The Black Students’ Association will be hosting its 14^th Annual High School Conference, entitled SWAG: Students with Academic Goals, on Tuesday, May 7^th at the University of Toronto’s St. George Campus.

A key part of the Black Students’ Association’s mandate is to support aspiring post-secondary students. Critical to the actualization of this mandate is the annual High School Conference, which provides opportunities for high school students to learn from leaders and role-models within our community .

An expected 450 students will attend workshops facilitated by self-identifying minority post-secondary students, and professionals from various industries. The professionals will discuss their careers and the steps they took to achieve their positions. The High School Conference will provide students with the tools necessary to begin their preparation for post-secondary education.

For more information about the conference, please contact:

Hawa Noor, Director of Communications
hawaanoor@gmail.com

First, I’d like to apologize. To poetry fans. To English students. To anyone who’s had any cursory exposure to literature and the search for deeper meaning in words beyond how nicely they fit into blog post titles. And of course, to Mr Eliot.

April is the cruelest month, though, at least for students. It’s exam and final essay time, that moment when the pedagogical procrastination that manifests itself as culminating assignments of obscenely high value rears its ugly head. Or ass. Excuse me; I’m frustrated.

I am frustrated because just yesterday I completed the first of my two exams this semester (the other is on the 29th; go figure) and just this evening I incorrectly answered a Jeopardy question about a topic that had been on the exam. Now, I’m almost certain I got that question right on the test, which means that in the twenty or since, I forgot something fairly important. Something fairly important that I learnt in a class that cost almost a thousand dollars. Something important and expensive that I spent twenty-four hours of class time learning and another thirty or so studying.

Rather than try to project my own experience on to you (I’m honest like that), I’ll ask you to think back to your winter examinations. If you had to take them again, right now, how much lower would your mark be? 10%? 20? “But of course it will be lower,” you say. “That was months ago.” “But,” I say, “why would you take a class if not to learn? And what is learning if not remembering and understanding after the fact?” And therein lies the problem: final exams are not conducive to learning.

They’re not necessarily obstructive, either; there’s no evidence to suggest that culminating exams encourage the forgetting of information, but there’s very little to suggest that they actually evaluate what students will retain. The most common form of preparation is studying all the relevant material at once, over the course of a few weeks or days. This leads to cramming, which, even when it does lead to higher exam grades – which is not as often as you might think – it almost always leads to lower long-term retention. This can be attributed to the distinction between long-term memory and working memory. (Here I apologize again, to psychology and neuroscience students.) Speaking generally, working memory lasts only in the short term, when the mind is focused on a project and the brain is employing all necessary processes and stressors to complete that project. Once that project is done, the memory is largely discarded as it is no longer useful.¹

Long-term memory, however, is not subject to the fallacies of short-term methods like cramming, and is activated by studying important material in smaller chunks over a large period of time. Think back to a class that had multiple smaller evaluations throughout the year. How well do you remember material from that course, compared to the others you took that year? I know that I can tell you way more about De Morgan’s Theorem than I can about religious imagery in Skyscrapers of the Midwest, and that I can offer much more insight into the influence of African culture in the Caribbean than I can to um, that Shaw play with the guns. Long-term memory is simply better stimulated through evaluations spread out across the year, rather than only once or twice.

These kinds of observations have not gone unnoticed. At Harvard University, for instance, only 23% of classes end in final exams.² Elsewhere in the world, universities are slowly turning to alternative methods to final exams, including the obvious choice of fewer, smaller evaluations. Not as always, the University of Toronto is fairly slow to catch up (that’s the closest thing to a compliment that I can give right now.) Although the percentage of classes with final exams is decreasing, they are still the norm and, in fact, mandatory in first-year courses.³ Welcome to UofT!

I recognize that there isn’t any actually useful information in here. Regardless of whether or not you know how effective exam studying is, you probably still have to do it. It probably still sucks. And you probably won’t remember much of it in a short while. Cruel, eh?

Opinions shared in this post belong solely to the author and do not reflect the opinions of the blog.

I’m probably not the only one who was left feeling discontent following last week’s lackluster UTSU election campaign period. We only had one slate running, the debate was so unremarkable that, even after sitting through the whole thing, I had nothing to say about it, and the platform was typical. Team Renew was trying to renew the campus, no doubt, in the same way you would renew a library card. Same books, new card.

I’ve said before that it seems like Team Renew isn’t keen on talking to anyone, especially since they have no real reason to. Well, now someone is talking, and that someone is ex-VP External Candidate, Sana Ali.

Here’s a quick summary of her letter:

• Her job wasn’t to use her brain (her words), but to fulfill a predetermined set of mandates that haven’t changed much over the years.
• The team runs supreme, and everyone part of it must find a way to conform, apparently without question.
• Different opinions will not be tolerated.
• Most importantly: the people are well-meaning and progressive, but the system is corrupt.

