Just six months ago, everything seemed different. A motion for a 10% cut to the Toronto Police budget was introduced to City Council, support for Black Lives Matter and police defunding skyrocketed, and a veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council had pledged to dismantle their city’s police force. But progress is rarely easy or quick.

To be clear, there have been a number of incredible, tangible gains as a result of the George Floyd protests. An average of four polls show that 31% of Americans support defunding the police, with 58% opposed. Consider that just a year ago, defunding the police was so far outside the realm of mainstream discussion that no pollster would have bothered to ask about it. Now, it is polling similarly to gay marriage just eight years before its legalization. In Canada, defunding the police already has the support of a slim majority with 51% of Canadians in support and 49% opposed.

But despite the surge in support for police defunding, legislative change has hit several stumbling blocks. As mentioned before, Minneapolis City Council pledged to abolish their police department, and backed it up by supporting an amendment which would remove a requirement to fund police in the city charter. But now, nearly every councillor who supported the pledge has walked it back. To quote directly from a New York Times article on the subject:

"Councillor Andrew Johnson, one of the nine members who supported the pledge in June, said in an interview that he meant the words ‘in spirit,’ not by the letter. Another councillor, Phillipe Cunningham, said that the language in the pledge was ‘up for interpretation’ and that even among council members soon after the promise was made, ‘it was very clear that most of us had interpreted that language differently.’ Lisa Bender, the council president, paused for 16 seconds when asked if the council’s statement had led to uncertainty at a pivotal moment for the city."

The councillors faced pressure from community organizations that didn’t support the pledge, and ran up against Minneapolis’ majority-white, unelected Charter Commission, which said the pledge violated several guidelines used during typical changes to the city charter. The Charter Commission rejected the Council’s amendment 10-5, and support for the pledge among politicians fizzled out.

Instead, the Minnesota Legislature passed a series of incremental reforms, most notably increased funding for mental health training and a ban on chokeholds. These kinds of incremental reforms sound significant even though they are proven to be almost useless; an NPR investigation found chokehold bans were “largely ineffective and subject to lax enforcement.”

Unfortunately, the city of Toronto is experiencing its own miniature version of the Minneapolis debacle. On June 8, City Councillors Josh Matlow and Kristyn Wong-Tam introduced a motion to defund the police by 10% - a small but significant cut that would send a message to the Toronto Police and encourage the use of non-police alternatives in a variety of situations.

More surprising than the motion itself was Matlow’s involvement. Matlow entered City Council as a proud centrist, complete with a Twitter account devoted to mocking his mushy moderate persona. To see him introduce and support such a motion meant there was a possibility other moderates would get behind it as well.

What stopped the motion from being passed? None other than mayor John Tory himself. Days before the vote on defunding, Tory threw his weight behind his own motion consisting mostly of watered-down versions of the reform policies proposed by Matlow and Wong-Tam.

The Matlow-Wong-Tam motion banned tear gas and the use of deadly force on unarmed civilians, while Tory’s motion included only a vague commitment to “deescalation.” Additionally, Tory’s motion limited the potential use of mental health responders to situations without weapons or violence, compared to all non-criminal calls involving mental health, addiction, or homelessness. On a practical level, Tory’s motion means that a shove or a butter knife would still be grounds for armed police response. Finally, Tory’s motion included $5 million for the implementation of body cams, despite clear evidence showing they have no effect on police misconduct.

But the most salient part of the motion was what it left out - police defunding. The Tory motion did promise to look for areas where funding could be cut, but the additional funding required for mental health training and body cams means the net effect will be a slight increase to the police budget.

Tory’s motion passed 17-7, with all but two councillors who had remained neutral voting yes. The defunding motion, however, failed 8-16.

What lesson should we take from this? For the people in power, the optics of change are far more attractive than actually changing things. Even in a place like Toronto, where the city motto is “Diversity Our Strength,” and where the mayor’s friendly rhetoric on the need to embrace that diversity is ubiquitous, Frederick Douglass’ famous line rings true: “Power concedes nothing without demand.”

When you think about it, the concept of dreaming is stunning; our brains are capable of generating full 4k realities in which the rules of logic are completely suspended for what feels like up to hours on end. But why do we dream in the first place? Is there any deeper meaning? These questions have mystified scientists to this day. No one has provided a conclusive answer, but research is now beginning to show that they play a much more crucial role in our daily lives than many could have ever dreamed.

