It’s been a strange couple of weeks at The Varsity, and it’s time to set the record straight.
“University politics are vicious,” Henry Kissinger famously said, “precisely because the stakes are so small.” With all due respect to Mr. Kissinger-and he isn’t due much-the stakes at The Varsity aren’t small. This is a half-million dollar corporation, the oldest and largest student-run newspaper in Canada, and the place where dozens of top journalists working today got their start. The people who work at The Varsity are fiercely protective of it, and, it has to be said, don’t like other people messing with it. In a word, we give a damn.
Tension between the editorial staff of the paper (the reporters, photographers, and editors) and the paper’s Board of Directors (the elected volunteers who are responsible for its financial well-being) built up over the past year, and in April, it burst. At its core, the dispute was over how The Varsity’s editorial staff should be chosen: the board wanted to start hiring editors, while the staff wanted to keep the process the way it was-editors elected by the staff of the newspaper.
Both processes admittedly have their pros and cons, and each camp argued its case with tenacity. But the argument brought to the surface simmering resentments and irritations that had been suppressed for months: staff believed the board was overstepping its mandate; the board saw the staff as resistant to change. In any case, what had been a simple disagreement about a proposed change to the corporation’s by-laws escalated into an ugly-and very public-conflict. The board fired three editors, the paper’s Annual General Meeting was cancelled, and our final issue was spiked. All these subjects are still touchy, but we are actively moving towards a resolution. In the meantime, this campus continues to vibrate, and The Varsity will provide a record.
Obviously, the staff cares deeply about what happens to this paper, and clearly so do the board members; we wouldn’t have gotten so worked up if we didn’t all honestly believe we had the best interests of The Varsity at heart. For everyone, board and staff, the end has always been to build a strong and respected newspaper-we just don’t always agree on the means. That will probably never change. People disagree, and they do so most bitterly over the things they truly value.
Another year of The Varsity starts with this issue, and it’s got a new staff, as it does every spring. We are focused on putting out a great newspaper that you’ll want to read, and we’re committed to making The Varsity into an organization where everyone works with, instead of against, each other. Does that mean we won’t disagree? No, but it means that our strange few months have taught everyone something about what we value: that we can put aside our grievances to work for a publication we love.
And we pledge to you, the students of the University of Toronto-the people who we exist to serve-that we will continue to give a damn about this paper, this university, and this city.
