Good news for Blues?
Re: Former prez fumbled football funding, (Oct. 20)
Thank you for publishing the letter in October deploring the way U of T was treating a 125 year-old institution, the Varsity Blues football team. I detailed how the school could have a stadium built free on the Varsity site, well before any of the recent headlines featuring MLSE’s interest in a $110 million dollar complex that would be donated to the school after 35 years.
Bud Purves, President of York University Development Corp. says he would like to build an athletic power center, if York is chosen as a site for a new Argo football stadium. Harold Sokolowski has been quoted as being in favor of the York site. MLSE has expressed interest in only the Varsity site and the Argos must be a tenant. As Stephen Brunt detailed in the Globe, the only choice is Varsity, with Canada’s most powerful man in the sports business, Larry Tanenbaum, at the helm.
Curiously, neither Bruce Kidd nor John Dellandrea has mentioned how this mega-deal would help Varsity athletics at U of T. Twenty-six different Varsity sports are largely under-funded by the school. The Varsity newspaper has detailed how U of T coaches have to be skilled fundraisers as well as athletic instructors. Hell, the lacrosse coaches have complained about their athletes being forced to go out into physical combat without proper headgear. How can this possibly be allowed to happen at Canada’s finest and richest university?
Furthermore, alumni donations have produced a sizeable endowment. There is no way U of T can cry poor any longer. It’s time that Varsity athletes have their own weight room. It’s time that a coach like Western’s Larry Haylor has no reason to chastise U of T for improper funding. It’s really embarrassing when Guelph can afford to bring two busloads of players to a football game and U of T can only “afford” one.
Attention: Bruce Kidd, Liz Hoffman, John Dellandrea, and Robert Birgeneau. U of T has just won the lottery. As Kidd said, “They are prepared to build the facilities we want and give our students the access we need. I think it will be excellent for the Argos, excellent for the Leafs, and fabulous for the city.” All present and former Varsity Blues, from all sports, need to make sure it’s excellent for them as well. It’s time to stop short-changing us.
I’m going to finish with exactly what was published in October, “U of T could then attract the student-athletes that are flocking to other Canadian and American schools. Current U of T president Robert Birgeneau can correct the mistakes of his predecessor. Let’s hold him accountable.”
Tom Hipsz
U of T All Century Team, former Blues coach, former CFL player
Reformists not radical enough
I’m not a right-wing fan in Iran, but I think the recent protests by the reformists about being barred from parliament are more of a power struggle than they are really about fighting for people’s basic rights.
If the reformist MPs were in fact after people’s rights, they should have also protested when the Guardian Council rejected the bill to join the UN convention against discrimination against women, or even when the Guardian Council rejected the bill to revise the present election law.
Should the reformists really want massive support, as Alireza Alavi-Tabar suggests, they have to radicalize their platform and to define a new framework beyond the constitution. They all know where the problem lies-the unlimited power of the uncontrolled Leader-and they eventually have to do something about it.
At the same time, they could separate themselves from the conservative groups such as Rohanioon Mobarez (Mehdi Karrubi’s group), who have cleverly portrayed themselves as reformists while they all believe, more or less, in the same principles as the conservatives. The irony is that Karrubi and all other nominates from his group are accepted by the Guardian Council.
I don’t think Iranian youth will engage in politics unless they see a real change in the reformists’ platform, which could translate to a collective call for changing the constitution or something as politically significant.
Hossein Derakhshan
