ALICIA NAUTA Tuition fees across the nation are rising at a pace almost four times the rate of inflation. On- tario students continue to pay higher tuition rates than the other provinces and more than twice as much as students in Quebec. While Ontario attri- butes this to the costs of higher enrolment, opponents of the in- crease remain unsatisfied. According to a Statistics Canada report released on Sep- tember 12, tuition fees across Canada increased by 4.3 per cent between 2011 and 2012 ,while inflation was only 1.3 per cent. These statistics were echoed in “Eduflation and the High Cost of Learning,” a report published by the leſt of centre think tank, Canadian Centre for Policy Al- ternatives (CCPA). “We call it eduflation,” said “I can tell you it was fun, and I hope it was for them too,” said U of T Law Professor Anver Emon, speaking of his first undergradu- ate class in Islamic Law held last week. While Emon has taught a variety of audiences, rang- ing from graduate students to NATO lawyers, he has never had the responsibility--or pleasure- -of teaching an undergraduate course at the University of To- ronto. That is until now, thanks to the Undergraduate Course Development Fund, which al- lows for professors who teach mostly graduates to teach un- dergraduate courses. One of the people responsible for designing this project is Pro- fessor Scott Mabury, who teach- es Chemistry and is the Vice President of Operations. When interviewed, Mabury explained that the main objective of the Fund was to “make the most of our faculty complement [num- bers], delivering upon the expec- tation that students will receive the best from the best.” Mabury described the Uni- versity of Toronto as interna- tionally renowned for its bril- liant minds from all over the world. Yet most of these gradu- ate professors spend their time researching, not teaching. For Mabury, the Fund will allow for the “unrealized capacity of non-teaching professors to be channeled directly into the un- dergraduate classrooms.” Students receive the best from the best, benefitting graduate professors most see page 3 Rob Ford causes controversy in the Windy City Rob Ford may be out of town but he hasn’t leſt the head- lines. During a photo-op on a two-day business mission to Chicago, Mayor Ford asked a Toronto Star reporter if he would find him in bed with him that night. “Am I going to be sleeping with you to- night?” Ford asked The Star’s David Rider, jokingly. On his last radio show, Ford said the press is hounding him so much he could expect to find a reporter in his bed. Rider’s response: “I hope not.” Not everybody loves Marineland Questions over the living con- ditions of animals at Marine- land have led Premier Dalton McGuinty to call for tougher animal welfare laws. Former Marineland staff claim that poor water and employee shortages at the Niagara Falls amusement park are to blame for chronic illnesses among sea mammals kept there and for the recent death of a baby beluga. “My sense is we’re go- ing to have to do something, “ McGuinty announced, add- ing that the government will wait until the ongoing inves- tigation of Marineland is over before reviewing animal care the briefs see page 2 The University of Toronto’s Independent Weekly Since 1978 VOL XXXV Issue 3 • September 20, 2012 the newspaper John Han Emily Meikle ^ ^ THREE WAYS ONTARIO WANTS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE 3 New initiative takes graduate professors out of research and into the classroom Grad professors may soon be teaching these undergrads. FANG SU Originally, Provost Cheryl Mi- sak approached Mabury with the idea and this spark exploded with 34 undergraduate courses offered this year, ranging from Tuition up again ^ ^ THE ARTIST VS URBAN OUTFITTERS 5
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Tuition fees across the nation are rising at a pace almost four times the rate of inflation. On-tario students continue to pay higher tuition rates than the other provinces and more than twice as much as students in Quebec. While Ontario attri-butes this to the costs of higher enrolment, opponents of the in-crease remain unsatisfied.
According to a Statistics Canada report released on Sep-tember 12, tuition fees across Canada increased by 4.3 per cent between 2011 and 2012 ,while inflation was only 1.3 per cent. These statistics were echoed in “Eduflation and the High Cost of Learning,” a report published by the left of centre think tank, Canadian Centre for Policy Al-ternatives (CCPA).
“We call it eduflation,” said
“I can tell you it was fun, and I hope it was for them too,” said U of T Law Professor Anver Emon, speaking of his first undergradu-ate class in Islamic Law held last week. While Emon has taught a variety of audiences, rang-ing from graduate students to NATO lawyers, he has never had the responsibility--or pleasure--of teaching an undergraduate course at the University of To-ronto. That is until now, thanks to the Undergraduate Course Development Fund, which al-lows for professors who teach mostly graduates to teach un-dergraduate courses.
One of the people responsible for designing this project is Pro-
fessor Scott Mabury, who teach-es Chemistry and is the Vice President of Operations. When interviewed, Mabury explained that the main objective of the Fund was to “make the most of our faculty complement [num-bers], delivering upon the expec-tation that students will receive the best from the best.”
