You’ve seen him do the Soulja Boy in his underwear and you’ve seen him in a banana costume. This time he’s running through the U of T campus, New Ho King, and a grocery store dressed as a chicken. Why?
I believe being confident or cocky is a personal characteristic that’s developed over time. Being confident has nothing to do with one’s race.
Now that school’s over and I’m all refreshed and relaxed and able to type long texts without feeling anxious, depressed and tired, I figured it was about time I wrote a second part to my wanderings on Nostalgia Crescent. Besides, I’m sure that it’ll help recover some of our souls from the institution known as the University of Toronto. In my last post, many of you mentioned a lot of old TV shows we used to enjoy as children. Now, again, this will not apply to you if you did not grow up in Canada in the 90s, so I welcome you to write your own post. In any case, I’ll try and think up as many shows as I can. I’ve already mentioned a few anime titles, such as Pokemon, Digimon, Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon in my last trip down memory lane, so I’ll refrain from mentioning them again. Anyways, let’s start the second part of our journey down Nostalgia Crescent with… (more…)
SexyDragon (a.k.a. Yang) is back with another video in which he is running around Toronto in a banana costume. Why? A banana is white on the inside and yellow on the outside — this is how some people describe Asians who are so-called “white-washed.” Yang wants to emphasize how silly it is to label people this way, by being an actual banana!
By now, a lot of you have probably seen the video of this crazy Asian guy dancing in public all across Toronto, groovin’ to Soulja Boy, in his underwear. The purported reason for the video is to break the stereotype that Asians are shy. Are Asians shy? How does this video break that stereotype? Over at blogTO the video has already been receiving some heated comments, from applause, to critique of his dance moves, to some pretty critical commentary on Sexy Dragon as a person.
Well, we at blogUT figured the best way to understand the reason behind this madness was to go talk to the man himself! After all, he’s a U of T Electrical Engineering student. So, what’s his story? Read on to find out! (more…)
After three days of voting, the UTSU 2010 Election results are in. “Stronger Together” won five out of the five executive positions with “Change UofT” winning 7 BOD spots. Approximately 16.4% of the 44,000 undergrads who attend the University of Toronto voted (which is a lower turnout than the 2006 municipal election in my home town of Whitby Ontario). President-elect Adam Awad received 58.24% of the votes cast for President which means only 9.3% of U of T students voted for him.
With this in mind, let me be the first person to arrogantly prescribe a complete overhaul of the political system here at U of T. Here, in no particular order, is what I would change:
Scrap 90% of the EPC:
If the University of Toronto consistently gets one thing right, it’s treating us like adults. The UTSU Elections Procedures Code does the exact opposite. The EPC assumes that voters at the best University in the country won’t be able to recognize false information on a poster or punish candidates who have annoying literature. It lets Adam Awad and Steve Masse run on their records but denies either campaign the ability to question their opponent’s past performance. Before the next election, the UTSU should remove the prohibition of pre-campaigning, allow for negative campaigning and unfetter the candidates. The institution of the University is built on a philosophy of intelligent and honest debate. The EPC’s definition of “fair play” is so narrow that candidates are prevented from really interacting with each other, segregating their ideas and stopping them from entering the political sphere.
The UTSU can keep the rules that facilitate the actual casting of votes but should remove all of the rules that get in the way of what. While this doesn’t require a completely libertarian UTSU electoral process, new rules can and must be brought in as the status-quo is rigid and counter-democratic.
Formalize official UTSU Political Parties:
If you want to engage students in the political process, make it openly partisan. In the 2010 election various clubs picked sides and both sides engaged in behind-the-scenes negative campaigning. If pre-campaigning was no longer prohibited opposition groups would actually have a chance at winning (there has been a 100% incumbency rate over the last five years) and it would make the UTSU visible all year, not just during the elections. The EPC has very strict spending rules, which are intended to level the playing field. If political parties were formalized (they already sort-of exist but only in the shadows) and students fund raised (limited to donations from U of T students only) it would further increase interest in the political process. Members of the UTSU executive are visible and get to campaign-without-really-campaigning in office. If political parties existed (with rules prohibiting affiliation with any outside political party) every candidate would be incentivized to have a full-fleshed out platform with a website that exists all year (I’d like to clarify that I am not anti-point form but ST/Change could have done a lot better) instead of creating a website in a rush, from scratch with low site-traffic.
Political parties will level the playing field, engage more students all-year-round and raise the level of debate to one appropriate for the University of Toronto.
I just thought that something like this would be amusing to write considering that I’ve been going through several weeks of non-stop total exhaustion all thanks to my courseload of 6 courses. Without further ado, here are 10 things that all or at least most of you should relate to if you are, in fact, a student at university. (more…)
If you missed the last Overheard on Twitter, you can check it out here.
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