February 5, 2024
THE VARSITY The University of Toronto’s Student Newspaper Since 1880
Vol. CXLIV, No. 17
“Enough is enough”: Canadian Federation of Students charts new direction
Student union execs across Canada set CFS’ priorities for the coming year at 2023 General Meeting
Jessie Schwalb News Editor
“Shameful,” “posturing,” and “trying to find unity” — attendees of the Canadian Federation of Students’ (CFS) 2023 National General Meeting (NGM) used many phrases to describe the federation’s current and future course. The meeting, which included representatives from more than 30 student unions across the country, saw heated debates over the federation’s claims to represent the more than 530,000 postsecondary students numbered among its membership. Over six days in 2023 and 2024, student union representatives — including representatives from U of T’s three campuses — tasked the federation with undertaking a decolonization audit, creating a strategic plan, and electing new national executives. The federation also committed to new advocacy priorities relevant to U of T students, including opposing deferred exam fees, supporting a ceasefire in Gaza, and criticizing the Blue-Ribbon Panel’s report — which called for increasing domestic tuition rates in Ontario. What is the CFS? The Canadian Federation of Students was formed in 1981 with the aim of uniting students across Canada. Its initial goals included advocating against funding cuts and organizing for government funding for “free and accessible post-secondary education.” Today, the CFS includes 63 student unions, or ‘locals,’ across nine provinces. The CFS advertises that these unions collectively represent more than 530,000 students — including almost every student at U of T. All five of U of T’s major student unions — the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU), the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU), the Scarborough Campus Students’
Union (SCSU), the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU), and the Association of Part-time University Students (APUS) — belong to the CFS. If you look at your invoice, you likely can find a budget line corresponding to your CFS fee: full-time graduate students pay the most this academic year, at $19.33, and APUS members pay the least, at $9.40. The CFS lobbies the provincial and federal governments and offers services such as the International Student Identity Card — which full-time students belonging to CFS locals can receive for free, and which qualifies students for discounts — and the Ethical Purchasing Network, through which students unions can order sustainably-sourced supplies. In a statement to The Varsity, SCSU VicePresident (VP) Khadidja Roble noted that she sees value in the CFS uniting students. APUS President Jaime Kearns wrote to The Varsity that the association does try to involve students in CFS campaigns, noting the many CFS services that benefit part-time students at U of T. On the other hand, UTSU VP Public and University Affairs Aidan Thompson told The Varsity that the UTSU will continue to avoid involving itself in CFS campaigns. The union has historically criticized the CFS for a lack of transparency, accountability, and effectiveness. Along with other student unions, the UTSU has floated the idea of leaving the federation, although CFS bylaws — criticized by the UTSU as “overly burdensome” — have hindered this process. Multiple student unions have attempted to leave the CFS but failed to meet the CFS bylaws’ requirements for secession. In multiple cases, the CFS has sued these unions for not paying fees after their attempted secessions. Four days in Toronto November 24, 2023 marked the first day of the
NGM. Executives from all five of U of T’s student unions attended, excluding the UTGSU, which proxied its vote to the UTSU. The four-day-long meeting included workshops; meetings geared toward specific constituencies such as women members, or Two-Spirit and trans students; and subcommittee meetings to amend and recommend motions for the entire membership to vote on during plenary sessions. Preparing and carrying out annual elections for CFS executives is one of the NGM’s primary functions, which became all the more important given that former UTMSU President Maëlis Barre resigned in September from her role as CFS national chairperson — the federation’s chief spokesperson and representative. In her absence, interim Lakehead University Student Union Vice-President Brandon Rhéal Amyot has taken on the role. During the opening plenary — a decisionmaking session that includes all attendees — the gathered student union execs elected CFS staff member Alice Wu as the federation’s Chief Returning Officer (CRO) for its upcoming elections, which were scheduled to take place during the closing plenary session on November 27.
The agenda for the closing plenary scheduled for November 27 included discussion and voting on motions recommended by various CFS committees — including motions related to the federation’s budget, policies, and services. These motions included accepting the federation’s financial audit and appointing a new auditor, a process required under the federation’s bylaws. The closing plenary, which the federation scheduled to begin at 1:00 pm, remained on hold while the Circle of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Students and the Black Students’ Caucus — two decision-making bodies within the federation — held an unscheduled meeting for upward of four hours. They emerged with two motions: tasking the federation with calling for solidarity with Palestine and undertaking a “decolonization audit.” Continued on page 2.
In Science this week: Dr. Anthony Feinstein discusses journalists’ moral courage during conflicts Page 7
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The Varsity would like to acknowledge that our office is built on the traditional territory of several First Nations, including the Huron-Wendat, the Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit. Journalists have historically harmed Indigenous communities by overlooking their stories, contributing to stereotypes, and telling their stories without their input. Therefore, we make this acknowledgement as a starting point for our responsibility to tell those stories more accurately, critically, and in accordance with the wishes of Indigenous Peoples.
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Continued from cover. “Enough is enough” At 7:57 pm, the closing plenary began. After delegates verified that the meeting met quorum — essentially, that it had enough delegates to begin under the CFS’ bylaws — more than 20 people approached the microphones planted in the conference room to discuss proposed motions on the agenda. Adaeze Mbalaja — the former president of the York Federation of Students and the Ontario representative to the CFS National Executive committee — first spoke on the motion for solidarity with Palestine. She criticized the CFS’ procedures for its meetings, which she said prevented the federation from taking “purposeful stances.” “We did introductions for 15 minutes out of [a] one hour [meeting]. That is shameful. We are posturing,” she said. Mbalaja called on the federation to “[recognize that] what is happening right now to the Palestinian people, what has been happening for 75 years, is a genocide.” She told the crowd that the federation must support students who have been harassed or criminally charged for demonstrating pro-Palestinian views. The solidarity motion, which delegates passed unanimously, reaffirmed the CFS’ “support for the Palestinian people and their ongoing fight against settler-colonialism, apartheid, occupation and genocide on Gaza,” resolved that the CFS advocate for a ceasefire in Gaza, that it create a campaign advocating for postsecondary institutions to divest from weapons manufacturers, and that it donate $5,000 each to the Community Defense Fund and Palestinian Youth Movement. Deanna Garand — a University of Manitoba student and co-chair of the Circle — then spoke on the motion for a decolonization audit. The motion calling for the audit noted that attendees of the 2022 NGM experienced “colonial violence.” In an apology released in early 2023, the national executive noted that individuals made “harmful comments” during the 2022 NGM elections forum impacting both Indigenous students and international students that “unfairly pitted [groups] against each other.” The organization agreed to conduct a decolonization audit before the 2023 NGM. According to the motion proposed at this year’s NGM, the CFS had not yet completed the audit or “provided adequate information to the Circle as to why this work has not been completed.” Garand also commented on the CFS’ procedures, arguing that the use of Robert’s Rules of Order — a parliamentary procedure system used to run most boards of directors meetings — hindered the organization from moving forward. Other speakers alleged that staff members lacked basic information on Indigenous history and noted years of CFS brushing conversations and necessary changes “under the rug.” “Our Indigenous students, our Black students, all of our other racialized students have come to another NGM again and experienced microaggressions, experienced racism, experienced harms,” Garand told the delegates. “We cannot wait any longer, and we absolutely cannot push back a decolonization audit and the reform of whatever this CFS organization is. Enough is enough.”
Members passed the decolonization audit motion, which tasked CFS with immediately founding a Decolonization Audit Working Group (DAWG), led in partnership with Hummingbirds Rising, an Indigenous consulting firm recommended by the Circle. The DAWG will collaborate with the Circle to create an action plan for the audit, with the aim to report on its work before the 2024 NGM. The motion also determined that the chair of the Circle will receive a seat on the CFS’ National Executive Committee as an at-large member alongside the organization’s chairperson, deputy chairperson, and treasurer. Wu then took the floor to speak on her experience as CRO, arguing that she didn’t receive the support or information needed to carry out the elections. She also alleged that delegates and a member of the national executive committee had blamed her for consistent delays in the schedule, “dragging [her] name through the mud.” At the end of her speech, she walked out and encouraged other delegates to walk out with her. After Wu spoke, members began playing drums, and delegates trickled out of the space. The meeting adjourned at 8:30 pm due to a lack of quorum.
benefits to supplement inadequate provincial benefits, which left almost 980,000 Canadians with disabilities 16 years and older below the poverty line in 2021. The 2012 Canadian Survey on Disability conducted by Statistics Canada found that almost one in five postsecondary students with disabilities lived in households with incomes below the federal low-income cutoff. Members also passed a motion opposing the recent Blue Ribbon Panel report on Ontario university funding and committing the CFS to advocating for “fair, free, and sustainable education policies.” The Ontario government commissioned the report to determine how to keep postsecondary institutions financially stable amid mounting debt and high-profile financial woes at some universities. The report recommended that the provincial government end its four-year-long domestic tuition freeze. The panel’s chair wrote that Ontario should stop regulating U of T’s tuition altogether, which would allow it to raise domestic tuition fees beyond the standard three to five per cent per year at which the province has previously capped increases.
Closing Plenary Part 2: Electric Boogaloo Having not completed the election or passed the financial and operational motions discussed in committees in November, the CFS scheduled a second closing plenary to take place over Zoom from January 26–27. The federation originally scheduled the meeting to begin at 12:00 pm. The bylaws, however, require that at least one-half plus one of the federation’s locals be in attendance or proxy their votes for a plenary to begin, and the federation did not meet this threshold until around 3:00 pm, delaying the meeting until then. The gathered delegates then moved on to discuss motions referred to the plenary by the committees that met in November during the NGM. Delegates approved the federation’s audited financial statements, which showed that, from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023, the CFS and CFS Services — an entity that manages services offered by the CFS — collectively brought in $4,127,535 in membership fees and spent $4,292,023. The members also approved the union’s budget for the year lasting from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, with an expected income and spending of $4,642,551. The budget showed that the federation spent $408,500 to hold the 2023 NGM. Members passed a motion opposing fees imposed by universities for deferred exams, referring to a survey conducted by the UTSU in October 2023 that showed a majority of students “would consider” going to class or taking an exam while sick if they had already used the one absence declaration allotted to them each semester. The motion tasked the CFS with compiling a database or spreadsheet of postsecondary institutions that charge exam deferral fees and creating advocacy materials student unions can use. The members also committed the CFS to partner with disability advocacy groups to lobby for a quick implementation of the Canada Disability Benefit Act. The benefit, which passed parliament in June 2023, would provide federal
A new chairperson, and a change in direction On January 26, Amyot explained that the CFS decided to begin elections again, given “concerns raised” around the original process started in November. The delegates appointed CFS staffer Ashlinn Pennell as the new CRO. During the following day, the members elected Association Étudiante de l’Université de Saint-Boniface Chair Michelle Kambire as the new interim chairperson. Memorial University of Newfoundland student Holly Star Tait — the current Newfoundland and Labrador representative for the Circle — won the 2024– 2025 chairperson election. Members also adopted a motion to create a strategic plan “to address issues highlighted during the 2023 National General Meeting.” Sara MacCallum, president of the University of King’s College Students’ Union, discussed the motion, noting disorganization, scheduling delays, and a lack of updates on the CFS’ campaigns, despite mandates to update them for “deadlines of NGMs even before [2023].” The motion obligates the national executive team to write a strategic plan, to be presented at the next NGM, that will guide the federation’s work and include strategies for “achieving free education,” deadlines for projects, proposals for any necessary restructuring, and increased transparency measures. Aymot gave closing remarks to the delegates, finishing off their term as interim chairperson. They noted the accomplishments the CFS had made over the past year, including organizing the National Day of Action, a Canada-wide series of protests calling for provinces to fully fund universities. They also noted the challenges faced by both individual student unions and the CFS as a whole. “I really hope that in the coming few months of the remainder of this term to the year ahead, we will really think about why we exist as a federation, and [try] to find unity in our purpose and our direction,” they told the delegates.
CORRECTIONS: The headline of a Business & Labour article published in Issue 16, originally entitled “Blue Ribbon Panel suggests deregulating tuition for U of T amid Ontario universities’ financial crisis,” was inaccurate — in fact, it was the panel’s chair who argued for deregulation, not the panel as a whole. The article also mistakenly attributed the start of the province’s tuition freeze to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — although the freeze was extended due to COVID-19, it was already in place at the start of the pandemic. A News article published in Issue 16 entitled “The Breakdown: Summer internships and jobs” stated that international students in Canada can only work for a maximum of 20 hours per week at an offcampus job. While this is true during school terms, this rule does not apply during scheduled school breaks. A News article published in Issue 16 entitled “Campus Safety under fire for not adequately warning UTSG of second voyeurism case” has been updated online to include new comments from the university. A U of T spokesperson clarified that the incident is under investigation, that Campus Safety and New College staff informed New College residents of the incident, and that the university currently does not have a photograph of the suspect. A Sports article published in Issue 16 entitled “Lukas MacNaughton’s journey from the Varsity Blues to Major League Soccer” stated that Shaq Moore of Nashville SC is a left-back, when he is actually a right-back.
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FEBRUARY 5, 2024
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Line 3 Scarborough replacement busway plans further derailed at TTC Board Meeting Board cites failure to complete environmental assessment as main cause of delay Mekhi Quarshie Managing Online Editor
During its January 25 meeting — the first board meeting of the new year — the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) board announced further delays to its busway project. This project is intended to provide support for Scarborough residents — and many UTSC students — after the TTC permanently closed Line 3, the Scarborough Rapid Transit system (SRT), following a derailment in July. With the majority of UTSC students commuting to campus, the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) has called on the TTC board to prioritize getting the busway built. To meet students’ needs, the union also hopes to implement a universal pass or shuttle bus that would cut down on students’ commute time and costs. Delays and rising price tag The TTC Board moved a motion in 2021 to prepare a roadway for buses — the famed busway — built over the tracks of the former SRT corridor that goes from Kennedy to Scarborough Centre. However, by the January 25 meeting, the TTC had failed to finish much of the foundational construction work that the board had expected it to complete, leading to months more of further delays. In response to this, TTC Board Chair Jamaal Myers moved a motion toward the end of the January meeting requesting TTC Chief Executive Officer Richard Leary report back to the board on financial possibilities for the busway. Leary will report to the board about reallocating $15.2 million in funds from within the TTC’s Capital Budget to ensure the project progresses and whether the provincial government would stomach some of the costs.
“This motion keeps the process going so there would be no further delays,” Myers told the board. “No final decisions are being made at this meeting; it is essentially a report back for the next meeting.” The TTC plans to begin construction for the busway in 2025. The expected completion date has been pushed from 2026 to 2027 and the expected cost has increased from $92.2 million to more than $108 million, according to a supplementary report the board received from the TTC’s chief capital officer at the meeting. The report attributed the ballooning price tag and delays to an additional, unexpectedly required environmental assessment for the Ministry of Environment, Conservation, and Parks and the need to construct a protective barrier separating the potential TTC corridor from the GO rail line. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow’s draft 2024 budget, which she released on February 1, includes full funding for the busway replacement project. Advocacy group TTCRiders had drafted a letter available on their website, calling on the City to provide full funding for the busway if the provincial government neglects to chip in. TTCRiders Executive Director Shelagh Pizey-Allen thinks that the petition was vital not only for the implementation of the busway, but for Chow’s decision to chip in as well. “The busway would not be happening without TTCRiders,” Pizey-Allen noted in an interview with The Varsity. “It’s bittersweet, right? We’re so relieved that the funding is here now, but we should never have been in the situation where there is such a long gap in transit service.” Pizey-Allen believes that Chow’s leadership has been important for the construction of Line 3, stating that the mayor has “cleaned up the mess of the last administration.”
