April 1, 2008
Varsity Boos
Every year, U of T's student newspaper The Varsity publishes at least one joke issue, and every year in recent memory, it has managed to either seriously offend a few people, confuse a whole lot of people, or just not be funny.
Enter the quest of AlwaysQuestion. There was, if you remember, a protest and sit-in over rising student fees, and a video accusing police of "police brutality." Then there was President David Naylor's response, deeming what occurred "thuggish tactics by mobs" and claiming the accusations of police brutality were "an astonishing display of historical revisionism." Then there was the protest to protest what happened at the protest, along with the anti-protest protest.
Though there's been a lot of discussion generated throughout the university, and a lot of vitriol around the sit-in—much of it directed at the protestors—no one has been quite able to shed light on the ridiculousness of the whole thing, particularly the original video that's now at the centre of the controversy. Not, at least, until yesterday's joke issue of The Varsity, which published the editorial pictured above. (As of yet, it is not available online, but you can view it larger here.) The editorial—photo caption and all—skewers the protestors the most effective way possible: by simply quoting them.
Touché, Varsity, touché.
Photo by David Topping.
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Haha, that's brilliant!
LOL
If those shrieky-voiced kids think that video shows brutality then those are some of the most sheltered and stupid kids ever.
I hope this shames the protesters juuuust a little bit. Hahahaha so good.
They are simply terrorists and should have been dealt with as such. There is no legitimate reason to invade and occupy anyone's office or property.
Too bad they weren't dealt with appropriately.
They probably like grafitti!
BOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I wouldn't go so far as to call them terrorists. I'm certainly not terrified by them.
That's a great editorial, though. I feel bad for the campus police that had to stand there throughout the entire demonstration. Probably didn't have earplugs.
Potential conflict of interest alert! Mathew Katz—The Varsity's Comment Editor, as well as one of our staff writers—e-mailed me to say he wrote the article, which I didn't know (but didn't think was impossible) when I wrote and published this article. I plead ignorance.
And I plead hilarity!
All I can say is lol.
I really hope this sheds some light on the absurdity of the whole situation for the so called protesters, and they don't repeat.
What the heck is going on at my alma mater? With all the pubs and bars around U of T, today's students are seriously disappointing me. Go out and enjoy yourselves. You will have plenty of time to change the world.
LOVES IT! And I'm so glad that the picture is of that girl who was yelling all that garbage. Quoting her ignorance under it is just icing on the cake!
Almost as savagely funny as the editorial is the masthead at the bottom of the same page, all of the names on which have been changed to "Bartholomew Richards."
Terrorists? Was that an April Fools joke?
Is that Bartholomew Richards thing some in-joke for U of T students? I don't get it.
Click Jonathan's link, Ben.
It's a Varsity in-joke, and I'm not aware of any context beyond the blog post that I linked.