” cheap eat spots to visit around campus.

North of Brooklyn Pizzeria (469 Church St.) What to order: A slice of anything Price: $4.20 - $4.40 Taste heaven in a bite at this tiny pizzeria located in the village. The spot is unassuming, as you have to walk downstairs to

EVA VAN VA NM MANN ANN NING | R RY YERSONIA NIIA NIA AN

Sweet and sour chicken and vegetable chow mein at Not Just Noodles on Yonge Street.

below ground level to enter. But once you’re inside, aromas of cheese and tomato will intoxicate you. You can’t go wrong with any slice – they will all fulfil your craziest pizza desires.

Hot Star Large Fried Chicken (374 Yonge St.) What to order: Salt N’ Pepper Fried Chicken Price: $9.99 The Taiwanese fried chicken chain came to Toronto in 2015. They’ve been serving up tender, crispy pieces of chicken larger than Dwight Schrute’s forehead ever since.

Three Little Pigs Sandwich Co. (15 Elm St.) What to order: The jerk pork sandwich or the “TLP” Price: $7.50 - $12 From the owners of Barberian’s Steakhouse came Three Little Pigs, one of the most underrated sandwich shops in the city. Every sandwich here is beautifully crafted and all of them clock

in around $10. Do you want juicy jerk pork served on a soft bun with crunchy rice? Or how about some deliciously juicy and flavourful “momma’s meatloaf”? Who knew meatloaf could taste so delicious in a sandwich form?

Ethiopiques (227 Church St.) What to order: Spicy beef with injera Price: $9 The spicy beef stew with injera is a plentiful meal for under $10. This is the best Ethiopian food that you’ll find close to campus.

Patties Express (4 Elm St.) What to order: Spicy beef patties Price: $2 per patty The lack of students eating on Elm Street is suspicious. Do we even know of Patties Express and Three Little Pigs? Or are students just actively trying to avoid Elm Street for some unknown reason? You can get five beef patties for $10.

Not Just Noodles (570 Yonge St.) What to order: Lunch combination dish Price: $6.99 On the corner of Yonge and Wellesley lies a Chinese spot that far surpasses Hong Shing, the ever-popular alternative for Ryerson students. In truth, Not Just Noodles may be a tad farther than Hong Shing but the extra walking is an added incentive to eat a massive plate of noodles and deep fried hot n’ sour chicken. They have different lunch specials for every day of the week too. Get ready for your food comas. @realecmanning

With four films now under her belt, it’s just the beginning for Toronto-based director, Alicia K. Harris. Her experimental short film Maybe If It Were a Nice Room, which explores her personal experience of rape, was featured at the Female Eye Film Festival in 2016 and won best production design at the North American Film Awards. That same year, Harris tackled a new and profoundly sensitive topic in her upcoming short film Pick: the social stigma around the afro. “Growing up, I never saw myself represented. There weren’t a lot of people who looked like me,” Harris said. The film depicts a young black girl who wears her afro for the first time and faces microaggressions from her peers and educators. “I made this film because black women and our hair are made to feel like the things we do with it are weird,” Harris said. Pick is to be released in 2018. Harris hopes to have it screened at TIFF 2018. @abimurta

R yersonian

Sports

First year spells change for baseball player ryersonian.ca Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Victor Findlay on the way up STEVEN ELLIS RYERSONIAN

When Ryerson introduced the sport media program to the school of radio and television arts in 2014, there was a bit of mystery to the program. But in March of 2014, Sportsnet gifted Ryerson with close to $750,000 to build upon the program. It truly was the future of the industry. Enter Victor Findlay, a fourthyear Ryerson sports media student who has become the exact student the school was hoping to create. At an early age, Findlay came to a realization that playing professional sports, like many kids’ dreams, wasn’t going to happen. Working in professional sports? That’s a different story. “For me, I always wanted to

get into sports. Probably from the time I was 10 years old, I wanted to become a play-by-play commentator,” Findlay said. To get his feet wet, Findlay started volunteering for RogersTV in Oshawa, getting experience covering the Oshawa Generals of the OHL and other teams in the area. Findlay always had Ryerson on the radar, specifically the RTA program. It wasn’t until the 201415 school year, however, that Ryerson began offering a sport media program under the RTA banner, something that instantly caught his attention. Findlay is part of the first graduating class for a sport media program that has seen work plastered over mainstream sports outlets all over the country. While he’s more known for being Ryerson’s play-by-play commentator during his tenure

at the school, Findlay has worked for various other publications in the past. Some of his other ventures include Yahoo, Junior Hockey Magazine and The Canadian University Sports Network, where he currently acts as the lead commentator. What makes Findlay notable is his ability to grab information from coaches and teams before anyone else. He’s known as a hockey “insider,” tweeting news about the U Sports hockey world to his thousands of followers. In some cases, he knows what’s going on before the players involved do. “That happens more than you think,” Findlay said. It was never the game plan to become an insider. After doing camera work for the Generals broadcasts for three years, Findlay decided to make the jump to commentary at the U Sports level.