So what does this mean?

Well, first is that there are serious communication issues within our student government. It should be no surprise to most of us that the hottest student politics topic this year is the push for defederation by three colleges and one faculty. The biggest reason for is because many of those college and faculty unions think the UTSU is incompetent and unable to meet their needs (that’s the nicest way I can put it). It’s one thing to have other groups criticizing the big guy, but to have one of their own? That’s huge.

Second, it goes far beyond ideology. She talked about being stifled, and the suffocating nature of groupthink. She talked about how her statements were reviewed, and how everything was submitted by the same person. What she said isn’t anything new, but she was the first to say something about it. By doing so, she exposed the inner party politics that exists within our union. Does this make UTSU any different than any other political body? Or any other organization, for that matter? I don’t think so.

I thought it was very nice of Sana to not point anyone out and criticize people explicitly. As far as I can tell, a major reason why she’s pulling out is that her beliefs didn’t match up with the rest of theirs, and that led to undesirable circumstances. She was kept from talking to her friends and conversing meaningfully during the campaign. But even through all that, she doesn’t name any names. That was very classy of her.

Finally, with all the buzz Sana’s letter is generating, I am hoping that this will get more students interested in how our university works. As harsh as this may sound, this kind of press is exactly the kind of thing that gets people going. Team Renew and UTSU will be forced to address this and, if they don’t, it’s indicative of how our unions are run. I want them to take this chance to really review and think critically about what has happened, and what is wrong with the system.

For Team Renew, I want you to consider just how effective and novel your slate is. Is your platform really a bunch of antiquated mandates, and is there really no plan other than to “work together”? That seems sort of flaky. And are you really not letting your candidates talk to “one of them“? Are you five?

For UTSU and all the bodies under it, I want you to take this opportunity to put it all out in the open. The spotlight is on you now, and if things go the way I think they should go, then more people will be asking questions. Your communication skills are lacking. You need to review your agenda. I know you implemented many suggested changes this year, but most of us don’t know about them, and that’s a problem. If you want to address the discontent that is definitely spreading among our colleges and faculties, that’s the least you can do.

For all defederating student bodies, no doubt you think this as a major victory. It really isn’t. First, if you’re going to defederate anyway, whatever happens with UTSU doesn’t matter to you so you shouldn’t spend your time caring in the first place. If your referenda go through, then focus on making your colleges and faculties a better place, not on rubbing it in the UTSU’s face. Second, if you don’t defederate, then you’re just like the rest of us – we don’t have a VP External. I’m not sure how that will play out but, either way, you’ll be just as worse off as the rest of us.

And to all of you, are you really doing this for us, the students, or are you doing this for your bruised egos, as Sana suggests?

Critical thinking doesn’t mean just being critical of others, but being critical of yourself as well. I dare all of the parties and teams I mentioned about to criticize themselves. Seriously. Can you do it?

There’s this one line Sana wrote that didn’t sit well with me:

The day of the All-Candidate’s Meeting when it was revealed that nobody would be running against the team, I was really upset because I saw it as a massive call for reform. When I brought this up, I was told that it did not mean no-one had faith in the system, it simply meant that people were too lazy to put in the work.

Politics isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Some people just have no interest or are repulsed by politics in general, which is fair. And others, like me, like to talk about it (some much more obnoxiously than others) but would never run for it, and that’s fair too. But the least we can do is listen in once in a while, and maybe question things that our governing bodies are doing. You may not care about it now, but one day they may bring up an issue that will affect you. Show that you care in your own little way. We’re adults now, and this sort of practice will extend to “real world” things, like municipal, provincial, and national elections.

Besides, I resent being called lazy. Don’t you?

This is probably the most exciting thing that has happened during the UTSU elections in the past few years. This is even more exciting than the tragic campus bar. There is no word on what the CRO will do in response to her withdrawal this late in the game. I also have no idea what will happen to that empty position. Perhaps a by-election in the fall? Everything will likely fall in the hands of the CRO and the rulebooks.

For those out of the social media loop, student news feeds were overrun today by links to a public Facebook note by Sana Ali, the unopposed Team RENEW candidate running for the position of VP External in the on-going UTSU election. In her note, Ali  forfeited the election and terminated her relationship with Team RENEW, and offered some heavy criticisms of the party’s practises regarding open discussion and diversity of thought. She describes attempts to “squash dissent and individuality”, and reveals that her official candidate statement was written for her by the team. She accuses Team RENEW of drastically altering their platform from past slates’, of choosing her because of her ethnicity, of restricting her communication with opposition, and of manipulating students’ ignorance and apathy so as to gain political advantage. Her criticisms are concise, clear, and specific; entirely unlike the whole of her former team’s platform.