Mabury described the Uni-versity of Toronto as interna-tionally renowned for its bril-liant minds from all over the world. Yet most of these gradu-ate professors spend their time researching, not teaching. For Mabury, the Fund will allow for the “unrealized capacity of non-teaching professors to be channeled directly into the un-dergraduate classrooms.”
Students receive the best from the best, benefitting graduate professors most
see page 3
Rob Ford causes controversy in the Windy CityRob Ford may be out of town but he hasn’t left the head-lines. During a photo-op on a two-day business mission to Chicago, Mayor Ford asked a Toronto Star reporter if he would find him in bed with him that night. “Am I going to be sleeping with you to-night?” Ford asked The Star’s David Rider, jokingly. On his last radio show, Ford said the press is hounding him so much he could expect to find a reporter in his bed.
Rider’s response: “I hope not.”
Not everybody loves MarinelandQuestions over the living con-ditions of animals at Marine-land have led Premier Dalton McGuinty to call for tougher animal welfare laws. Former Marineland staff claim that poor water and employee shortages at the Niagara Falls amusement park are to blame for chronic illnesses among sea mammals kept there and for the recent death of a baby beluga. “My sense is we’re go-ing to have to do something, “ McGuinty announced, add-ing that the government will wait until the ongoing inves-tigation of Marineland is over before reviewing animal care
the briefs
see page 2
The University of Toronto’s Independent Weekly Since 1978 VOL XXXV Issue 3 • September 20, 2012
the newspaper
John Han
Emily Meikle
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THREE WAYS ONTARIO WANTS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE
3
New initiative takes graduate professors out of research and into the classroom
Grad professors may soon be teaching these undergrads.
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Originally, Provost Cheryl Mi-sak approached Mabury with the idea and this spark exploded
with 34 undergraduate courses offered this year, ranging from
Tuition up again
^̂THE ARTIST VS URBAN OUTFITTERS 5
2 September 20, 2012 THE NEWS
the newspaper
the newspaper1 Spadina Crescent Suite 245Toronto, ON M5S 1A1
U of T physicist casts doubt on founding principle of quantum mechanics
Research conducted at the University of Toronto has un-covered a flaw in Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, a found-ing principle of quantum me-chanics and modern physics which states that it is impos-sible to measure something without affecting the result of the measurement.
The research, headed by Pro-fessor Aephraim M. Steinberg and released in early Septem-ber 2012, proves that making measurements does not neces-sarily disturb a quantum sys-tem to the extent suggested by
the principle. “I think it’ll have a big im-
pact on the way we teach the uncertainty principle, the way we write our textbooks be-cause a lot of what we say now is not strictly true,” said Stein-berg in an interview with the newspaper.
The way Heisenberg himself talked about the uncertainty principle was that one cannot measure the position and the momentum of an electron at the same time. This is because when one tries to figure out the exact position of an elec-tron under the microscope, for example, the light bounc-
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es off the electron, pushing it and therefore changing its momentum. Momentum is the product of mass and veloc-ity, and because momentum is changed, so is velocity. For that reason, any measurement of position would by design change the velocity of the elec-tron.
Using a combination of ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ measure-ments of a photon’s polariza-tion, Steinberg discovered that the uncertainty principle is not as precise as previously be-lieved. Following the measure-ments, the photon’s polariza-tion displayed less than half of the disturbance expected. “The amount of disturbance I need to add might not be very big where there was already un-certainty there to begin with,”
said Steinberg.Steinberg does not reject the
belief that nature is uncertain. The question he aimed to an-swer when testing the uncer-tainty principle was whether making measurements adds to the preexisting uncertainty. The findings, professor Stein-berg assured us, do not debunk the theory completely but do undermine the authority of the principle to an extent that warrants attention. “The real Heisenberg relationship is fine because it just says there has to be some uncertainty in the momentum; it doesn’t say that I have to produce it.”
Besides making present text-books obsolete, Steinberg ar-gues that certain experiments which apply the Heisenberg formula might also be affected.
legislation.
It’s curtains for the Toronto Underground CinemaAs of last Sunday, the Toron-to Underground is no more, leaving only one independ-ent repertory cinema in the city (The Royal). One of the Underground’s co-managers announced in December that the theatre would be closing for financial rea-sons. The cinema bid fare-well to the city with a dou-ble-bill screening of Night of the Comet and, fittingly, The Last Waltz.
Ontario gets ready to transform post-secondary educationThree proposed changes you should know about
“I would argue we’re about to go through a decade-long transfor-mation bigger than any we’ve had in nearly 50 years — to modernize our education sys-tem and spend smarter,” Glen Murray, Ontario Minister of Training, Colleges, and Univer-sities, told The Toronto Star in a recent interview.
An increasing and changing demand for post-secondary edu-cation enrollment, rising costs, and rapidly evolving technol-ogy have forced the provincial government into reconsidering the post-secondary education structure.
