The Blues’Varsity
Grading every single fall semester team’s season and their MVP
T HE VA
T HE VA RSI T Y
Vol. CXLVI, No. 12
21 Sussex Avenue, Suite 306 Toronto, ON M5S 1J6 (416) 946-7600
thevarsity.ca thevarsitynewspaper @TheVarsity
thevarsitypublications the.varsity The Varsity
MASTHEAD
Medha Surajpal editor@thevarsity.ca
Editor-in-Chief
Chloe Weston creative@thevarsity.ca
Creative Director
Sophie Esther Ramsey managingexternal@thevarsity.ca
Managing Editor, External
Ozair Chaudhry managinginternal@thevarsity.ca
Managing Editor, Internal
Jake Takeuchi online@thevarsity.ca
Managing Online Editor
Nora Zolfaghari copy@thevarsity.ca
Senior Copy Editor
Callie Zhang deputysce@thevarsity.ca
Deputy Senior Copy Editor
Ella MacCormack news@thevarsity.ca
News Editor
Junia Alsinawi deputynews@thevarsity.ca
Deputy News Editor
Emma Dobrovnik assistantnews@thevarsity.ca
Assistant News Editor
Ahmed Hawamdeh opinion@thevarsity.ca
Opinion Editor
Medha Barath biz@thevarsity.ca
Business & Labour Editor
Shontia Sanders features@thevarsity.ca
Features Editor
Sofia Moniz arts@thevarsity.ca
Arts & Culture Editor
Ridhi Balani science@thevarsity.ca Science
Caroline Ho sports@thevarsity.ca
Aksaamai Ormonbekova design@thevarsity.ca Design
Karunaratne design@thevarsity.ca
Erika Ozols photos@thevarsity.ca
illustration@thevarsity.ca
video@thevarsity.ca
emilyshen@thevarsity.ca
sataphon.ob@gmail.com
The Varsity acknowledges 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.
Cover: Design by Brennan Karunaratne & C.
Photos courtesy of Aru Das, Barry McCluskey, Dan Inglis, Nathan Oribhabor, Sarah Comtois & Seyran Mammadov
Copy Editors: Teresa Coley, Cyrilla Zhang
Designers: Audrey Apolinario, Bonnie Zhang, Loise Yaneza, Simona Berardocco, Yena Choi
Gabriella Wrona Long-Form Video Editor video@thevarsity.ca
Campus Safety investigating voyeurism incident in UTSC Bladen Wing bathroom
An unknown individual held phone camera underneath the bathroom stall door
On November 27, 10:06 pm, U of T alerted students that a reported voyeurism incident took place earlier that day in the UTSC Bladen Wing building bathroom.
A community member reported that an unknown individual tried to film underneath the bathroom stall using their phone camera. The individual left the area and has not yet been identified.
According to the alert, Campus Safety officers responded “immediately” and are increasing officer patrols and reviewing security footage. Campus Safety is encouraging community members to report any concerning behaviours.
The Bladen Wing building, more commonly known as BV, is one of the central academic buildings at UTSC, and mostly contains classrooms and study spaces.
TPS confirmed a report had been filed and that an investigation is ongoing.
Where to find sexual violence and harassment support at U of T : A list of safety resources is available at safety. utoronto.ca
The tri-campus Sexual Violence Prevention & Support Centre’s website is www.svpscentre. utoronto.ca
Individuals can visit the centre’s website for more information, contact details, and hours of operation. Centre staff can be reached by phone at 416-978-2266.
Locations :
• U of T downtown Toronto campus: Gerstein Library, suite B139
• U of T Mississauga: Davis Building, room 3094G
• U of T Scarborough: Environmental Science and Chemistry Building, EV141
Those who have experienced sexual violence can also call Campus Police to make a
report at 416-978-2222 (St. George and U of T Scarborough) or 905-569-4333 (U of T Mississauga).
After-hours support is also available at:
• Women’s College Hospital Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Care Centre (416-323-6040)
• Scarborough Grace Sexual Assault Care Centre (416-495-2400)
• Trillium Hospital Sexual Assault Care Centre (905-848-7100)
November UTGSU BOD discusses equity and finance concerns
VP Finance resigned citing other commitments, union discusses replacement plans
Matthew Molinaro Graduate Bureau Chief
On November 17, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) held its monthly Board of Directors (BOD) meeting. The meeting featured presentations from the equity response team, ratified fall audit and surplus reports, and discussed the upcoming Annual General Meeting (AGM), which will be held on December 4.
Equity Response Protocol
Equity Officer Laurie Baker presented the Equity Response Protocol developed over the summer. The protocol is designed to help the UTGSU respond to claims of identitybased harm.
According to Baker, the mandate does not replace existing human resources protocols but addresses competing claims of harm. The protocol is grounded in the principles of non-comparative harm: restoration rather than reaction, maintaining dignity, humanity, and empathy, as well as transparency and accountability. The protocol is divided into four phases of intake and listening, response, transparent communication, and opportunities for feedback.
Ratifying audit and surplus reports
The directors then moved to ratify the audit and surplus reports so that the audit report could be approved at the AGM. Following a recent
external audit, the UTGSU Finance Committee recommended that the reports be ratified. Vice-President (VP) Internal Dominic Shillingford also proposed ending the 2025–2026 fiscal
on April 30 instead of August 31. This revision is intended to simplify the fall audit corrections process and ease the transition for executives newly elected in the spring. The motion carried.
Effective November 1, VP Finance Farshad Murtada resigned due to other commitments. The directors discussed implementing a hiring process, rather than an election process, for an interim, non-voting VP Finance.
Directors Thomas Vukovic, Hani Choski, and Shana Alexander volunteered, with VP GradLife Eliz Shimsek chairing the process.
Other motions and business
Katerini Hatziantonis, treasurer and board member of Students for Barrier-Free Access (SBA), gave a brief presentation on the organization and called for a referendum. Hatziantonis requested that the BOD approve an increase in SBA membership fee to account for the rising cost of American Sign Language programming.
Since 2002, SBA has provided advocacy, education, mentorship, and community programming for disabled, neurodivergent, and chronically ill students at U of T.
Ella MacCormack News Editor
SIMONA AGOSTINO/THE VARSITY
Bladen Wing is one of the central buildings at the U of T Scarborough campus. SHANNA HUNTER/THEVARSITY
Looking back on the UTSU’s fall semester with Melani Veveçka
UTSU president discusses deals with Metrolinx, The New York Times, Uber
Celesta Maniatogianni
Associate News Editor
The Varsity sat down with UTSU President Melani Veveçka to discuss the UTSU’s time in office so far.
UTSU’s highlights this semester
According to Veveçka, the UTSU made a deal with The New York Times to grant students access through U of T’s library system. “We ended up closing a deal with The New York Times through the library system, but they’re taking forever to audit for some reason. They have to go through a lot of data security, but essentially, we advocated for our students at U of T to have access to The New York Times The library system finally ended up buying this deal. So it will be for all students across three campuses, not just for St. George,” said Veveçka. “This [process] has been going on since May,” she added.
The UTSU also increased its funding for the Food Coalition from $10,000 to $13,000. The Coalition is a student-faculty network focused on reducing food insecurity on campus, and it currently serves two free lunches a week.
“From the census that we got last year, food insecurity was a very important issue for a lot of students,” said Veveçka.
According to Veveçka, the UTSU implemented the Respect, Educate, Empower Survivors (REES) project at U of T with the Sexual Violence Prevention Centre. REES provides an online portal “customized for each campus partner with their sexual violence policies and campus/community resources,” according to their main website. U of T is not yet listed as an official campus partner. Implementing REES has been a UTSU goal for two years.
Veveçka explained that the platform gives survivors space to record their experiences
without the pressure of filing a formal report.
“Survivors of sexual assault or gender based violence can document their story without the pressure of actually reporting it. [When] there are any minor inconsistencies, I have noticed before that people tend to nullify the account of survivors, so they can just write it down, use it as a digital diary when the event occurs or when they feel comfortable, and if they ever feel comfortable, they can send that report that they’ve written to the Sexual Violence Prevention Centre.”
The UTSU also expanded the hours of its Rideshare program. U of T students can now access one $5 Uber voucher per week between 10:00 pm to 6:00 am, rather than the previous 12:00–5:00 am. This change is paired with an increase in total monthly vouchers from two to four, although each student can still only use one per week.
“Now that it’s getting darker as well, for a lot of women and gender diverse folks, it might be a little bit dangerous to get the TTC. We just wanted to have this option if they ever needed to alleviate a worry of them getting safe at home,” Veveçka said.
Reflecting on the fall AGM, Veveçka said, “It wasn’t anything interesting. We did get a normal turnout, and we just presented what we did, but nothing specifically riveting happened. There wasn’t much debate about anything. We didn’t get any motions from students, if I recall correctly. It was mostly just us presenting and waiting for questions, if anyone had any questions.”
Regrets
When asked what the UTSU could have done better this semester, Veveçka said, “I think that for a lot of things, it took a little too long. Whether they were something that I could have controlled by myself or outside of my control, but ultimately it did work out.” She pointed to
The New York Times deal finally closing after months.
Veveçka added that extending the deadline for club registration is something to improve next year. The form was open until September 30, though “it might have been a little more beneficial if we kept it running up until October rather than closing it off September 30,” since some clubs may still have been waiting to be acknowledged by U of T’s Student Organization Portal. Clubs will have another opportunity to register with the UTSU in January.
Looking forward
The UTSU has several initiatives in progress. One of them is the installation of bidets on campus, particularly in high-traffic buildings such as Bahen, Myhal, and Robarts. “We are currently in early consultation with our plumbers at the Student Commons building to see if any of our gender neutral and accessible washrooms could have the bidets installed,” Veveçka said.
The UTSU has also been in conversation with Metrolinx about a voucher system for students using GO trains, in addition to the 40 per cent discount students already receive. “Before, we did want to do a TTC subsidy for people who would be in more financial need. However, we did discuss with a lot of groups on campus, mainly the Rocket Riders, and they were essentially saying that it might have been a better idea to look into a GO train subsidy… We want to see first how much interest there would be, so we can allocate funds directly and accordingly,” said Veveçka.
Last summer, the UTSU also began developing a “club matchmaking” system to help students find clubs aligned with their interests. The system is projected to be completed by January. Election dates for the next UTSU election have also been proposed, with a nomination period between February 11–18, a campaign period between February 21–27, and official election results announced on March 4. These dates are subject to change.
UTM Muslim Students’ Association sends legal letter to Stephen Lecce
Group claims defamation over minister’s comments on October 7 student commemoration
UTM’s Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) sent a legal letter to Ontario Energy Minister Stephen Lecce, a month after he called the group a “hateful, antisemitic, and antidemocratic mob” for organizing a “Honouring our Martyrs” student commemoration on October 7.
The letter, issued by the MSA’s lawyer Jeff Saikaley, claims Lecce made defamatory and libellous claims that are “completely and absolutely false.” The letter, obtained by The Varsity, calls on Lecce to publish a retraction and apology for his X post, as well as provide $2,500 in compensation for legal costs.
Saikaley wrote that Lecce has until January 6, 2026, to respond and that legal action will be considered if the deadline passes.
The October 2 joint social media post by the UTMSU, Palestinian Youth Movement Toronto, and Association of Palestinian Students at UTM stated that the commemoration planned outside the Student Centre on October 7 would ensure “the martyrs of Palestine are never forgotten” and that it will “honour their legacy.”
In an October 6 post on X, Lecce denounced the organizers, and wrote, “It’s beyond appalling to think that this morally degenerate
group will glorify the barbaric murder of 1,200 kids, mothers, fathers, and grandparents.”
Lecce added, “This hateful, antisemitic, and anti-democratic mob should be condemned and banned from any campus. This poisonous ideology is entirely incompatible with wellestablished Canadian values.”
The Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killed approximately 1,200 Israelis and took 250 hostage. Since then, Israel’s attacks on Gaza have killed 70,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry.
The UTM MSA posted a statement on Instagram the day after Lecce’s post, demanding that he publicly retract and apologize for his remarks.
“Misrepresenting our event, ‘Honouring our Martyrs,’ as one that glorifies murder is dangerous,” the statement read. “Calling for the banning of a Muslim student association under such assumptions fosters hatred toward Muslims and contributes to an unsafe campus environment.”
The group added that “reckless language that paints Muslims as inherently tied to violence fuels the very climate that led to [the 2021 London] atrocity.”
Saikaley told The Varsity that they had not heard from Lecce as of writing. Lecce did not immediately respond for comment.
Food insecurity, sexual violence prevention, and commuting were the focus of the UTSU’s work this semester.
SYDNEY BENJAMIN/THE VARSITY
A photo of the UTSG MSA office at 21 Sussex. SHANNA HUNTER/THEVARSITY
Eleanor Yuneun Park Varsity Contributor
1265 Bistro operated at a $76,603 loss last year, only breaking even after SCSU subsidy
SCSU AGM also approved bylaw additions addressing summer ratification delays
On November 26, the Scarborough Campus Students' Union (SCSU) held their Annual General Meeting (AGM), now called Annual Members Meeting (AMM). They approved the 2024–2025 audited financial statements, updated the union’s bylaws, heard members’ motions, and presented directors’ reports. The auditors listed two financial risks with SCSU’s restaurant.
Restaurant risks and uncertainties
As reported in the 2024–2025 audit, SCSU collected $2,521,396 in revenue and $2,055,783 in expenses, not including the revenue or expenses from health and dental plan fees or restricted referendum fees. General and administrative expenses were down by $131,015, and wages and benefits were up by $57,014. Overall, SCSU ended with a net surplus of $476,982.
The Bistro operated at a loss of $76,603. Between the last two audits of the restaurant, revenue from food sales and rental costs decreased by $4,435 to $237,437, and expenses of sales increased by $19,850 to $97,773. General expenses increased from $180,277 to $216,267, most significantly from the $31,102 increase in wages and benefits and the $11,473 increase in office and general expenses.
The operating loss of 1260 Bistro in previous years was $16,328 in 2023–2024; $66,423 in 2022–2023; $4,751 in 2021–2022; $37,302 in 2020-2021; and $164,009 in 2019-2020.
Despite the operating loss, the Bistro broke even thanks to a $68,195 subsidy from SCSU, $3,018 in interest income, and $5,390 in miscellaneous income.
Every year except 2024–2025, the university provided a $127,500 subsidy to “offset the costs of operating SCSU Restaurant.” In 2024–2025, the restaurant received an additional $68,195 operating subsidy from SCSU and the $127,500 subsidy from the university was listed as for “repairs and maintenance of the student centre.”