The TTC Board applauded fundraising efforts at the start of its January 25 meeting. MEKHI QUARSHIE/THEVARSITY
The City Council will vote on the proposed budget on February 14. How are students coping? UTSC houses less than 10 per cent of its students, with most students commuting to campus. A 2019 survey of students attending Toronto postsecondary institutions — including U of T — found that 60 per cent of students’ trips between home and campus involved local or regional transit. Students have attempted to make the most out of the current situation since the SRT closed. Andre Zhang — a first-year management and international business student at UTSC and novice representative for the Hart House Debate club — sees the bright red and blue seats of the TTC quite regularly. Zhang takes the 38, one of the current Line 3 replacement services, to head back home at night after late debate meetings. “Previously, the trip from downtown would require a connection at Kennedy [Station]… now, especially late at night, I can just take the 38 straight from Kennedy,” he told The Varsity. The new route cancels out a transfer at Scarborough Centre for Zhang, compensating for the extra time that the bus takes on the road. Other students, however, have raised concerns about the continuous neglect that Scarborough transportation receives — concerns they have brought up to the SCSU.
“Students have been sharing their frustrations with the overall service the TTC provides,” SCSU Vice President External Khadidja Roble wrote in an email to The Varsity. “Every day that the busway remains unbuilt, commuter students lose a substantial 20 minutes stuck in traffic. It is imperative that government officials prioritize swift action to prevent further time wastage for our students and all commuters while deliberating on the funding for the busway.” Roble wrote that the SCSU has worked to address these issues by signing the TTCRiders’ advocacy letter. She added that the union has also “been providing students free PRESTO cards” to offset financial burdens. The SCSU remains in talks with the university to implement a universal transit pass — a pass that would provide UTSC students with free or discounted public transit trips. Roble told The Varsity that Metrolinx “appears to be supportive of the project.” As for the potential of a shuttle bus project similar to that provided between the UTM and UTSG campuses, the union is in the “early stages” of developing a proposal, alongside the TTC, that would provide direct transportation from Kennedy Station to UTSC. The next TTC board meeting is scheduled for February 22, where Leary will report back to the board about the state of the budget and whether the province will step in to foot some of the costs.
U of T students organize walkout, town hall in solidarity with Palestine Events mark renewed advocacy efforts as violence in Gaza enters fifth month Selia Sanchez & Maeve Ellis Deputy News Editor & Assistant News Editor
On January 29, Tkarónto Students in Solidarity with Palestine (TSSP) — a U of T student-led advocacy group — organized a tri-campus walkout that drew hundreds of students. The same day, the group held a town hall for students to “learn more about Palestinian organizing on campus, share experiences, and get involved.” The walkout With over 100 people in attendance at UTSG, the TSSP led a march from Sidney Smith Hall to Simcoe Hall, reiterating its demands for U of T to end its “complicity with the ongoing genocide in Gaza.” The group has called on the university to cut ties with Israeli institutions and stop engaging with
companies and banks, such as Starbucks and the Royal Bank of Canada, that have limited their employees’ speech related to Palestine or funded companies with connections to the Israeli military. Students gathered on the steps of Sidney Smith Hall at 2:00 pm for the walkout. Members of the TSSP and the audience chanted “Free Palestine.” Organizers also carried a sign that read, “U of T students stand with Palestine.” According to Sara Rasikh, a first-year masters student studying social justice education at the Ontario Institute of Education (OISE) and one of the walkout organizers, the TSSP organized the walkout to “[disrupt] business as usual on campus” and “bring forward the collective disdain that U of T students have with U of T’s complicity.” In an interview with The Varsity, first-year Munk One student Jaelin Caverhill explained that she
Organizers demand U of T end its complicity in ongoing violence in Gaza. SELIA SANCHEZ/THEVARSITY
participated in the walkout because “the cause is really important, and it’s very evident that this is a genocide at this point.” The South African government brought a case to the International Court of Justice on December 29, accusing the Israeli government of committing genocide against Palestinians. The International Court of Justice has agreed to hear the case and, on January 26, approved six orders against Israel requiring the country to take all possible measures to protect Palestinian civilians. The Israeli government has refused to implement them and maintains that it is acting in self defence. Around 2:30 pm, TSSP organizers began walking toward Simcoe Hall. The town hall From 6:00–9:00 pm that evening in University College’s Student Commons, TSSP also organized a town hall for students, focused on discussing concrete means to support Palestine, including through student politics and divestment. Fourth-year international relations and philosophy student Aviral Dhamija spoke during the event. He told the crowd that activists on campus should focus on behind-the-scenes work to promote Palestinian activism, similar to actions student leaders took in the 1980s and 1990s against South African apartheid. “We just have morality on our side, and morality is not enough,” he said to the crowd. “We divested from South Africa. I’m gonna keep saying this again and again: we have done this before, and we can do this again.”
He said that the University of Toronto Graduate Student Union’s Divestment Caucus, founded in 2022, showed an example of effective organizing, because it went beyond “platitudes” and created a structure for students to discuss divestment. Third-year political science and sociology student Mariam El-Rayes, a member of the TSSP’s steering committee who is running for the U of T governing council, pledged to focus on Palestinian activism if elected, among other topics. She focused her speech on the importance of students having power in governance spaces. “Access to admin and being privy to important information is necessary for us to properly strategize. We should know how decisions are being made and how those decisions get put on the table in the first place,” El-Rayes told the crowd. Fatima Sohail, the UTSU’s vice-president equity, also attended the event. She told The Varsity that, in the past year, focusing on Palestine has remained one of her many focuses. “[In] my role, it was really important for me to focus on it, but of course, I focus on other equity issues on campus as well,” she said. Some attendees came to the event with the purpose of collective organization. Clara Ruplinger, a first-year student in her masters of teaching at the OISE, told the crowd that pro-Palestine organizing should model itself off of the Black Lives Matter movement and focus on building community and “prioritize love to each other.” “The fact that we have a room this full of this many supporters for Palestine is indicative of the progress that we have made,” she said. U of T declined The Varsity’s request for comment.
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UTM Campus Council approves 6.5 per cent increase in undergraduate residence rates Council also approves three per cent increase in meal plan prices, discusses budget challenges Kamilla Bekbossynova UTM Bureau Chief
The January 24 UTM Campus Council meeting included votes on many changes to the fees students will face next year, including a 6.5 per cent increase in rates for students living in residence and a three per cent increase in meal plans and parking fares. It also provided a snapshot of the financial challenges facing UTM institutions such as Hospitality Services and Student Housing & Residence Life (SHRL). Rising residence receipts At the meeting, Brian Cunha, the director of SHRL, presented proposed changes to the cost students pay to live in residence. Cunha noted that UTM expects more students to demand on-campus housing in the coming years due to the limited availability of off-campus housing, rising UTM enrolment, and a rising preference for on-campus residences. Cunha told the council that, given the rising demand, he “anticipate[s] [they] could fall short of meeting [U of T’s] guarantee” to provide on-campus housing to all first years who request it. The council approved increasing undergraduate residence rates at UTM by 6.5 per cent, while rates for graduate, medicine, and family residences will see an increase of three per cent. The Student Housing Advisory Committee approved these changes. Cunha also told members about renovations that the MaGrath Valley Residence will undergo during the 2024–2025 academic year. The university plans to undertake a project to improve the MaGrath Valley through renovations — including new doors, windows, roofs, floors, kitchens, bathrooms, and furniture — and landscaping. Making up losses and food price increases UTM’s Hospitality Services — which includes
food and facility rentals — faced challenges amid fluctuating food prices and unexpected transitions, including a mid-year change in food service providers. Additionally, the writer and actor strikes in the US that ended in September and November 2023, respectively, decreased the income that U of T received from camera crews renting out campus spaces. As such, Hospitality Services expects a loss of $730,000 between May 1, 2023 and April 30, 2024. To account for inflation, the council approved plans to increase the average cash price of food at non-chain restaurants on campus by 3.3 per cent. The price of meal plans will increase by three per cent on average. Looking ahead, the department hopes to potentially alleviate its financial strains by increasing its income from people renting UTM facilities. With the actor and writer strikes ended, the university hopes to see increased revenue flowing in from movie shoot rentals. Parking services The university expects parking at UTM to face a deficit for the next two years, with a positive turn expected in the 2025–2026 fiscal year. Noteworthy initiatives over the past year have included the License Plate Recognition (LPR) program, which the university implemented in September. This program simplifies access to campus by allowing people to pay online, which streamlines parking procedures for visitors. Additionally, the university has adopted new payby-plate options — where people can input their plate numbers into a machine without needing to receive a ticket — in all of its parking machines. Testing for a pay-by-app feature — where people can top up their parking from anywhere — is in its final stages. UTM has also enhanced its parking infrastructure: it has doubled the number of its Electric Vehicle (EV)
JESSICA LAM, ALEXIA KOUTLEMANIS/THEVARSITY
charging stations to a total of 12, catering to the increasing demand for eco-friendly transportation options. The council approved a proposed three per cent across-the-board increase for parking fees, coupled with the decision to maintain existing payand-display rates. Student responses In an interview with The Varsity, Ehab James — student governor on the UTM campus council — highlighted the financial challenges students are facing as Ontario universities scramble to make up revenue. He pointed out how strikes, funding reconsiderations, and the recently announced cap on international student permits will all further impact the university’s budget. James abstained from the votes on fee increases held during the meeting. He urged the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) to advocate for student interests by calling on the Minister of Colleges and Universities to better support universities amid the current cost of living crisis. “It really is up to the [UTMSU] now to do what is right and take critical action to make sure that the students who are most vulnerable and impacted by these changes are still able to attend university,
are still able to put food on the table, still able to park if they need to, and still be able to be housed here,” James said in an interview with The Varsity. “Education is a right, it’s not a privilege, and it’s increasingly becoming more of a privilege.” Jan Durkiewicz, a student representative on the UTM campus affairs committee, posted a video to his Instagram where he highlighted the university’s proposal to increase food fees by 3.3 per cent and residents’ meal plans by 3.4 per cent, starting next September. He expressed opposition to these increases, emphasizing the negative impact on student affordability. “The students cannot handle more inflation,” Durkiewicz stated in the video. In an interview with The Varsity, Durkiewicz expressed concerns over proposed food price increases at UTM. He argued against imposing additional costs on students, especially with potential tuition and fee hikes. In a January 31 press conference, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said that he doesn’t “believe this is a time” to increase tuition, but his staff clarified that the provincial government is still considering a tuition increase as an option. Durkiewicz highlighted the university’s annual food feedback survey, which will be released in the coming few months, as a way for students to express their input.
UTSU approves referendums on two levy increases totaling $2.50 Board says yes to two levy proposals, but sends PEARS project and gardening organization home empty-handed Devin Botar Associate News Editor
A question of the utmost importance has come down from the Student Commons this week — should students pay an extra $2.50 in fees? At its January 28 meeting, the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) Board of Directors (BOD) approved two proposals that will put this question to the student body. The UTSU’s own Student Aid Program (SAP) and the University of Toronto Sexual Education Centre (UTSEC) hope to receive increased levies through referenda that the union will hold during its March elections. Two other groups vied for levy increases, but the board turned them down. Successes from SAP and UTSEC SAP is a program run by the UTSU that provides financial aid to students on the basis of need. Currently, all full-time undergraduate students pay a three-dollar levy per semester towards this program, which raises roughly $240,000 per year to be distributed to around 480 students. At the meeting, the union proposed increasing this levy to five dollars. The UTSEC is an organization which aims to promote safe sex practices on campus. They currently receive a 25-cent levy per student per semester. The group proposed an increase of 50 cents, for a total of 75 cents. The Board approved both proposals. They will not go into effect unless approved by a referendum of the student body, which will occur during the upcoming UTSU elections from March 4–7.
Losses from the PEARS Project and Regenesis UofT The Prevention, Empowerment, Advocacy Response for Survivors (PEARS) Project is an organization which aims to support student survivors of sexual violence. Unlike the previous two programs, PEARS is not funded by a UTSU levy and requested instituting one for 97 cents — largely to pay rent for a new office. The group currently has an office in the UTSU Student Commons, but told the board that it wants a larger space with soundproof walls so that it can conduct confidential peer support sessions. The UTSU Board voted to refuse this proposal. In an email to The Varsity, UTSU Vice-President (VP) Operations Samir Mechel explained that the
board refused the proposal because the union had concerns about how PEARS was going to address the insurance and liability associated with a new office. He added that the UTSU would try to find a more private space for PEARS at the Student Commons. Regenesis UofT is an environmentalist club that is part of a larger nation-wide organization. Among other projects, it operates six gardens around UTSG and puts the produce to charitable use. It requested a new levy of seven dollars and 23 cents, which the board denied. Mechel cited the exceptionally large size of this request as one reason for the refusal. Mechel also explained that the UTSU had intended not to approve any more than two levy
JESSICA LAM, CAROLINE BELLAMY/THEVARSITY
proposals, out of worry that if the union held too many referendums, voter fatigue would set in and cause all of them to fail. Extended debates over all four levy proposals were conducted in a private session of the Board — meaning The Varsity and all other visitors were booted from the Zoom call for them. Executive reports VP Public and University Affairs Aidan Thompson reported a deal the UTSU recently struck with U of T President Meric Gertler in response to Ontario’s higher education revenue crisis. The UTSU believes that U of T should lobby for more provincial funding rather than for the ability to raise tuition, and according to Thompson, Gertler has promised to support this position — so long as the UTSU can “shift the media narrative” to align with it. Thompson reported that, to this effect, the union has been “in and out of meetings with reporters” to present this narrative. UTSU President Elizabeth Shechtman added that the union is preparing to create the Student Senate, which it hopes to implement next month. The Student Senate is a new governance body that the UTSU student body voted to make the union implement during its Annual General Meeting. According to VP Professional Faculties Al-Amin Ahamed, the union has nearly completed renegotiations with the Engineering Society (EngSoc) about the fund-sharing agreement that redirects UTSU funds to the society. In the past, EngSoc has criticized the UTSU for breaking the terms of the original agreement by downsizing the BOD and removing previously secured engineering seats.
