A campaign opposed to turning the university’s back campus field into field hockey turf for the 2015 Pan Am Games metastasized this week, as community members and national media latched on to the story.
A petition with 3,000 signatures was presented to president David Naylor at a Governing Council meeting. Opponents of the plan say that the presentation embedded the issue in the minutes of the meeting, allowing future discussion at the highest levels of university governance as ‘business arising from the minutes.’
Athletes have mixed feelings about a plan to put down artifical turf. BERNARDA GOSPIC/THE VARSITY
Unusually, many of the Governing Council meetings over the past year regarding this project have been in camera, or confidential and closed-press, due to a requirement of Infrastructure Ontario, with whom the university has partnered for construction projects related to the Pan Am Games.
As debate over the plan unfolded in recent weeks, opponents have identified numerous areas of concern, including environmental sustainability and heritage protection.
Others have voiced concern that fewer athletes will be able to use the field after it is converted to Astroturf. Hundreds of intramural sport players, including soccer, rugby, flag football, and Frisbee players, many of whom currently use the back campus field for practices and games, would lose out once construction begins in July.
Intramural sports already face substantial difficulty finding space for practice, with anywhere from 35 to 90 field-based intramural teams of 15 or more students on campus. “Absolutely, students need more space to play, but paving the heart of our historic back campus is not the way to achieve that,” said professor Suzanne Akbari, a leading opponent of the proposal.
Akbari says preparations are underway for a grassroots fundraising project to finance improvements for the field’s drainage and improve it as a playing space, if construction can be halted. The current grass tends to become muddied in spite of intensive maintenance from university staff. As opposition to the plan ramped up in recent weeks, the Graduate Students’ Union (gsu) issued the “#GreenWager,” a marketing campaign that calls for a university-wide referendum. The Arts & Science Students’ Union has also backed the #GreenWager.
“Give each student the opportunity to vote for or against the proposed plan,” reads a letter from the gsu to Naylor. “With the question, provide a link to a pro-plan website and a link to our anti-plan website. If students approve the plan then we will give it our full support. If they reject it, then you will help us kill it.” The issue has even attracted attention from ndp environmental critic Jonah Schein.
“We need to make sure that the 2015 Pan Am games are in fact the ‘Green Games’ they’ve been advertised as,” Schien said, “not just the ‘Green-washed Games.’
Margaret Atwood, a U of T alumna, has also voiced her opposition to the plan, signing the petition delivered to Governing Council and tweeting frequently about the issue. Administrators at the Faculty of Kinseology and Physical Education (kpe) have defended the plan. “It will allow the university to program activities for many more months of the year, which will give intramural athletes more playing time,” said Anita Comella, assistant dean of kpe. “Having the field will change field hockey in so many ways,” said Heather Haughn, a Varsity field hockey player. “It would help bring in more high-level recruits. A lot of them, otherwise impressed, shy away from the fact that we don’t have real turf.”
Haughn says that playing on a regular field turf is problematic for the team, as the bumps and inconsistencies, created by other sports playing on the field, get in the way of the game.
According to a statement released by Naylor’s office, “[U of T’s] mission is to support the province’s top athletes while giving our own students and community members a world-class sport and recreation experience.” Construction is scheduled to begin on the project on July 1, 2013. The next Governing Council meeting is schedled for Tuesday, April 9, where the issue is expected to be discussed again.