In June, the Murray’s min-istry released a paper entitled Strengthening Ontario’s Cen-tres of Creativity, Innovation, and Knowledge. Designed to spur discussion on forthcom-ing transformations to post-secondary education in Ontario, the final deadline approaches for proffering feedback from af-fected stakeholders: Sept. 30th.
As the date draws near, two separate forums are being opened to discuss the paper and also to learn more about the is-sues at hand. On Monday, OISE can teach you about the issues at
a free and public, all-day sympo-sium including professors from U of T, York and other Ontario universities. On Tuesday, the U of T Students’ Union is hosting an Emergency Town Hall to gar-ner student feedback. The Town Hall will help shape UTSU’s for-mal submission to the Ministry.
So what are some of the dras-tic changes proposed? Here’s four you should consider:
1. Online UniversityNot only will there be a push to-wards increased online courses, but the province is expected to establish an Ontario Online Insti-tute capable of granting degrees and to compete with the likes of the University of Athabasca.
As discussed in last week’s the newspaper debate, online education is still in its infancy as an innovation, accessible and flexible for the disabled or es-pecially busy student, and can reduce costs by accommodating huge classes, but the drawback is a diluted learning experience due to lack of face-to-face con-tact amongst students and one-on-one with their teacher. There is also the question of an online-degree’s recognition.
2. Three-year degrees
One of the more controversial elements of the proposal, three-year bachelor’s degrees would not necessarily involve a con-densed program, but rather a shift to year-round campuses with three full semesters and the opportunity for students to earn half their credits online.
U of T abolished three-year de-grees about a decade ago, partly because of the removal of Grade 13 in Ontario high-schools.
The Ontario Confederation of Faculty Associations has ex-pressed concerns that dropping Grade 13 has already forced universities into adjusting to first-years not quite prepared for university. They add that a three-year degree would dimin-ish the “university experience.”
3. Transferrable creditsSo as to increase the efficiency of the credit transfer process and allow students more mobility across Ontario universities, the province is seeking to bring a certain level of standardization to first- and second-year cours-es. The province will establish learning outcome assessments in an attempt to ensure Ontario students finishing core courses will have a similar knowledge base. The issue here is quality
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Law to Forestry to Public Health.A graduate department pro-
poses a course, and after con-sultation with the Vice Dean, receives permission to teach it. Each course is monitored for a year or two and if no one en-rols (there is a 20 student mini-mum), the course is cancelled. However, if the course becomes popular, more funding is given to that graduate department.
The keyword here is funding. Mabury noted that Graduate departments have no access to Undergraduate funds. However, the University of Toronto does. If a program for undergraduates proposed by a Graduate depart-ment is approved, that faculty is rewarded with a sum of money for further research. This creates an initiative for Graduate pro-fessors to teach first-entry class-es since it means the revenue of their department increases in proportion to the Graduate-pro-posed classes that are approved.
While departments might run the risk of burdening their instructors, Mabury explains that “[Graduate] Professors have to rearrange teaching schedules but we are providing an outlet. Everything is purely voluntary, and the money certainly helps.” Mabury states the money in no way goes to the professor teach-ing to but the department they represent.
When asked if Graduate
professors “dumb down” their lectures for the Undergradu-ates, both Mabury and Emon answered no. “It’s not so much what year they are in but what background material they have,” Mabury said. He related it to teaching a foreign language and asked if it was dumbing down to teach what a verb is and how grammar works. Clear-ly not, he concluded. Emon echoed these words by saying he capitalizes on Undergraduate skill sets and prerequisite cours-es, which ensure a sophisticated conversation.
The Fund is intended to be beneficial for both students and professors. In a phone interview with the newspaper, Professor Emon described his reasons for joining as a chance to “draw upon younger minds who are embedded in developing their own connections to the hu-manities,” and to engage with undergraduate students’ diverse academic backgrounds.
Whether for a fervor to edu-cate or a fervor to fund depart-ments, the newly initiated Undergraduate Course Develop-ment Fund is set to expand into 60 courses within a few years. Emon looks forward to his con-tinued participation: “It’s an important time for [Undergrad-uates] . . . in terms of their own intellectual development and their place in the world, and I’m delighted to be part of it.”
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Erika Shaker, an author of the CCPA report. “Very deliberate decisions are being made by pro-vincial governments to down-load more of the cost to students and their families. The actual amount of the increases happen to be so large that, in fact, they eclipse inflation and the average income for median families and certainly for low-income fami-lies.”
Despite this condemnation of tuition hikes, the Ontario government maintains that the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) is one of the most generous in the country. “The government is committed to making postsecondary edu-cation accessible on the basis of ability to learn, not ability to pay,” said Gyula Kovacs, Se-nior Media Relations and Issues Coordinator of the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universi-ties.
Because funding for Canadi-an post-secondary institutions is controlled at the provincial level, both tuition fees and the amount of revenue contributed by the government vary drasti-cally across the country.