thevarsity.ca/category/news
FEBRUARY 5, 2024
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Scholars and activists hold virtual roundtable on destruction of Gaza’s archaeological sites Nine speakers discuss the need to protect historical sites, academic solidarity with Palestine Muzna Erum Associate News Editor
Activists and scholars spoke to U of T community members about the “cultural genocide” going on Palestine, and the destruction of Gaza’s historical sites, during a January 23 virtual roundtable co-organized by the Critical Ancient World Studies Collective (CAWS) — an international group of researchers that seek to adopt a new model for studying antiquity — and Everyday Orientalism, a blog co-founded by U of T Roman history Professor Katherine Blouin that examines how historical power structures have shaped human societies’ self-perceptions. The event also received support from U of T group Hearing Palestine, which aims to educate on and facilitate academic inquiry into Palestine. The roundtable discussed how scholars of antiquity, archaeology, and heritage could play into opposing the alleged genocide of Palestinians and stand in solidarity. “That history is a legacy” Marchella Ward, a lecturer in classical studies at the Open University — a public research university in the UK — and the chair of the CAWS collective, began the event by discussing the organizers’ “collective disappointment with the apathy and lack of leadership on the issue of Palestinian solidarity from major subject organizations within classics, archaeology, and ancient history.” People have inhabited Gaza since at least the fifteenth century BCE, making it one of the world’s longest inhabited areas. Al Jazeera reported that, between October 7 and January 14, Israeli military air strikes had damaged at least 195 historical sites in Gaza, including some dating back 4,000 years. The United Nations (UN) Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has verified damage to 22 sites. Speakers at the event included Fadel alUtol, a Palestinian archaeologist who has been working with the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem — a French biblical and archaeological research foundation in Jerusalem — to excavate archeological sites in Gaza. “Archaeological sites prove the existence
of ancient civilizations, and that history is a legacy for every free citizen in Gaza and their heritage,” he told the panel. He recounted crying when he heard that much of the Old City of Gaza — which included churches, mosques, and archeological museums — had been destroyed. An October strike conducted by the Israeli military damaged the Sayed al-Hashim Mosque — an important site for Muslims, originally built in the twelfth century, located in the Old City of Gaza. Isber Sabrine — a chair and co-founder of the international non-governmental organization Heritage for Peace, which specializes in cultural heritage management during conflicts — explained that his team has collaborated with colleagues in the United Kingdom for satellite imagery and local contacts in Gaza and other countries in the Middle East to report directly on the destroyed sites. Heritage for Peace published a report in November, which determined that “the recent war has… [resulted] in the destruction of a significant portion of the cultural heritage in the Gaza Strip.” The report garnered media attention in publications like National Public Radio and Al Jazeera. However, regardless of the media attention, Sabrine said that he found the lack of reaction from other cultural organizations “shocking.” “This is a tragedy,” he said. “Those buildings, those sites, they need to be really considered as a part for the reconstruction of Gaza.” He said that a recognition of shared heritage in the region can help unify people across religions. How do we define ‘genocide’? Santiago Slabodsky — the Kaufman chair of Jewish studies at Hofstra University in New York — posed a question to the audience: “Why is [it] so difficult to recognize this longstanding genocide that Palestinians are suffering?” The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the crime of genocide as violence “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Polish Jewish jurist Raphaël Lemkin originally introduced the term genocide to describe the
The roundtable discussed the role of antiquity, archaeology, and heritage scholars. COURTESY OF EVERYDAY ORIENTALISM
destruction of a group, including destruction of a group’s culture. In her 2020 book, Suffer the Little Children: Genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian State, Tamara Starblanket notes that during the drafting of the convention, delegates from the US and Canada pushed for the definition to not include cultural genocide, fearing that recognizing cultural destruction as genocide would implicate their treatment of Indigenous peoples. In a submission to the UN International Court of Justice on December 29, the South African government accused the Israeli government of committing genocide in Gaza, noting its alleged “targeting” of Gaza’s cultural heritage as evidence. The Israeli government has rejected claims of genocide, arguing that its actions in Gaza constitute self-defence. The court will likely take three to four years to pass a judgment. According to Slabodsky, most of the Western world can not acknowledge attacks on Gaza as genocide due to the “myth of modernity,” coined by Enrique Dussel, which he defined as a view that the West, as the “most advanced civilization,” has used violence solely to help humanity and advance progress. Slabodsky claimed that the Israeli
UTMSU board approves fee adjustments Union unveils Black History Month celebrations Kamilla Bekbossynova UTM Bureau Chief
On January 26, the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) held its monthly board of directors (BOD) meeting. The board approved increased fees for its transit pass, its health and dental plans, and its overall
membership fee, among others, raising fulltime students’ fees by a total of $34.85 per session. The union also shared information about upcoming Black History Month (BHM) events. Fees climbing The BOD passed a motion approving increases to the overall membership fee, the U-Pass fee,
LEXEY BURNS, JESSICA LAM/THE VARSITY
the health and dental fee, and other fees the union charges students. This coming year, fulltime students’ UTMSU-related fees will increase from $383.06 to $417.91 per session for the fall and winter terms — an increase of $34.85. Fees for part-time students — those taking fewer than 3.0 credits combined during the fall and winter terms — increased by $32.63, from $345.97 per session to $378.6 per session. These fees differ in the summer session and for Mississauga Academy of Medicine students. The union increased most fees based on the Ontario Consumer Price Index (CPI) — a metric released annually by the Government of Canada to measure changes in the prices — from December 2022 and December 2023. The student society membership fee increase was based on the CPI from December 2021 to December 2022. “Things just get more expensive, and that’s because of inflation,” UTMSU Executive Director Felipe Nagata told the BOD. “We’re not increasing fees just because we want to.” Updates from executives: Municipal policies and microwaves During her presentation to the board, UTMSU President Gulfy Bekbolatova discussed the union’s preparations for lobby week, an annual effort where it lobbies the City and university to
government presents itself as the “right civilization” by promoting its technological advancement and claim as the “only democracy” in the Middle East. This justifies the government’s use of violence under the idea that ‘might makes right.’ Solidarity movements for Palestine Aditi Rao, a third-year graduate student at Princeton University and an organizer in the Palestine liberation movement in Philadelphia, focused her presentation on how scholars can participate in activism supporting Palestine. She said scholars and universities can find many ways to participate in pro-Palestinian solidarity, including by boycotting Israeli institutions. Rao encouraged faculty members to refuse to give talks at universities in Israel. However, she highlighted the importance of not conflating people with institutions, noting that boycotting does not mean refusing to work with colleagues based at Israeli universities. “It is exceptionally important for putting the necessary sanctions on for the Israeli state to realize that it cannot be a part of this intellectual, cultural exchange if it continues the work of apartheid, if it continues to enact policies of genocide,” she said. implement goals related to its campaigns on topics such as free education, consent education, housing, and transit. Bekbolatova told the board that the union has met with “really passionate students” and professors and hopes to explore ways it can contact and lobby government officials and community leaders with significant influence in Mississauga. The union’s Instagram page includes links to feedback forms where students can share their views on the union’s campaigns and how the City and university should move forward. Additionally, this year, the union decided to apply for money from the Capacity Building Fund — a grant offered by the Mississauga Food Bank that awards food agencies funds to expand their programming. According to Vice-President (VP) Equity Ruth Alemayehu, the union hopes to receive money it can use to buy additional appliances such as microwaves or stoves forits food bank. Upcoming Black History Month events UTMSU VP Campus Life Jasnoor Sandhu discussed the union’s BHM events, including a Welcome Ceremony on February 2 that aimed to bring together Black-identifying students, staff, and faculty. Other BHM events include Buy Black on February 5, where the union will host a market in the Student Centre that will include a variety of Black-owned businesses selling jewelry, clothing, thrift finds, shoes, and more. The union’s BHM celebrations conclude with a gala on March 1 in Etobicoke, which the union will host in collaboration with a couple of other Ontario student unions.
Business & Labour
February 5, 2024 thevarsity.ca/category/business biz@thevarsity.ca
Could U of T’s co-op housing enter a new golden age? After a historic rise and fall, U of T’s 86-year-old co-op might be coming back to life Amy Mann Varsity Contributor
It was 1936, right in the middle of the Great Depression, when Japanese labour activist Toyohiko Kagawa gave a lecture at U of T that would inspire a group of students to form Campus Co-operative Residence Incorporated — what is now Canada’s oldest continuous coop housing entity. The U of T Campus Co-operative leased a house on St. George Street that is now the School of Graduate Studies. Within five years, one house had become five. Then, five turned into 30. Amid the Great Depression, the co-operative movement seemed hopeful. Co-operatives had been sprouting up across Canada, and they took every form imaginable: co-operative fishing organizations, co-operative health facilities, co-operative recreation, and co-operative film clubs. In Japan, Kagawa tendered a similar co-operative movement and helped it flourish into a movement of six million workers. The rise and fall of the co-op Kagawa was a staunch advocate for co-op housing, and he also saw workers’ daily economic struggles as an integral component of his religious ideals. His book Brotherhood Economics
etched out his plan for the grand unification of Christianity, the peace movement, and the cooperative movement into one powerful force: “Christ put God first,” Kagawa wrote, “but in doing so he did not ignore economics.” By the 1970s, the co-operative housing model was taking root across Canada. John David Hulchanski, a professor of Housing and Community Development at U of T, told The Varsity, “The federal government in 1971 had announced a pool of money for innovation in co-op housing… And sure enough, it works.” Residents could own and manage co-ops themselves, and could draw on the funding when they ran into financial difficulties. But such optimism would soon prove premature. The 1970s was a difficult time for the U of T campus co-op — debt piled up from a failed experiment in forming a new independent college, and buildings started to fall into disrepair. It was the 1990s that finally punctured the Kagawian economic utopian bubble. The co-operative movement in Japan began to experience pressures from a liberalizing economy encouraging entrepreneurial farmers to leave the co-operative behind. Back in Canada, the economic recession of the 1990s hollowed out the campus co-op as vacant rooms created never-ending operating deficits.
U of T’s co-op housing stays afloat with almost no outside support. ZEYNEP POYANLI/THEVARSITY
Meet Roman Leifer — U of T alumnus and Co-Founder of Stylista.ai This engineering science graduate shows us the intersectionality of fashion and AI Czarina Leung Varsity Contributor
U of T engineering alumnus and investment professional Roman Leifer has co-founded an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered personal stylist, Stylista.ai. Leifer’s co-founder is his wife, Ziqi Liu. Liu is the one who brought the original vision for Stylista, Leifer said in an interview with The Varsity. “The idea is to imagine a personal stylist who’s also your best friend, is able to personalize things for you, and is always available,” he said. From CPP Investments to creating a stylist With the boom of AI technology in recent months, Leifer and Liu decided that the time was ripe to realize their ambition. Leifer pointed to Jeff Bezos’ regret minimization philosophy as the thing that ignited his entrepreneurial spirit and prompted him to pivot away from his previous career. Leifer left his job at CPP Investments, sat down at a computer to apply the technical knowledge he’d developed in his undergraduate studies, and built a proof of concept. Having worked in the consulting and financial industry since his graduation in 2007, Leifer explained that the teaching approach at U of T’s
Faculty of Engineering heavily influenced his development of Stylista’s initial groundwork. “I think the way of thinking is just developed over a long, long time… the way it teaches you to think is just to take any problem, no matter how vague, how difficult, and how overwhelming [the problem is], and just break it down into different steps and solve each of those steps.” After months of experimentation, the minimum viable product was launched on the App Store in early January. The app is now also on Google Play and is free to download. Business plans In the short term, Leifer said, Stylista hopes to attract as much user feedback as possible. “The key for us as a new startup is just continuing to listen to our users and seeing what it is people want,” he added. At the moment, the app consists of a few core elements, such as Outfit of the Day inspiration and a “StyleMe” search engine. It gives the user ChatGPT-enabled specific responses concerning fashion choices, in which users have real-time conversations with Stylista to build their outfits for different occasions. Importantly, Leifer noted, he and Liu are making a point to avoid having the tool simply give generic advice.
“Governments were doing everything they [could] to keep housing in the marketplace,” Hulchanski explained. Then 1995 came, and the program disappeared. Neither the federal nor any of the provincial governments has funded any cooperative housing projects in Canada in decades.
Hulchanski noted that non-market housing is essential to address households at the bottom of the income spectrum. 96 per cent of Canadian households rely on the private market for housing, due to the scarcity of non-market options like co-ops and social housing.
The future of co-op at U of T The U of T co-op has now been reduced to 23 homes, but it has not disappeared. Cyrus Al-Zayadi, a masters student in evolutionary anthropology and the treasurer of the Campus Co-Operative Residence, told The Varsity that it maintains itself with almost no support from government, and absolutely no support from U of T. The co-op stays afloat, charging just $650 to $800 for a single room, and in 2019, even acquired a new home for the first time in decades. The co-op was forced to sell the home, however, due to high vacancy rates during the pandemic. Still, Al-Zayadi noted that applications have spiked since the return of in-person classes. Al-Zayadi has lived in the U of T co-op for over three years. “I was always a very shy person, especially initially when I moved in. Through time, living in a co-op allowed me to break out of my shell,” Al-Zayadi told The Varsity. “There’s an air of camaraderie between everyone. We spend time together, we organize social outings together.”
Will the co-op movement return? Kagawa’s dream for co-operative housing may be having a resurgence. In 2022, Canada announced a $500 million fund to expand co-operative housing — its largest federal investment in co-op housing in 30 years. The money from this fund is expected to build around 6,000 units. This is a start — but Hulchanski noted that this contribution is nothing compared to Canada’s past social housing commitments. The U of T campus co-op has also turned a corner after the difficult pandemic years. “In my time, we’ve gone from having a $200,000 deficit to a $30,000 net surplus,” Al-Zayadi said. In the short term, he explained, the co-op is prioritizing repairs to existing properties, but expansion is part of its 10-year plan. “It gives me a lot of optimism and hope,” AlZayadi said. “Not only can we make this work, but we can reach out to other people and tell them you don’t have to suffer like this anymore. There is a better way of doing things.”
Toyohiko Kagawa saw workers’ daily economic struggles as an integral component of his religious ideals. ZEYNEP POYANLI/THEVARSITY
The outfit inspiration function is powered by an array of themes that users can choose from, like ‘Office’ or ‘Mob Wife.’ The app also recently added a “Surprise Me” feature, which pulls outfits from multiple themes for the user to browse through. In the medium term, Leifer and Liu are hoping to introduce the ‘try-on’ function in six months, which visualizes what users would look like in certain outfits without physically trying them on. According to Leifer, the industry has yet to see such a technological breakthrough, but he believes such technology will soon be reliable and widespread for everyone to enjoy. Finding innovation in frustration While Stylista has established its basic infrastructure, its future development hinges on AI technology’s rapid and unpredictable
evolution. “[For] some of the features that we’re working on,” Leifer explained, “the research has only come out in the last six months.” Leifer expressed that this constant uncertainty is cause for a lot of frustration and the flipside of working in such a cutting-edge industry. “If it was easy, then there’d be a hundred people doing it, right?” Leifer said. At the same time, Leifer noted that being a small start-up gives Stylista a crucial advantage over larger companies since they can quickly pivot their development and marketing strategies as AI research develops. Plus, Leifer said he finds excitement in the ambiguity and growth on the leading edge in the technology sector. “I’d say [the working hours of a] startup [are] even longer [than finance or consulting] because there’s just so much to do. But, I wake up every day with a smile on my face.”