Findlay used his play-by-play work as a way in to the industry, and then started to do more than he ever expected. He quickly became the Ryerson Rams’ hockey insider, something that had not really been done at the school before. “It got to the point where my interest was piqued in the rest of the league.” In March of 2016, Findlay’s passion led him to Halifax for the U Sports national hockey championships. From there, he was able to talk to a coach about some new recruits coming to the team a year later, something he had heard from a Ryerson source. Findlay would go on to break the news before anyone else. Of course, not everyone is willing to give out their information to Findlay. “I take pride in being fair, so I have a very good relationship

with just about every coach in the league,” Findlay said. When asked about what events he’d love to cover in the future, he stated that covering the Stanley Cup Final is any hockey sportscaster’s dream. However, one event in particular stands out most to the Oshawa native. “I’d love to cover the Daytona 500,” said Findlay, an avid NASCAR fan. “I mean, it’s the crown jewel of auto racing.” For now, Findlay hopes to only go up from here. His future is looking strong, but he said he can never stop working hard to meet his goals. Just like a professional hockey player.

@StevenEllisNHL

ST VEN STE N ELLIS | RY RYE YE Y ER RSO SO ON NIA AN AN

R yersonian Editorial

Read more about mental health online ryersonian.ca Wednesday, September 27, 2017

EDITORIAL

Mind your language Three-quarters of lifelong mental illnesses emerge between the ages of 18 and 24. By age 25, 20 per cent of Canadians will have developed a mental illness. As students, we ought to be aware of our mental health and learn strategies to maintain it. But what does that entail? Some mental health awareness initiatives will tell you that getting eight hours of sleep, exercising regularly, eating a balanced diet and petting a few dogs here and there is good for your mental health. And they’re not wrong. But what they won’t tell you is that while mental health and mental illness are important and related, they are not the same thing. Mental health is a general term for the condition of a person’s psychological and emotional well-being. Everyone has mental health. The status of it changes regularly. A mental illness is a set of persistent symptoms that affect your ability to function and may decrease your mental health quality. This distinction matters. Mental illnesses are as numerous and varied as physical illnesses, yet the term “mental health” is often used interchangeably with “mental illness,” which can end up isolating mentally ill students. When the phrase “mental health” is used in place of “mental illness,” it further stigmatizes the latter. It allows for initiatives meant to improve mental health on campus to ignore the effects of mental illness on one’s mental

health, and to continue as though simply promoting a healthy lifestyle is enough. It normalizes a generalized approach to all mental illnesses, which is unhelpful. The impacts of different mental illnesses are kaleidoscopic, as different as a broken bone and a blood disease. Taking the same generalized approach for all mental health problems and illnesses is about as useful as taking the same approach for all physical problems and illnesses. Again, this distinction matters because not everybody with a mental health problem has a mental illness. It could be a passing issue or it could be a chronic problem that requires a long-term plan and strategizing to manage. Understanding the difference between mental health and mental illness is the first step in realizing the needs of individuals with different mental illnesses, and moving towards accepting those with uncommon mental illnesses. Using the term “mental health” to homogenize mental health and mental illness might also prevent students from realizing that they are at risk of developing a mental illness. It would instead be more useful to acknowledge that mental illnesses exist, and to help students learn the signs and symptoms of particular mental illnesses, so they can recognize them in themselves and others. We need to stop using “mental health” like a euphemism and instead acknowledge the role of mental illness in a student’s mental health.

SIMONA CATALANO | RYERSO҃ NIAN

OPINION

Black community mental health SADE LEWIS RYERSONIAN

The discussion around mental health can make people feel uncomfortable, or embarrassed. Because of that it is an endlessly silenced topic. But if people dismiss their apprehensiveness by speaking up, they are ostracized. This fear of not being able to have a voice while dealing with an ongoing mental illness is even more relevant within the black community. There are over 200 types of mental illness. Common ones include: depression and anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, social anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and anorexia nervosa, to name a few. It is said that mental illness

affects everyone at some point, whether it’s through a family member, friend or colleague, and 20 per cent of Canadians will personally experience a mental illness. Why is that? Mental illness doesn’t discriminate or isolate. There is no running from it, which means it can have a serious impact on absolutely anyone. What’s quite interesting is that this issue is not disussed within the black community. Have you ever seen a television show or a blockbuster movie where the main character has a mental illness and is black? Or how about in really good novel? It’s either very rare or non-existent. Why? As a child, what did you do when you realized you weren’t feeling well? You would tell someone. Or if you fell and scraped your knee, an adult would ask, “Are you OK?” and your response would most likely be, “No. It hurts.” As children we’re so vulnerable and life seemed so simple. But as young adults, young black adults, we’re

struggling to find the words to tell someone that we’re not OK. It’s a lot easier said than done. We’ve all experienced emotional pain in one way or another. My pain comes from the loss of my two cousins — one who died a bit over a week before school returned. I’m the type to keep everything bottled up and not express how I feel. I wrote and read a eulogy at my cousin’s funeral, where I expressed and laid out every bit of emotion that was drowning in the pit of my stomach. Once I finished reading in front of everyone, I felt quite a bit of relief. It’s OK to not be OK, and it’s also OK to let someone know you aren’t well. We need to ignore the judgments of people around us, whether they are family or friends. You need to take the time to worry about yourself because, at the end of the day, your mental health is what’s most important. @flockoflew

R yersonian