Wobbly lawsuit built on milk crates

Sometime soon, the U of T Engineering Society, which represents all of U of T’s undergraduate engineering students, will be defending itself in a $1.25 million injury lawsuit filed by one of its own members. Alvin Ihsani, a 2006 computer engineering graduate, brought the lawsuit against the University of Toronto Engineering Society, as well as the Governing Council, the engineering pub Suds, and the U of T-run high school UTS. Ihsani and his aunt, Silvia Fico, filed the suit on July 21, 2005, over injuries sustained on January 16, 2004. A court date is expected within the year but has not been set.

On the final day of Godiva Week 2004, Ihsani fell off a stack of milk crates and broke his ankle in Suds, UTES’s pub, which operates in the basement of Sir Sanford Fleming. UTES operates Suds during Orientation Week and other social activities.

Former UTES VP finance Eamon McDermott is UTES’s spokesperson for the lawsuit. McDermott said that Ihsani’s injuries did not occur during an official event.

“[Ihsani] found some milk crates that were left over from something else, and my understanding is that he and a buddy started stacking them up. And to reach higher on the stack, they began standing on stacks themselves, and you know milk crates aren’t exactly the most stable thing to stand on when they’re stacked three high, and he fell off.”

Because of the lawsuit, the society had to re-evaluate risk management procedures and house policies. While the insurance company is covering the costs of the lawsuit, McDermott said, UTES has seen a sharp increase in liability insurance costs. Both UTES and U of T have appointed legal counsel and are gathering information. The lawsuit is still in the pre-trial phase.

Naylor: ‘Send me to China’

The University of Toronto and Beijing University have struck an “umbrella agreement” for international collaboration, announced U of T president David Naylor in his president’s address on May 1. Naylor had recently returned from the formal signing ceremony in Beijing.

U of T has signed many similar agreements over its history, most of which have lapsed due to lack of interest.

“We are cleaning out a bit of an accumulation of agreements that reflected past optimism that was not always rewarded,” Naylor told The Varsity. “In the future, we want to strategize which universities to make institution-wide agreements with, and which we are just interested in smaller agreements between individual faculties or divisions.”

With Beijing University, however, Naylor sees no shortage of possible collaborations in areas such as biotechnology and East Asian studies. Citing its international prestige and “blue-chip pedigree,” Naylor pointed out that BU already conducts successful exchanges with top American schools like Berkeley, Stanford, and Yale.

“It’s certainly reasonable, indeed arguably overdue for us to begin to explore how we can interact more closely with them,” he said.

Naylor was effusive about potential student experiences. “One can wander into archeological centres in Beijing where there are cypress trees and juniper trees that are several hundred years old, and then go over to Beijing University where there are state-of-the-art scientific facilities. So it’s a wonderful blending of old and new, and a very vibrant city .”

Collaborative opportunities could include faculty and student exchanges, joint degree programs, research projects and conferences. China’s Minister of Education Zhou Ji expressed special interest in short-term exchanges of one to two years, where Chinese graduate students would do research with supervisors in North American institutions and vice-versa .

Naylor cautioned that this is only the beginning. The agreement is carefully vague until the institutions can find a mutual comfort zone.

“Because of the details that need sorting out, those exchanges are not going to appear soon,” said Naylor, who expects U of T’s large population of Mandarin speakers to help facilitate the relationship. He hopes to send a delegation of senior U of T academics and administrators to Beijing before the fall-term. Newly appointed assistant vice-president Lorna Jean Edmonds will start working out the details.

  • Jane Bao