Stylista users can choose from a range of themes, like ‘Office’ or ‘Mob Wife.’ ZEYNEP POYANLI/THEVARSITY
Science
February 5, 2024 thevarsity.ca/category/science science@thevarsity.ca
On war journalists’ moral courage U of T professor Anthony Feinstein discusses the psychological traits of journalists who report on oppression Shernise Mohammed-Ali Managing Editor, Internal
Since October 7, the violence in Gaza has marked the most dangerous conflict on record for journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). As of February 2, airstrikes — most of which the CPJ has been able to trace back to the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) — and on-the-ground conflict have killed 85 journalists and media workers, including 78 Palestinian, four Israeli, and three Lebanese journalists. The IDF’s targeted killing of journalists represents not only an urgent threat to press freedom, but also a call to protect the journalists covering what Al Jazeera reports is the “deadliest conflict of the 21st century” thus far. However, attacks on journalists covering conflict within their own country aren’t isolated to the Middle East. Both authoritarian regimes and criminal gangs around the world continue to target journalists in an attempt to undermine press freedom and thus suppress public dissent against violence and corruption. It goes without saying that journalists are integral to ensuring that any civil society remains just that: civil. After all, it is the journalists who call out violence and corruption when they see it and hold leaders and institutions accountable for their actions. Despite this, few researchers truly examine how journalists — particularly those who cover conflict — can cope with the work they do. Anthony Feinstein, a professor of psychiatry at U of T, not only pioneered the study of emotional health in war journalists but has also investigated the psychological traits that allow a special niche of journalists to stand up to oppressive regimes while pursuing an independent and uncensored press. The Varsity recently sat down with Anthony Feinstein to ask about his research on journalists who cover violence, corruption, and oppression. The origins of Feinstein’s research Twenty-three years ago, Feinstein, who was running a medical practice in Toronto at the time, was referred to a patient suffering from serious psychiatric problems brought on by stress from her profession. As he described, the patient was a journalist who had just “[returned from] working in East Africa, covering famine.” Despite the mental strain her reporting had on her while on assignment, Feinstein explained, she held back in seeking treatment, out of fear that her editors would pull her from the field. To better understand what the patient was experiencing, Feinstein reviewed the existing literature on journalists and psychiatric symptoms caused by their line of work. However, to his surprise, he found a great lack of research on the topic. With that in mind, he wrote a grant application to the Freedom Forum, an organization in Washington, DC dedicated to protecting freedom of speech, including freedom of the press. The organization accepted his application, and he received funding for what he described as “the very first study on journalism and emotional health.” Eventually published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 2002, the study revealed deeper, unspoken problems within the field of journalism. Among the journalists Feinstein studied, war journalists suffered from significantly higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and substance abuse than journalists who didn’t cover war. The likelihood of these war journalists developing PTSD at some point in their lives was comparable to that of combat veterans. The key problem, however, was that despite the poor condition of their mental health, these war journalists weren’t seeking treatment. An even larger problem was that the management within the news organizations
these journalists worked for failed to address this problem. In the interview, Feinstein acknowledged that at the time of his first study, although managers knew these war journalists were coming home traumatized, they chose to ignore the problem. According to Feinstein, this ignorance was part of the larger culture within journalism: the consensus was that if you’re not fit to handle the stress of the job, you should find another job. In the years since his first study, Feinstein has continued to examine the emotional impact of journalism, specifically reporting on foreign war coverage from Western news organizations. In fact, the findings in his research have become an instigator for change within larger news organizations, with managers beginning to implement specific measures to address war journalists’ emotional well-being. Interestingly, Feinstein described how his initial study also became a catalyst for further studies on the mental health of journalists covering conflict within their own country. Soon enough, he began studying other specific cases of journalists facing violence, including Mexican journalists investigating drug-related violence, Syrian journalists covering the civil war in Syria, the underground movement of Iranian journalists doing political coverage of the oppressive regime currently in power, and Kenyan journalists covering election violence and terrorist attacks. On moral courage, moral injury, and their overlap It should come as no surprise that journalists who persist in covering conflict within their countries, despite persecution from authoritarian regimes and criminal gangs, possess extraordinary courage. In what initially began as a project for The Globe and Mail, Anthony Feinstein’s 2023 book, Moral Courage: 19 Profiles of Investigative Journalists, documents the experiences of 19 investigative journalists from countries with a poor history of press freedom. Throughout each profile, Feinstein explores the psychological traits — specifically, what he refers to as “moral courage” — that motivate these journalists to remain so
committed to their work, despite the harm that comes with it. In his book, Feinstein writes that the countries these journalists are from all share “an intolerance of a free press,” and so “journalists who tell an inconvenient truth are treated brutally.” It is not uncommon to find details of harassment, death threats, and prolonged imprisonment in the profiles of these journalists. And for women journalists specifically, the corrupt governments they’ve reported on have targeted them in an incredibly sexually violent way. Feinstein writes, however, that “these journalists have not arrived at this rarefied place solely by chance. Moral courage, a component of free will, has led them there.” To understand Feinstein’s theory of moral courage, one first needs an understanding of a concept he calls “moral injury,” and how it develops in these journalists. Feinstein defines moral injury as “a condition that arises from witnessing, perpetrating, or failing to prevent acts that transgress a person’s code of ethics or moral compass.” Both acts of commission — doing something wrong — and acts of omission — failing to do the right thing — elicit feelings of moral injury. For journalists in countries or settler colonies rife with corruption, violence, and human rights abuses, the events they witness daily transgress their moral compass and give rise to the feelings of shame, guilt, anger, and disgust associated with moral injury. For them, staying quiet about what they’re witnessing further heightens these feelings of moral injury. And while there isn’t just one factor motivating these journalists to continue their work, there is a common thread driving the 19 journalists Feinstein profiles: their strong sense of moral courage. After all, not everyone will speak out when the things they see exceed their threshold for feelings of moral injury — especially when the consequence of speaking out is persecution by an authoritarian regime. This raises the question: what exactly is moral courage? As Feinstein explained in the interview, there are three vital components one must have to
exhibit moral courage: a dangerous environment; a strong moral compass; and the agency, energy, and endurance to speak out against the acts that transgress one’s moral compass. For these journalists, “by stepping out and saying something and writing about [transgressions], photographing [them], bringing [them] to the public’s attention, [they] avoided [their] own moral injury.” It’s important to note, however, that these journalists represent a small group within society of the few people willing to speak up, despite all the threats, the violence, the losses, and the fear they have endured. It is not hard to see then, as Feinstein writes, for these journalists, “it has fallen to them to keep alive the remnants of their failing civil societies. In doing so, they remind their fellow citizens, cowed by authoritarian governments or criminal gangs, that all may not be lost.” Eroding press freedom in Western countries Reporters Without Borders, an organization that safeguards the right to freedom of information, reports that many Western countries have a history of ranking high in press freedoms, but democracy and an independent press aren’t guaranteed in Western countries. The reality is that democracy and an independent press aren’t guaranteed anywhere. Given Donald Trump’s hostile record with the press, the 2024 US elections have raised questions among American journalists about what a Trump reelection could mean for the future of press freedom in America. With the upcoming election, Feinstein also said that the threat to democracy and journalism in Western countries is more pressing than ever. In his future research, Feinstein hopes to learn from the 19 investigative journalists he’s interviewed, because he says that the kind of moral courage they possess — that allows them to continue their work despite persecution — is something that journalists will continue to need, even beyond the niches of journalism that he’s studied. As Feinstein said, “The moral courage that they display is a kind of moral courage that we need in our society for us to live our lives in a democratic way.” At the end of the interview, Feinstein said that “the journalists who do this kind of work, they need to be supported, acknowledged, and kept safe. You cannot target journalists, wherever you go — it’s just unacceptable. Because if you do so, you’re targeting all of us. You’re targeting civil society by doing it.”
Professor Anthony Feinstein studies the emotional impact of oppressive regimes and violence on war journalists. COURTESY OF RITA LEISTNER
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science@thevarsity.ca
SCIENCE
HBSU’s Her Health Horizons spotlights new research in women’s and reproductive health. COURTESY OF MICHAEL CHEN
Her Health Horizons on innovations in women’s and reproductive health How research and industry innovation at U of T and beyond is advancing women’s healthcare Mashiyat Ahmed Science Correspondent
On January 26, U of T’s Human Biology Students’ Union (HBSU) hosted Her Health Horizons, an in-person conference dedicated to highlighting emerging areas of research in women’s and reproductive health. It also focused on industry and entrepreneurial work centred around women’s experience of health and in healthcare. The conference aimed to incorporate diverse perspectives from scientists and industry professionals across Canada, amplify historically underrepresented scientific voices, and emphasize the need for better resource allocation and funding for issues that affect half of the world’s population. Novel reproductive technology Interested in the intersection of smart textiles and fertility health? Parnian Majd is the founder and CEO of Fibra Inc., a smart textiles company dedicated to providing an accurate and non-invasive method for understanding fertility cycles and chances of conception through a device in the form of underwear. The underwear is adorned with conductive fibres and sensors that are designed to collect various types of health data from women like pH levels, heart rate, and other biomarkers to give an estimation of where individuals are in their monthly fertility cycle, and how likely they are to conceive at a given moment. Fertility status relies on a delicate interplay of various biological, psychological, and environmental factors, such as stress, weight, diet, substance use, and hormonal levels. Additionally, a woman’s relationship with her fertility can also be stressful; societal pressures, the laborious process of fertility testing, uncertainty, and treatment, as well as financial and emotional burdens along fertility journeys can induce more
stress. The advent of a smart textile would alle- Department of Political Science at U of T with viate some of the stress associated with fertility a keen interest in how politics and policies and conception. shape the landscape of female and reproducWith this in mind, Majd, who graduated with tive healthcare. a Masters in Biomedical Engineering from U of In her talk, Quelch asserted that “[healthcare] T, was inspired by the plethora of possibilities is a reflection of power, it is a reflection of race, that lie at the intersection of smart technology of culture... and it is reflective of intersectionality and women’s health, with both her educational and the oppressive regimes that exist... Healthand personal experiences of being a woman care is inherently political.” Quelch’s PhD work paving the way for Fibra Inc. delves into how definitions of what constitutes “Growing up, I healthcare differ often encountered across provinces and “[Healthcare] is a reflection territories, and how other female individuals... always these differences are of power, it is a reflection ha[ving] to sort out reflected in the policy any problems they decisions and quality of race, of culture... and it is of care women and had regarding their reproductive health gender minorireflective of intersectionality other in private.” Majd exties receive. plains that women Quelch shows that and the oppressive regimes someone’s should not have to geograspeak about their phy can be a greater that exist... Healthcare is health experiences in predictor of their hushed tones; unforhealth outcomes inherently political.” tunately, this is a realthan the actual mediity for many women cal issue they are fac- Jenna Quelch and girls worldwide. ing. For instance, the During her pasprovince or territory sionate talk, Majd highlighted that “it’s a very a person lives in can determine whether they huge problem that we lack a good and reliable can participate in and receive financial support database when it comes to women’s health,” and specialized care for in-vitro fertilization — and that this gap in available information and an alternative conception method that fertilizes funding is reflected in other fields, namely, an egg and sperm in a lab and implants them in gendered cardiovascular health. These issues the uterus to cause pregnancy. Even the age at inspired Majd to start Fibra Inc. and empower which the law considers it acceptable for a fetus women as they navigate the joys and uncertain- to be aborted differs across Canada depending ties of fertility. on different provinces’ and territories’ policies. Quelch remarks that even though Canadians The politics of gendered healthcare should be proud of their healthcare, “there is [a] How individuals experience their health is not very intense variation in the access of services just restricted to pure physiology and medicine. for gendered health.” Politics and culture also greatly affect women’s In her talk, Quelch explained how the definihealth. Jenna Quelch is a PhD student in the tion of deservingness by various governments
and policy-making bodies in Canada determines how gendered health issues are treated by different parts of Canada’s healthcare infrastructure. “My hope with this research is to... acknowledge that healthcare, indeed, is powerful, it is reflective, and it is inherently political.” Neuroscience, aging, and memory The world of neuroscience and sex-based research is only just beginning to unearth all the ways in which female and male brains may differ. Female brains are sensitive to estrogenbased hormonal changes throughout the body, which can result in different cognitive effects between men and women, especially in old age. The majority of women experience menopause between the ages of 45 and 55, where their menstrual cycle stops and their estrogen — a predominantly female sex hormone — decreases. This decrease strongly correlates with poor memory performance and cognitive decline in female brains. As a consequence, scientists believe that estrogen is protective against memory and cognitive deficits common with aging. “Estrogen and menopause are more than just reproductive health,” claims Sara Ahmed, an MA candidate in clinical psychology at Toronto Metropolitan University, at the conference. She continues, “It is also brain health, especially because as women get older, they are at an increased risk for memory disorders like Alzheimer’s compared to men [of the same age].” The HBSU’s Her Health Horizons conference wove together a diverse range of perspectives on the status of female and reproductive health, emphasizing emerging areas of research and how industry innovation is revolutionizing how women and individuals with otherwise marginalized gender identities experience their reproductive health moving forward.
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Effectively embedding equity, diversity, and inclusion principles into science WICTO’s Connecting Through Chemistry Symposium discusses the place of EDI in science Aimee Perry Varsity Contributor
On January 27, the U of T organization Working Towards Inclusivity in Chemistry Toronto (WICTO) hosted its second annual Connecting Through Chemistry Symposium, which aims to foster an equitable, diverse, and inclusive environment for chemistry enthusiasts. The importance of inclusivity and diversity in research Commanding the stage with presence and confidence, Imogen Coe — a professor of biochemistry at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) and an advocate for equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in science — set the tone for the symposium in her keynote lecture. Coe’s speech revolved around how EDI-infused science not only elevates the scientific enterprise but also enhances the capabilities of scientists, ultimately raising the standard for everything and everyone associated with the scientific community. Coe told the audience that, in our pursuit of unravelling the complexities of science, we are compelled to become conscientious of the relationship between the scientist and the scientific process itself. A critical component of this introspection, she said, involves a thorough examination of scientific literature looking for potential biases that can skew results, which requires a discerning eye to uncover and scrutinize the biases and challenges that may subtly influence the trajectory of scientific progress. On the topic of bias, Coe relayed that we must scrutinize our reactions to scientific research through the lens of unconscious biases — biases that mostly operate in our subconscious perceptions of people or situations. This
term encompasses a spectrum of phenomena, including affinity bias, perception bias, halo effect, and confirmation bias. Affinity bias is the tendency to favour people like us; perception bias means how we can be biased by our preexisting perceptions of a situation; the halo effect involves conflating a person’s success in one area to unrelated areas or their overall competence; and confirmation bias is being more likely to see conclusions that confirm our preexisting beliefs. Our cognitive reliance on heuristics to comprehend the world — using mental shortcuts that make use of observed patterns — may paradoxically impede our progress in research, Coe said. When we adhere to the previous status quo in scientific research — notably the predominance of research data from subjects who are all men and white, we perpetuate stagnation rather than fostering evolution. Embracing change and diversifying perspectives is essential to propel us beyond the confines of the status quo and usher in a more dynamic and inclusive era in scientific exploration. In light of this, Coe posed the essential questions: “Is your research environment inclusive, and therefore excellent? Does your research design prioritize inclusiveness, and [is it] therefore rigorous?” The alumni panel After a sequence of illuminating flash talks about students’ research endeavours, coupled with interactive networking and EDI workshops, the focal point shifted toward the eagerly awaited subsequent event: a panel of alumni hailing from U of T, York University, and TMU. This panel, comprising nine chemistry alumni, covered a spectrum of scientific domains,
Chemistry professors and alumni came together on January 27 for a day of professional development and networking. COURTESY OF ANNA GALANG
including research and development, business, environmental science and policy, and sports data analysis. The panel addressed inquiries about each of their professional journeys, providing valuable insights into their roles and experiences. For instance, Yanxin Yang, a U of T alum and data scientist, talked about how analytical skills gained through chemistry can be applied to other fields. He expressed a keen interest in integrating machine learning into his role at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, using statistical techniques to analyze recorded data and generate insights that can influence coaching strategies and decisions related to player development. In response to a question about advice for their younger selves, Kim Chan, a U of T alum and senior medical science liaison at biotechnology company Amgen, recommended taking a step back, focusing on the bigger picture, and embracing humility and a willingness to learn. Brandon Khan, a synthetic chemist at Dalton Pharma Services with an MSc from York University, stressed the importance of being open and receptive to advice. Melanie Mastronardi, a U of T alum and the vice-president of platform operations at the biotech startup BenchSci, urged the audience not to stress about choosing the perfect job, encouraging exploration and personal growth. The panellists also reflected on when they realized their current careers were the ones they
wanted to pursue. Matthew Gradiski — a U of T alum and an application scientist with Advanced Chemistry Development, Inc., which designs software with a focus on research and development in chemistry — discovered interests in research and development for software and machine learning. Anastassia Pogoutse, working as a strategic research development officer at UTM after graduating from U of T with a PhD, discovered her passion for writing and editing. When an audience member asked a question about imposter syndrome, it elicited knowing smiles from the panellists, who offered insights and advice on overcoming it. They emphasized the importance of recognizing your strengths and weaknesses and granting yourself a sixto-nine-month grace period in any new job to master your role. Furthermore, many of the panellists stressed the universality of self-doubt and encouraged individuals to be transparent about areas where they may lack knowledge. The symposium provided profound insights and stimulated contemplation, illuminating facets of chemistry that may transcend traditional laboratory boundaries. It is paramount, both within and beyond the lab, to instigate EDI principles for an inclusive, comprehensive, and optimized environment. This strategic implementation of EDI aims not only to change scientific knowledge, but also to integrate EDI into the minds of students and educators to create fairer labs and classrooms.