“Different jurisdictions face
different post-secondary educa-tion challenges,” added Kovacs. “Since 2002-03, post-secondary education enrolment in Ontario has increased by 150,000 full-time students, much more than in any other province. Ontario has supported the enrolment of new students through significant increases to operating grants to colleges and universities, capital investments and enhancements to student financial aid.”
However, opponents of the increases remain unsatisfied. “Between 1979 and 2009, the proportion of university operat-ing revenue provided by govern-ment sources dropped from 84 per cent to 65 per cent and the amount from tuition increased from 12 per cent to 35 per cent,” said Shaker. “Within that, prov-inces have made their own very different choices.”
Ontario tuition fee increases are currently capped at a maxi-mum annual rate of 4.3 per cent for the entering year of most college and undergraduate pro-grams, 8 per cent for the enter-ing year of graduate and high-demand university and college programs, and 4 per cent for all subsequent years of enrolment.
Both the CCPA and the StatsCan reports indicate that
the average Ontario student paid $7,513 last year. Tuition in New-foundland and Labrador, which has been frozen since 2003-04, was only $2,861. In Quebec, in response to the massive student protests that took place over the last academic year, the newly elected Parti Quebecois have promised to scrap the tuition in-creases proposed by the Liberal government. As a result, Quebec tuition remains the second low-est in the country at $3,278.
“It’s very inspiring seeing the folks in Quebec be able to come together to refute what’s going on,” said Abigail Cujoe, UTSU VP External Affairs. “It’s a very different context in Ontario compared to what’s happening in other provinces.”
While the student move-ment in Ontario managed to procure a 30 per cent tuition rebate in 2011, many support-ers of the movement claim that the Liberal party was deceptive in promising this rebate as it only applies to a select group of students. Although there have been several smaller protests re-cently, Ontario has yet to expe-rience anything on the scale of the Quebec student movement.
from “Tuition”
control. Some of the recommenda-
tions could take effect before
the end of the year, according to Murray, but others may require legislation.
4 September 20, 2012 THE DEBATE
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Government should get bigger, so we don’t
The hard truth is that most people need help in maintain-ing a healthy lifestyle. The government needs to increase their role in regulating our nutrition by restricting un-healthy products that corpora-tions introduce to the market, and by controlling the types of food served in our schools.
According to Statistics Canada, in 2007 to 2009, nearly a quarter of all Cana-dians could be categorized as obese. In 2004, 26 per cent of children between the ages of 2 and 17 could be catego-rized overweight or obese, compared with 15 per cent in 1979. If the government fails to be more vigilant over what money-hungry food companies put out on the market, who will protect us?
Past government attempts to remedy this situation, such as introducing the food guide pyramid and mandating that
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There’s no doubt that obe-sity is literally a huge problem in North America, but finding a solution has proven to be more challenging. Some gov-ernment officials, notably New York Mayor Michael Bloomb-erg, believe that stricter regula-tion will help curb the trend. In a story that has garnered inter-national attention, New York’s Board of Health passed a ban on the sale of soft drinks over 20oz (600ml). Increased pres-sure has prompted restaurants and franchises (McDonalds in particular) to display calorie counts on all of their menus.
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First off, these efforts are nothing new. We can draw on a past example with placing warning labels on cigarettes. The argument was that when the public is uninformed that what they consume could be dangerous, swift action must be taken. However, fast food works under a completely dif-ferent set of circumstances. Unlike the cigarette industry, which used to enjoy endorse-ments from doctors, we’re now living in a generation obsessed with healthy eating and nutri-tion. The public is bombarded with countless nutritional studies, thousands of diets and magical weight-loss programs.
This all boils down to a ba-sic point: The public is more informed than ever that fast food is unhealthy. The people Mayor Bloomberg is trying to help, shoving their faces into Baconators and guzzling 20oz soft drinks know it too. Displaying calorie contents at McDonalds will only satisfy people who obsess over eve-rything they eat, and won’t curb people from consuming what they already know is un-healthy. The city telling peo-ple how much they can and cannot consume is simply of-fensive, not effective. It insinu-ates that we can’t take care of ourselves and require bureau-
crats to make the “tough” de-cisions instead. With obvious loopholes such as the govern-ment’s ability to enforce, and the many fast food joints that offer unlimited refills, this size ban will likely prove fruitless.
One of the best solutions to obesity can be found through the fast food industry itself. As fast food continues to be demonized in popular culture, restaurants have been forced to come up with healthier food options. Not only does this im-prove the health of the gen-eral public, it creates a whole new health-conscious demo-graphic interested in fast food. If this new consumer demand
continues to rise, we’ll see less of a need for wasteful govern-ment intervention. Instead we can let fast food giants com-pete for profit by selling tastier and healthier food on the free market, something that ef-fectively benefits everyone.