As reported by the auditor, the restaurant’s one of two risks and uncertainties was a credit risk from the small number of customers and the nature of point of sale operations. The second was a liquidity risk from the difficulty in meeting obligations of the financial liabilities.
The Bistro’s financial liabilities included $6,366 in accounts payable and accrued liabilities, $5,866 in government remittance payable, and $445,012 owed to SCSU. In 2024–2025, the money owed to SCSU increased because of a $59,305 advance from the SCSU.
SCSU did not respond for comment in time for publication.
Constitutional and bylaw changes
The few clauses added, subtracted, or reworded in the AMM seem to be designed to address the delayed summer ratification, when the previous council members had to stay on beyond their term limit, while the Board of Directors (BOD) refused to ratify the results.
An exception to what the board can ratify or reject now includes “the ratification of the unofficial election results for either the byelections or spring elections.” Additionally, directors and executives now cannot remain in office after their term is over unless they have been “duly re-elected or re-appointed by the membership.”
A “Standard of Care” duty was added so directors must act honestly and “exercise the care, diligence and skill a reasonably prudent person would.” Directors must also disclose conflicts of interest and refrain from voting on related contracts, and must now send regrets at least 48 hours in advance before missing a BOD meeting.
Terminations shall now be “carried out in good faith and in a fair and reasonable manner,” which includes written notice of grounds with ten days to respond and an opportunity to speak to the Board before the decision.
Other notable changes include that the vice president operations no longer administers payroll, and is now responsible for presidential duties when the president is gone. A Financial Aids Office representative was removed from the Bursary Committee, and SCSU commissions like the SCSU Equity Commission are now hosted on a bi-semesterly basis instead of monthly.
Motions
A member tried to add an emergency motion addressing club funding, but the chair clarified it could not be considered an emergency motion.
Another member submitted a motion for the SCSU to take action to expand the current bookable multi-faith prayer space, add a new space within the student centre, and continue to lobby for more multi-faith prayer spaces outside the student centre. It carried.
Reports
Some highlights from the directors’ and campaign reports include the new study space in the Bladen Wing –– the BV lounge –– which opened September 5. Phase one of the Student Centre Redesign Project is underway, and the SCSU has now finalized the design with U of T architects and construction managers, and construction is projected to begin in the summer.
The “Put Equity in Academics” campaign lobbied for the second attempts for credit policy to apply towards failed courses, and for courses with 100 or more students to begin recording lectures. The SCSU changed the CGPA requirement from 1.6 to 1.5, successfully completing years’ worth of campaigning.
For the SCSU dental plan, the user copay for fillings, basic oral surgery, and comprehensive oral surgery was reduced from 30 per cent to 20 per cent, and now bruxism — the grinding of teeth — is covered under the plan.
Throughout the semester, the SCSU food centre provided weekly grocery and hygiene pick-ups and hosted a clothing drive. SCSU’s academic bursary, transit bursary, and Dollar for Daycare grant provided students with financial support this semester as well.
Ella MacCormack News Editor
The 2024–2025 audit shows the Bistro’s revenue decreased by $4,400 and sales expenses increased by $20,000.
JESSICA LAM/THE VARSITY
UTMSU AGM: Student-submitted motions all tabled for a future meeting 2024–2025 union financial statements
Arunveer Sidhu UTM Bureau Chief
On November 27, the University of Toronto Mississauga Students Union (UTMSU) held its Annual General Meeting (AGM) in the Instructional Centre, reflecting on events and achievements from the past year and presenting its annual financial statements.
Attending students participated in voting on motions, with some speaking up about concerns regarding certain lobbying requests.
Ongoing campaigns and advocacy
Despite challenges, the UTMSU secured a meeting with Metrolinx to discuss a proposal to modify the GO Bus Route 21 Milton Line to include a direct stop at UTM. This proposal responds to the “some of the longest travel times” — often exceeding 90 minutes — experienced by UTM students commuting from Milton.
The UTMSU also noted the introduction of weekend service to the MiWay Route 110 University Express, which went into effect on September 1.
Although the UTMSU made efforts to combat Bill 33 through a “week of action,” the bill was passed by the Ontario government on November 19. In response, UTMSU President Andrew Park said, “We may have lost the battle, but the war is far from over.” He further added that the UTMSU will continue to fight and “resist this government that has made clear that education is not the priority.”
Statistics and financial statements
The UTMSU 2024–2025 financial statements ended with a $773,068 surplus outside of levies and the health and dental plan. Wages increased from $878,490 to $940,189, meeting expenses rose from $33,781 to $74,397, and services decreased from $137,810 to $124,643. Orientation revenue dropped significantly, from $181,459 to $89,874. Cash flow was also lower compared to the previous year, but net assets increased.
This year, The Blind Duck served a total of 55,000 students, with chicken wings as its bestselling item at 10,000 wings per month. Profits increased significantly, with a gross profit of $424,632. After expenses such as wages and serving supplies, the restaurant ran a deficit of $138,246. The student levy helped cover the deficit, allowing the Blind Duck to end the year with a surplus of $156.
Vice President Internal Rui (Owen) Zhang said this outcome is “intentional,” emphasizing that The Blind Duck is not meant to operate as
The Varsity Newswire
U of T receives $42.5 million in federal funding for AI infrastructure
Junia Alsinawi, Deputy News Editor
On Friday, Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Minister Evan Solomon announced $42.5 million in federal funding for the university’s AI infrastructure, funded through the Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy. This investment is aimed towards Canadian researchers using AI to advance medicine, the sciences, technology, engineering, and the humanities, among other fields. The university is contributing $100,000 to the initiative and will receive $40 million in funding this year, with an additional $2.5 million distributed over the next two fiscal years.
An overriding policy goal of Prime Minister Mark Carney is to decrease Canada’s reliance on foreign resources by strengthening
a “profit-making business.” Instead, it “provides students with accessible [and affordable] food options.”
The Duck Stop, a convenience store at UTM, supported local businesses and recorded over 27,000 student purchases in the past year. The Duck Stop made $15,181 in gross profit and ended the year with a $12,150 deficit.
Student-submitted motions
This year, there were four student-submitted motions.
The first motion involved the UTMSU lobbying to improve ACORN’s accessibility and performance during periods of high volume, with course enrolment times specifically cited.
Two students objected: one argued that this was an IT Service issue and that the UTMSU should “focus their power on things that are important [to the] student movement,” while another student requested that the motion be tabled to the Board of Directors (BOD), which was passed.
The second motion called for the UTMSU to lobby for solutions to improve Wi-Fi reliability across campus. A student requested that this motion also be tabled to the BOD, a request that was passed.
The third motion requested that the UTMSU investigate funding options for students who require parking passes, noting that they may be unaffordable for those commuting from afar. One student commented that UTM is one of the most ticketed locations in Mississauga, and that parking tickets may be cheaper for students than a pass.
Two students opposed the motion, arguing it was a “pro-car” amid climate change concerns and that lower prices would inflate the already high waitlist for parking passes, while two others supported it.
The motion did not carry initially, with 118 votes in favour, 183 against, and 82 abstentions. A subsequent request to table the motion to the BOD was passed.
The fourth motion, which proposed that the UTMSU adopt online voting for all elections and referenda, was not discussed due to time constraints.
Update on previous AGM motions
In response to student motions concerning Indigenous rights and equality during last year’s AGM, the UTMSU established the Committee to Indigenous Justice and
Collaboration (CIJC). The CIJC now has over 30 active members and will be formally recognized as a standing committee in the UTMSU’s bylaws.
A makerspace — a space for students to create using resources such as 3D printers and power tools — was proposed last year. While it would have benefits, Park said that the UTMSU will “probably not [be able to create their own makerspace], at least for the foreseeable future,” citing financial limitations and a lack of space in the student centre. He added that such a long-term project could be risky “in light of Bill 33.”
The UTMSU will also undergo an organizational name change to align its legal name, currently “Erindale College Student Union,” with its business name. This legal name dates back to when the campus opened in 1967 as Erindale College before becoming UTM in 1998.
One student raised concerns about the associated costs and questioned whether the change was necessary. A UTMSU executive explained that it was a “requirement put forward [on] advice of [their] lawyers,” adding that the cost would be only $150.
domestic infrastructure. In his Friday announcement, Solomon explained that Canadian researchers must often employ foreign compute resources and stressed the importance of “Canadian discovery powered by Canadian infrastructure” as a way to safeguard Canadian data sovereignty and establish the country as a research leader in the field.
At the announcement, U of T President Melanie Woodin framed this initiative in terms of Canada’s place on the global stage, “in this time of disruptive change around the world.”
Grad students to vote on new fee to fund food security programming
Junia Alsinawi, Deputy News Editor
From December 2 to 5, graduate students can vote in the Food Equity and Education
Drive (FEED) referendum on the creation of a new fee to fund food security initiatives. The referendum is organized by the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) and, if successful, the fee will fund initiatives like emergency food relief grants and subsidized and free food programs.
The proposed fee, which would be refundable and managed by the union, is $4.00 per semester for full-time students and $2.00 per semester for part-time students. If adopted, the fee will start in the Fall 2026 term and be subject to annual adjustment based on inflation and food costs.
Residential Tenancies Act in Bill 60
Hilary Cheung, Lead Copy Editor
Bill 60, formally titled Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025, passed in Ontario last Monday, November 24. The government
says this legislation is aimed at speeding up decisions at the Landlord and Tenant Board and increasing the supply of rental housing in the province.
The Bill introduces measures to reduce delays in resolving rental disputes and changes the eviction rules, allowing landlords to evict tenants under shorter notice and gives tenants less time to appeal eviction orders. This has caused concern among tenants, and housing advocates warn that Bill 60 weakens tenant protection and may bring housing instability, particularly affecting students.
Student renters are especially at risk due to low incomes and potential exposure to predatory landlords. Toronto City Council expressed strong opposition against Bill 60, reiterating calls to reinstate rent control on rental homes first occupied after 2018, and requested that the City Solicitor explore legal options.
The UTMSU held their AGM for the 2025 year in IB120. ARUNVEER SIDHU/THE VARSITY
Opinion
December 2, 2025
thevarsity.ca/cateogory/opinion
opinion@thevarsity.ca
Forum: Is having a boyfriend embarrassing? The Varsity asked three writers to comment on
boyfriends, love, and embarrassment
Contributors
An article published in Vogue in October titled “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” has gone viral, or as viral as an article can get. In this article, author Chanté Joseph argues that being single is ‘in’ and having a boyfriend is ‘out’. So we asked three U of T students to answer the seemingly simple question: is having a boyfriend embarrassing?
Having a boyfriend can be embarrassing
Having a boyfriend is… embarrassing? The article featured in British Vogue confirms this, but it seems to miss some nuance of why it would be. Joseph writes that many women, herself included, are fatigued or “icked out by seeing too much boyfriend content” online. However, she fails to explain why that is the case, outside of quoting vague podcast comments such as, “having a boyfriend typically takes hits on a woman’s aura.”
Seemingly, Joseph’s article ignores men’s behaviours which often make it embarrassing for women to claim a man as a boyfriend. Instead, she chooses to divide women in two groups: the partnered, and the single; the guilty and the righteous.
I don’t disagree with Joseph’s overarching argument that “being partnered… is no longer considered an achievement, and, if anything, it’s become more of a flex to pronounce yourself single.” However, I find she fails to acknowledge that boyfriends are not a monolith. While some may undeniably become embarrassments to their partners, I don’t believe that every woman has cause to be embarrassed by her boyfriend.
Joseph claims that “women don’t want to be seen as being all about their man, but they also want the clout that comes with being partnered.” This places significant importance on the presence of a man within a woman’s life, by suggesting that heterosexual women waste time worrying about trivial man problems.
On TikTok, user @cleopatra_501 points out that, “it’s all fun and games until we seriously start defining women by the man in their life,” suggesting that the article only serves as another
manner of diminishing women; this time, by flipping the usual script so that the single woman can feel empowered at the distinct expense of the partnered woman. The user claims that the stance taken in Joseph’s article is “regressive. lame. anti/ feminist [sic.],” due to the tone it takes in othering women in relationships from the ‘single’ status, which Joseph deems “desirable and coveted.”
Make no mistake — having a boyfriend can absolutely be embarrassing. But not because his girlfriend posts about him too often on Instagram, or showcases too much love and affection for him. Having a boyfriend only becomes embarrassing when he gives his girlfriend something to be embarrassed about. And if you do find yourself feeling embarrassed by your boyfriend’s behaviour — not merely his existence — I implore you to dump him.
Ali is a fourth-year English specialist at U of T. Having completed the Vic One Frye stream in her first year, Ali’s focus has always been on literature.
Having a boyfriend is not embarrassing
After reading “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?”, I realized the discussion shouldn’t be about boyfriends’ ‘coolness’ but about how digital culture pressures us to question our choices by fleeting standards that determine what makes someone ‘cool.’
In recent years, social media has become a powerful adjudicator of cultural standards. Joseph shows how women face backlash for posting about their boyfriends, probing whether having one is “embarrassing.” Nonetheless, the influence of the digital world is not meritocratic, but fueled by seeking validation from the digital panopticon.
Joseph notes that once “being single was… cautionary,” now it’s aspirational — a rebellion against heteronormativity. Even so, online, singlehood means being independent, hotter, and cooler overall.
But even this becomes performative: you have to post selfies, thirst traps, and curated routines to prove that you’re single in the ‘right’ kind of way. We still end up performing confidence for the digital panopticon, seeking validation from online users who reward us with likes and comments. So, if independence still relies on applause, is
singlehood truly rebellious, or just another trend being pushed on social media?
Full disclosure: I do have a boyfriend. And no, this isn’t in defence of him; it’s in defence of myself and authenticity.
I was always the ‘single girl,’ — then life happened. Someone filled my days with warmth, and my singleness disappeared. Yet I’m as strong and self-defined as before; what’s embarrassing about that?
Having a boyfriend isn’t regressive — it’s a choice. A healthy relationship shouldn’t cost your sense of self. For me, it’s made me feel supported and confident. I still laugh loud, speak my mind, and move on my terms. What’s changed is that I’m happier because I have another person to share celebrations and catastrophes with, alongside my friends and family. In a culture obsessed with curated images, being authentically happy may be the most rebellious act.