Perhaps the most striking indication of the power dreams hold was demonstrated in many studies conducted over the past decade, showing a relationship between REM sleep and depression (REM sleep is the stage where most dreaming occurs). The researchers found that “the more severe the depression, the earlier the first REM begins” during sleep. This non-restorative, excessive REM sleep displaces deep sleep to the point that when the patients woke up, they felt as if their brain was even more active than it was during the day. According to the expectation fulfillment theory of dreams, this is because excessive rumination during daytime generates so much cortisol (stress hormone) that a) one finds it extremely hard to fall asleep, and b) the body immediately goes into REM sleep. But what exactly is the connection between worrying and REM sleep? Researchers have speculated that a critical function of dreams is to regulate and ‘discharge’ intense emotion generated during the daytime. It stands to follow that worrying creates so much negative emotion that REM sleep must last longer to bring the mind back to balance.

The work of other scientists seems to confirm a relationship between dreaming and our emotions, at the very least. In particular, they assert that our dreams play a hidden yet oversized role in how we feel the next day. For example, a 2018 scientific journal article found a strong correlation between a “waking peace of mind and well-being with more positive dreams.” A separate experiment found that when people dreamt of drinking water, they woke up feeling more hydrated. The connection between emotion and dreaming even seems to extend all the way to emotional intelligence. People who were observed to be getting too little REM sleep had difficulty recognizing what constituted a sad or joyful facial expression.

To say, however, that dreams are only connected to emotions would be an understatement. Now we also know that they are tied to our brain structure too. According to the ground-breaking defensive activation theory, the brain would rewire itself and deprive the visual cortex of the neurons it needs to operate if it was rendered useless for 8 hours a day. Thus, dreaming keeps the visual cortex active so that we don’t gradually lose the ability to see over time.

So what can we do to affect the dreams we have? Humans are capable of ‘lucid dreaming,’ or becoming aware that they are within a dream, allowing them to change it to an environment they prefer. The most common technique used to do this is ‘reality checking,’ where people continuously ask themselves during the daytime if they are within a dream. They hope to make this such an ingrained habit that they will ask themselves this when they are dreaming to become self-aware. Be warned, though; it can take up to three months of this obsessive training before you can manifest your lucid dream. Alternatively, if that sounds too Matrix-y for you, then you can listen to calm music before sleeping. No pressure, though. Dreaming is probably just the most essential thing you’ll do in a day. Unless you want your visual cortex to die and emotional well-being to suffer.

Now go to sleep.

sen·ior·i·tis (noun) : a supposed affliction of students in their final year of highschool, characterized by a decline in motivation or performance.

Symptoms:

• Not completing assignments

• Procrastination

• Loss of interest in studies

• Skipping class

• Dropping grades

Although the term “senioritis” is often used as a joke, it is a real phenomenon that people experience. It's the feeling after seeing the finish line and deciding you don’t have to work as hard anymore to reach it. The loss of momentum and motivation leaves students hoping they can float through to the end.

In September, I was amazed to finally step into school and see my teachers and peers again. But slowly, that in itself lost its thrill as less and less people started coming in and teachers piling on seemingly endless amounts of work. The insane amounts of lessons learned in a day sapped my personal enjoyment for the course. Instead the courses became an abundant amount of assignments or tests to complete before the due date.

I felt myself getting sucked into the Senioritis vortex, but little things like facetime or messaging friends pulled me out. One big thing that sparked my enthusiasm was the live rehearsals Chamber Strings was fortunate enough to have at 371 for the Remembrance Day Concert. Even though we were all socially distanced, playing beautiful music together felt somewhat normal.

Tips to Overcome Senioritis:

• Set goals to get you motivated

• Reward yourself

• Get yourself organized and on schedule

• Surround yourself with support

• Change things up - work environments/scenery

• Take a break

Sometimes I forget how privileged I truly am. I’m so lucky to have the option of going to a school with amazing teachers who continuously try their best to create engaging lessons and make the best out of our pandemic situation. Even though focusing on the negatives are easy, I remind myself to take a step back to see how lucky I am.

A huge thank you goes to all the UTS staff and admin who put so much effort to ensure we’re able to have extracurriculars, fun online events, and a wonderful hybrid learning model. <3