Big Brother won’t let anyone get any bigger. Last week, McDonalds locations south of the border began listing calo-rie counts on all its menu items. Recent US Supreme Court decision to uphold President Barack Obama’s healthcare plan included the mandate that res-taurant chains with over 20 locations must post calorie info. Additionally, state governments are not taking the obesity issue lightly. New York City board of health decision to prohibit the sale of fountain sodas over 16 oz (473 ml). With over a third of American adults cat-egorized as obese, the US is certainly the heavyweight champion, but Cana-da is not far behind.
corporations label their prod-ucts, are vital but not enough. Regulation should extend to the types of food available in school cafeterias. In my high school, my choices were lim-ited to things such as French fries, hamburgers, hot dogs and pizza. Needless to say, I ended up bringing lunch boxes for three years in a row! While vegetarian options are much healthier than junk food, many students are not even aware of them, let alone think
about the lack of availability. The government needs to
invest in more programs that provide our students with a proper nutrition education, and create more resources that encourage and enable families to eat healthier. It is pretty ob-vious what needs to be done: the government needs to take control, keep a closer eye on food companies and get rid of those vending machines.
What is the Canadian government’s role in regulating our diet?
www.thenewspaper.ca 5 THE INSIDE
Justin Beattie
Hipster clothing retailer, Urban Outfitters, has drawn attention from the US arts community for its recurring theft of jew-elry designs and other artwork. Last week, the retailer’s unethi-cal practices ventured into the Toronto arts community, and approached local Graphic Art-ist Alicia Nauta with an offer to retail her work.
Featured over a year ago in the Village Voice, the clothing retailer manufactured one-to-one reproductions of a series of pendants without any consulta-tion from designer, Chicago art-ist Stevie Koerner. Along with a Navajo-themed liquor flask, this is just another example of unethically sourced products on Urban Outfitters’ shelves.
On Tuesday, September 11, Urban Outfitters contacted Ali-cia Nauta, OCAD University graduate and resident artist of her Murdertides blog, offering to mass-produce three pieces of her artwork to be sold as wall-art. This would seem like the big break she had been waiting for, a multinational company offering to license her work so it could be sold in stores across North America. But the offer was a pittance: one dollar out of the $24 price tag slated for the 600 reproductions Urban Out-fitters planned to make. Natu-rally, she declined the offer.
This is well out of line with what artists, even emerging ones, should expect to receive in compensation for licens-ing their work. If Nauta had awarded Urban Outfitters a full license, the company could to continue to reproduce her work indefinitely without offering any further financial compen-sation. Better than stealing, but not by much.
What was even more trou-bling to Nauta was that the initial email from Urban Outfit-ters included three copies of her prints sourced from her Blog, obtained without her prior au-thorization.
According to Kathryn Ad-ams, a freelance illustrator and Business Practices instructor at Sheridan College and OCAD U, “That would be like walk-ing into a shoe store, taking the shoes out of the store...wearing them home... then calling the store and saying...you know, I really like these shoes, so I’m going to give you ten bucks for them even though they’re marked in the store...at $200.”
Adams noted that taking an artist’s work without asking is a common business practice
Left:
ARTISTS, COPYRIGHT, AND URBAN OUTLAWSCopyright, copy wrong and the status of emerging artists in Canada
among many larger retailers. In Canada, the copyright for artistic work is automatically awarded to the creator, requir-ing no further action on the part of the artist. However, without any kind of regulated registra-tion process, proving ownership of the art is difficult at best.
Adams suggests registering work with the U.S. Copyright Office for a fee of about $50 per item as more secure proof of copyright should legal pro-ceedings begin. While not an insignificant cost for emerging artists like Nauta, this is a small amount in comparison to the le-gal fees required for an artist to pursue a copyright claim in civil court, which can often amount to more than the artist would be awarded in settlement should the case eventually prove suc-cessful.
Since these cases are dealt with in civil court, it is up to the artist to prove that it is in-deed her image used without
her consent, and requires no ac-tion on the part of the offender. What is even more concerning for Adams is that unlike the United States, where legislation mandates certain levels of com-pensation, Canada has no stan-dardized awards for successful cases. When artists’ claims are successful, they often receive no more than they would have originally charged to legally li-cense their work.
Unsurprisingly, financial bar-riers faced by artists attempting to pursue a case of copyright infringement in court often prevent them from ever doing so. Adams notes that large com-panies, like Urban Outfitters, with their formidable financial resources are aware of this ad-vantage.
For large companies, appro-priating work without consent proves to be a more cost effec-tive business practice when compared to ethically licensing work from artists.
While organizations like Ac-cess Copyright Canada offer ad-vice and support to artists trying to protect their work, Adams concludes that, as it stands, the legislation simply isn’t there to lend the advantage, or even a level playing field, to individual artists.