Opinion: U of T is building a sustainability centre over a former green space on campus — and that’s okay Sustainability means responsible land use in all of its forms Philip Harker Science Correspondent
U of T prides itself on its abundance of green spaces, especially considering it’s nestled in the heart of Canada’s largest city. After all, everyone loves green spaces. Sprawling fields of grass, tall trees to sit under, and gardens of diverse, native, pollinator-friendly flowers are cornerstones of a North American university campus. So, it’s not exactly a surprise when students react to the loss of a large, open green space for development. Last November, a Reddit post hit the front page of r/UofT with almost 200 upvotes and generated a storm of controversy. The post highlighted the current construction work on Trinity College’s Lawson Centre for Sustainability, a new addition to Trinity that would include residences, classrooms, and other community facilities. The Centre, expected to be completed in 2025, is being built on a plot of land north of Trinity and south of Varsity Field — a sizable and underutilized grassy patch on the Trinity campus. “Destroying one of the only green spaces on campus to build a sustainability centre,” wrote the poster. “U of T math,” they titled it, highlighting the apparent backward logic in demolishing a natural area for yet another urban project. On the face of it, their argument is logical. But beneath the surface, this whole dialogue reflects a very real problem with the public’s understanding of “sustainability.” Using Toronto’s land Toronto’s population is skyrocketing, and the value of land on and near the St. George cam-
pus has been growing with it. Last October, the Toronto Star reported that real estate prices have almost doubled across the entire GTA since 2010. Combined with U of T’s enrolment increasing by approximately 16 per cent in the last decade, the high real estate prices mean that the market
food production. The university needs to address the problem of affordable student housing. Building a large, well-designed building with accommodation for hundreds of students definitely seems like a step in the right direction. Increasing the on-campus housing supply
Trinity College’s Lawson Centre for Sustainability aims to improve urban food production for the community. ZEYNEP POYANLI/THEVARSITY
for student housing is far more competitive than it used to be. High demand and low supply means more students are living further away from campus, with many of them forced to commute by public transit or their own personal vehicles. Hence, the Lawson Centre: a solar-powered classroom and residence building constructed from timber, with rainwater collection, high-tech insulation, and a rooftop garden for on-campus
can also make U of T more sustainable. 2021 research from the German Hot or Cool Institute has shown that 35 per cent of the average Canadian’s carbon footprint in 2019 was from transportation. A 2019 survey from StudentMoveTO shows that, of all students in Toronto, about one fifth drive, and almost two thirds take either local or regional transit to and from campus. More student housing could mean
fewer students driving or cramming onto GO Transit and the TTC. However, none of this addresses the actual issue being raised: new developments like the Lawson Centre can sometimes mean the loss of green areas on campus. Trade-offs in sustainability The field to the north of Trinity was an occasional recreational space before work on the Lawson Centre began, though it was seldom available to students, and was closed off by a fence. The space was hardly the communal outdoor commons that Front Campus or Queen’s Park are today. When it comes to making a better campus, it’s incorrect to equate spaces like the Trinity field to unequivocal good. For example, the grass required maintenance in the form of lawn mowing, making it a significant investment for something the community hardly made use of. Land, like all resources, is precious, and the university can no longer afford to waste it. Using a gasoline-powered lawn mower for an hour emits as much air pollution as driving a car for 72 kilometres, in the form of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and fine particulate matter. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, garden and lawn equipment engines produce up to five per cent of the country’s air pollution. There will be trade-offs in the ongoing effort to make our campus and our lives more sustainable. For a handful of Trinity students and athletes, the loss of this green space is disappointing. But when the consolation is a new, environmentally-friendly building with more student housing, such a tradeoff will probably be worth it in the long run.
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Spirituality and science can be two sides of the same coin
How studying neuroscience has guided my journey into secular spirituality Mashiyat Ahmed Varsity Contributor
The first time I was bullied was at religious school. Sitting meekly in the back of the classroom with my legs crossed and my mind disinterested in the piece of Arabic text on my lap, I spotted two girls glancing at me and sheepishly whispering something between themselves. Every other student had someone else to sit with; every other student seemed to grasp the scripture better than me. I had been attending this class for months now, managing to achieve superficial progress and growing ever more skeptical with each religious history class. Even with my makeshift hijab and improvised Qur’anic accent, I felt foreign among my peers and distant from my teachers. In retrospect, it was not until I was 18 that I found the language, the self-confidence — and, to my surprise — the coursework to finally confront and digest my lifelong discomfort with religion. Eventually, as I got older, this discomfort transformed into a newfound awareness and familiarity with the idea of ‘secular spirituality.’ Secular spirituality, which is becoming an increasingly mainstream branch of spirituality, argues that spirituality does not demand a belief in, or engagement with, any supernatural deities, forces, or energies. Spirituality is a set of thoughts, philosophies, emotions, words, and
actions stemming from the unshakable belief that everything in the universe — including the human experience — is interdependent. This broad definition of spirituality encompasses the fact that any experience can evoke sensations of awe, connectedness, and awareness, all of which can be seen as spiritual. Being immersed in nature, meditation — or, in my case, learning about the human body and mind — are all wonderful examples of experiences that can be personally spiritual. I found that secular spirituality is personalized, grows, and adapts at my own pace, if I let it. Religion & family: My grandfather Religion has always been a part of my life. It is a familial, cultural — and indeed — personal narrative that I have had the privilege of inheriting from my parents and previous generations before them. I recall my paternal grandfather passing away from colon cancer, yet my memories will not let me remember who he was before. All I can remember is my father’s hands held up in supplication more than they usually were. All I can remember is how protective our practicing of religious customs was during this time of inexplicable grief and bereavement. I did not know my grandfather well, but I keenly observed how our family’s deepening trust in faith kept his memory alive. I knew him by proxy; I became aware of the intensity of his presence
through how he seemed to strengthen the faith and devotion of others who knew him, like my father. Growing up, though the occasional bullying I experienced at religious school left a sour taste in my mouth, I also observed that religion was more than just a set of ideologies and practices my parents would perform and teach. Religion was, and still is, the language they use to translate their deepest emotions into currencies of resilience, reflection, and connection. Looking back, it is certainly a beautiful sight to see how love, grief, and faith intermingle. However, I remember being overwhelmed with a peculiar, fluttering ball of guilt in my stomach. This guilt — which has transformed much since then — told me: look around you, how could you not love something that has given your family so much resilience and peace? This question still lingers in my mind. Still, I am now assertive and independent enough from my family to resolve my childhood discomfort with faith without having it question the integrity of my relationship with my family. As an agnostic-atheist, I interpret the concept of God to be fundamentally unknowable to humans. Even if there is some spirituality to human existence, and even if God does exist, I do not believe humans can capture it through institutionalized religion because spirituality is a highly personal experience.
The classroom: Where science & spirituality converged There is a common narrative in society that spirituality and science are insurmountably disconnected, and this narrative infiltrated my worldview. It meant I took unexpected avenues to find where spirituality, philosophy, and science comfortably intersect for me. As a science student, it was easy for me to think of spirituality and science as mutually incompatible: both attempt to solve the mystery of human and natural existence, but only one solves it in a way that provides certainty in its results through the rigour of the scientific method and elaborate mathematical equations. Now, I realize how naive my mindset was. Since my grandfather’s passing, I have taken an abundance of undergraduate courses related to biology and neuroscience for my program. However, I did not expect that they would fulfill a new, previously spiritually unsatiated space in me as I ventured into my studies of the brain and mind. Last semester, I took a course in anatomy and physiology where I learned about the sheer volume of biomechanical and systems coordination required to simply bend my knee. In another course, I tried to digest the fact that me and the tree outside the classroom window likely shared a common ancestor at some point during the evolutionary labyrinth. In my introductory neuroscience course, I was taught
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about the sequence of biological processes that allow me to move my finger, much less think and feel. As my classmates around me committed pen to paper, eagerly taking notes to prepare themselves for the looming final exam, I sat silently transfixed, meditating at the back of the class about the neuroscientific machinery operating in my skull that allowed me to do even the most mindless of tasks. Questions swarmed my head: how much of the universe remains undiscovered? How is everything mutually dependent? What happens when this chain of mutual dependence is broken? When I stepped out of these classes, I not only felt a sense of excitement and wonder at the vastness of science. Ironically, the materialism of my scientific coursework awakened me to the fundamental interconnectedness and interdependence of all of nature’s workings, including myself. Of course, before this, I did not have an anthropocentric view of the world, nor did I believe humans to be exempt from certain natural laws. But by studying the sophistication of our brains, bodies, and minds, I was beginning to see myself as a culmination of intricacies that would take a lifetime to contemplate. I was beginning to see the beauty in all my supposed imperfections — the wrinkles on my hands, the stretch marks on my hips, and the texture of my black, thinning hair. How could I ever think my body is ugly or undesirable when it does so much just to keep me alive?
This newfound bearing on the world, prompted by my studies and periods of introspection, bred in me a self-love that was not fragile and conditional like all the other types of self-love I have tried to force on myself. This love and empathy I felt in me radiated outward into the world, manifesting through my patience and the ability to forgive.
How is everything mutually dependent? What happens when this chain of mutual dependence is broken? Embracing science and spirituality After sitting with these thoughts and experiences for a few weeks, I realized the complex relationship that existed between science and spirituality. The course content I was learning connected me with the natural world in ways I had never experienced
before, the experience of which usually seems to be reserved for episodes induced by consuming psychedelics. Science is a tool that allows us to quantify, qualify, and understand the natural world in and around us. Western science is fundamentally empirical, but this empiricism developed my heightened sense of empathy, love, and sensibility beyond what I previously extracted from religion. In his New York Times-bestselling book How to Change Your Mind, author and journalist Michael Pollan discusses an interaction he had with Richard Griffiths, a psychopharmacologist studying psychedelic science. Psychedelics — such as magic mushrooms and LSD — are naturally derived substances that can powerfully influence the mind toward a state of ‘ego death.’ Ambiguously, ego death is a subjective experience where the ‘self’ dissolves and is an experiential precursor to the feelings of interconnectedness one might feel following a magic mushroom experience. The clinical and therapeutic novelty of psychedelics is increasingly being embraced by scientists and clinicians alike; more scientists, such as Griffiths, are open to understanding psychedelics using both scientific and nonconventional methods. Pollan describes Griffiths’s capacity for “negative capability,” which he defines as the “ability to exist amid uncertainties, mysteries, and doubt
without reaching for absolutes, whether those of science or spirituality.” This ability to exist in a state of uncertainty applies to engaging in science as a practice and living a spiritual life. Pollan recounts a meeting with Griffiths in which he asks him about his views regarding science and spirituality. Griffiths replied that the two concepts are not “mutually exclusive” — and that he “has little patience for absolutists on either side of the supposed divide. He instead argues that the two ways “can inform each other and correct each other’s defects… and then, possibly, answer the big questions we face.” Divorcing science and spirituality not only breeds hostility but hinders the human capacity to experience the world empirically and esoterically. Both fields are equally valuable to our collective narrative, and the human quest for meaning. Though religion is formally no longer a part of my world, through my experiences with spirituality, I can relate to the feelings of inspiration and devotion that institutionalized faith evokes in people such as my parents. While I do not fully understand or relate to some perspectives that organized religion offers, I am more comfortable now than ever living in the vague in-between of science and spirituality. As I venture deeper into the wonders of science, my journey into secular spirituality has empowered me to embrace and appreciate the unknown. I am eternally grateful for who I have become in the process.
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Responsibility for Chrétien’s treatment of Indigenous peoples extends to Trudeau’s government Reactions to 2003 cabinet records of Australia and Canada show how far Canada has to go Thomas Law Labour Correspondent
This past December, declassified Australian government documents revealed that, back in 2003, the Canadian and Australian governments led by Jean Chrétien and John Howard, respectively, attempted to weaken the language in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). CBC reported that, in response, former chair of the Indigenous caucus at the UN, Kenneth Deer said, “I’m not surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised.” Personally, I also see such government actions to be simply in character with centuries of similar actions. The current Liberal government is attempting to disassociate itself from the actions of the Chrétien administration, which fought to delete references to land restitution, conflict, and cultural genocide from the language of UNDRIP. Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu claimed, “We’ve taken a long leap away from those early thoughts of elected leaders of all stripes who looked to undermine and weaken Indigenous rights in this country.” But the Chrétien government’s willingness to diminish legal protections and means of redress for Indigenous peoples are common characteristics in Canada’s history of Indigenous mistreatment — which extends up to the present administration. In my view, the fact that the first reaction by government ministers was to downplay contemporary association with a prior Liberal government is symptomatic of a system of institutional thinking that is overly concerned with day-to-day political perceptions and a desire to shift responsibility
rather than tackle and acknowledge underlying, long-term issues. A joint statement released by Hajdu and Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree last month claimed the current administration wants “to help right past wrongs, be unwavering in the pursuit of the truth, and work to repair relationships so we can walk the path of reconciliation together.” But actions speak louder than words. To me, the administration’s reactions to these revelations don’t appear to be in the spirit of seeking to “right past wrongs,” but rather to avoid blame. It could be argued that it is not the incumbent regime’s responsibility to atone for its predecessor’s misdeeds. After all, why should the political class of 2024 be dragged over the coals based on the actions of those from more than two decades ago? But to extend that logic would be to absolve the current and any future government’s responsibility for Indigenous reconciliation. Of course, Justin Trudeau should not shoulder the personal responsibility for what Jean Chrétien’s government did any more than he might for the policies of Sir John A. MacDonald. But I believe the notion of reconciliation requires collective, historical responsibility by parties, national leaders, and the political class as a whole. Reconciliation means different things to different people, but at its heart lies the understanding that what happened in the past matters and it must be acknowledged and apologized for. The legacy of colonial structures created and acts carried out in the past have a direct impact on the present, as the plethora of statistics on education, incarceration, health, and fatalities demonstrate. In my view,
The past legacy of colonial structures and their acts have a direct impact on the present. COURTESY OF CLAUDE GILL AND GOPMTL1 CC WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
any action taken now by the current Canadian government must work to atone for the past, and learn from it to build a better future. In their 2003 conspiring, the Australian and Canadian governments denied Indigenous peoples the chance to provide their input on policies of fundamental importance to their communities. It’s yet another example of governments doing things ‘to’ Indigenous people rather than ‘with’ them. And it’s a real shame that the Canadian government has passed on the chance to use these revelations as an opportunity to put into practice what they have preached about learning from the past to build a better future. The most important thing to me is not necessarily that a past government was less than honest about its intentions regarding Indigenous people — quelle surprise! It was yet another chapter in the long story of Indigenous mistreatment, cultural genocide, displacement, and denial — not just denial of Indigenous nations’ right to self-determi-
Nunavut’s devolution agreement marks a new beginning for the territory
Decisions for Nunavummiut will now be made by Nunavummiut Rubin Beshi Comment Columnist
On January 18, Canada’s federal government, the government of Nunavut, and a representative of Inuit in Nunavut signed the Nunavut Lands and Resources Devolution Agreement. In a ceremony held in Iqaluit, Nunavut Premier P.J. Akeeagok and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau completed an agreement that constituted the largest land transfer in Canadian history, through a 239-page agreement also signed by President Aluki Kotierk of Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated — the legal representative of Inuit in Nunavut. With it, the federal government handed over control of two million square kilometres of land and water to the territory. As a result of achieving devolution, Nunavut will finally be able to have the final say over decisions that have typically been made in Ottawa. Almost 25 years since becoming a territory in 1999, Nunavummiut — the people of Nunavut — are finally realizing their goal of self-determination. How devolution works Devolution is the process where certain powers and responsibilities are transferred from a central government to more local levels of government. This often entails a lengthy negotiation process between the two levels of government as they hammer out financial agreements and legal frameworks. Devolution is typically employed as a means to enhance local empowerment and economic opportunities in the region. For Nunavut, the devolution process entailed collaboration between the federal government, territorial government, and Indigenous stakeholders. Inuit communities in Nunavut played a crucial role in the negotiations to ensure the final decision
Nunavut’s devolution was realized almost 25 years after becoming a territory. COURTESY OF JAMES LEIGH AND MAPGRID CC WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
was respected and took into account their rights, interests, and traditional knowledge. Nunavut’s devolution history Canada’s federal government has been gradually transferring powers to territorial governments in fields such as health, education, and housing since the 1960s. Since 1999, Nunavut has been slowly negotiating with the federal government for more widespread devolution that finalizes the transferring of administrative control of the Crown lands and resources of Nunavut to the territorial government. A breakthrough came in 2008 when Nunavut signed a negotiation protocol with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, which allowed the territory to begin gaining more control over its land. With the help of Crown-appointed negotiators, an agreement-in-principle — which served as a guide for this final agreement negotiation — was struck in 2019 between the Nunavut government, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., and the federal government. With this year’s final agreement, Nunavut has
now finally joined the Yukon and Northwest territories — which achieved final agreements in 2003 and 2013, respectively — as having full official responsibility and control over its land. Benefits to Nunavummiut This historical agreement provides a multitude of benefits for Nunavut and its residents. The territory will be able to make its own decisions about how to manage its land development and resources. This allows for more responsive and culturally sensitive decision-making for Nunavummiut. The agreement will also lead to more prosperity. The territory will now receive royalties on development projects of oil, minerals, and gas on their public land. The territory will also be able to strengthen its employment and education. This will stimulate job growth and lead to increased economic opportunities in the future. Additionally, Nunavut will be able to start imposing taxes on the exploration and production of minerals found in the territory, as well as corporate income tax and other fees. Overall, the transfer of Crown
nation but denial that such wrongdoing occurred, denial that communities experienced such suffering was, and denial that the suffering continues to this day. The current government’s focus should be on recognizing and apologizing for this denial and then implementing UNDRIP, not only in strict accordance with the language and stipulations in the declaration — as is theoretically required by Canadian statute — but in spirit too. That means genuine reconciliation, treatment of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis as equal partners with self-determining autonomy. That will involve learning lessons from the past, but the current government’s latest reactions suggest to me that is not something at the forefront of its thinking. Thomas Law is a first-year graduate student at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He is The Varsity’s Labour Correspondent and a senior editor of the Eurasiatique journal. lands, waters, and natural resources to Nunavut empowers the territory to better manage its own affairs and retain more of the wealth it generates. What’s next? Although the final agreement has been signed, the process isn’t over. The agreement needs to first be drafted into legislation, and then follow a lengthy implementation schedule. For now, full devolution is scheduled to be achieved by April 2027. The implementation process can be unpredictable, however, since both Parliament and the Nunavut legislative assembly need to approve of the various legislative changes. CBC reported that Nunavut’s former premier Joe Savikataaq emphasized the significance of taking on more Inuit staff in the government and adding new departments, as the territory’s government has long been facing struggles to fill vacancies in various departments. The territory’s Inuit employment goals of ensuring all levels of Nunavut’s government have a workplace that reflects Inuit the territory have also often ended in failure. In 2018, only 40 per cent of the federal employees in Nunavut were Inuit. Nevertheless, Savikataaq expressed his optimism by stating, “If we weren’t ready, then we shouldn’t have been negotiating.” I also believe there is still reason to be optimistic. Nunavut is receiving $85 million annually as part of the transfer, in addition to one-time payments of $67 million and $15 million for transitional activities and training, respectively. I believe this funding will bolster Nunavut’s economy and provide a kickstart for this new period in the territory’s history. All in all, the Nunavut devolution agreement is a crucial turning point for the territory. A testament to Inuit resilience, this agreement sends a statement to the country and signifies to subsequent generations that, as Premier P.J. Akeeagok puts it, they will “decide our own future.” Rubin Beshi is a third-year student at Woodsworth College studying political science and English. He is a Local Affairs columnist for The Varsity’s Comment section.