So maybe having a boyfriend seems ‘uncool’ online. But what’s truly dangerous is letting the internet dictate how we live. What matters most are the real-world connections that fill life with meaning. They are what ground us long after the noise of the internet dies down and screens have gone dark.
Single or not, both are valid, beautiful ways to exist. Even if the panopticon disagrees, chasing real connection is worth losing the ‘cool girl’ badge. Because what’s the point of being cool if you aren’t happy?
Maria Gracia Jimenez is a first-year undergraduate student at UTSG pursuing a degree in the humanities stream.
Boyfriends aren’t embarrassing, men are Having a boyfriend isn’t embarrassing; men are. With the rise of feminism and ostensible gender equity, there’s a growing prominence of hyper-independent women. We’ve dismantled the ‘taboo’ surrounding the lonesome spinsters we called ‘single women.’
While Joseph’s Vogue article may have incited public debate, her most paramount reading of modern women is this: women are not scared of relationships, love, being
loved, or commitment. Women are, almost instinctively, scared of men, and of the bitter ramifications tied to heterosexual romance. Framing relationships as “embarrassing” creates a safeguard, protecting women from unfulfilling and often painful relationships with men.
In my view, as women fight to collapse the cultural narrative of child-bearing as their ‘natural’ role, they’ve created a modernist purpose for their boyfriends: stepping stones, or at times, toys to be played with. I’ve seen women create lists in their notes apps, titled ‘men who will never be good for you,’ as though gathering ingredients to create the ultimate, seriously damaged man; hoping it’ll be enough of a reminder to stay unattached.
In a world that places motherhood on a pedestal, women are striving to be the rich aunt. “You shouldn’t work,” they’re told, and reminded to “focus on settling down.” Every woman I know counters these bits of counsel with numbers: stats on marital rape, infidelity, shameless men who relish in the skewed universal rulebook written for the two sexes. Perhaps when men stop abusing their power, women will stop working to escape it.
It is impossible to pinpoint when our view of relationships grew sour. But the twenty-firstcentury dating culture that shames women for having a boyfriend reminds me of a patriarchal image of the impure, tarnished woman who has engaged in sex, who has been marked by a man. Does Joseph’s article illustrate the unequal shame and embarrassment tied to romantic association?
According to such puritan logic, it is the male counterpart who determines a woman’s chastity. It is they who commit the act, yet remain flawless, as though immune to an illness that women remain vulnerable to.
As I see it, this nuisance is irrelevant to women entirely, considering it paints men — the determinators — as not merely embarrassing, but as the filth that women grow to carry.
Hana Rabie is a first-year social sciences student, with a focus on political science and cinema studies. She is an Egyptian-Canadian writer.
Hana Rabie, Maria Gracia Jimenez, and Ali Zarubin Varsity
Ziqian Zhang Varsity Contributor
Imagine you’re a student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. You’re scheduled to attend a lecture downtown the next morning, so you check your route the night before. A taxi would take about 25 minutes, but could easily get caught in traffic. The metro, at 34 minutes, is a bit slower but cheaper and, most importantly, reliable. You’ve never experienced a shutdown, so you feel confident you’ll arrive on time. The assumption feels entirely reasonable.
But if you’re a U of T student living in North York, your experience with transit is almost the opposite. The 16 kilometer trip is a 45-minute taxi ride, so you choose the 40-minute Line 1 ride to Queen’s Park instead. The next morning, you get to the station and boom — Line 1 is shut down for maintenance. Now your only options are taking a one-hour shuttle bus, or spending $30 on a last-minute Uber, and either way you’re going to be late.
You learn the lesson all commuters must know immediately: when something really matters, you leave early or take an Uber, but you never rely on the TTC.
Transit reliability
In most major cities, the transit experience is reversed. Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway system (MTR) operates at a 99.9 per cent ontime rate; Dubai reaches 99.7 per cent; New York, even with its aging system, sits at 84 per cent. Vancouver operates around 96 per cent. And Toronto? A striking 57.98 per cent. This gap in the number of trains arriving on time represents not just a statistical difference, but an entirely different way of living, one in which public
We need trust, not tracks Why TTC’s biggest problem isn’t infrastructure
transit is the most trustworthy option, not the least predictable one.
Public transit is essential for Toronto because road traffic is notoriously bad. Major corridors like Highway 401, Allen Road, and the Don Valley Parkway are congested every day, and the city’s large population only intensifies the pressure. Buses have been proven to use urban space far more efficiently than private cars, meaning the whole city moves faster when more people choose transit.
I believe that in a fast-paced city, reliability matters more than anything else. When the subway feels just as unpredictable as driving, its only real benefit becomes the lower cost — and once people can afford a car, many will choose to drive.
I believe that if more residents turn to cars, Toronto would drift even further from the goal of creating efficient and accessible mobility for everyone. That’s why, in my view, the city urgently needs a transit system people can consistently rely on.
I believe that for the TTC’s new CEO as of June, Mandeep Lali, the most urgent problems to address are not expansion or marketing, but the frequent emergency incidents and maintenance work that riders often discover only at the station, issues that produce sudden, unpredictable delays.
Avoiding shutdowns
One clear way to strengthen reliability is to address the specific causes of sudden, unpredictable shutdowns. Among these, track intrusions have become one of the most disruptive yet preventable issues. This is where Platform Edge Doors (PEDs) –– doors that separate the platform from the subway tracks
–– become important. PEDs sharply reduce intrusions, which is an issue that has repeatedly triggered full-line closures, emergency braking, and safety investigations.
In 2024 alone, TTC data recorded 711 such incidents, resulting in more than 90 hours of delay. In order to circumvent this issue, a March TTC business proposal outlined the projected safety benefits of building PEDs on the TTC. Although the TTC had proposed a pilot PED project at Dundas station, the TTC cancelled the project in June .
If Toronto is serious about building a transit system people can rely on, PEDs must shift from a distant possibility to an immediate priority. Their cost is estimated to be $4.1 billion, but the payoff — fewer disruptions, lower emergency response expenses, and restored public trust — is far greater.
Communication and planning
A second way to strengthen reliability is to change how the TTC communicates planned repairs and service interruptions. Right now, I find that, despite existing service alerts, I only discover this information when I am at the station. That kind of unpredictability directly undermines public confidence; people can’t rely on a system when they don’t even know what they’re walking into.
The truth is, riders are not asking for perfection; they simply want predictability. If I know a day in advance that Line 1 will be shut down, I can plan for a two-hour trip instead of one. What destroys trust is being promised a reliable system and having those expectations disappointed. A centralized, intuitive platform that lists all planned maintenance, shutdowns, slow zones, and expected timelines would give riders the transparency they currently lack.
Improving communication may seem simple, but I believe it is a foundational step toward rebuilding reliability.
Transit future
Now imagine another future in Toronto, one in which the struggles commuters at U of T face today are obsolete. You still live in North York, and you still have something important downtown the next morning. But this time, you check the TTC website and see clear, reliable information: Line 1 is fully operational, with no hidden shutdowns or surprise slow zones. You know the 16-kilometre trip to Queen’s Park will take exactly 40 minutes, not 40 minutes unless it suddenly changes again.
In the morning, you arrive at the platform to find doors that keep the station safe, the train arrives exactly on schedule, and you reach Queen’s Park without stress. Instead of being forced into lastminute Ubers or hour-long shuttles, public transit becomes the option you trust first, not the one you turn to only when there is a lack of urgency.
In that future Toronto, no one misses classes, milestones, exams, and other important events because of sudden transit shutdowns; no one wonders whether Line 1 will run into problems again; and no one has to budget extra time out of fear that the system might fail. That is a transit system built on trust — and the first step toward it is simple: make the TTC’s existing lines truly reliable.
Ziqian Zhang is a journalism and political science student at U of T whose work focuses on international politics, with a particular interest in East Asian political dynamics. He is also engaged in questions of urban planning and policy, exploring how cities shape governance and social experience.
Addison Rae is a pop star for times like these Why does it matter how a celebrity becomes famous?
Nicole De Jesus Varsity Contributor
Addison Rae Easterling, popularly known as Addison Rae, is a pop singer, influencer, actress, and dancer who, on November 7, was nominated for the “Best New Artist” Grammy, a decision made controversial due to Rae’s harrowing origins — TikTok. While nearly every musician has an ‘embarrassing’ past, Rae’s origin as a TikTok star seems to haunt her career in particular. Her artistry is frequently questioned by internet detractors whose common critique is that she is “manufactured” and trying too hard to be something she’s not.
Her presence in music was once perceived by PAPER Magazine writer, Joan Summers, as an “omen of certain doom” for the sanctity of the music industry. Despite the criticism, I think Addison Rae has proven herself to be a talented artist. I think the fact that her fame is consistently undermined by her past is a result of the public’s inability to adapt to the changing definition of fame and classist notions of celebrity.
A new kind of fame
With the rise of social media influencers, many dismiss internet fame as “less serious” than traditional stardom, ignoring the reality that modern fame is no longer elusive. Before the internet, fame was gatekept by record labels and studios that hand-selected talent and moulded them into celebrities. Now, nearly anyone can gain social media clout and even mass virality as a result of social media democratizing fame. Rather than executives selecting celebrities, social media has given audiences and algorithms the ability to choose who becomes famous, making fame more accessible than ever.
This is best seen in Rae’s career trajectory, where she garnered over 88 million followers on TikTok by making dance videos before she pivoted to music. Social media’s democratization of fame has allowed artists who would traditionally face barriers
to the industry, due to their marginalized identities or alternative sound, to cultivate fan bases.
Although this is seemingly a positive change, Rae’s origins on TikTok are often weaponized against her to question if she is qualified to make music, or if she pivoted to music to seek more fame; hence, why a majority of the discourse surrounding Rae pertains to her authenticity as an artist.
Critics online argue that the lower threshold to fame is cheapening the quality of art and artists’ awards. While these concerns are understandable, I think the origin of fame does not determine its legitimacy. Moving forward, I think celebrities will only further synthesize with influencers, and internet personas will be integrated into the music industry. This has already occurred with the generational talent Justin Bieber, who was discovered through a YouTube video. Even Rae’s fellow nominees, such as Sombr and Alex Warren, are notable TikTok sensations.
Fame for all
I think the growing ease of achieving fame is effectively narrowing the socioeconomic gap in who can become famous. Although Hollywood is filled with “rags to riches” stories; in reality, many celebrities come from wealthy families. Social media virality, in contrast, allows talented individuals with fewer resources to break into mainstream success.
In an era where public discourse often criticizes “nepobabies,” it is quite contradictory to scrutinize Rae, who gained fame organically via social media. The notion that musicians are only legitimate if they spent their youth in music school or on film sets carries a classist connotation, as lower-class children typically lack access to those environments.
Conclusion I think Rae’s debut album is incredible. It has a distinct dreamy dance-pop sound that distinguishes it from the contemporary musical
atmosphere. Although criticisms of Rae are dominated by her past as an influencer and supposed inauthenticity, there is also a gendered aspect to the scrutiny she faces that her male counterparts, such as Alex Warren, have mostly evaded. It seems that the public revels in critiquing women, which is a symptom of a misogynistic culture and would require an additional article to address!
Ultimately, Rae doesn’t represent the depreciation of the music industry; rather, she is a talented musician whose unique fame
A case for missing class
Why skipping lectures shouldn’t be frowned upon
is a product of the relatively democratic and meritocratic fame created by the internet. Rae proves that striking talent can originate from anywhere, even doing the Renegade on TikTok.
This Grammy season, I’ll definitely be cheering for Addison Rae!
Nicole De Jesus is a third-year student studying history and political science. She is the President of the Second Sex Club and Academic Director of the History Students’ Association.
For many of us at U of T, midterm season is wrapping up and grades are rolling in. My grades, I confess, were a wake-up call that led me to solemnly swear I’d start attending every lecture. Only two weeks into this journey, I’ve already broken my promise — and I don’t regret it.
The moment we set ourselves up for failure as students is when we start attending lectures out of fear and guilt rather than for genuine learning. The taboo and shame associated with skipping lectures is, in my opinion, outdated, and something we as students should let go of. Attending lectures isn’t necessary in today’s education system; in fact, it’s often advantageous for some to skip them.
Recorded lectures
Nowadays, I have found that professors often record lectures and post them online for students to use alongside supplementary materials, such as lecture slides. This allows students to work at their own pace and use learning styles that work best for them.
Personally, I like to watch my lectures at double speed, because I don’t have the attention span for a three-hour lecture. I have no fear of missing anything important because I’m able to pause and rewind whenever I like — which you can’t do in a live lecture.
Additionally, recorded lectures mean that you can learn at any time and place; so for those who find it difficult to focus at 9:00 am, or who prefer the comfort of their couch, recorded lectures are a lifesaver.
Academic burnout
Another factor that’s often overlooked by students is the danger of academic burnout. It’s imperative for students’ mental and physical health to address symptoms of burnout and do our best to take care of ourselves during the academic year.
A simple yet effective way to avoid burnout is to take a break when you feel overwhelmed — even if that means missing class on a random
Wednesday afternoon. Commitment to lectures shouldn’t override your health as a priority. Sacrificing your health will only lead to poor academic outcomes.
More than just attending lecture
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be committed to your education. Lectures are important, and they serve as a guide for what you will be tested on in
each course. But lectures alone aren’t worthwhile if you don’t put in the work behind the scenes. In my experience, attending lectures creates a false sense of security — as if my mere presence in the classroom, my showing up, was enough. But this only led me to put off the work I had to do outside of the classroom: the assignments, readings, studying, and practice. A long day on campus left me tired and worn out, with no energy or motivation left to get any real work done.
I don’t mean to say that live lectures are worthless. I value them, not only for their contribution to my learning but for the experience. I value the privilege of sitting in a classroom at the top school in the country and being taught by an expert in my field of interest — or any field, for that matter.
I enjoy waking up and getting ready for school, sitting at the front with my matcha, and annotating the slides on my iPad despite knowing I’ll never read them again. I look forward to that moment when the professor calls for a break, and I text my friends to meet up after class and explore the city. I love being a U of T student, and because lectures are a core component of that experience, I’ll never give them up entirely.
But if I want to remain a U of T student — in good academic standing — I know I won’t be able to attend every lecture, or rely on the mere sense of productivity I feel from showing up to class. On days like today, I’ll shamelessly skip every lecture to focus on the work that needs to get done. My call to action is that you all let go of shame with me.
Nardos Wakjira is a second-year psychology major. She is also the Opinion Section’s Campus Affairs Columnist.