While Nauta took the oppor-tunity to remind Urban Outfit-ters of her copyright and their past transgressions against oth-er artists, she received only a cor-dial but evasive e-mail in reply. Should they choose to use her work without her consent, the advantage still belongs to them.
Above: “There are too many shadows” screenprint by artist Alicia Nauta, pictured below.
>> Hear ye, hear ye. Find out more about this story, listen to the podcast online at thenewspaper.ca
6 September 20, 2012 THE ARTS
From disability to remarkabilityThe Abilities Art Festival breaks barriers
Degas once said, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” The same can be said for disability, and the Arts Abilities Festival will be making Torontonians see, starting this week.
Abilities presents the work of artists with disabilities ei-ther visible or invisible. It was founded ten years ago by artist Sharon Wolfe, partially in re-sponse to a remark by a friend of hers. “Her friend, who had MS, commented, ‘We have Caribana and Pride and all these parades in Toronto, there ought to be a disability parade, we ought to celebrate this,’” relayed the festival’s Execu-tive Director, Rina Fraticelli. Instead of a parade, the festival was developed and it has seen incredible growth since, with the addition of a media and children’s component as well.
“It’s interesting because we’re a multidisciplinary fes-tival, so it’s kind of hard to pigeonhole that way; plus To-ronto is so rich in art that we
Vanessa Purdy
This hour has 60 minutesU of T students take funny-making into their own hands
If there’s one thing U of T stu-dents are known for, it’s prob-ably not their love of laughter and relaxation. Current stu-dents Jacob Duarte-Spiel and Alexander Saxton have defied that stereotype, large-scale, with their monthly comedy show aptly titled One Hour Fun Hour.
Held at the Crown and Tiger, One Hour has featured some of Toronto’s--and Canada’s--top comedic talent, with names like Scott Thompson and Dave Merheje gracing (or more likely, pacing) the stage. Com-ing up on its first anniversary, it appears that the show is be-coming a staple on the stand-up scene, although that wasn’t always a certainty for its crea-tors.
“The first show was just a trial run to see if it would work; and it did, we packed the venue,” explained Duarte-Spiel to the newspaper earlier this week.
Since then, it’s been a good ride for the childhood friends. Duarte-Spiel and Saxton grew up with deep appreciation for comedy--Patton Oswalt, Paul F. Tompkins and Louis CK are among their favourites--and despite studying History and Immunology, respectively, they never lost their drive to make people laugh. One Hour is almost a way to help ensure other students don’t either.
“You can never stop focusing on the youth element. There are always more people com-ing to university and that’s when people get interested in seeing live comedy; and they’ll be more likely to nurture that interest later in life,” Duarte-Spiel explained. Saxton added, “It’s the the sweet nicotine of comedy.”
“You can use it [comedy] for good or evil...we use it for evil, to make people spend their time in a basement surround-ed by alcohol,” Duarte-Spiel clarified.
Although in a basement, One Hour isn’t the average To-ronto stand-up show. “I think that because we don’t do this for a living it gives us a differ-ent perspective and different priorities,” said Duarte-Spiel.
The complete show is avail-able on iTunes in podcast form, a sure sign of its growing popularity and commitment to making itself appealing and accessible to the academic, not excluding the nerdy university crowd.
“I think a lot of comics are nerds, and it’s nice for them to have an audience where they can talk about stuff people wouldn’t normally get,” mused Saxton. “You don’t have to ex-plain who Peter Dinklage is to our audience.”
You can catch the next One Hour Fun Hour at 10pm this Saturday, venue TBA. Perform-ers include U of T alumnus and recent Comedy Brawl finalist Diana Bailey. PWYC.
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really have to open the gates as much as we can,” Fraticelli explained. “While Abilities is exceedingly successful with-in its sphere, it doesn’t really have profiles outside of it...it’s kind of one of those best-kept secrets.”
In honour of its tenth anni-versary, Abilities is launching Canada’s first ever artist-in-res-idence position for a disability-identified artist.
“Generally speaking, people don’t like to be called disabled because in a lot of cases the dis-
ability is in the way in which the society contextualizes it,” Fraticelli explained. “It’s like we learned with the women’s movement...we need to ensure that underrepresented groups get to represent themselves.”
Abilities will be participat-
ing in this year’s Nuit Blanche. “We wanted to kind of take over a Queen streetcar and get the festival out of the closeted space where only people who know about it know about it, but the streetcar isn’t acces-sible,” Fraticelli recounts of their original Nuit Blanche plan. Instead, their installment is called “The Listening Post,” featuring site-specific audio-plays told by eloquent story-tellers, that cover a selection of topics from the toils of the original inpatients of CAMH to a drunken odyssey.
It all comes down to art ac-cessibility, and it works both ways. Said Fraticelli, “What we’re doing here is removing obstacles, both from prevent-ing the artist from doing their work, and also those that im-pede the audience from get-ting to their work.”
Abilities Arts Festival runs September 20th-October 11th. Visit abilitiesartsfestival.org for more information.