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The Democrats need to change tactics if they want to win the 2024 election Why moving away from negative campaigning and holding smaller town halls is the key Felix Hughes Varsity Contributor
It’s election year in the US, and for some, the stakes could not be higher. President Joe Biden has made it clear that this election is about asking “whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause.” Say what you want about him, but I believe he certainly isn’t being hyperbolic, with such language being a part of Democratic identity since Donald Trump defied expectations to take the White House in 2016. Democratic Representative Alexandria OcasioCortez stated that “CNN should be ashamed of themselves” over the network’s decision to host a town hall with Trump. Shenna Bellows, the Maine Democrat secretary of state, has been facing criticism even from within her own party for removing Trump from the Maine ballot, on the grounds that such a decision has never occurred in US politics. While criticisms of Trump are more than fair, I don’t think the Democrats basing their whole identity around criticizing Trump is getting the party anywhere. Current 270toWin polling results have Trump with a 3.2-per cent lead nationally. The political feuding that seems to be the backbone of modern political discourse is getting the Democrats nowhere, despite how much they criticize Trump. In my view, this failure comes down to the fact that the constant Democratic attacks suit Trump’s populist campaign style perfectly. Despite what he may do in practice, Trump has always positioned himself as “the voice” of the people: the only one willing to criticize the ‘liberal elite’ and stand up for the ‘real Americans’ who help “make America great again.” For his supporters, Trump’s narrative of the repressive democrats is only validated through constant attacks from left-wing politicians, comedians, and everyone in between. The January 6 insurrection only heightened this discourse. The Democratic Party has become what former president Barack Obama, in his 2006 autobiography,
wrote he expected it would become: “the party of reaction.” So, how can the Democratic Party regain the nation’s favour? Less negative campaigning, more small town halls For starters, the Democrats need to be the party that moves away from negative campaigning. In 2018, 91 per cent of US voters on either side of the political spectrum in a Pew Research Center survey said that it was essential for politicians to “be honest and ethical” above all else. This shows that most people don’t want politicians telling the public why their rivals are wrong but instead why voters should vote for them. Thus, if Trump spends his campaign on the offensive, I believe the Democrats must not engage in childish politics and instead take the honorable and ethical high ground of focusing on their accomplishments. In 2023, the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors referred to the US economy’s growth as having “defied expectations” and current unemployment is lower than the country’s long term average rates. It is these kinds of successes I believe the Democrats must convey. They must focus on their strengths rather than Trump’s character flaws to create the picture of a stronger America under the Democrats, not a divided one. I believe what the Democratic party needs most is simple, small-scale campaigning that focuses on individuals or groups of citizens. For many, it may seem like the party isn’t focused on the little guy like it was set up to do, so it will be crucial for the party to actively seek average Americans out on the campaign trail. In his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama stresses the importance of a long face-to-face campaign as a way to understand the electorate. He writes that he imagines ordinary people “are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism.” It is exactly these kinds of people that I believe the Democrats need to find. To reach across the nation, I believe the party must minimize social media campaigning. While
The Indian democracy is dying The newly inaugurated Ram Mandir is a symbol of all that is politically wrong with India
The new temple seems to me neither a victory for Indians or Hindus. COURTESY OF THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA CC WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Nidhil Vohra Comment Columnist
On January 22, a centuries-old religious dispute came to an end in India, as the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya — translated in English as the Rama temple — finally opened to the general public. The site for the Ram Mandir has been disputed territory between Hindus and Muslims since the nineteenth century, and prior to the construction of this temple, the land was the site of the Babri Masjid, a mosque erected by the Mughal Empire in 1528. Hindu activists have alleged since the 1850s that the Mughals had destroyed a Hindu temple to construct the mosque and have argued that Hindus are the rightful owners of the land, which they consider to be the birthplace of Lord Rama, a Hindu deity. This conflict co-existed in the legal and public spheres for years before the government blocked entry into the Babri Masjid in 1949, after Hindu activists illegally placed Hindu idols inside the
mosque’s inner premises. Legal proceedings continued but the dispute spiralled and turned violent in 1992 when a mob of Hindu extremists tore down the mosque and subsequently triggered monthslong nationwide religious riots. The demolition of the Babri Masjid became a pivotal moment in Indian history and significantly heightened Hindu-Muslim tensions. Debates regarding the land’s ownership were rife in political and public realms before and since the destruction of the Babri Masjid. After years of failed attempts at out-of-court settlements and mediations — and after a government-commissioned archaeological survey whose reports have been disputed by several archaeologists, and which therefore seems dodgy — the Supreme Court of India ruled in favour of Hindu activists in 2019. The Court allowed for the construction of a temple on the disputed land, allotting a piece of land 25 kilometres from the original site to the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board for the construction of a mosque.
social media may seem the most accessible way to reach an audience, I see the approach as lacking a human touch, creating a divide between politicians and voters, as — according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey — both politicians and voters said they “distrust social media sites for political and electoral news.” Instead, politicians need to be getting out on the road, across the country, to do their work. Current town hall-style rallies, like the one Trump hosted with CNN in May last year, lack the sense of warmth and togetherness that engage voters. Often, these events are filled with thousands of people and so most people don’t get the opportunity to get their views across to the politicians. Instead, town halls should be held in much smaller venues and towns across America, away from larger media, with attendances of perhaps only a few hundred. I believe this gives Biden and other Democrats the opportunity to have real, intimate conversations with voters. In such a setting, I can see politicians listen to the struggles citizens
go through in their everyday lives, such as a union leader’s unfair dismissal by a megacorporation or a struggling family’s need for a strong after-school program. In addition to town halls, local community-organized events involving campaigning politicians will not only help increase the intimacy of such events but also get more people involved in both community and political action. In my view, if the Democrats want to show that they are the people’s party, this is exactly the kind of campaigning they need to be doing. They need to show America that the Democrats are not the party of the ‘elites,’ but the party that provides aid for struggling families or stands up for the small union against megacorporations. What most Americans want is a president who represents them and cares about them — and the Democrats can only show that this is who they are if they get out into the wild. Felix Hughes is a first-year student at Trinity College studying humanities.
LISA YIN/THEVARSITY
The judgement was widely celebrated by many Hindus, including Hindu activists, and while the temple’s consecration on January 22 puts an end to a troubled chapter in India’s religious and communal history, I believe it simultaneously opens up a new chapter of unprecedented religious divisiveness and blatantly majoritarian politics. The violent aftermath of the Temple’s inauguration On the eve of the temple’s inauguration, clashes between Hindus and Muslims broke out across several states in the country amid reports of harassment and violence against religious minorities. A lot of this violence was related to the emotionally charged processions carried out in most cases by Hindu activists — sometimes armed — who celebrated and chanted religious slogans in front of mosques and Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had previously urged his fellow Hindus to “show faith, not aggression” in their celebrations, but it is evident that, in many cases, his request fell on deaf ears. However, the government has yet to speak out against the strife that has transpired in the wake of the Ram Mandir’s inauguration, and I strongly believe that the reason for its strategic silence is the fact that the temple is a political victory for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It is 2024, and Modi is up for reelection this year. Securing the support of the lucrative Hindu vote-bank is necessary for Modi to ensure another five-year term for him and his colleagues. Politicisation of the Ram Mandir Modi isn’t the first BJP leader to politicize the temple. Ex-BJP leader L. K. Advani spearheaded the campaign to build the temple throughout the late ’80s and ’90s, and several BJP leaders were named in the initial report against those responsible for the Babri Masjid demolition. The campaign to construct the temple has been taken up by the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as well. The RSS is a far-right Hindu nationalist organization with close ties to several factions in areas across Indian society, including the BJP. It does not come as a surprise to me, then, that both the 2019 court ruling in favour of Hindus and now the temple consecration have happened during election years. The BJP won in 2019, and another BJP victory looks all but certain this year. This is why I am troubled by the question of whether the temple is either a victory for Hindus or a victory for India. Several of my Hindu friends and relatives would like me to believe that this is in fact a victory for India. They say that the temple allows them to celebrate their religion in India — something that they previously were scared to do. Several of my Indian friends and relatives would like me to believe that this is a victory for Hindus — and they also say that the temple stands as a monument for all that is currently wrong with the country. That it’s a 217 million USD illusion to distract you from the democratic backsliding, expanding class divides, the blatant commercialization and manipulation of religion for politics. For me, it is neither a victory for Indians or Hindus. The temple and all that it brings is a victory for Modi and for the BJP. It is a victory for the people who lawlessly demolished the Babri Masjid and now roam free, and a victory for all who have allowed secularism to decay in our country. For me, it stands as a victory for fascism. For me, the place that many consider to be the birthplace of Lord Rama now stands as little else but the burial site of the Indian democracy. Perhaps years from now someone will dispute this claim too. And perhaps then we will find ourselves distracted again. Nidhil Vohra is a fourth-year student at St. Michael’s College studying peace, conflict and justice and political science. He is an International Affairs columnist for The Varsity’s Comment section.
Arts & Culture
February 5, 2024 thevarsity.ca/section/arts-and-culture arts@thevarsity.ca
TEDx Catalyst conference showcases U of T’s best speakers The full-day event included speeches, artistic performances, and networking Vicky Huang Varsity Contributor
On January 28, TEDxUofT held its annual TED Talk conference at Isabel Bader Theatre. Centred around the theme ‘Catalyst,’ the all-day event was an exciting showcase of provoking and novel ideas from U of T’s community. According to its website, TEDxUofT is a student-run club consisting of 54 dedicated members who work tirelessly to “inspire and innovate within the university community” and to “spark conversation.” The organization runs several events throughout the year, including intimate networking ‘Salons’ and its annual TEDx conference. For the uninitiated, a TED Talk involves an expert delivering a speech on their area of specialty in an engaging and accessible way. Someone with a background in the arts can go into a TED Talk and leave with a firmer understanding of neuroscience. Ideas get to flow from field to field, generating new interdisciplinary possibilities. As Shivangi Roy, TEDxUofT’s speaker relations manager, described in an interview with The Varsity, “When you leave the [talk], you’re going to be that much more enriched and [able to catalyze] your personal development.”
The planning for Catalyst took several months of hard work. Applications for the conference began as early as October. Roy explained that the club received around 300 speaker applications in total for the event. Out of the swathes of competitive prospects, the TEDxUofT team narrowed it down to a few speeches that they felt were the most impactful and relevant to the U of T community. Their efforts certainly paid off. On event day, the venue was packed to the brim with students, faculty, and alumni alike. Outside the auditorium hall were sponsor booths from Rexall and Manulife that handed out various goody bags, delicious snacks, and refreshments. This year’s all-day conference was broken into three parts and featured a packed itinerary of three artistic performances and nine talks. The conference started strong with a performance by priyana, an award-winning Torontonian musician, who sang three of her original songs. After the mid-day break, Hannah Flores stunned the audience with her unwavering slam poetry about her struggles with identity and assimilation as a Cubana, in addition to performing an inspiring letter ‘to the only black person in the room.’ Finally, U of T’s Bhangra Club was the last of the conference’s performances, lifting the energy with a bedazzling,
jumping dance to the skies. The inclusion of artistic performances helped refresh the audience after a long session of interesting but intellectually dense discussions. This year’s speaker lineup was a wonderful reflection of U of T’s community. Porsha Taheri, the club’s chief of staff, explained that the speakers are broken down into two streams of students and affiliates, the latter referring to anyone connected to the university but not currently enrolled as a student, such as alumni, professors, etc. Platforming people in different stages of their lives allowed for a great range of experiences and perspectives to be shared. Highlights included a tongue-incheek presentation on charismatic storytelling by U of T student Soban Atique, and a riveting discussion on kindness in education by the beloved Professor Bill Ju from U of T’s Department of Human Biology. As a result of this diversity, each speech had a unique spin on the “catalyst” theme. Organizers had allocated an intermission between every couple of performances for networking and rest. Eager students dressed in tailored blazers chattered about with industry professionals, filling the auditorium with an infectious hum. Not only was this event an amazing place to generate new ideas but also
a way to connect with like-minded peers and industry professionals. During one of these intermissions, The Varsity spoke with two U of T students, Francesca Lisi and Huidan Zuo, about their thoughts on the event. “We saw the [event] on Instagram and we grew excited for it… we were [drawn] to the scientific events, especially Professor Ju’s [discussion],” Lisi raved. “I also found Claire Zhao’s talk to be really insightful… we weren’t really knowledgeable of artificial intelligence (AI) and privacy. I think it’s a nice refreshing topic, especially when AI is everywhere now.” Zuo also chimed in: “My favourite was Jessica Lim’s talk about attention. I like her style. She got my attention, and I really liked her story of how she got closer to her students and paid attention to their goals in education. It inspired me for what I want to do in the future. I’m also going to be an educator or work with kids.” Their satisfaction seemed to be shared by many. When the event ended, the Bader Hall was loud with excited murmurs and heated discussions about the ideas that had just been shared. Overall, the conference revealed how U of T students and affiliates have many creative ideas worth sharing, and was an impressive reflection of the university’s excellence.
The TEDxUofT’s team poses for a photo.
The Isabel Bader Theatre hosted the all day event.
U of T Bhangara Club performs.
U of T student Soban Atique delivers his speech onstage.