MEHAR FATIMA/THEVARSITY
Nardos Wakjira Campus Affairs Columnist
The taboo and shame associated with skipping lectures is outdated. NATHAN CHAN/THEVARSITY
The tightrope walk: Navigating anti-abortion protests at U of T
Which anti-abortion organizations are behind the protests at UTSG and UTSC?
though sometimes it included broader antiabortion sentiments.”
‘Choice’ Chain became available as a project, it was a lot easier. It was a lot more portable.”
If you’ve walked past Sidney Smith, Queen’s Park, or along Bloor Street to Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), you may be familiar with the large poster boards with graphic images and bold text that reads “ABORTION” or “LIFE.” Captions at the bottom write “first trimester” or “baby at 10 weeks.”
Despite years of coverage on anti-abortion protests at U of T, the groups behind these protests remain hard to pin down. My investigation seeks to uncover the network behind these protests: how, when, and why they appear across U of T, and how they adhere to U of T protest policies.
Cross-campus protests
In a message to The Varsity, Melani Veveçka, president of the University of Toronto Student Union (UTSU), wrote that at UTSG, antiabortion demonstrations “appear on campus fairly regularly throughout the year.” She found that “they are more likely to be on campus at the start of the academic year, particularly around orientation, when campus activity is at its peak and there are more new, impressionable students.”
The start of every new school year brings with it a new cluster of young students excited to learn everything there is to know about life at U of T, absorbing all the new sights, sounds, and information on campus. That impressionability may make new students susceptible to the manipulative tactics, like upsetting imagery, that anti-abortion protestors on campus often use.
Anti-abortion protests are not limited to a specific message. Some are rooted in theology, featuring posters with text such as “life is holy” and “life is sacred.” Others adopt a more direct political language, with slogans such as “abortion kills children,” “human rights for ALL humans.”
Liz Rajesh, Co-Director of Branch Coordination for The Prevention, Empowerment, Advocacy, Response, for Survivors (PEARS) Project, wrote in a message to The Varsity that the timing of protests at UTSC is also consistent throughout the year, with an uptick during September.
However, the UTSC demonstrations do not seem to follow the same style of imagery as those prominent at UTSG. Rajesh has only “occasionally seen the more graphic posters [...], but that’s quite rare.” Most of the protests she observes use text-based posters: “messaging is generally theological in nature,
Which organizations are behind antiabortion protests?
Many anti-abortion protests at UTSG are organized by Toronto Against Abortion (TAA), an anti-abortion advocacy group founded by Blaise Alleyne, a U of T alumnus who obtained his Master of Theological Studies in 2019. He is also the Eastern Strategic Initiatives Director of the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform (CCBR), another anti-abortion advocacy group that has staff who volunteer with TAA. The CCBR has an overarching vision of “an abortion-free Canada.”
The website whyhumanrights.ca is frequently linked at the bottom of these posters. Bernadette Zasowski, president of University of Toronto Students for Life (UTSFL) — a recognized student group that opposes “abortion, euthanasia, IVF, [and] embryonic stem cell research ” — explained in an email to The Varsity , that whyhumanrights.ca is not an individual organization but rather an online resource. This website, which features similarly graphic videos, is also a project from the CCBR.
The graphic imagery, the bold text stating “abortion,” and the link to whyhumanrights.ca, are all common anti-abortion poster markers — especially by a CCBR project called “‘Choice’ Chain.”
Alleyne stated that “the signs, the pamphlets, the approach to conversations, and initial training in carrying out the project is standard and provided by CCBR.” Alleyne also wrote that before using CCBR materials, setting up anti-abortion events used to take the full day, but “once
“ ‘Choice’ Chain is a project from CCBR that other anti-abortion groups can run — the signs, the pamphlets, the approach to conversations, and initial training in carrying out the project is standard and provided by CCBR,” Alleyne wrote.
While TAA is an independent organization, they have strong connections to anti-abortion student groups on campus. In fact, “Choice” Chain was started by Alleyne during his time with UTSFL.
“In 2014, I restarted the UTSFL activism team and we began running ‘Choice’ Chain monthly at U of T,” wrote Alleyne. “By 2015, we were running ‘Choice’ Chains weekly on campus. In 2016-2017, the activism team grew beyond UTSFL and became Toronto Against Abortion.”
To this day, TAA and UTSFL have maintained a collaborative relationship. Alleyne explained that TAA runs frequent outreach during the year at U of T, often aided by members of UTSFL, who volunteer with TAA.
Zasowaski also confirmed that “UTSFL partners with organizations like Toronto Against Abortion, which offers volunteer opportunities to advocate for human life.”
TAA’s activism is not limited to U of T. The group has run across several different university campuses in Toronto, including York University, Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), and George Brown College. In April, TMU’s student newspaper, The Eyeopener, reported an increased presence of TAA on their campus in April.
While TAA seems to have the most active presence at U of T, it is not the only antiabortion group that has made an appearance on campus. Veveçka wrote that It Starts Right Now Canada, an organization that seeks to elect anti-abortion candidates into public office, has also been “active in setting up displays and engaging with students on campus.”
Abortion politics
Abortion politics are divisive, which evidently manifests on campus.
Pro-choice advocates maintain that abortions are a human right and a necessary part of reproductive healthcare. Amnesty International — an international nongovernmental organization that advocates for human rights — echoes this sentiment, emphasizing on their website that abortion is “a medical procedure that ends a pregnancy”
Julianne Wisner Varsity Contributor
and a “basic healthcare needed by millions of women, girls and people who can get pregnant.”
Nithya Gopalakrishnan is a co-executive of the Sexual Education Centre, a U of T student group that provides informational services about sex, sexuality, and gender identity. In an email to The Varsity , she wrote that “antichoice protestors are advocating for a violation of bodily autonomy for [people with uteruses] by presenting people on campus with graphic images and intimidating rhetoric–neither of which should have any place on a university campus.”
A lack of access to safe abortions harms women and queer people. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is a treaty body that seeks to monitor and implement tools to reduce inequality against women.
Their convention represents the committee’s work, which “has been instrumental in bringing to light all the areas in which women are denied equality with men.” They mention the importance of reproductive choice, such as access to health care around family planning and the right “to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children.”
In 2022, CEDAW urged the United States to legalize abortion at minimum for cases of rape, as well as incest, threat to life, and fetal impairment, demonstrating the importance of abortion access for people with uteruses. Contrastingly, the CCBR heavily implies that the life of the fetus takes priority over the resolution of trauma in circumstances involving sexual assault, as is common among these groups.
These contesting views evidently manifest on campus, where organizations like PEARS are for abortion access and reproductive autonomy, while organizations like UTSFL are starkly against it. But student opinions at large on the right to protest about their positions — pro- or anti-abortion — can be mixed.
In 2017, Zach Rosen — The Varsity’s Current Affairs columnist at the time — wrote
in an article that although he believes that the “ideology” behind the anti-abortion protests is “wrong,” he also believes that “the right to protest needs to apply equally to all points of view.”
“The student body at U of T is incredibly diverse,” wrote Veveçka, “with over 40,000 undergraduate students just on the St. George campus alone. With a community of that size, it’s natural that opinions will vary widely, including on an issue as complex and personal as abortion.”
Are debates and grey areas a recipe for weak abortion protest policies?
To Veveçka, the university needs to find a way to balance its duty to care for the well-being of its students — which can be harmed by the imagery and messages on anti-abortion posters — and the constitutional right to protest. “That means ensuring that advocacy on campus does not cross into targeted harm or create an environment that undermines a person’s sense of belonging or safety.”
Rajesh believes many UTSC students find the protests uncomfortable. “U of T is often seen as a progressive and inclusive space,” she wrote, “so witnessing protests of this nature on campus can be jarring and, for some, triggering, especially for those who have had related personal experiences.”
Part of coming to university is being met with opposing viewpoints to our own. However, I believe there is a line between platforming a different perspective and platforming intentional hate and misinformation.
These platforms are like pipelines, only exponentializing negative stigma around basic bodily autonomy. It’s hard for me to believe that these organizations are simply starting a conversation without creating a hostile environment for many students. But the constant ambiguity surrounding the ethics of anti-abortion protests might be what makes regulating them through policy so difficult.
U of T generally supports the right to protest
and to express opinions on its campuses. However, it does impose limits on place, timing, and manner of protests in its user guide for protest policies. For example, protesters have to book specific spaces to protest, no demonstrations are allowed between 11:00 pm and 7:00 am, and there is zero tolerance for violence or excessive noise.
There may be a grey area around U of T’s protest policies that implicates discrimination. The policy prohibits the use of discrimination using “language… that demeans others based on their… gender identity or expression, sex or other categories in the Ontario Human Rights Code.”
However, there are no outlined restrictions on the use of graphic or disturbing imagery as a medium for demeaning or discriminating at protests. Anti-abortion protests commonly use disturbing images to garner shock value and attention, even to rile students up. So the lack of specification on how imagery, beyond words, can be equally as discriminatory is problematic.
In the case of anti-abortion imagery, it essentially subjects anyone who can have an abortion to discrimination. U of T specifically outlines that sex-and gender-based language discrimination, is prohibited, but visual-based discrimination seems to have slipped under the rug.
Veveçka similarly expressed her opinions on this grey area. “These pro-life groups often maintain that their intent is to express their belief rather than to target a specific gender, which provides them with a degree of plausible deniability. Whether that claim holds true is difficult to determine, and unfortunately, that ambiguity often allows such displays to persist without clear institutional intervention.”
Protest policies from other Ontario universities are similar to U of T’s. TMU’s guidelines acknowledge the importance of free speech and debate so long as they do not breach the realm of “harassment, disruption or acts of violence.”
protestors of formal repercussions for spreading their message using disturbing imagery.
Education not persecution
Even if U of T did have stricter protesting policies, there would still be limitations on intervention. Protests often occur on public roads, which are not owned by the university, so, from a legal standpoint, the university can’t do much to intervene. Constant caveats seem to be what keep anti-abortion protests going, despite how much backlash they receive.
Even if there is no violation of U of T protest policy, even if students retain the rights to protest and freedom of speech, and even if anti-abortion organizations argue that they operate out of care and concern, it’s no less frustrating to see them politicize and eschew abortions.
Abortions can be lifesaving medical procedures in instances where a person’s health is compromised. They can help reduce unwanted pregnancies, ultimately reducing the number of children in already over-extended foster care and adoption systems. They enable women the bodily autonomy to prevent pregnancies that will interrupt their plans and goals for their own lives, even if they plan to have children later on.
Abortions should continue to be a right.
Like Rajesh says at the Sexual Education Centre, many on- and off-campus organizations offer the resources for sexual and reproductive health and wellbeing that can help you navigate any issues you face. Action Canada for Sexual Health & Rights offers statistical reports, factsheets, and a hotline for sexual health information. Birth Control Sexual Health Centre has information on pap smear results, a sexual health information line, and a distress line. Right here at U of T, the Health & Wellness Centre provides resources for birth control, emergency contraception, sexual assault support, and abortion care.
York University’s protest policies are a bit more detailed. In their Guide to Freedom of Expression, they provide a list of unprotected expressions such as “suggesting its members are engaged in illegal or unlawful activities” and “degrades, denigrates or vilifies persons or
While these examples demonstrate a specificity that U of T lacks in its own policy, they still have enough ambiguity to absolve antiabortion
Where to obtain an abortion in and around U of T:
Closest to UTSG: Bay Centre (Women’s College Hospital)
• 76 Grenville St, third floor
• 416-351-3700
• womenscollegehospital.ca
• Manual Procedural: up to eight weeks gestational age (GA)
• Medication: up to 10 weeks GA
• Procedural in hospital: up to 24 weeks and six days GA
• No admin fees
Closest to UTM: Mississauga Women’s Clinic
• 101 Queensway W Unit 401
• 905-629-4516
• mwclinic.com
• Medication: up to 10 weeks and six days GA
• Procedural: up to 18 weeks GA
• Admin fees: $70
Closest to UTSC: East End Women’s Clinic
• 301–520 Ellesmere Rd
• 416-901-3278
• eastendwomensclinic.com
• Medication: up to 10 weeks GA
• Admin fee: $60
Arts & Culture
December 2, 2025
thevarsity.ca/category/arts-culture arts@thevarsity.ca
The
Louvre
heist and other thefts
Why do people steal art?
of Dutch Baroque masters Rembrandt and Vermeer — have been recovered.
On the morning of October 19, two people disguised as construction workers snuck into the Galerie d’Apollon of the Louvre in Paris, and made their way out with several pieces of the French Crown Jewels, all in under eight minutes. The heist left many people in a state of
simultaneous shock and awe — how could the most widely visited museum in the world allow what was seemingly such a simple theft?
This is hardly the Louvre’s first rodeo with thievery. In 1911, Italian national and former Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia stole Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” in what would become one of the most infamous art thefts in history. It was Peruggia’s theft that skyrocketed the otherwise unremarkable painting to worldrenowned fame.
However, arguably one of the most intriguing art heists of all time — and the most successful — is that of the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The heist still hits particularly hard for art lovers; to this day, none of the 13 stolen works — including the rare paintings
Why people steal art
In each of these cases, some questions arise: why do people steal art? What happens to the art they steal?
For one, stealing jewelry — like in the Louvre heist — is quite a bit different from stealing painted masterpieces. If your goal is to make money, then jewels are probably your best and safest bet.
Jewels have more material value than paintings, and they can be separated into simpler parts and then sold individually. But when it comes to museum heists, jewelry is statistically the least commonly targeted item, making this quite a unique theft for the Louvre. Why, then, do people so often bother stealing artwork if it’s harder to sell?
Perhaps they do not grasp the sheer risk associated with selling stolen artwork before they go through with their theft; stealing one-ofa-kind items warrants closer attention from the law enforcement agencies tasked with getting them back, making it nearly impossible to sell them without getting caught.
In some instances, however, financial gain is not the primary motivation for art theft. When the “Mona Lisa” was recovered, for example, it
was revealed that Peruggia believed the work should be returned to its native Italy, and tried selling the portrait to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence — in spite of the fact that Leonardo himself had sold it to the King of France in the early sixteenth century.
History is riddled with instances of ideologically motivated art theft and desecration. The looting of artwork during World War II was a significant part of the Nazis’ aggressive censorship campaign. When the Nazi regime openly classified Modernist and Jewish-owned artworks as ‘degenerate’ and launched widespread plundering across Germany and its occupied territories, this included France, which made the Louvre a target.