At time of press, over one thousand students have liked Ali’s note, an impressive number considering how few follow student politics and how little time the content has had to spread. There are dozens of comments as well, almost all of which are complimentary, often lionizing. Ali’s note is being heralded by some as “an inspiration” and indeed it should be: she’s got us all caring, though perhaps just a little, about a one-sided election.

There is something unintuitive in commending Ali’s action, though. How, exactly, is forfeiting noble? Why are we commending inaction? The answer is both chilling and condemnatory, not of Ali but of the campus that has nurtured the rise of Team RENEW: our state of political affairs is such that the most brazen, powerful action taken by one of our political candidates in recent memory is refusing to take part in something unethical. Ali’s decision is impressive because it is brave and principled, but the consequences of her decision are important not because they are good but because they are not bad. So surrounded are we by the haze of political doublespeak and the murk of self-serving governance that plain honesty’s dim glow is enough to draw us near.

I’m not going to chastise a body of tens of thousands of students, including me, if only because I know it could do no good. We, students, are among the most opinionated and vocal demographics in the world; we are surrounded by geniuses and innovators whose insights we absorb and analyze daily. The discord between our beliefs and refusal to act on them is so immense that there must be an underlying cause so powerful it not only compels us to apathy but blinds us to the extent.

I don’t believe, as Ali suggested, that there is a campus-wide epidemic of mass ignorance. Nor I believe that we are too lazy to mobilize. Apathy is a thing of its own kind; it is emotional inertia. We act only when we care, we care only when we must. We are not an active entity conflicted by the obstacles of ignorance or oppression; we are a motionless body with no apparent incentive to get up and improve our environment. There is, fortunately, unfortunately, simply nothing so terrible or unjust to compel us to take action at all.

Yet.

Opinions shared in this post belong solely to the author and do not reflect the opinions of the blog.

Campus was eerily quiet today. So quiet that I had to double check my phone just to make sure today was, in fact, the first day of campaigning for UTSU elections. Gone are the intense poster wars at 7am. Gone are the heated (and albeit slightly hilarious) slogans shouted with vigour in front of Sid Smith. Gone are the UTSU elections.

Okay, not really. No one can get rid of UTSU (trust me, people have tried). Without further ado, let me introduce to you the one the only slate running this year:

Renew

Executive Board Candidates:

• President: Munib Sajjad
• VP Internal & Services: Cameron Wathey
• VP External: Sana Ali
• VP Equity: Yolen Bollo-Kamara
• VP University Affairs: Agnes So

There are two familiar names up there. Both Munib and Yolen are current UTSU VPs of University Affairs and Campus Life, respectively. Everyone else are rookies to UTSU politics, so how those candidates do remains to be seen. One thing is for sure, with two international students running, Renew is using the diversity card to push their tuition agenda.

—

Chances are, you didn’t know we had UTSU elections this year. That’s okay! Don’t feel bad. You probably aren’t the only one. With the way campaigning week is starting off, you probably won’t be hearing much about it anyway. This is my fourth U of T election, and so far it has been my quietest.

An election is only as engaging as the parties running. It serves both legislative and entertainment purposes. What I mean by that is, an election decides the fate of legislative directions for the coming term, but it is only as interesting as the personalities in the race. In past years, the general formula has been an “incumbent” vs “opposition” race. Slate go head to head over issues they think are relevant to U of T (incumbent) or try to take down The Man (opposition). While voter turnout has always been low at our university, there was at least a buzz on campus. Candidates used to campaign in major campus hubs, and students going to and from class would get at least one pamphlet during the week.

Since Renew is the only slate running, it seems like they have taken the half-assed approach to campaigning. And why shouldn’t they? Why should they put in the same amount of work as previous years if they’re going to win anyway, right? At this point, all executive positions will be filled. Most of the Board of Director positions – with the exception of Trinity, of course – have been acclaimed, meaning that the people running are guaranteed positions on the board. Renew’s website wasn’t up until the afternoon, and as of March 4, 9:15pm their Twitter account is still locked and inactive. The link to their Facebook Page from their website doesn’t work. Once found, it doesn’t really tell us much.

Perhaps I am being too nitpicky about their PR strategy. But think of it this way: with horrible PR, how are they supposed to get the word out? You haven’t got a campaign if no one follows it. I get it though. There’s not point in actually campaigning when there’s no one running against you. It’s practical. It’s pragmatic. And most of all, it tells you just how much Renew wants students to know about their platform.

That isn’t to say Renew is going to sweep the board. Acclaimed positions undergo a “confirmation vote”, meaning that students can vote Yes or No. If enough people vote No or cast an empty ballot, these positions will remain vacant until someone more suitable fills it. So, as decisive as this year’s elections may seem, things can still change at the turn of a dime.

We should know about our student union. It can be as simple as learning about what services and platforms each new executive team has to offer.  Look for these candidates and talk to them. Clearly, they aren’t going to talk to you. It is up to us as U of T students to step up and put running candidates on the spot.