COURTESY OF TEDX UOFT
COURTESY OF TEDX UOFT
COURTESY OF TEDX UOFT
COURTESY OF ROXANNE HUANG AND TEDX UOFT
thevarsity.ca/category/arts-culture
FEBRUARY 5, 2024
15
A list of the best shawarma trucks on campus To each their own wrap — but here are your best bets the sauces we were promised, and the toppings were inconsistently distributed. Still, the small wrap, full of delicious and flavourful meat, satisfies the expectations of anyone looking for a wrap to grab on the go. The truck also had the best fries we’d tried out of all the shawarma trucks: seasoned, pillowy, and crisp. If you’re looking for some heat, ask for extra hot sauce directly in the wrap, as the Pita Express spicy version is a little milder than you’d expect. Best for: Fries, and potentially even Shawarma poutine. A wrap to snack on and a home away from home.
Rola Fawzy & Anya Berube Boutin Varsity Contributors
To study at U of T is to be in the heart of a thriving food scene. From Chinatown to Kensington to Koreatown, there is no shortage of places one can go to in Toronto to indulge in a good meal. However, studying at U of T means being in a perpetual time crunch. From schoolwork to club work to actual work, the student experience is a juggling act — one where students often drop the ball on nourishment. Thankfully, shawarma trucks line up across St. George Street for those who need to beat the clock. The variety in trucks is our blessing, but it is also our curse — is it fair to expect a student nursing a headache amid a busy schedule to gamble on an unknown wrap? We at The Varsity didn’t think so. Over the course of two days, we set out with the intention of finding the best shawarmas. We ordered mixed shawarmas — which are half chicken, half beef — and a side of fries from every truck lined down St. George, an order we deemed reflective of the typical pickme-up. Below are our results. Fiyu Food Truck (Black truck with white writing) Where we found it: Across from Bahen Flavour — 4/5 Freshness/Juiciness — 5/5 Variety of toppings available — 4/5 Did they get our order right? — 5/5 Service — 4/5 Fries — 3/5 Busier than most of its neighbouring trucks, we started our day with Fiyu. And what a gem Fiyu was! Drawing heavily on Turkish cuisine, Fiyu’s shawarma was perfectly juicy. Piled high with fatty beef and nicely balanced by fresh and crunchy onions, you’ll want to ask for a napkin (in the best way). If you’re a fan of heat, their hot sauce takes the wrap to another level and is worth the glass of water you may need after.
Clockwise from top left: Ali’s Wraps, Food from East, Fiyu, and Pita Express. ZEYNEP POYANLI/THEVARSITY
Best for: A filling and plump dinner, and those who love a good presentation.
Best for: Garlic sauce lovers, and anyone who wants a good lunch.
Food from East (Black truck with flames) Where we found it: Across from Sid Smith Flavour — 4/5 Freshness/Juiciness — 4/5 Variety of toppings available — 2.5/5 Did they get our order right? — 5/5 Quality of service — 4/5 Fries — 3/5
Pita Express (Red truck) Where we found it: Outside of Robarts Flavour — 3/5 Freshness/Juiciness — 5/5 Variety of toppings available — 2.5/5 Did they get our order right? — 4/5 Quality of service — 5/5 Fries — 5/5
Place your order, and soon after, the vendors — highly attentive, and, we found, mildly flirty — will hand you garlicky bliss. The combination of pickles and lettuce made for a crunchy wrap, but when it came to flavour, the garlic sauce was the star of the show, keeping everything moist and flavourful without overpowering the well-seasoned meat. Enriched with white sauce, this wrap is fresh, zesty and balanced.
If you are looking to take a step aside from your cold, professional routine and step into a bubble of comfort, Pita Express is the place for you. You may likely be greeted by the sweet and friendly woman who operates the truck with her husband. Their wraps are highly reminiscent of home meals, to us: imperfect but nice to depend on. We found that the vendor under-delivered
The UC Follies present: Checking up on Mrs. Vernon A young grad student on why she wrote a play about ageing Lina Obeidat Varsity Staff
On January 28, audience members gathered in the Cat’s Eye to watch the UC Follies’ production of Checking up on Mrs. Vernon. This performance was an original play written by Jasmine Ryu Won Kang, a first-year medical student in the MD/PhD program at U of T, and co-directed by Kang and AnnaMaria Maleshev, who graduated from U of T in 2021 with a BA in drama and English. Telling the story The play centres around an older woman named Janine Vernon (Mashreka Mahmood), who, following the death of her husband, makes a brave effort to carry on with each new day but has become dependent on alcohol and seems unable to escape the crushing weight of solitude. The few people remaining in her life include a couple of waiters at the local café, a luxury cruise telemarketer, and a grandniece. As they all attempt to comfort or redirect the older woman, they must also navigate the guilt they feel during moments in which they fail to do so. The set design for the play, done by Abbey Kowlaski, was minimal, with lightweight tables and chairs that could be swapped out easily during transitional moments. Greater emphasis was placed on lighting, also designed by
Kowlaski, and dialogue — both of which took on a modernist feel. The lighting choices reflected the wide range of emotion communicated by the actors: red for angst, pink for romance, purple and blue for sorrow, and so on. Similarly, the dialogue was fairly straightforward, delivered meaningfully and authentically for the most part, maximizing the actors’ connection with a modern audience. The connection went beyond words as well: during moments throughout the play, the actors would either lean forward on the edge of the stage or stare at some point just past the audience’s heads, so that some of us even felt compelled to turn around and stare as well. An interview with the playwright The Varsity sat down with Jasmine Ryu Won Kang to discuss the process of writing her play. The play, Kang explained, is based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway called “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” In the short story, an older man — much like Mrs. Vernon — frequently stops by one particular café for drinks, much to the curiosity of the younger waiter there, “who isn’t able to grasp the loneliness and sort of the existential emptiness that this old man is experiencing.” Kang chose to maintain the character of the young waiter in her play but expanded on the dynamics of Hemingway’s short story so that
Mrs. Vernon was not the only one whose life had taken a dark turn. Her grandniece Clarisse (Anya Ivantchenko), for example, spent the better part of the play doubting her self-worth and dealing with a negligent boyfriend. She confided in Mrs. Vernon about these issues, and it became clear that the role of a compassionate listener was something to be shared. When asked what inspired her to write a story about an older woman despite being in her 20s, Kang said it came from her personal relationships: “I’ve been around a lot of people who are nearing that age where things in life that mattered to them a lot in the past are sort of starting to crumble away, and the relationships that they built are not necessarily holding up.” She continued, pointing out that “especially [in] Canada, [with] such a rapidly growing elderly demographic, it’s important to talk about these stories, and to explore… what it means for someone to age, and what barriers
Ali’s Wraps (Green truck) Where we found it: In front of Bahen Flavour — 4.6/5 Freshness/Juiciness — 4/5 Variety of toppings available — 4/5 Did they get our order right? — 3/5 Service — 3.5/5 Fries — 2/5 We ended our food tour with Ali’s, which was the furthest truck south along St. George. The sweet and soft wrap hugged the savoury meat and standard toppings: lettuce, tomato, and pickles. This freshness, however, did not carry into the fries, which left us tasting the staleness of the oil used for frying them. However soft their bread may be, we found the folks at Ali’s don’t believe in pleasantries; charmingly hostile, they let the peppery and feisty wrap do the talking for itself. Best for: Those who like their meat smoky and charred, and have a fondness for mean uncles. Combatting hunger in a timely manner, the trucks that decorate campus are every student’s friend. Next time you and the rumble in your belly gaze up St. George Street to its seemingly endless stream of trucks, rest assured in knowing there is a wrap out there for you. that people who are older might face when they're trying to reach out to someone, when they’re trying to connect with others.” Society, Kang thinks, might be designed for “young people to flourish, and to… meet people all the time and have all these short-term, fast connections.” However, she wonders, “how many genuine, multi-decade relationships do we have in the end?” According to Kang, these are the relationships that keep us going and ultimately matter the most, presumably because they are formed around the people who have agreed to help carry the weight of our burdens. Her words remind me of a line by Clarisse’s therapist, Dr. Moore (Noah Sokoloff), near the end of the play. He says, “Instead of holding us captive, chains serve a different, essential purpose. They tie us together and remind us of our interconnectedness.” Perhaps the burdens we carry, when we share the weight of them with others, can be a means to identify those who care for us the most in this life.
The cast of the play takes a bow. COURTESY OF MELODY HONG
Sports
February 5, 2024 thevarsity.ca/category/sports sports@thevarsity.ca
Victoria Mata, UTSC’s multi-sport athlete turned soccer coach From the grass to the ice, Mata reflects on her achievements and hopes for UTSC’s athletic community Arthur Dennyson Hamdani Design Editor
Many U of T students would argue that double majoring in human biology and psychology would take up most of their time. UTSC alumna Victoria Mata begs to differ. Alongside academics, Mata has played in multiple teams across three sports — soccer, ice hockey, and field hockey — and helped lead most of her teams into finals competitions. Her time on the grass, turf, and ice introduced her to various communities that have shaped the person she is today. A balancing act Mata’s dedication to sports started long before university. At 11 years old, she began her soccer journey as a goalkeeper. At 13, she took up ice hockey, and in grade 11, she joined field hockey. With the hopes of continuing her athletics in university, Mata quickly stumbled upon a problem. Initially starting as a student at UTM in 2019, the distance between her home in Scarborough and UTM halted her athletic ambitions. Nevertheless, after transferring to UTSC in fall 2021, Mata wasted no time finding her way into the athletic community. She joined Division 2 soccer, Tri-Campus soccer, and ice hockey, playing a vital role in each team. She also joined UTSC’s interhouse soccer league — a recreational league where UTSC students form their own teams and play against each other. Her first taste of a championship came in winter 2022 when her Division 2 women’s soccer team dominated the intramural league. Mata also participated in non-athletic extracurriculars as part of UTSC’s Greek Students’ Association and the Scarborough College Athletic Association. Alongside her biology and psychology classes, Mata still insisted on making time to be a student athlete. In an interview with The Varsity, Mata reflected on balancing her various athletic commitments with academics and other extracurriculars. “It’s probably my number one way of de-stressing... I feel like it just helps you forget about academics for at least an hour, 45 minutes,” she said. When asked if she experienced any struggles with time management, Mata laughed with surprise. “Honestly, I think I balanced everything pretty good,” she said. Her biggest challenge was in balancing her three sports. But from conflicting practice times to unexpected injuries, Mata successfully found ways to make up for her absences and maintain her quality performance. UTSC’s female athlete of the year 2023 On the evening of April 1, 2023, Mata went into the Chelsea Hotel to celebrate UTSC athletes and their performances throughout the year in the 57th Annual Athletic Banquet. It was at this event that she added a hefty trophy to her collection. Mata won the Dickinson Award, also known as the Athlete of the Year award, given to the male and female athletes who excelled most in ability and participation. “It completed my undergrad journey. And I’m grateful for that. And I’m really happy about it,” Mata told The Varsity. Despite already being deeply involved in UTSC’s athletic community, in her last undergrad semester, Mata played three different sports across five different teams: Tri-campus soccer; Division 2 soccer; interhouse soccer; and Division 1 ice hockey and field hockey. She reflected on her mentality when entering her last year of undergrad: “It was like, ‘go big or go home.’ So, I was determined to do well,” she said. Mata explained that her commitment to a multitude of sports originated from the COVID-19 pandemic, which hindered her opportunities to play. “So, I basically just piled on every sport I wanted to do throughout my undergrad into
my last year... just so that I can check mark it and say, ‘Yes, I did it,’” Mata added. At the end of her 2022–2023 academic year, Mata had collected two interhouse championships, four appearances in intramural finals, and the Dickinson Award. Player turned coach After graduating in June 2023, Mata returned to UTSC as a Division 2 women’s soccer coach. Her transition from playing to coaching has taught her how to promote team building and create sports strategies. As much as she wants to get on the field and help her team, Mata has shifted her perspective to focus on how to help her players improve. However, practices and drills can only go so far. One of her biggest challenges as a coach is instilling more passion and commitment in her players. She mentioned, “We want them to have some sort of passion towards the sport for us to do well.” Despite these obstacles, Mata and co-coach Joshua Solomons managed to lead their team, the Maroons, to the finals in the fall. However, they fell just short, losing 2–1 to the Law A team. With one semester of coaching experience under her belt, Mata hopes to continue contributing to and nurturing the community that welcomed her. “I want to get the players better than when they initially came to us and hopefully bring home championships,” she said. The next chapter “One of my first interactions [in] UTSC was through sports. And yeah, like the individuals I met were kind... and welcoming. Yeah, [I] just wanted to do the same,” she said. Her ambitions as a coach have only grown stronger, as she aims to bring home a championship this winter. Furthermore, she plans to continue her academic journey by pursuing a Masters of Education, and intends to play soccer at whatever institution she attends. Mata has left her mark in the UTSC athletics community as a student athlete who’s demonstrated commitment and passion across three sports. Both as a player and a coach, she has proven her dedication to helping those around her improve and grow. Wherever Mata ends up, it is safe to say that she will be standing her ground and defending what life kicks at her. Disclosure: Victoria Mata is the current VicePresident Campus Life at the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union.