Work by festival artists Mike Monize & Natalia Isak.
After a year without a Toronto festival, Just For Laughs makes its triumphant return to the city rechristened as JFL42. And along with the new name they’ve decided to make some changes.
The most significant change to the festival, however, comes in the ways in which the per-formances are ticketed. You must have a Facebook account to purchase a ticket to the fes-tival, as your pass and all res-ervations are associated with that account.
Additionally, organizers have made it clear that smart-phones are the preferred method of interacting with the festival, remarking on their website that “for the fullest fes-tival experience, a smartphone is the way to go.” This helps them to enforce the non-trans-ferrable nature of the passes.
A single pass affords you ac-cess to every act over the eight days of the festival, but you can’t reserve seats for every show all at once. Depending on whether you buy the $99 or $149 pass, you are allotted four or eight credits respectively.
You can use one credit to re-serve a spot at a performance, but you get the credit back once the performance is com-plete so that you may use it to reserve a spot at another per-formance.
The only exception to this rule is the festival headliner – Louis CK. Having rocketed to stardom with his FX show and near-annual standup specials, the organizers have recog-nized that his appearance will likely eclipse most of the other acts, and have guaranteed eve-ry pass-holder a seat at one of his four shows.
However if all seats are taken for your show, you are still able to “show interest” in that per-formance via your online ac-count, which puts you in a vir-tual waiting list for any seats that might become available. This also allows the organizers to move acts around to to larg-er or more intimate venues, de-pending on audience interest.
No longer are the acts at the festival limited to just comedy. There will also be modern art exhibits and performances, documentary screenings, and
www.thenewspaper.ca 7 THE ARTS
Buy a smart phone just for a laughAnnual comedy festival returns to Toronto, gets a 21st century upgrade
Dan Christensen
even a poetry slam under the festival banner.
As for the comedy itself, an effort has been made to make the slate of acts more attuned to alternative. Widely-recog-nized names from 2010’s fes-tival such as Everybody Loves Raymond’s Brad Garrett, and Whose Line Is It Anyways’ Wayne Brady have been re-placed by lesser known acts like beatboxer-cum-musical comedian Reggie Watts, the deadpan stand-up stylings of Todd Barry, or a taping of Chris Hardwick’s geek-culture ori-ented The Nerdist Podcast.
In fact, Andy Kindler, a fa-vourite at the Montreal festi-val for his annual roast-like State of the Industry address is hosting The Alternative Show, a line-up of just such rising talents whose fan base isn’t as well represented by the Niels-en TV ratings. He gave us some insights on his comedy, his ad-dress this year at the Montreal festival, and the festival head-liner, Louis CK.
Newspaper: People call your comedy very self-referen-tial, I might describe you as self-conscious, or self-depre-cating maybe.Andy: Yeah, all those qualities that you have chosen so far I would agree with. I think still reverential, I have incredible reverence for myself. The trick is: tell the joke, you comment
on how the joke did, then you blame the crowd for not get-ting the joke, and then you condescendingly explain what the joke meant, then you talk about how you’re feeling now that the joke has been told and the people haven’t liked it and you have mixed feelings about yourself, and goodnight, drive safe.
Some comedians have a per-sona on stage that is really different from the way they are in real life. Would you say that’s true for you?Well, I would say there’s no dif-ference. The only difference be-tween my personality on stage and off stage is that on stage I know that I have to try and get through a joke. And yet, I’ll still belabour it. A lot of times on stage I’ll be in the middle of a joke and I’ll realize “oh, I was supposed to put a punchline here.” I need to work on that. Note to self. Work on jokes off-stage.
How long have you been do-ing the State of the Industry address that you do at Just For Laughs Montreal?I’ve been doing that speech since 1995.
N: There was a ton of press about your comments about Louis CK because he’s a hugely successful comic right now. People are saying ‘Andy Kindler hates Louis
CK,’ ‘he’s out to destroy Lou-is CK.’ Do you think what you were saying was taken out of context?I did this speech, which I al-ways do, and I did go after Louis CK in the speech. But a lot of times times when I do the speech I’ll go after people that we all agree are pretty hor-rible, so we all laugh. Like Jay Leno. But people really didn’t agree with me about Louis CK because he is, as you say, a be-loved figure. The thing about the Louis stuff was that I had mixed feelings about it. It’s not that I don’t think Louis is talented and it’s not that what I was talking about was really all about Louis, it was more
about how the media deals with a phenomenon some-times so that it’s almost like there is an emperor-wears-no Clothes type of atmosphere created.
Do you know Louis person-ally? Did it have any effect on you?It’s not like we’re enemies. In the old days we were friends, but I wouldn’t consider us friends now. Some comedi-ans assume that I was tight with Louis or you know, like I’m Judas. He is Jesus and they thought I was Judas. But I’d say I’m more like the Doubting Thomas.