As always, I encourage anyone and everyone to comment and share their opinions. I will be posting my thoughts here on blogUT throughout the election period, so look out for them! If you would like to contact me or you have a tip you want me to talk about, comment below or tweet me at @cjyc23.

Dear BlogUT reader,

Before you take a look at the title of this article, roll your eyes, and choose something less pretentious, please know that I am far from a jazz connoisseur. In fact, while something of a music enthusiast, I know next to nothing about jazz; all I’ve really had to go on for the past 21 years are stereotypical mental images of some fat guy blasting away on a trumpet while a sweaty tweaker bounces around uncontrollably in the audience. So, since I value your time as much as the next girl, and simply know too little about the genre, I won’t be boring you with jargon or technical details, or insightfully describing the “virtuosity of the alto sax”. This article is meant to be the thoughts, recollections, and recommendations of a jazz beginner, noob, philistine, or whatever other degrading term you’d prefer to call me. So, looking to get up close and personal with some real jazz, and not just the one Coltrane album in my collection, I decided to head down to The Rex Jazz & Blues Bar located in the bustling Queen St. West area and get initiated.

The first thing that became apparent as I approached The Rex’s exterior is that it isn’t a stuck-up or intimidating venue in the least. While jazz may conjure up images of stuffy, exclusive clubs, The Rex couldn’t be further from this cliché. The outside of the bar exhibits something of a sleek, retro look, while the interior is Cheers-esque, with wooden finishes and a pervading sense of warmth (Although maybe that was just the central heating. Yowza it’s cold out these days!). I was also heartened to discover that the place was absolutely packed. Although it was a little overwhelming to walk in and be greeted by what seemed to be a wall of people, me and my plus one were lucky enough to find a spot near the back, with seats just high enough to get a glimpse of the stage at the opposite end of the room. The crowd was a mix of all ages, and everyone seemed in good spirits with the drinks flowing and a nice selection of bar food at the standard expensive-but-not-Toronto-expensive prices. I ordered the New York style cheesecake with caramel sauce and was pleasantly surprised: the night was off to a good start.

Up next, a waitress came to our table, but we were told that we absolutely couldn’t be served until we paid our cover charge. Oddly enough, when we arrived there was no one at the door waiting to take our money and stamp us; we had to sit and wait a good 15 minutes before someone came to our table to help us. I also thought the cover was a little steep at $10 a person. It’s nice to support local acts, and so I wasn’t annoyed per se, but considering the place was beyond packed, $5 or even $7 seemed more reasonable to me. Still, for the show that followed, and for the wonderful ambiance of the place as a whole, it was worth giving up a tenner.

The best surprise of the night was when we discovered that the nightly act was the Radiohead Jazz Project, bringing together the Toronto Jazz Orchestra and local tribute band Idioteque. To be introduced to any live jazz that night would’ve been a pleasure, but knowing the songs really helped me get into the spirit of the evening. For the most part, the group sounded very tight and comfortable playing with one another. They burst out of the gates with a freewheeling, beautifully-played version of Bodysnatchers. Without any vocals getting in the way, the trumpets really shone, and the song presented itself in a completely fresh, invigorating way. Paranoid Android in particular was an audience favourite, and had people roaring with delight at every new twist and turn. Yet, as much as I hate to say it, the vocals really let the group down. To begin with, they were far too high in the mix at the start of the night, overpowering the backing band at various points. Yet, even when the vocals were noticeably turned down, the quality of the singing wasn’t up to par, especially when it came to the soaringly high notes Thom Yorke is famous for. In all fairness, few people could ever hope to cover Yorke’s vocals in a convincing or even competent way. Still, it seems to me that the show would be much stronger as a whole if the vocals were simply omitted altogether. It speaks to the strength of the backing band, however, that the lackluster singing didn’t detract much from the overall experience: the show was a rousing success with the crowd, and left me wanting to get out there and explore much more live jazz in the near future.

In summary, while certain elements of the show could’ve done with some reworking, the night as a whole was a wonderful experience, leaving me hopeful that this is but the start of my adventure into the world of jazz. Perhaps I’ll head back on the 25th, when our very own U of T Student Jazz Ensemble hits the stage. Join me?

Junior Editor’s Note: Due to an unfortunate error, this article could not be posted until ten days after it was first written – the “25th” referred to is of February.

The University of Toronto Drama Festival is an annual competition of student-written and -directed plays at Hart House Theatre. This year, blogUT is pleased to provide reviews and critiques of each show for your elucidation and entertainment.

The final night of the festival featured only two shows, which were as different from each other as possible. Fortunately, both seemed to be improvements of other night’s shows: Shazam! acts like the more self-aware brother of Flapjacks, while The Gully accomplishes the interpersonal drama so many other productions worked so hard to almost achieve.

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