Mata made her coaching debut for UTSC's Division 2 women's team in fall 2023. ARTHUR DENNYSON HAMDANI/THEVARSITY
thevarsity.ca/category/sports
FEBRUARY 5, 2024 17
Opinion: Shohei Ohtani in LA — I say nay The rich will continue to get richer in the world of baseball Ethan Wang Varsity Contributor
The baseball world was in shock and awe on December 9, 2023, when they learned that megastar Shohei Ohtani was signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers, concluding one of the most hyped-up free agency periods in recent memory. But, in an alternate universe, Ohtani could have been playing less than 30 minutes from U of T, wearing a different shade of blue. In a race no one expected the Toronto Blue Jays to be in, they came oh-so-brutally close to landing the most talented player in baseball. For a moment in early December, Toronto and Ohtani seemed like a match made in heaven. Everything was aligning: Ohtani would play in front of an entire country, Rogers Communications Inc. was willing to pay him the big bucks, the Rogers Centre was finishing up its renovations, the Jays were a playoff team, and Jays pitcher Yusei Kikuchi went to the same high school as him. So why was that not enough? As much as it hurts me to admit this, the Dodgers are just a bigger team. They enjoy greater media coverage in the US, are continual big spenders, and have been baseball’s most successful regular-season teams over the last ten years. If you were looking for a bandwagon team, the Dodgers would be it. His decision still hit hard in Toronto. Jays fans like me were desperate for some good news from the
team after another postseason disaster; instead, the hope of signing Ohtani only made the disappointment hit harder. When I talked to a friend, fellow Jays fan Alaina Hu, she did not take the news well: “The Blue Jays are doomed!” she exclaimed. Yet, the Jays are not the only thing that’s taken a hit here. Instead, I feel like baseball as a whole has been let down. Sometimes, describing scenarios in basketball terms might make the most sense. Think about Kevin Durant’s decision to sign with the Golden State Warriors in 2016, a team that had just gone 73–9: that move led to two terrible, uncompetitive years of basketball where the Warriors dominated over everyone. Ohtani signing with the Dodgers will likely have the same effect. Some have argued that the Dodgers — as a historically significant team — would give him the largest platform. But a player of his stature could have sparked huge growth in any other team, creating even larger platforms for the team and himself. If he was on the Jays or any other team, Ohtani would have delivered a much greater impact than he would on an already stacked Dodgers team. I also cannot help but think about the amount of missed potential growth for baseball. In a time where we just had the least-watched World Series of all time, growing audiences is crucial. There was an opportunity here to enlarge a huge baseball market in Canada. Reporters and fans can spin this all they want, but at the end of the day, the act of big teams
The martial arts revolution of the century UTM’s Cobra Muay Thai Club is spearheading a movement to diversify martial arts curricula Ahmad Khan Associate Sports Editor
The UTM Cobra Muay Thai Club is spearheading the early stages of a martial arts revolution. It’s a movement that the club hopes can take place in Ontario, the heart of Canada. Executive director Talha Çelik, as well as Ahmad Siyar Habibi — the head coach and president of the Canadian Traditional Taekwondo Association, a partner of the Cobra Muay Thai club — spoke to The Varsity about their goals for the future of the club and of martial arts in general. Çelik explained that they both envision going “beyond the realm of traditional martial arts” by “encompass[ing] interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches.” An interdisciplinary approach Çelik and Habibi described observing a trend towards a more holistic martial arts education recently emerging across North America, Asia, and Europe. With the popularization of mixed martial arts (MMA), various disciplines have been “amalgamating into one whole,” Habibi explained. Rather than the common multidisciplinary approach, which separates martial arts practices into different elements, MMA involves incorporating these different elements into a holistic training regimen. Different focuses of MMA training — such as calisthenics, fitness and strength, conditioning, striking, and grappling — all come together to build an interdisciplinary approach and a more holistic understanding of martial arts. Because of the country’s rich history in martial arts, Çelik and Habibi believe that right here in Canada, we’ll begin to see an academic approach to martial arts. “Past 2025, a revolution is going to take place, and it’s going to change how martial arts is being practiced,” explained Habibi. One of the goals of the Cobra Muay Thai club is to promote health and fitness through MMA by making the practice more accessible to all. Cobra Muay Thai hopes to
help members become more well-rounded by teaching diverse skills beyond what is available at typical martial arts classes. The club hopes to achieve this by exploring the intersection of martial arts, philosophy, history, pedagogy, early child development, kinesiology, and more. It seeks to provide martial arts workshops, increase research opportunities for those interested in the academic side of martial arts, and build up communities of practice that practice martial arts together. Partnerships and initiatives The Cobra Muay Thai club has partnered with multiple esteemed institutions, including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the European Union’s Erasmus+ project, to further develop its martial arts programming. The Erasmus+ project is focused on offering opportunities for youth in education, culture, and sport, as well as promoting mental and physical health. Cobra Muay Thai and its partners have lofty ambitions to help make Canada a thriving hub of martial arts studies. This means that their initiatives are open to martial arts professionals, but their programming is also focused on serving Canadian youth. Its initiatives extend to the local community, as it provides youth educational programs and workshops. Through these programs, the Cobra Muay Thai club hopes to “promote martial arts and holistic fitness, fostering a broader understanding and appreciation within society,” as Habibi explained. “Inclusion of [martial arts programming] within the K–12 [curriculum] would be something that we’re looking into,” shared Habibi. Habibi and his team at the Canadian Traditional Taekwondo Association have had prior experience bringing martial arts initiatives to different school boards across Central Asia. “Now it’s time to take this movement and bring it to Canada,” he added. A holistic curriculum Habibi explained that Cobra Muay Thai and
buying superstar players and building super teams of money and deferring that money into the future? in baseball is not exciting. I think that in baseball, This would only worsen the divide between the everyone already expects that good players will rich and the poor teams in baseball. Smaller teams end up in New York or LA, and with Ohtani, that can also sign big stars this way, but for now, this unfortunate cycle continues. remains primarily a method for big teams — with I haven’t even discussed his historic 700 million more money — to get what they want. USD contract, 680 million USD of which will be deTruthfully, Ohtani is also an outlier — given his ferred until after his 10-year contract ends. He extremely unique skill set and superis getting paid just two million USD annually star appeal, we might not see anin those 10 years, and only afterwards other contract like this in another will he receive ten payments of 68 mil10 or 20 years. Nevertheless, lion USD lasting from 2034 to 2043. Jays and baseball fans alike As a result, Ohtani will be 50 years old should feel disappointed with when all is paid out in full. Ohtani’s decision. The historic deferral of nearly all Let’s see how the fans react to that money might be a genius move him on April 26, when he comes by Ohtani but is exactly what could ruin to Toronto in a Dodgers uniform for baseball. The deferral of this much of the first time. Don’t be surprised to his salary reduced the Dodgers’ annual hear a few boos. salary bill and competitive balance tax, leaving room for more spending. The impact of this was felt immediately when the Dodgers signed Japanese ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto for 325 million USD. What’s stopping teams from doing the same, guaranteeing Ohtani signed a ten-year, $700 million contract with the LA Dodgers. players insane amounts COURTESY OF MOGAMI KARIYA CC WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
its partners hope to play a part in creating a “more extensive global network of martial arts studies.” Habibi and Çelik hope that the club’s initiatives will add to the foundation of martial arts studies already created by prominent academics in the field, such as Professor Wojciech J. Cynarski of Rzeszów University and Professor Paul Bowman of Cardiff University. Cobra Muay Thai hopes to strike a better balance between the practice of martial arts and more theoretical components of the sport, so that the martial artists can benefit from both. Through such a focus, the club believes that martial artists can benefit from research being conducted in the field of martial arts studies. The club has put together a curriculum that reflects its commitment to holistic development. This curriculum includes classes on the “Anatomy of Martial Arts,” guides to stretching, strength and conditioning, information on the biomechanics and kinematics of muay thai, and calisthenics. Habibi explained that this curriculum is a preview of what the club “envision[s] martial arts [will] be taught like in the future.” This curriculum forms part of a pilot project for the club’s educational initiatives, which it hopes to build upon and bring to more people with the help of its partner organizations.
Opportunities By forming connections with partner organizations at over 500 facilities in Canada and the US, Cobra Muay Thai hopes to allow their members to network and meet other martial artists. In the future, the club hopes to partner with more faculty-led and student-led groups at U of T, working with groups in the biology and kinesiology departments as well as with UTM’s MMA club. Furthermore, Çelik shared that some professional martial artists, including current and former UFC fighters, are interested in the project and have consulted with the club on certain issues. Jasmine Jasudavicius, who competed at UFC 297 in Toronto last month, is one such fighter. “We are very moved by their attention to us,” Çelik said. The club has also consulted with retired UFC fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov and current UFC fighter Belal Muhammad. They also hope to involve members of other clubs and facilities, such as the Niagara Top Team, the Burlington Training Centre, and Xtreme Couture. Cobra Muay Thai’s unique philosophy and programming, and the initiatives which they offer with their partners, are all part of their goal to promote and offer holistic and accessible martial arts education. With all this in mind, Çelik believes the club is helping set the path for “the martial arts revolution of the century.”
Cobra Muay Thai has an ambitious plan for to grow martial arts. COURTESY OF AHMAD SIYAR HABIBI
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SPORTS
Dive, ride, stride: Inside the adventures of U of T’s Triathlon Club Unravelling the triumphs, challenges, and unwavering spirit of triathletes at U of T Jennifer Lee Varsity Contributor
A triathlon is the ultimate test of endurance, bringing together athletes who embrace the challenges of swimming, biking, and running consecutively. U of T’s Triathlon Club is a community where athletes find a supportive space to dive into this multifaceted sport regardless of their levels. Embarking on a journey that extends beyond the ordinary boundaries of sport, the club members constantly push their limits to define what it means to be a triathlete. Club executives Eva Graf and Katy Tiper sat with The Varsity to discuss some of these journeys. Unravelling the triathlon A triathlon’s allure lies in its diversity. Many triathletes are drawn to the sport because it allows them to excel in three disciplines rather than specializing in just one. The club’s focus spans everything from sprint races, comprising a 750-metre swim, 20-kilometre bike ride, and five-kilometre run; to the Olympic race distance of 1.5-kilometre swim, 40-kilometre bike ride, and 10-kilometre run; to the Half-Ironman, which doubles the Olympic distance; to the ultimate test, the Ironman, which doubles the Half-Ironman. Graf is a fourth-year Rotman Commerce student and the club’s treasurer, having been involved since 2021. She stumbled into triathlon, seeking an alternative to Varsity swimming. “I was definitely not good enough at swimming for a Varsity team. So, I got in touch with the head coach of the swim team… and he recommended [I] look into the Triathlon club,” Graf explained. This unexpected turn led her to form friendships that kept her rooted in the club. What sets apart the Triathlon Club is its inclusivity. There are no mandatory practices or requirements for joining the club. Participants of all levels, from beginners to seasoned athletes, are welcome. With track workouts, group runs, and stationary bike sessions that run at different paces, the club ensures that no one is left
The Triathlon Club is a supportive and energetic community of athletes. COURTESY OF TRIATHLON CLUB
behind, creating an environment where everyone can thrive. “Everyone’s going at their own level — you don’t need to be good at everything. Some people are better at one sport; some people are better at another one… As I would say, it’s almost more like a lifestyle,” said Graf. “Everyone is so supportive, no matter how you’re doing. It pushes you always to go to the best of your abilities.” Unleashing the triathlete spirit The club has witnessed remarkable journeys, including athletes who transitioned from novices to professionals. Professional triathlete Tamara Jewett started as a Varsity-level runner at U of T, but after facing injuries, she shifted to triathlon to diversify her athletic focus. She learned to swim during her time with the Triathlon club, later achieved professional status, and became a top-ranked triathlete globally. While the club proudly acknowledges its highperforming members, its primary identity is that of a community. Tiper is a PhD candidate in the biomedical engineering program and has been in the
Five years later: How we ended up with the current Toronto Raptors A look back at the recent history of Toronto’s favourite basketball team Damola Omole Varsity Contributor
Conference semifinals but lost to the Boston Celtics in seven games.
The 2023–2024 Toronto Raptors are a far cry from their glorious title-winning team of 2019. In five years, the Raptors have gone from NBA champions to a team firmly out of the playoff race. We all know how the infamous story began, with the Raptors trading fan favourite DeMar DeRozan to the San Antonio Spurs for Kawhi Leonard in the summer of 2018. But post-championship, how exactly has the team evolved?
2020–2021 season This season is one that fans would love to collectively forget. It’s not hard to pinpoint why the Raptors were not good this year. They lost Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka, two crucial role players, and didn’t bring in adequate replacements. On top of that, the Raptors were forced to make their home arena in an entirely different country due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. On the bright side, the Raptors were bad enough to snag the fourth overall draft pick for the next season and drafted Scottie Barnes. Nevertheless, the team’s apparent decision to tank this season for a high pick was questionable. With the losses of Gasol and Ibaka, and with the team struggling, they could have gone into a full rebuild and traded away attractive players like Lowry, Siakam, Anunoby, and VanVleet
2019–2020 season Leonard left the team in free agency when his contract expired in July 2019. Nevertheless, apart from that, the roster was virtually the same as the year prior, and the Raptors proved that their championship run was not a fluke, finishing the season with a 53-19 record. Furthermore, Pascal Siakam and Kyle Lowry made the all-star roster, while players like Fred VanVleet and OG Anunoby had breakout seasons. To cap it all off, Raptors coach Nick Nurse won Coach of the Year. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic brought a startling halt to the season, drastically hurting the momentum of several teams around the league — including the Raptors. They made it to the Eastern
club for seven years, serving as the club’s social coordinator and bike leader. “U of T is a very hard place to make friends — it’s very big,” said Tiper. “I’ve been at U of T for a very long time, and I just wanted a release in terms of mental health, to be active and have something going on outside of school… as well as make friends.” She started at the club with zero experience and eventually progressed to doing her first triathlons by the following year, advancing to the Olympic and the Half Ironman the next summer. “I just kept building and building. I think that’s what the club does… it really just takes you and sucks you in,” said Tiper. Graf also emphasized the club’s supportive environment where individuals come together to train, forge friendships, and celebrate each other’s successes. “I personally wouldn’t say we’re a performance kind of group… It’s the best opportunity to actually meet people, and for me, it was a life-changer.” Social bonds and overcoming setbacks The club also organizes monthly social events, for younger talent or draft capital. At this time, however, it seemed as though the Raptors made the right choice at the moment. 2021–2022 season This season was a mixed bag of high and low emotions. The big offseason headline was that the team traded Lowry to the Miami Heat. Like the DeRozan trade, fans reacted passionately to this monumental moment in Raptors history. Nevertheless, the Raptors didn’t dwell on the loss of Lowry for too long, as they bounced back in a big way. The Raptors won 48 games and clinched the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference, though they lost in the first round to the Philadelphia 76ers. Moreover, remember that guy Scottie Barnes they drafted the previous season? Well, he’s really good — he won Rookie of the Year in 2022. 2022–2023 season As a whole, mediocrity prevailed in this season, hence the team’s even 41-41 record. The Raptors were not bad, but they were not particularly good either. Aside from the wonky post-COVID year, this was the first season in a long time where the Raptors weren’t competitive, alluding to the fact that the team didn’t do enough to improve the roster either in the offseason or IRIS DENG/THEVARSITY regular season.
ranging from skating in the winter to outdoor activities like the Toronto Tour in the summer. Gala nights add a celebratory touch, recognizing members’ achievements and reinforcing the club’s commitment to acknowledging each member’s contribution. Triathlon, like any sport, comes with its share of injuries. The club encourages members to seek professional help for injuries and utilize resources like the David L. MacIntosh Sport Medicine Clinic. Due to the versatile nature of Triathlon, however, injuries don’t have to interrupt their training: athletes can focus more on other dimensions while still aiming for a healthy recovery. Any U of T Athletic Centre members — whose membership is open to students, faculty, alumni, and other community members — can join the club. Many club members have played particularly key roles in ensuring the club’s vibrancy. Paulette Dalton, a lung transplant nurse, has been dedicated to the club for two decades in various executive positions while qualifying for the Ironman World Championship in Kona. Another standout member is Sierra Valeriano, a lawyer who attended the full and half-distance Ironman World Championships within a year. Edward Ing has provided unwavering support in welcoming new members and ensuring they feel embraced by the club. Lastly, Marina Carr has served as the club president for several years and has been crucial in organizing events and maintaining effective communication. These passionate individuals embodying the triathlon’s spirit define the club’s heartbeat. Every mile is a triumph The beauty of triathlon lies in its adaptability. “The experience is what you make of it,” said Tiper. U of T’s Triathlon Club is more than just a sports club; it’s a community, a support system, and a journey of self-discovery and camaraderie. Members dive, ride, and stride their way into the heart of this club, where the journey matters as much as the destination. Find out more about the Triathlon club through its website, Instagram, or Twitter page. The new core of VanVleet, Siakam, Anunoby, and Barnes played decent basketball all year round but just missed the playoffs after losing to the Chicago Bulls. Notably, this was Coach Nurse’s last season with the Raptors. This season was also where the Raptors front office made some critical mistakes. The team was not competitive, yet they elected to keep VanVleet at the trade deadline as opposed to trading him for younger talent or draft assets. In hindsight, it’s easy to talk, but the Raptors’ financial constraints meant it was almost a certainty VanVleet would walk in free agency — as he eventually did — so the decision not to trade him made little to no sense. Instead, the “big” deadline trade the Raptors made was to send Khem Birch to San Antonio in exchange for Jakob Poetl — a former Raptor who ironically had been part of the initial trade to acquire Leonard back in 2018. Yet, the Raptors gave up a lightly protected 2024 first-round pick, which is never ideal for a non-contending team. The trade also did little to move the needle in terms of becoming a contending team again. 2023–2024 season And that leaves us with the present 2023–2024 Toronto Raptors. The season is far from complete, yet so much has already happened. Most notably, the exit of several integral parts of the 2018–2019 championship roster: VanVleet left for Houston in free agency, Anunoby was traded to New York, and Siakam was traded to the Indiana Pacers for a slew of young role players and future draft picks. The season is still young, and a lot can still happen. But from the looks of things, the Raptors are on the right track, as they have leveraged their veterans of old into some exciting young prospects — like RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley — to build around players like Barnes. I’m no fortune teller, but I think the future still looks bright for Toronto.
Games
February 5, 2024 thevarsity.ca/category/games creative@thevarsity.ca
The Varsity’s Varsity’s Weekly Crossword — Kenergy
Answers to the previous crossword
Elise Corbin Puzzles Correspondent
The Varsity’s Varsity’s Mini Crossword — Anagrams Kaiyo Freyder Puzzles Correspondent
Strung Out Kaiyo Freyder • Start at one of the four corner letters Puzzles Correspondent • Draw straight lines between letters to create the longest word you can!
• Each letter can only be used once • The lines may never cross over each other
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