However, the Louvre had anticipated the looting and managed to evacuate most of the collection beforehand. Though many of the artworks stolen by the Nazis have since been recovered, identifying and returning the work remains an ongoing and arduous process, reflecting a far-reaching consequence of ideologically motivated attacks on material and visual culture.
A criminological perspective on the Louvre jewel theft
Art theft is often an opportunistic crime, where potential offenders capitalize on an opportunity to commit a crime if the benefits are perceived to far outweigh the risks. This notion is perhaps best captured by a classic criminological framework known as Routine Activities Theory (RAT), which posits that opportunistic crimes are born out of three existing conditions: a motivated offender, a suitable target for the crime, and, perhaps most importantly, a lack of “capable guardians” preventing the crime from taking place.
In the weeks after the recent Louvre theft, an audit that began in 2015 was revealed to have been heavily criticizing the museum’s security infrastructure, calling into question the role that a lack of guardianship may have played in the theft’s success. What remains puzzling, then, is how at least two people were, according to
RAT, motivated enough that the Louvre was a suitable target for their crime. It has even been speculated that the heist was an inside job, though the true motivations remain to be discovered.
What art theft means for museums and galleries
The Louvre jewel heist, and the many art thefts that have preceded it, remind us that even the world’s most celebrated cultural institutions can be susceptible to crimes of opportunity. Perhaps this is why we react to them with such fascination and bewilderment: these valuables belong, in a sense, to the curious, visiting eyes of the public, and when the seemingly impenetrable buildings that house them fail, the loss reverberates well beyond museum and gallery walls.
As authorities continue to investigate, the jewels remain missing, and the world’s most prominent museum is forced to face an uncomfortable truth: they are only as secure as their weakest link — and somehow, at least two people knew exactly how weak that was.
Simona Agostino Illustration Editor
The “Mona Lisa” is inspected by Giovanni Poggi on the right, director of the Uffizi in Florence, after the painting was recovered from Peruggia in 1913. COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
“Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” one of the thirteen artifacts stolen during the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner heist. It is the only known seascape of Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn. COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
NABILA IRREZA/THEVARSITY
“The Concert,” one of only about 34 known works attributed to Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, and one of the thirteen artifacts stolen during the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Heist. COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
In hopeful memory of Fabienne de Cartier
As hope, my friend Fabienne lives on as a value
Eleanor Yuneun Park Varsity Contributor
Never did I expect that sitting in a stuffy University College (UC) classroom chair, waiting for my introductory British Literature class to begin on a grey, winter morning, my life would be enlivened. As the clock ticked closer to the start of lecture, the antiquated brown doors creaked open, and Fabienne walked in.
I vividly remember her gliding through the dull classroom with an incredible knee-length, baby blue coat with feathers: one that was just so quintessentially ‘her’ that I dubbed her ‘U of T’s Penny Lane.’
Including the first day I met her, she’d always introduce herself to others with a smile and a line: “My name is Fabienne de Cartier, but I’m not French at all. I don’t know why I was named this way because I need to explain every time I introduce myself.”
She’d feign annoyance at the verbose clarification she seemed to think was required for her to avoid people asking if she could speak French. But I didn’t mind at all. Listening to her, even for the first time, I was already wishing she would say more — and I instantly realized that I wanted to be her friend.
I recall feeling particularly grateful for The Varsity at the time, because working there gave me the honour of having something this beautiful person could speak to me about with intrigue — this was exciting for me. Though distracted by the idea of a burgeoning friendship, I also noticed Fabienne’s inquisitive nature rooted in an undiluted adoration for her life and the lives of others. She embodied a level of hope so pure it was almost anachronistic in this seemingly misanthropic day and age.
Fabienne transferred to McGill University after her second year to study English and Political Science, and later worked at its student newspaper, The Tribune, as a News Editor. This was to be expected, as her passion for journalism had long been evident, marked especially by her words and illustration in The Varsity’s winter 2023 Raw magazine. In it, she wrote about holding dialogue with people with disabilities — a beautifully hopeful piece
reflecting on living as an amputee after being diagnosed with osteosarcoma at 13 years old.
Then-Features Editor Alexa DiFrancesco, who edited Fabienne’s magazine piece titled “Being on the right foot with someone who’s missing one,” remembers Fabienne’s love above anything else.
“The thing that stood out the most about Fabienne to me was her love for existing,” DiFrancesco wrote to The Varsity. “She was so happy to go through the editing process, no matter how tedious it was, and she seemed so excited to be putting something into the world.”
“When she wrote about her story, she presented herself as someone who was so in love with life and excited,” she continued. “It was so evident that she loved living, that she loved interacting with other people, and that she loved loving other people and her surroundings… I can only imagine the strength it took for her to live that way and I am so thankful that a piece of her lives in Raw.”
Her irresistibly raw hopefulness carried through in the months after she was hospitalized when her cancer recurred in her lung at the end of 2024. As I sat in The Varsity office late at night, she would call from her hospital bed, listening through my tears while her voice remained unwavering. Once again, and as always, she was the bigger person in our friendship.
She persevered with hope even as she underwent chemotherapy, calling me to ask about my work as The Varsity’s Editor-in-Chief and to seek feedback on her platform to run for the same role at The Tribune in the upcoming year. I now realize that her matter-of-fact way of speaking about her plans for the upcoming year instilled in me an infinitely expansive sense of hope that I had no idea how to sustain without her.
Her hope painted me, as it did for so many others who love her. Every once in a while, when I rushed outside during my work this past summer to answer her call, she’d apologize for ‘bothering’ me. But she didn’t realize that every call from her was reminiscent of the day she creaked the UC classroom doors open and flowed into the room with her coat, her light, her hope. Even as her health deteriorated by the day, I still felt more hopeful with each call.
And for a while after the summer cooled down, I had no idea how to cling to the hope she wanted to leave behind. She had wanted us to remain hopeful — but when hope itself was kept ablaze by her sparking it, how were we supposed to continue seeing its light without her? The strength that made Fabienne so hopeful, I never learned how to emulate during her fleeting time here, and I didn’t believe I could crystallize hope when there’s a dearth of it in her absence.
Some many nights after, things remain grey without her light. I still vacillate between ascertaining the mortality of hope and wondering if hope can reappear. But what’s left with us here now seems to be the hope of hoping that hopefulness will appear — the hope to hope for hope. And in this way, Fabienne — as hope — exists as a value. Fabienne is a value within me. And, to borrow a much wiser man’s words, the question of keeping this value isn’t a matter of viability, nor is that important, nor is it better to last than to burn by keeping it. I’m honoured to be one of countless people who have Fabienne, our hope and value, burn within me.
Donations in Fabienne’s honour can be made to the Fabienne de Cartier Award for Poetry at www.fabiennedecartier.com. In partnership with the Ontario Arts Foundation, the award will recognize young emerging Ontario poets for their courage to experiment and commitment to artistic expression.
Inside Toronto’s Distillery Winter Village
not impossible to keep fun, festive outings affordable!
Ashley Thorpe Varsity Board Member
The chilly air sweeping through the city invites Torontonians to pull their jackets out of storage and bundle up in scarves. At this time of year, it is easy to stay home and avoid venturing into the freezing weather and slushy streets. However, the return of the annual Distillery Winter Village fills many of the city’s residents with much-needed excitement.
The holiday season can get expensive quickly as gift-giving and social outings pile up fast, and the Winter Village is no exception. But with a bit of planning, this festive experience can fit comfortably into any budget, while still offering the cozy atmosphere that people look forward to each year.
The Winter Village sees over one million visitors every year, which can sometimes make the experience feel overcrowded and busy. To address this and provide a safe and fun experience for both staff and visitors, the Village has scheduled select weekdays and weekends to require a fee and reservation. However, many days are still free to enter from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Tickets range from $18–$37 after that time. For those hoping to keep their outing affordable, some planning in advance can go a long way. Travelling to the market earlier in the day or on dates that don’t require ticketed admission allows you to experience the Winter Village while keeping costs down.
Scattered throughout the Winter Village are several restaurants and pop-up shops offering just about every type of food you could imagine.
Unfortunately, the steep prices make it hard for students to enjoy these treats without stretching their budget to its breaking point.
Many of the dishes seem to be built for social media appeal — items like ‘Dubai hot chocolate’ that pander to online trends and items that are deep fried and covered in cheese which prioritize aesthetics. This is reflected in the prices that seem to charge for the likes and views that will come from posting the meal online.
For example, the Aprile Holiday Feast by Chef Claudio Aprile costs $19 for a small portion that disappears as quickly as the money spent on
it. Similarly, a booth serving raclette with fried pickles charges $22, while a booth nearby rings up a single soft-shell crab sushi taco at $18. With prices like these, choosing a spot to eat feels more like a gamble on deciding which snack is worth the splurge.
While the pop-up shops that are only present in the Distillery District during the festival seem to have significantly higher prices than the fulltime restaurants, I found a delicious alternative tucked away in one of the market’s alleyways.
Sweetie Pie is part of a local chain of bakeries, selling fabulous treats and warm winter drinks. Their Belgian hot chocolate, accompanied by
one of their soft cookies, is one of the best deals around the district. The hot chocolate, topped with whipped cream, marshmallows, and sprinkles, comes to a total of $6. Their large, thick cookies cost $3 a piece. For comparison, several vendors around the Village sell specialty hot chocolates for $12–$16, making Sweetie Pie’s menu one of the most affordable.
As a popular destination for holiday shopping, the Winter Village is home to the largest Jellycat store in Canada. These adorable stuffed animals come with hefty price tags — the trendy Bartholomew Bear Bag Charm, for instance, costs $38 — but there are still endearing alternatives to the expensive brand names. A Bukowski Bears Bag Charm costs about $16, providing the same sweetness as the Jellycat keychains for less than half the price. Both of these options can be found within Bergo Designs, an eclectic novelty store and staple within the festive Market.
In a season when costs can quickly become overwhelming, the Distillery Winter Village is yet another place where staying within a budget can be challenging. However, anyone can enjoy the unique festive atmosphere, the sparkling lights of the Christmas tree, and local vendors without overspending if they are willing to plan in advance and avoid the temptation of trendy treats.
As the cold settles in and the city transforms into an icy wasteland, the Village offers an escape from winter blues, showing that positivity can still be found in simple, affordable moments. For anyone willing to bundle up and get outside, festive magic is waiting!
The Winter Village sees over one million visitors every year. ASHLEY THORPE/THE VARSITY
A part of Fabienne's illustration from The Varsity's Raw magazine. FABIENNE DE CARTIER/THE VARSITY
December 2, 2025
thevarsity.ca/category/science science@thevarsity.ca
Lights, camera, atom!
The world of molecular movies and ultra-fast electron diffraction
Ridhi Balani Science Editor
It has been a great year for movies with Superman , the last part of The Conjuring , the Demon Slayer Infinity Castle movie, and many others. Even the finale of Wicked is out, which is super exciting.
And so, in the spirit of movies, here is a recommendation from the science section — molecular movies: an endeavour in trying to catch the motion of molecules over time. Molecular movies are a particular research focus and tool at Dwayne Miller’s lab in the Departments of Physics and Chemistry at U of T. Alex Wainwright — a PhD candidate from the lab — spoke on the topic in an interview with The Varsity
Behind the scenes
According to Wainwrite, the name ‘molecular movies’ is a “bit of a misnomer.” You can’t really take a camera, record, and then watch molecules moving like actors on a screen.
A regular video recording is a sequence of images taken quickly and stitched together as the actor moves. However, molecules move far too fast for us to be able to do that with them. By the time one picture is taken — even with one of our fastest cameras — the molecule has already moved on or been damaged.
To combat this, researchers repeat the same chemical process over and over again, and then take ‘pictures’ of that process at different times instead. As Wainwright puts it, “instead of watching someone walk from start to finish… [for] 10 seconds of walking, we would take a photo at, let’s say, every microsecond, and every time we take the photo, the person would have to go back to the start, and we try to take photos again until we got the entire movie.”
The actual ‘camera’ in a molecular movie — at the Miller lab — is ultra-fast electron
diffraction (UED), which uses a pump-probe technique.
According to Wainwright, "everybody’s done a pump probe, whether or not they realize it.” Think about poking someone so that they make a funny face and then taking a picture of them — you’ve just done a pump-probe.
In molecular movies, the ‘poke’ — or probe — that causes a reaction of interest is a very short pulse of light. After the reaction starts, a beam of electrons — small negatively-charged particles that act as the ‘camera’ — hits the sample. The data collected from the electron’s diffraction pattern — the way the electron particles bend around the molecules — can be analyzed and processed into a movie.
Why use UED?
Regular camera pictures are constructed from a somewhat similar principle by capturing visible light bouncing off objects. However, because of their small size, molecules need very short wavelengths to be viewed — the smaller the wavelength, the higher the resolution. Alternatively, molecular movies can be made using X-ray diffraction, which uses very short wavelengths of light, instead of electrons. According to Wainwright, UED remains “a relatively niche way of doing things” because of the specialized, technical expertise required to run and understand the data.
Additionally, because electrons are so small and reactive, UED needs to be conducted in a vacuum to avoid interactions with air particles. So, “there’s this other expertise and skill set you have to have of putting things under vacuum and having a sample that’s stable under vacuum.” X-rays can easily travel through the air, though, so they are much more suited to experiments that must be done under atmospheric conditions or in normal air.
However, Wainwright emphasized that while “they each have their own advantages
and disadvantages, the real advantage of electrons… is that it allows for you to get higher resolution because the wavelength of an electron is so much shorter than the wavelength of the light that you use in an X-ray diffraction.”
And action!
We can record molecular reactions fairly well using UED, but what is the data useful for? As it turns out, the applications are numerous.
Let’s go back a couple of decades. In 2003, Bradley J. Siwick — at the time a member of the Miller lab and now an Associate Professor at McGill — and his team released a notable paper in the acclaimed academic journal, Science He recorded the first atomically-resolved movie, which is detailed enough that some of the smallest levels of matter interactions are viewable. The movie showed a transition reaction — the melting of aluminum — using UED.
The paper showed that “if you can excite a solid fast enough, it will melt inside out instead of outside in,” as Wainwright explained. This process is known as homogenous nucleation.
Notably, in the aluminum, the nucleation didn’t spread to the surrounding area and was confined to around 10 atoms per nucleation site. Interestingly, this can also be applied to water molecules, so that you can “actually boil water without heating up the material around the water.”
