Still worth trying out
Re: No space on Varsity teams, Sept. 8, 2003.
As a former Varsity Blues football player I find it hard to support the article stating that there is a lack of space on Varsity teams. The extra competition for a roster position will only serve to increase the team talent level and hopefully place the Varsity teams in a better position to contend for league championships. You should be writing columns that urge more athletes to try out for teams, primarily the football team, which requires a more substantial pool of athletes to draw from. The largest university in Canada, with a full-time student body of over 35,000, should be able to start training camp with more than 75 players. It’s time for U of T and The Varsity to urge students to dust off their gym shorts and running shoes and make the effort to try out for a team. By highlighting the lack of roster positions on Varsity teams, your recent article will only dissuade individuals from trying out. As a writer for the most read and highly circulated student newspaper, please make a greater effort to promote student athletics.
Mark Dienesch 9T9
Not really SAC-free
Re: All froshed out, Sept. 8 2003.
You give the impression that the activities and events run at UTSC were done completely free of SAC. I must assure you that this is totally not the case. This year SAC understood that the hardest hit campuses from the double cohort were our Scarborough and Erindale collages, and as such we did more than we ever have to help our Erindale and Scarborough student council colleagues deal with the increased expenses, to the tune of over $17,000 in money and sponsorship at Scarborough alone. SAC had a presence at least at one event daily, and gave some student groups at these campuses funding to help them with their activities. We also for the first time fully paid for their buses to come down on Friday (something that was long overdue) and provided water at UTSC for the whole week. I also personally dedicated $3,000 in discretionary funding each to the UTSC and UTM commissions to help them cope with the influx, out of the orientation budget. While this does not fully make up for SAC’s horrible treatment of our suburban campuses in years past, I believe that we did everything we could to help make their current orientations more manageable, and as such played a significant role in both.
Dylan Rae
SAC Orientation Coordinator