Can you tell us a little about the current state of comedy and The Alternative Show that you’ll be hosting at this year’s festival?At Montreal [Just For Laughs] in 1997 or ‘98 I started this al-ternative show. Comedy in the early to late 90s was so homog-enized and so a lot of comedi-ans like me formed this other movement. But now it’s really exciting. The show I did in montreal this last year expand-ed to four nights and we never did anything [like that before]. I really do think this might be the best time period I’ve ever seen for stand-up there’s so many really funny people doing just so many different types of things.
Check thenewspaper.ca for the full interview.
A lot of times on stage I’ll be in the middle of a joke and I’ll realize “oh, I was supposed to put a punchline here.” I need to work on that. Note to self. Work on jokes offstage. -Andy Kindler
8 September 20, 2012THE END
the newspaper asked: What’s something cool or interesting you found discarded, in the garbage, in the street or wherever?
2
CASSANDRA Humanities, 1st year“I found a perfectly new-looking pair of running shoes on the street, and I wondered about who would’ve left them. They weren’t my size, so I left them.”
HAMMER Life Sciences, 1st year“I found a Barney costume and I wore it to halloween.”
KHATIJA Environmental Studies, 1st year“On the street, I found a children’s electronic toy that tells you facts about giraffes when you press the buttons!”
LOUIS Visual Arts, 2nd year “I found an awesome yellow wooden chair on the street in a pile of garbage. I brought it home to my room in Toronto, and eventually it came with me when I moved to Montreal.”
FELI
CIA
PER
RIC
ELLI
MICHAEL EEB Economics, 2nd year“I was walking around High Park the other day and I found a creepy stuffed elephant toy in a tree. I left it there.”
ILEEA Psychology, 4th year“Well, last week my boss found a plastic spoon in the gar-bage. He picked it up and put it in the sink so we could wash and re-use it.”
the campus comment
““
U of T scores high on international green cardsSustainable practices on campus help reduce our carbon footprint
If these garbage bins could talk.
Why is the University of Toron-to thanking us for thinking? As proclaimed by posters plastered all over the university walls, your green thinking has helped UofT achieve a record 71.4 per cent diversion rate in 2011. This means that over 70 per cent of waste materials on the St. George Campus were recycled, and thus diverted from landfills.
Will Warnica, Sustainability Commissioner for the Univer-sity of Toronto Students’ Union, points to the almost universal placement of recycling bins wherever garbage cans ap-pear on campus. Warnica adds, “many bins are also labelled with pictures of recyclable items to help students correctly sort their waste.”
Beyond our recycling pro-grammes, the University of To-ronto boasts many sustainabil-ity successes over the years.
The Strategic Plan for the University of Toronto Sustain-ability Office compiles reports from third party groups such as the Sustainable Endowment In-stitute’s Green Report Card. Ac-cording to its website, the Col-lege Sustainability Report Card is “the only comparative evalu-ation of campus and endow-ment sustainability activities at
colleges and universities in the United States and in Canada.” U of T rates an A-, a comparable rat-ing to most Ivy League schools, but below Brown and Yale. The report specifically commended the U of T’s dining halls on com-posting pre- and post-meal food scraps.
The Facilities and Services de-partment has worked to reduce the university’s carbon footprint for over 45 years. Starting from the 1964 switch from coal to gas boilers, improvements have been made in electrical savings, grounds keeping, recycling, and thermal and water savings.
The University of Toronto has received several sustainability awards. In 2009 the Exam Cen-tre became a LEED Gold Certi-fication, an internationally-rec-ognized designation for green design and construction. This year, U of T was named one of Canada’s Greenest Employers by Canada’s Top 100 Employers project for its commitment to sustainability.
But we aren’t perfect. Will Warnica laments the limited places for organic waste dis-posal, which “would make a big difference to UofT’s waste diver-sion.” Plus, according to Warni-ca there are rumors of funding cuts to sustainability offices on UTM and UTSC campuses, and
Sebastian Greenholtz
BO
DI B
OLD
since “sustainability offices are crucial for promoting sustain-ability initiatives and ensuring appropriate policies are enact-ed” this indicates further weak-ness.
An indication of the com-mitment University of Toronto students have towards sustain-ability comes from the number of clubs and student groups involved in greening UofT. The
Sustainability Office lists 15 dif-ferent environmental student groups, from college environ-mental clubs, to the “Print Dou-ble Sided” club, promoting the use of double-sided printing to reduce paper waste.
University of Toronto has a clear green streak running through students and faculty alike, and both sides work to make campus even greener. The
UTSU Sustainability Commis-sion plans to lobby this year for more water fountains and pro-motion of campus agriculture. Compared to peer universities, U of T leads in greenhouse gas emission reduction, recycling, food service, and transportation. We may be a giant university but we don’t have a giant impact on the environment.
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