Considering that we’re mostly made up of water, this has some interesting applications in medicine and biology. In fact, a major problem with many laser surgery techniques is the surrounding tissue damage that happens as a result of explosive heterogeneous nucleation — the typical melting from the outside in process once the surrounding tissue is heated by a laser. However, cross-applying the method from the 2003 paper, surgeons can instead use fast, short laser pulses to obtain very precise and clean
tissue removal. As Wainwright explained, by cutting “a tissue with this laser beam… only the spot that was irradiated by the laser is boiled, and it is boiled so fast that information cannot be transmitted away,” meaning there is no surrounding damage.
According to Wainwright, “this is looking to be one of the first techniques towards scarless surgery.” The Picosecond InfraRed Laser (PIRL) scalpel was created by researchers to use these insights, but it is still in the process of being widely adopted and advanced further.
According to Wainwright, “[the Miller group] is now exploring how to use these lasers to remove material very selectively.” They are also collaborating with Light Matter Interaction — a company developing and commercially selling these lasers. So, even though the research for this technology has existed for 20 years, the medical device development and distribution are still underway today.
Of course, having the ability to visualize molecules to the degree that UED affords has numerous applications in understanding how various processes work. For example, Wainwright highlighted that recent and ongoing research in the lab covers a wide variety of topics — visualizing a biomolecular reaction is a recent example. Biomolecules refer to molecules found in living organisms; some big examples include DNA and proteins.
Molecular movies created using UED promise to be a useful tool in understanding the motion of molecules and how various reactions proceed to a great level of resolution. Like how understanding the phase transition in aluminum led to a new level of surgical precision, a greater level of understanding of molecular processes is key to further innovations. While this marks a wrap on this article, it’s far from a wrap for UED, a molecular visualization field that is constantly growing and has an exciting place in future research.
SIMONA AGOSTINO/THEVARSITY
“We’re sorry we upset you, Carol”
A mid-season review of Pluribus
Mia White Varsity Contributor
Vince Gilligan, of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul fame, has done it again. The director’s newest project — Pluribus, the newest science fiction series on AppleTV+ — is as gripping as his previous successes with its unique and unsettling spin on pandemic-era fiction.
Pluribus’s protagonist Carol Sturka — played by Better Call Saul’s Rhea Seehorn — is an up-andcoming author who discovers she is immune to an alien virus that has infected the rest of the human race. In a matter of days, billions of humans form a shared consciousness, leaving Carol utterly alone. After losing her partner, Helen, to the illness’s deadly side effects, Carol is forced to free the surviving members of the human race from the virus herself — even when what remains of humanity does not want to be saved.
A peculiar philosophy: Is peace worth its cost?
Pluribus’s greatest strength is the philosophical nature of its main villain — the human race. The virus has converted the infected into a collective with the goal of achieving universal happiness.
In theory, the virus has achieved world peace. In practice, the consequences of uniting eight billion minds force viewers to reckon with the value of their own individuality and the role it plays in their humanity.
At first, the idea of total unity might seem appealing. If everyone is the same, no one can be criticized for being different. The infected “Others” claim that the virus has cured racism, sexism, and homophobia. Everyone loves and accepts everyone because everyone is everyone — with all the knowledge to show for it.
Even the most unique person becomes just another thread in the collective tapestry. The
world’s leading expert on Shakespeare? You have their memories, and they have yours. Your bully from high school? The two of you are now one, and old grudges have vanished.
But what lies beneath the surface? The members of the collective have no choice but to conform and act like a well-oiled machine, taking strides to fulfill the biological imperative of their virus — propagation.
Even the initial process of infection is strangely invasive, with a single kiss being enough to bring someone into the collective. Despite the assurances of the infected that Carol’s life is her own, no one is given the choice to become infected; the virus is forced upon them in an act of assault, stripping them of both their physical and mental agency. If the infected have their way, Carol will be the next to meet this fate.
To make matters worse, joining the collective means a loss of free will, acting without hesitation to fulfill any directive — whether this be to drop everything to restock a grocery store, or to step into the blast radius of a
grenade. They lack the ability to think critically, to have autonomy, or to hold an opinion.
The members of Pluribus ’s collective are no longer themselves, even referring to the identities they were forced to abandon in the past tense. Is abandoning individuality the best decision for the human race — or does it spell the end of all the good that came before?
Safety in the collective, or freedom alone?
To Carol, joining the collective means certain death. She repeatedly refers to her mission to cure the virus as a mission to save humanity, and cannot understand why anyone would disagree with her motives. When considering her life before the pandemic, her views make a lot of sense: she is an author whose creative work and values align closely with individual thought. Being Carol means being independent; would she be the same person if that were taken away from her?
When exploring these themes, Pluribus appears to hint at a topic relevant to our own post-pandemic world: humanity’s increasing
A new, emerging use for AI in chronic facial pain
Toronto-based study shows how to predict patient responses to surgery
Zuhal Olomi Varsity Staff
Machine learning (ML), a subset of AI, has the capacity to address technical limitations that traditional diagnostic methods cannot. After training an ML model on a dataset, the model learns the patterns present in that data. Once trained, it can use those learned patterns to make predictions on unseen data.
This predictive power is especially useful for detecting patterns in complex medical data that are often difficult to identify by manually reviewing images or clinical assessments. In medicine, ML is increasingly used to accelerate research and improve diagnoses by physicians and clinical scientists.
Terminal neuralgia (TN) is a chronic facial pain condition affecting the trigeminal nerve. This nerve supplies sensory information from the face, and sends motor signals to the muscles that control chewing. Patients often describe the pain as ‘electric’ or ‘shock-like’, and it is so severe that patients struggle to find long-lasting relief. Even when surgery is a treatment option, predicting who will benefit from it and for how long is a major challenge for clinicians.
Led by second-year PhD student and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Timur H. Latypov, a 2025 study in Brain Communications investigated the application of ML techniques to detailed clinical and brain-imaging data to predict surgical outcomes for terminal neuralgia (TN). Currently, these decisions rely on clinical evaluation, such as the patient's pain characteristics, TN attack frequency, triggers, and medication response.
Due to the wide variety in patient symptoms, standard clinical evaluation faces technical limitations in forecasting which patients will
respond to surgery. Understanding how a patient’s clinical and imaging data relate to future surgical outcomes can bridge the gap between unpredictable patient responses and personalized treatment.
The research question was simple: can AI assist in anticipating post-surgical outcomes in TN more accurately than the current methods alone?
Building the model
The 2025 study used a combination of ML techniques to determine whether patterns in patients’ pain characteristics and brain imaging data could predict how long surgical interventions for TN would remain effective post-surgery.
The researchers used two ML approaches to identify predictors of how long treatment would remain effective: unsupervised learning and supervised learning, which are trained on unlabelled and labelled data, respectively. Researchers collected clinical data, including pain characteristics and medical history, prior to the patients undergoing one of several common surgical interventions for patients with TN.
In unsupervised learning, researchers reduced complex patient data into its crucial components so that key patterns become easier to see.
The supervised learning approach measured the volume, thickness, and surface area of the brain from MRI scans, along with a multiclass support vector machine (SVM) classifier. An SVM is a supervised ML model that separates patients into categories, allowing for the algorithm to predict which surgical outcome group each patient is more likely to fall into.
dependence on AI. With large language models like ChatGPT having access to much of the knowledge found on the internet, the technology has become its own sort of hive mind.
The resulting temptation to supplement independent thought with AI-generated responses is significant: 33 per cent of American adults claimed in an April 2025 report by Pew Research Center that they had used an AI chatbot like ChatGPT, and that number has almost certainly grown since. At what point will our reliance on technology begin to fundamentally change the way we think and behave, and could these changes have an impact on who we are as people?
While we have not come to a collective consensus on whether AI will ultimately help or hinder us, we are facing the same crisis of individuality as Carol. Namely, is our reliance on AI leading to a drain of individual thought and creativity? Although AI has not yet threatened to take forceful control of us as a species, the impact of the Pluribus virus presents an opportunity to reflect on its growing role in our society.
What’s next for Carol’s world?
While the first four episodes of the series have yet to propose a solution to humanity’s growing dilemma, the power of this science fiction story comes not from the quick resolution of its challenges, but from the uncertainty it inspires in its audience. With its critic rating of 98 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes and the confirmation of a second season in the works, Pluribus will undoubtedly have even more quality entertainment to offer science fiction audiences over its next five episodes.
Since the show’s premiere on November 7, Pluribus’s Reddit page, r/pluribustv, has gained approximately 80,000 members. Many of these have spent the last few weeks discussing theories and predictions for what might await Carol and the infected in the coming episodes, demonstrating an impressive level of engagement for a show that is less than a month old.
After its meteoric rise in popularity, it seems Pluribus viewers have formed a ‘collective’ of their own.
Takeaways from the model
Several pain characteristics emerged as both positive and negative predictors for how effective surgery is likely to be for TN. These traits include how often pain attacks occur, whether the pain is shock-like and brief but intense, or spontaneous and longer but dull, and whether medications provide relief before surgery.
MRI scans revealed that patients who responded well to surgery showed reduced thickness in pain-processing brain regions such as the left insula and frontal cortex. They also had increased thickness in pain-modulation areas like the dorsal cingulate cortex, and demonstrated distinct structural patterns in the posterior cingulate and pericallosal cortex. Together, these differences helped inform the model’s predictions.
Various statistical measures help determine the reliability of the study. MRI data alone
allowed the algorithm to predict a patient’s surgical outcome category with about 78 per cent accuracy — considered reasonable for an ML model. The study’s success shows that MRI databased machine learning could reasonably predict trigeminal neuralgia surgical outcomes.
If clinicians can reliably identify patients unlikely to benefit from surgery, they can spare them from invasive interventions and prioritize surgery for patients who stand to gain the most benefit. These findings move closer towards a future where surgical decisions can be guided by data rather than uncertainty. This study shows that clinicians can use ML tools, which are trained on traditional clinical judgment, to uncover hidden patterns that might predict surgical success more accurately.
This model is just one example of how AI is introducing new ways of approaching clinical problems that were once considered technically or diagnostically out of reach.
Pluribus is a new sci-fi show on AppleTV+ about a viral pandemic that takes over the human race.
ERIKA OZOLS/THE VARSITY
Machine learning is used in medical applications to predict patient outcomes.
CHLOE WESTON/THE VARSITY
Business & Labour
Pitch Perfect 2025: The Health and Innovation Hub’s staple pitch competition
Various healthcare startups competed to win $5000 in funding
Samm Mohibuddin Varsity Contributor
“This is probably one of the most exciting things we do in the fall,” said Professor Paul Santerre, director of the Health Innovation Hub (H2i), in his opening remarks for Pitch Perfect 2025 — a pitch competition organized by the H2i and the Temerty Faculty of Medicine for early-stage health-related companies. The event took place on November 12 at the William Doo Auditorium.
Startups submitted applications in September, and the selected finalists had five minutes to deliver their pitch at the competition, followed by questions from the judging panel. Three winners were awarded $5,000 each to further develop their companies.
This year’s judges were Faizah Balogun, program coordinator for the Black Founders Network; Liz Munro, president of Liz Munro Consulting; Liam Kaufman, executive vice-president of Cambridge Cognition, a digital health company assessing brain health; and Yasaman Soudagar, co-founder and former CEO of Neurescence Inc., which developed a microscope for viewing neural circuits in the brain.
U of T’s entrepreneurial environment
When asked about what stood out in this year’s competition, Sophie Stuart-Sheppard, the communications manager for H2i, said in an interview with The Varsity that “the calibre of the pitches and the traction that their products are getting before coming into the pitch is getting more and more impressive, and that honestly speaks to the fact that U of T has more resources for the students and the Entrepreneurship network.” A recent U of T Entrepreneurship report stated that the network raised over $14 billion in the last five years.
Contestants echoed similar sentiments. “U of T has a pretty good culture of promoting startup and entrepreneurial work to students,” shared Jasmine Jing in an interview with The Varsity Jing is a fourth-year life science student and the chief marketing officer for TechInu, a Pitch Perfect finalist developing an optical sensor that will monitor indicators of human health in real time. She added, “Because I'm a student [at U of T] … I can maximize my connections and opportunities here to kind of push [TechInu] further.”
What the 2025 federal budget means for students
Impacts on housing, employment, and cost of living
Lama Abousalem
Varsity Contributor
In the foreword of this year’s federal budget, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne writes that the budget “lays out a generational investment strategy” and that “Now is the time to build Canada Strong.” Released in November, Budget 2025 lays out major commitments to lowering the cost of living through housing expansion and youth support programs.
With youth unemployment reaching 14.7 per cent in September, the highest level since 2010, disregarding the pandemic. This leaves many young Canadians entering a job market that feels increasingly uncertain. For students who already face high rent, rising debt, and competitive hiring conditions, the budget’s measures could have a direct impact.
The job market and youth unemployment
As the semester comes to a close, graduating students face the tough reality of finding a job in the current market. In this challenging environment, Budget 2025 proposes over $1.5 billion in funding over the next few years to support employment for young Canadians and directly shape the opportunities available to students entering the workforce.
This includes nearly $600 million for Canada Summer Jobs, a program aiming to provide more work experiences for young people over the summer. They are partnering with not-forprofit, public-sector, and small private-sector organizations to subsidize wages and create roughly 100,000 positions for youth through this program. The Youth Employment & Skills Strategy, which delivers 16 federal programs, will also receive $307.9 million to expand training and provide supports like mentorship and mental health counselling.
$40 million will start a national Youth Climate Corps, which will train young people in green
December 2, 2025
thevarsity.ca/category/business biz@thevarsity.ca
The winners Startups AlloWide, NephroTech, and VRiT won the competition.
AlloWide aims to improve surgical and transplant outcomes by developing a new chemical solution to soak a donor’s bone in before a transplant, enhancing the bone’s regenerative potential.
NephroTech developed a new product called DialySnake to prevent complications in patients with kidney failures. When a patient’s kidneys can no longer properly filter their blood, doctors inject a cleansing fluid into their body through a catheter tube, a process known as peritoneal dialysis.
Sometimes, this catheter becomes obstructed and causes serious complications — some of which require surgery. DialySnake safely
unblocks catheters within five minutes and costs less than $20. The team plans to use their prize to file a patent and begin introducing the product to emergency rooms.
