It’s been a week of mystery for us here at The Varsity. It seems that one of two things has happened. Either our readership has increased dramatically since our Halloween edition, or somebody has been removing stacks of unread Varsitys from their racks in many buildings around campus. After some quick calculation, our Science staff has confirmed that the chances of Varsity readership improving are only slightly smaller than those of a snowball in Hell, although somewhat larger than the probability of any male heterosexual member of our staff getting a date with Elle McPherson. Thus, we must conclude that someone has been stealing our newspapers for some ungodly purpose.
One might speculate about the many possible reasons why copies of The Varsity should go missing. The popular theory around the newsroom is that aliens have taken them for weird experiments. Perhaps they will be returned safe and sound in a few days, none the worse for wear except for some repressed memories of rather undignified probing.
Others among the staff have speculated that the wayward publications were commandeered by the U.S. National Guard. Apparently, the theory goes, the missing copies of The Varsity will line a gigantic birdcage that will be used to capture the monstrous bird-creature Rodan.
A more plausible explanation is that, it being the middle of the semester, students are short of money and unable to afford the more traditional two-ply, and have opted to use copies of The Varsity to keep their hindquarters clean and shiny. This may in fact be a better use for the paper than what we, as editorial staff, originally intended it for. Why didn’t we think of that?
Unfortunately, the real answer is not so intriguing. The Varsitys have simply been taken, and no call to Sherlock Holmes or CSIS was required to narrow down the list of suspects.
A couple of weeks ago, the Joint Referendum Committee (JRC), a four-member group set up to oversee the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) vote, asked the editor of the Trinity College newspaper, Salterrae, to quit after he wrote an editorial advocating a “no” vote in the CFS referendum. Shortly after the paper with the editorial appeared on stands, all copies at Sidney Smith Hall mysteriously vanished. The same week, our news editor went out for a drink with some friends, one of whom happened to work for the “No” campaign, only to see somebody taking pictures of him. The photographer was a CFS rep from the University of Victoria.
On Monday, November 4, The Varsity ran advertisements from both the “Yes” and “No” sides. Alex Kerner, a “Yes” committee volunteer, e-mailed the JRC about the “No” ad, stating that “firstly, this ad was not approved and secondly, the content of the ad lists the www.cfsfacts.ca website, which the JRC has already ruled to be inappropriate campaign material because it contains possible libelous [sic] material.” We must bear in mind that paid advertisements in The Varsity can say almost anything the advertiser desires, unless it is hate propaganda (which advocating a “no” vote certainly is not). Kerner went on in his e-mail to suggest that “Every copy of The Varsity should be collected immediately, so as not to impact the referendum unfairly.”
That same day, copies of The Varsity placed in the upright portion of the racks at Sid-Smith were found turned to display the “Yes” advertisement, instead of the front page. Could this be the work of beings from another dimension? Or was it simply a good old-fashioned conspiracy? Odd how it is unfair to run a “no” ad in the paper, but there seems to have been no objection to the tampering of the racks in a manner that supports a “Yes” position.
As of Wednesday, copies of The Varsity began disappearing from racks at various locations on campus in far larger quantities than ordinary readership would warrant. One Varsity editor reported seeing full racks at Sidney Smith hall at about noon, while another reported the same racks empty by 2:00 p.m. yesterday. Later that night, our editor-in-chief received an email from Alexandra Artful-Dodger, Esq., a SAC director and the CFS representative at U of T. In it she stated, “I don’t know if destruction is really a responsible solution, but this referendum is no longer one I can call fair. Why? Because [lies] like these are affecting our electorate’s decisions.”
Isn’t the whole point of campaign advertising to affect the electorate’s decisions? More importantly, isn’t it reasonable to say that subjecting any publication to “destruction” on the grounds that it does not support your political position is a rather undemocratic thing to do? Nobody was impressed when the Nazis did it. Unfortunately, aliens and giant fire-breathing birds aside, we can’t know for sure who is responsible for the missing Varsitys. The act is frightening, to say the least—especially considering that it’s occurring on a university campus. Perhaps the individuals responsible would find some of the books in Robarts Library disagreeable to their political views. If so, perhaps we should pile them on St. George Street and have ourselves a little bonfire for democracy.