VRiT is transforming surgical care with a handheld bioprinter that eliminates the need to transplant skin from one part of the body to another, enabling advanced, minimally invasive procedures. “[Winning Pitch Perfect] is about building momentum… it helps us stay on track and [gives us] just a little bit more motivation to keep the work going,” said Sushant Singh, CEO and co-founder of VRiT, in an interview with The Varsity Students interested in participating in pitch competitions are encouraged to visit H2i’s website for information on similar upcoming events.
and emergency-response roles. The Student Work Placement Program, which partners with universities, colleges, and Québec’s College of General and Vocational Education (CEGEPs) to provide work placements, is also receiving additional funding and is set to create 55,000 paid learning placements by 2027.
At the same time, the budget makes a significant push toward AI adoption and productivity growth. The government will invest $925.6 million over five years to develop Canadian AI cloud infrastructure, and set aside $25 million for TechStat, a new program designed to study and observe how AI shapes productivity and the labour market. The federal government argues that these investments will help create long-term economic growth and new high-skill jobs.
This transition may create short-term challenges for young workers, especially those seeking their first job, due to AI’s ability to displace certain entry-level tasks. However, the World Economic Forum maintains that the “number of jobs destroyed will be surpassed by the number of ‘jobs of tomorrow’ created.”
Among them are big data analysts, machine learning specialists, and environmental engineers, along with growing demand for farmers, nurses, and other essential roles that keep economies running.
Making housing affordable
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation estimates Canada needs to nearly double housing construction from its current pace of 250,000 homes per year to at least 430,000 units per year to restore affordability. The budget directs major funding to close that gap.
A central pillar of this plan is Build Canada Homes, a federal agency launched in September with $13 billion in funding over five years to pursue initiatives to increase available housing. Examples include building 700 public
housing units in partnership with the Nunavut Housing Corporation or channelling $1 billion to build transitional housing for homeless people.
For students in cities like Toronto, where rent remains among the highest in the country, measures that affect tenants are particularly relevant. Budget 2025 notes that average asking rents have fallen 3.2 per cent over the past year, a shift that the government attributes to stronger rental construction and a slowdown in population growth following changes to immigration policy — factors that have begun to ease demand-side pressures.
The budget also proposes eliminating the Goods and Services Tax (GST) for first-time buyers on new homes priced up to $1 million, with a reduced rate on homes up to $1.5 million. The measure, currently before Parliament, intends to lower upfront purchase costs for younger buyers.
Taken together, the budget’s housing measures aim to reshape the market over the next decade. But for students facing immediate rent burdens, the question remains whether new
construction will arrive fast enough to meaningfully ease pressure in the short term.
Healthcare investments
Budget 2025 offers little new support for pharmacare, the national system for prescription drug coverage, which includes universal access to certain contraception and diabetes medications. Instead, the government commits $5 billion to a Health Infrastructure Fund, aimed at upgrading hospitals, emergency departments, urgent-care centres, and medical schools. One planned project is funding for the new Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Medical School.
The budget is also pursuing initiatives to ensure timely access to healthcare in Canada’s Arctic and North. The government will conduct a comprehensive review of healthcare needs in these areas to understand how it can improve the current infrastructure.
Budget 2025 lays out an ambitious vision for Canada’s future, but its impact will depend on how quickly new housing is built, jobs are created, and affordability measures take hold.
TechInu was one of the finalists at Pitch Perfect 2025. SAMM MOHIBUDDIN/THE VARSITY
YIXUAN GUO/THE VARSITY
Sports
December 2, 2025
thevarsity.ca/section/sports sports@thevarsity.ca
The Varsity Blues’ 2025 first semester report card
Grading
every single fall semester team’s season
and their MVP
Caroline Ho, Jake Takeuchi, Taimoore Yousaf, Jean Patrick Vidad Sports Editor, Managing Online Editor, Sports Associate Editor, Sports Associate Editor
With the conclusion of fall semester, The Varsity presents the Blues’ first semester report card, subjectively grading each of the nine men’s and nine women’s Varsity fall teams, their season placement, and this season’s MVP. Notable results include the men’s and women’s soccer programs, which swept both
Ontario University Athletics (OUA) provincial titles, claiming double OUA gold medals on the same day. The baseball team also had a particularly impressive season as the only team to take home a national title. 13 teams competed at provincial playoffs or an equivalent, while eight competed at national championships. Overall, five teams won provincial titles and four teams placed second or third at the provincial level.
Cumulative GPA: 3.02
Men’s sports
Sessional GPA: 2.74
Baseball
The Varsity Blues men’s baseball team had a sensational 2025 season, which culminated in the elusive ‘three-peat’ — a third straight win at the OUA Championships, and the fourth in five years.
The Blues finished the regular season with a 14–6 overall record and closed out on a fivegame win streak, including doubleheader wins over the Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Bold and McMaster Marauders. They then proceeded to steamroll their competition in the playoffs, winning 10 straight en route to OUA Gold and the national championship.
The 4–2 win over the Carleton Ravens in the national championship was a thriller. The Blues were down 1–0 to start the game in the first
Football
The Blues football team had another disappointing season, recording a 1–7 record and placing 11th out of 11 teams in the OUA. Their one win came on August 23 against the Carleton University Ravens, where the Blues dominated with a final score of 42–23.
The Blues struggled both offensively and defensively. On the offensive front, they scored a total of 180 points, which was a notable improvement from last season’s 91. Meanwhile, the defence gave up 314 points. While this was
Cross country
The men’s cross country team saw slight improvements over last year, placing seventh at the OUA Championships and 18th at Nationals. The season began on September 20 in London, Ontario, at the Western Invitational, where they finished sixth out of 12 teams. They then competed at the Don
also an improvement from last year, the team’s inability to capitalize on scoring attempts to add to their win column were evident throughout the season. Perhaps their biggest heartbreak came against the York University Lions, where they sustained a 32–33 overtime loss at the 55th annual Red and Blue Bowl.
Despite their team’s record, several players achieved impressive individual accolades. Most notably, fourth-year receiver Chris Joseph had a record-breaking season, setting an OUA, U SPORTS, and U of T record for single-season
Lacrosse
The Blues men’s lacrosse team had a solid season this past fall. They finished their regular season with a 5–5 record, good for fifth in the West Division, and secured a spot in the Canadian University Field Lacrosse Association (CUFLA) playoffs. Highlight wins included a statement overtime win over the Western Mustangs and a 21–5 beatdown of the Laurentian Voyageurs on the road. Unfortunately, the team was unable to progress in the playoffs, losing in the first round to Nipissing in a 19–8 contest.
Golf
The team kicked off their season at Western’s invitational, where Bryan Luo and Desmond White’s top-five individual finishes propelled the squad to a fifth-place tie. The team then went on their invitational slate, with Luo and White leading the way as they picked up fifth place in St. Catharines at the
Rookie midfielder Zach Abu-Ali had a brilliant first year with the Blues, pacing the team with 35 goals and 16 assists in nine games. He finished second in CUFLA goals scored and fourth in total points during the regular season. His efforts earned him Rookie of the Year and all-Canadian honours. Attacks Scott Del Zotto and Daniel Clarke also enjoyed strong seasons, scoring 24 and 20 goals apiece.
Meanwhile, U of T won the CUFLA Stadium of the Year award thanks to the brilliant
inning, but in the fourth, the bats came alive. Finals Player of the Game Ryan Hsu nailed the go-ahead RBI double in the sixth inning to give the Blues the lead, and relief pitcher Tyson Espiritu Santo slammed the door on the potent Carleton batters to secure championship glory.
Second-year outfielder and pitcher Diego Fuentes had a superstar campaign, batting a scorching .536 while registering 27 RBI and four home runs in 23 total contests. He won Most Valuable Hitter honours and was named an OUA All-Star alongside infielder Spenser
Mills Open at Waterloo University and the 8-Kay Marauder Invitational at McMaster University, where they placed second out of 13 teams and seventh out of 14 teams, respectively.
Law student Nima Ashtari had a solid season leading the Blues, finishing in the highest place for the team at each meet. He achieved an impressive fourth-place finish at the Don Mills Open, and also tallied an individual 19th-place finish at the OUA Championship. Ashtari also led
receptions with 77 catches across eight games played. He most recently became the first Varsity Blue since 2019 to receive second team all-Canadian Honours, and was designated as an receiver Jake Oseen.
Grade: D
Season finish: 11th out of 11 in OUA Regular Season
Team MVP: Chris Joseph
and another notch
of a dominant program.
Grade: A+
Season finish: OUA Champions and Canadian National University Champions
Team MVP: Diego Fuentes
the Blues at the U SPORTS Championships, where he was followed by Parker Levac, Andrej Prekajski, Jack O’Connell, Jacob McLean, Oliver Tagalog, Jack Heintz, and Brandon Cidade.
Grade: B-
Season finish: Seventh at OUA Championships, 18th at U SPORTS Championships Team MVP: Nima Ashtari
Brock Invitational. Last year’s second team all-star Jordan Hutchings then topped the Blues’ leaderboard at the Laurier-Waterloo Invitational in Kitchener, helping them snag the sixth spot. The team rounded out their provincials preparation at the Toronto Invitational, with Luo and Jason Yang placing third in a six-way tie for bronze, while the Blues earned a second-place team finish.
The men’s golf team just fell a stroke short of a top-10 finish at the OUA Gold Championships. They tallied 315 points on day one, and concluded their second round campaign with a
Varsity Stadium, for combining “history, atmosphere, and top-tier facilities in one iconic venue.” Overall, men’s lacrosse took a step in the right direction after a losing season last year. With a potential gem on their hands in Abu-Ali, look out for these Blues to make noise next season.
Grade: B
Season finish: 5–5 in CUFLA Team MVP:
score of 303. Luo spearheaded the team in individual scoring after recording 149 total strokes, settling for the 14th spot in a fiveway tie. Meanwhile, Blues veteran Sai Kaja’s 153-stroke finish proved good enough for 27th place in the leaderboard.
Grade: C
Season finish: 11th of 15 at OUA Championships Team MVP: Bryan Luo
Ross. Pitcher Matthew Clarke won Rookie of the Year honours, while coach Andrew Needles won his third-straight Coach of the Year award. It was a season to remember for Blues baseball,
in the belt
Zach Abu-Ali
Ethan Kwong pitches on the mound. COURTESY OF TIANNA DIP
Zach Abu-Ali protects the ball from the defending player. COURTESY OF NATHAN ORIBHABOR
The Blues’ defence made a slight improvement from last season. COURTESY OF BARRY MCCLUSKEY
The Blues golf team fell just short of a top 10 finish at the OUA provincial championship.
COURTESY OF MARINA PARTICELLI
The Blues cross country team placed seventh at the OUA provincial championship.
COURTESY OF BARRY MCCLUSKEY
Rowing
The men’s rowing team had another productive season in 2025. The team participated in three invitational competitions in the fall. The Guelph Invitational in September saw the Men’s Open 8+ crew capture second place, while four men’s crews finished in third place. At the Head of the Trent, the lightweight 4+ placed fourth, while the JV crew nabbed a first-place finish in the JV 4+ race. Finally, the Blues secured two third-place finishes in the lightweight coxed four and lightweight double at the Brock Invitational.
Rugby
After taming the York Lions in a dominant season opener, the men’s rugby team suffered five straight losses, finishing the season second-to-last place in the OUA. This year's record marks a three-place drop from last year’s campaign. Despite regressing as a team, Liam Marshall emerged as an all-star this season, snagging second team honours, proving to be this team’s silver lining.
Soccer
In the OUA Championships, men’s rowing placed fifth overall in the 14-team field. Veteran duo Lysander Weeks and Youssef El Mays brought home silverware for Toronto, finishing third in the men’s lightweight double. The team also notched two fourth-place and three fifth-place finishes. In
The team’s trajectory seemed promising after seeing improvements from last season, where they placed seventh in the league with a .500 record. Surely that was the hope after bombarding the Lions at Varsity Stadium; however, after dropping a tight contest in Kingston, the team never found its footing to give itself a chance to compete for a playoff spot.
After bowing to the Royal Military College Paladins in a 31–22 defeat, the Blues incurred
the Canadian University Rowing Championships, men’s rowing placed seventh overall out of 28 teams in the competition. Jack Bon made an appearance in the A-Final, placing sixth in the men’s 1X event.
Overall, it was a satisfactory set of results for Blues rowing. They will look to regroup and collect more medals, starting with the Toronto-McGill Challenge in May before preparing for next season.
losses by an average margin of 36 points. Overall, this season is one to forget for the Blues, especially after comparing it to last year’s campaign, where they secured their best finish since 2002.
Grade: D
Season finish: 10th of 11 in OUA Regular Season Team MVP: Liam Marshall
The men’s soccer team has finally arrived. The Blues had a fantastic regular season, finishing first in the OUA East with a 10-1-1 record (W-L-T).
Then, entering the provincial tournament as a first seed, the Blues shut out the York Lions 2–0 at Varsity
team claimed their first OUA title since 2010 and 51st in program history.
Tennis
Return to glory. The men’s tennis team recovered from a winless doubles slate as they fought off the Ottawa GeeGees with an outstanding singles run to bag their second OUA banner in the last three years. Lukas Mock garnered double honours after winning Rookie of the Year and earning an All-Star nod. His running mate, Rassam
Women’s sports
Sessional GPA: 3.3
Cross country
The women’s cross country team matched last season’s OUA sixth-place finish, but fell five places behind last season’s U SPORTS result, finishing 17th in the country.
Their season debuted on September 20 at the Western Invitational, where they recorded a sixth-place finish out of 13 teams. There, Julia Agostinelli recorded a strong individual fourth-
Field
Hockey
The Blues field hockey team had yet another solid season on the pitch. While they had a bit of a rocky start with three consecutive 0–1 losses against McMaster, Guelph, and Waterloo at the beginning of their season, they quickly recovered and ended their season with a solid 4-4-2 record.
In contrast to last year, where they maintained a 9-0-1 regular season record but were unable to carry their momentum into the postseason
Stadium in the OUA final, claiming their first OUA title since 2010 and 51st in program history.
Unfortunately, the Blues could not carry this momentum into the U SPORTS National Championships. The first-seeded Blues were upset by the eighth-seeded Université du Québec à TroisRivières (UQTR) Patriotes in the first round, ending U of T’s chance for a national title in a heartbreaking 3–2 extra-time defeat. In the consolation bracket, the Blues defeated the Cape Breton Capers 5–0, then lost 2–1 against the University of British Columbia (UBC) Thunderbirds to end the tournament with a relatively disappointing sixth-place finish.
However, the fact that this national exit was a letdown is a testament to the steady progress
Yazdi, was also named an All-Star for the fifth time in his collegiate career.
However, the Blues failed to secure a win in the doubles round, with their best chance coming from the duo of Yazdi and Mock in a match where they lost 8–5. Despite the setback, the Blues managed to clinch the title after success in the singles round. After Yazdi dropped the first singles match in a tiebreaker
place finish out of 100 runners.
The following weekend at the Don Mills Open, the Blues placed third overall out of nine teams.
Agostinelli had yet another strong performance, where she won the six-kilometre race in 21:20 minutes, while fourth-year Sarah White finished in third place with a time of 22:24 minutes. The team finished sixth at the 8-Kay Marauder Invitational, where Agostinelli recorded a second-place finish.
Agostinelli once again stood out at the OUA Championships and at U SPORTS, claiming an individual silver medal and fourth
–– falling to the Waterloo Warriors in the OUA semifinal –– the Blues defeated the Warriors in a 1–0 shootout win in a rematch semi-final game. They advanced to the OUA gold medal game against the York Lions, but tragically lost 1–3 and had to settle for silver. This result is an improvement from last season’s playoffs fourth place, and the Blues field hockey program is on a clear upward trajectory.
The Blues boast incredible depth both offensively and defensively. Defenders Maggie
Golf
It was another solid season for the women’s golf team. After finishing eighth overall in the Canadian University College Championships over the summer, the Blues carried their OUA dominance into the 2025 regular season, scoring a podium finish in every single tournament they participated in for the second straight year.
The team grabbed team silver at the seasonopening Western Invitational, team bronze at
the Blues have made over the past few seasons.
Midfielder Michael Osorio was named to the Championship all-star team for his two-goal heroics at the tournament.
Rookie forward Jordan Grey claimed OUA East rookie of the year. This marks the fourth consecutive year that a Varsity Blue has won the award, proving U of T’s continued dominance as a powerhouse talent producer in the OUA. Fourth-year goalkeeper Alex Lin received the OUA East Champion of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Award — becoming the first Blue to win the recently introduced award — for his work as Chair of the U of T’s BIPOC Varsity Association (BVA).
second set, Mock took care of business as he swept the second match.
Alex Zhang, Luka Kirigin, and Ben Whitley also took individual wins to seal the victory 4–3, and bring the provincial title back to U of T. Before their successful return to the top of the podium, the Blues first knocked off the Brock Badgers, 5–2, in the quarterfinals before dispatching the Queen’s Gaels, 6–1, in the semifinals.
place, respectively. With her performance, she earned U SPORTS first team all-Canadian honours. White, Madelyn Bullock, Shelby Spencer, Madison Sparkman, Claire Nolet, and Kaitlyn Koyanagi also represented the Blues at nationals. White took home the U SPORTS Community Service Award.
Grade: B+
Season finish: Sixth at OUA Championship, 17th and U SPORTS Championship
Team MVP: Julia Agostinelli
Mullins and Midfielder Alicia Lung were designated as OUA All-Stars alongside rookie Goalkeeper Mary Yang. Yang was also named Goalkeeper of the Year for her outstanding performance this season, where she earned six clean sheets and allowed only three goals through eight regular-season starts.
Grade: A-
Season finish: Silver at OUA Championships Team MVP: Mary Yang
the Brock Invitational, team gold at the Waterloo Invitational, before rounding out regular season tournaments at the Toronto Invitational with a split squad earning gold and bronze.
Entering the provincial tournament as reigning OUA champions, the Blues fell just short of back-to-back gold, finishing five strokes behind Waterloo for a silver medal finish. Second-year sensation Mia Wong dominated the OUA tournament, claiming the
Midfielder Mehdi Essoussi earned prestigious second team all-Canadian honours for the first time in his career, while Grey added to his phenomenal debut season with a place on the national all-rookie team. Defender Anthony White and Essoussi took home OUA first team all-star honours while goalkeeper Filip Zendelek, Micah Joseph, and Grey were named as second team all-stars, rounding out a hefty haul for the Blues.
Grade: A Season finish: OUA Champions Team MVP: Mehdi Essoussi
Grade: A Season finish: OUA Champions Team MVP: Lukas Mock
Judy McCrae Trophy as individual champion and receiving OUA all-star honours. Strong participation throughout the season, and a solid final exam to boot, but the fact that the team took a step back this year leaves them just shy of a perfect grade.
Grade: A
Season finish: Silver at OUA Championships
Team MVP: Mia Wong
Grade: B Season finish: Fifth in OUA Championships; seventh in Canadian University Rowing Championships
Team MVP: Lysander Weeks and Youssef El Mays
The men’s Rugby team’s record this year marks a threeplace drop from last year’s campaign. COURTESY OF SEYRAN MAMMADOV
In the OUA Championships, men’s rowing placed fifth overall in the 14-team field.
COURTESY OF SARAH MAUDE COMTOI
The men’s tennis team took their second OUA banner in the last three years.
COURTESY OF SEYRAN MAMMADOV
The men’s soccer
COURTESY OF ARU DAS
The Blues’ field hockey team ended their season with a solid 4-4-2 regular season record and an OUA silver medal.
COURTESY OF YAN HUCKENDUBLER
Julia Agostinelli claimed a silver medal at the OUA Championships and a fourth-place individual finish at U SPORTS.
COURTESY OF BARRY MCCLUSKEY
The women’s golf team scored a podium finish in every single tournament they participated in for the second straight year.
COURTESY OF DAN INGLIS
Rowing
Lacrosse
Unfortunately, 2025 was a mediocre season for the Blues women’s lacrosse team. They finished with a 3-5-1 record in the regular season, securing the sixth seed in the 2025 OUA Championship. Just a year ago, Toronto had a 2–7 regular season record but went on a magical playoff run to secure an unlikely OUA bronze medal. Sadly, Toronto was unable to bring home silverware this time around.
In the first match of the postseason, the Blues fell to the Queen’s Gaels in a 13–3 contest. It was a loss that mirrored much of the team’s low points this season, where the team allowed an average of
over 12 goals in their defeats. The team finished off the season with two more losses to Western and Ontario Tech.
Attack Rheanna Swanson had an excellent year serving as the primary goalscorer for the Toronto offence. She finished top five in the OUA in goals this season with 22 goals and 27 points in eight games. Swanson earned OUA All-Star recognition for her performances. Attack Isabella Ward also had a strong season in the playmaking department, putting up 13 goals and seven assists.
The Blues demonstrated their immense offensive potential in the season opener when
they blew out McGill 15–4, but since then, they only managed an average of 6.6 goals per game in the remaining eight regular-season games. Looking toward next season, the women’s lacrosse team will look to develop more consistency in order to win games early and often.
Grade: C+
Season finish: Eighth place at OUA Championships
Team MVP: Rheanna Swanson “the Tasmanian Devil”
It was a strong season for the women’s rowing team. At the OUA Rowing Championships, the Blues grabbed a remarkable team bronze medal, marking their best team result since their provincial championship in 2000. Especially impressive was the Lightweight 8 crew of Caitlin Terry, Emily Thompson, Sophie Corradini, Dayun Kong, Guinevere Reaume, and Jamie Blunt, who grabbed a first-place finish and the only medal finish of the team at the OUA’s.
on last year’s results of sixth of 16 at nationals and fourth of 14 at provincials, the Blues took a clear step forward this year and have established themselves as an OUA dark horse.
At the national Canadian University Rowing Championships (CURC), the Blues finished with a strong sixth place in a 28-team field. Improving
Grade: A-
Season finish: Third at OUA Championships,
sixth at Canadian University Rowing Championships Team MVP: Lightweight 8 Crew (Elizabeth Yeoh, Olivia Ruffolo, Marina Sobotka, Caitlin Terry, Emily Thompson, Sophie Corradini, Dayun Kong, Guinevere Reaume, and Jamie Blunt)
Rugby
The women’s rugby team had a difficult season, ending the year with a 1–5 record. They opened their season with a tough start against Queen’s University, where they suffered a 0–20 loss. Their only win came against Trent University, where they took home a 52–43 win against the Excalibur on September 13. Chioma Duru and Adele Church had standout performances, recording two and three
Soccer
It was a historic season for the women’s soccer team. Their 9-2-1 regular season record was the best in the OUA East, and gave the Blues an advantageous firstseed heading into provincials at the Varsity Stadium. There, U of T dispatched the Ottawa Gee Gees 1–0 in the quarterfinals, before showcasing gritty defence once again to beat the Western Mustangs 1–0 in the semis. In the finals, the Blues shut down the Guelph Gryphons 1–0 to capture the program’s first-ever provincial title in the team’s 40-year history.
Unfortunately, at nationals, the Blues were defeated in a heartbreaking 3–1 decider in
Tennis Dominance personified — the women’s tennis team capped off an immaculate run at the OUA Tennis Championships to secure their third consecutive banner and their 41st in program history.
tries respectively, while Sydney Heighington had six conversions.
Despite the bright spot in their season, the Blues were unfortunately not able to carry their momentum to their following games and recorded three consecutive losses to close out the season. Their biggest loss was their game against the Guelph Gryphons, where they were dominated 0–137. Sydney Heighington led the Blues in tries and conversions through the six
the quarterfinals against the Trinity Western Spartans to crash out of U SPORTS gold contention. In the consolation bracket, U of T took down both McMaster and Cape Breton in two consecutive 2–0 victories to finish their U SPORTS championship campaign in fifth place.
The veteran defence captain Hannah Chown had another superb individual season, sweeping up OUA East MVP, OUA East Community Service Award, and a fifth consecutive OUA all-star nomination with a place on the first allstar team. Chown was also named a first team all-Canadian for the first time in her career, capping off an illustrious Blues career with national recognition and bringing home the ever-elusive provincial title — The Varsity would
Softball
Coming into the 2025 season, the Blues women’s softball team had one goal in mind: a threepeat in the Ontario University Softball (OUS) championships. And after an electric 19–1 regular season to win the OUS East division, the team looked well on its way to a third straight trophy.
The Blues offence fired on all cylinders, scoring a whopping 209 total runs, 34 more than the next highest scoring team in the OUS. The defence was also stout, allowing only 90 runs, the third-fewest in the OUS.
In the postseason, however, the Blues ran into a few speed bumps. The team qualified for the
En route to their provincial title, the team first swept the Ottawa GeeGees 7–0 in the quarterfinals before trouncing the York Lions 6–1 in the semifinals. In the final against the Queen’s Gaels, the Blues took a commanding 5–1 win. Despite conceding a loss in the first singles match in a three-set marathon, the team left no stone unturned as they swept through the remainder of the singles fixtures, losing just one set in the process. With the win, the most decorated program in OUA women’s tennis continued their dominance.
The team also amassed a haul of awards in individual categories. Anastaysia Dyadchenko
games, with three tries and 12 conversions. While there is room for improvement, the team will try to bounce back in the offseason as they set their eyes on a return to the OUA playoffs.
Grade: D
Season finish: Ninth out of 10 teams in Regular Season
Team MVP: Sydney Heighington
like to congratulate the career of a true Varsity Blues legend, who has been the heartbeat of the team for the past five years.
In addition, seventh-year Head Coach Angelo Cavalluzzo received OUA East Coach of the Year for leading the Blues to OUA glory, while defender Bryanna Campbell, midfielder Emilija Lucic and forward Anne Yeomans were all recognized as OUA East second team allstars.
With the departure of Chown and eight graduating senior players, Cavalluzzo will have his work cut out to rebuild the team in the off-season.
While a first-round national exit was disappointing, it’s hard to give anything but full marks for a remarkable women’s soccer season for the ages.
quarterfinals in the Canadian Collegiate Softball Association National Championship, and while unable to secure a podium finish, the tournament served as good preparation for the three-peat quest that awaited them in the OUS Championship.
Things got off to a rocky start when the Blues lost 4–13 to McMaster in the first match of tournament play. The loss relegated U of T to the elimination side of the bracket, given the tournament’s double-elimination format.
The team demonstrated incredible resilience, however, proving their championship mettle by rattling off three straight wins to advance to the semifinals.
won player of the year, along with an all-star selection. Meanwhile, Katherine Zhang was named rookie of the year, and coach Nabil Tadros was hailed as the coach of the year. To round out the list, Veronika Poboded was the second Varsity Blue, alongside Dyadchenko, to earn an all-star honour this year.
Grade: A
Season finish: OUA Champions
Grade: A+
Season finish: OUA Champions Team MVP: Hannah Chown
Unfortunately, the Blues’ run came to an end with an 11–0 loss to Laurier, the eventual tournament winners. Although they fell short of the ultimate goal, this was still a team that demonstrated the heart of a champion. Shirley Chan and Tala Rennie earned All-Star recognition for brilliant individual seasons. Pitcher Alexa Aquanno also deserves recognition for a strong season. Women’s softball didn’t quite stick the landing, but they deserve all the flowers for a dominant three-year run.
Grade: A-
Season finish: Third place in OUS Championships
Team MVP: Shirley Chan and Tala Rennie
Team MVP: Anastaysia Dyadchenko
The Blues blew out McGill 15–4 in their season opener. COURTESY OF BARRY MCCLUSKEY
The Blues achieved their best team result at OUAs since their provincial championship in 2000.
COURTESY OF SARAH MAUDE COMTOIS
The women’s rugby team ended the year with a 1–5 record. COURTESY OF BARRY MCCLUSKEY
The Blues were unable to secure the OUA threepeat, but ended the season with a solid bronze result.
COURTESY OF ARU DAS
The women’s soccer team had a historic season, taking their first-ever OUA title.
COURTESY OF ARU DAS
The women’s tennis team cemented itself as the most decorated program in OUA women’s tennis, with its provincial title win. COURTESY OF SEYRAN MAMMADOV
Dyadchenko grabbed her second OUA player of the year.
OF SEYRAN
1. Welsh name for Wales 2. “Don’t wanna be an American _____”
3. French Canadian word for a 7-across
4. Emmy/Grammy/Oscar/Tony
5. “Check____,” at the end of a game of chess
“______ sells” (advertising adage)
Toronto MLB team that competed in the 2025 World Series finals (so close…), for short
Creme-filled cookie
Toronto NHL team, for short
Sample
River in which Achilles was dipped
1. What one might use MLA to do 5. “This is _______, Spot” when introducing a pet
7. Fish common to Ontario lakes
Magnetic semiconductor material: abbr. ACROSS
Ashley Wong Varsity Staff
Brennan Karunaratne Design Editor
Ashley Wong Varsity Staff