A graduating student and former-EiC’s plea that students carry on this newspaper’s legacy
This is my last article for Ultra Vires, our law school’s beloved student newspaper. Since starting classes at the Faculty in the fall of 2020, I’ve made an effort to write at least one article per issue. Now, three years later and nearing the end of my law school journey, I have written or contributed to nearly 60 articles for UV. I’m honestly a bit sad. While I am generally very ready to graduate, I will miss aspects of student life—especially UV.
UV is the best kind of extracurricular this law school has to offer. What other student activity lets you write virtually anything you want an hour after the deadline? Not only do you get to experience the joys of publishing (in print, no less!), your hard work gets compensated with free donuts and a chance to piss off some of your favourite people at the school. In an institution filled with career-daunting, pressure-inducing activities, UV is a low-stakes, high-reward haven tucked away in the basement dungeon of Falconer Hall.
Contributing to the law school newspaper is also a surefire way to meet the coolest and most down-to-earth people. I started law school during the pandemic year, which made it even harder to forge friendships. Joining UV as an Associate Opinions Editor in my 1L year made all the difference in creating relationships that have lasted me to this day. At the very least, it kept me up-to-date on the law school tea (imagine the newsroom the day the IHRP scandal broke).
More than just a fun bonding experience, I’d like to think that UV has made a difference. Of course, it publishes its annual recruit special. In addition to providing the Canadian legal community with important statistics, the publication increases the transparency and accountability of an otherwise opaque recruit process. But while the recruit special is important and hard volunteer work (trust me when I say getting yelled at by a partner of a firm who did not want to disclose their hiring numbers was not top of my bucket list), UV does more than churn out numbers.
In my first year on UV, I co-wrote an article on a law student’s posthumous call to the bar, the first time the Law Society of Ontario permitted such calls, and one student’s story of resilience in advocating for this result. This represents just one of the many dives into investigative journalism that UV has supported. Last year, when I was co-Editor-in-Chief, we ran an article on a student’s human rights claim against the Faculty and an in-depth investigation into the Faculty’s budget, penned by your current co-Editor-in-Chief, Harry Myles (3L). Tuition is a hot topic at UV; from the Tuition Special in 2013 to the countless articles on the subject, UV has contributed to holding this school accountable for rising tuition costs with seemingly inadequate justification. Even way back when, in 2001, UV worked to be the first to expose the grades scandal at U of T Law that shocked the legal community. And, although it’s been recently characterized as mere complaining (I’m looking at you, Follies), I am very proud of the opinion articles UV has published and continues to publish. To me, they represent the heart and soul of this paper.
In my past life as an Opinion Editor for McMaster University’s The Silhouette, I wrote a totally-not-self-promoting piece on why students should write opinion articles and a final article on why students have a responsibility to hold their institutions accountable. Both hold true today. Students should contribute to all aspects of UV (please do!) but I’m going to make a special case for opinion articles. I know you pesky law students are brewing with hot takes. Please share them with UV!
In the best-case scenario, your opinion article sparks a change or inspires ongoing advocacy. I’ve seen it happen before. For example, though I’ve argued the Faculty’s current lecture recording policy is still suboptimal, the policy up until late last year was an outright ban. When making yet another plea for lecture recordings, I found similar requests in the UV archives dating back to at least 2016. Though it took six years, a global pandemic, and tons of student advocacy outside of UV for the new policy to come into place, those articles served to support proposals for change and now provide documentation on how the process took place (and an indication of how long it took).
In the worst-case scenario, your article does just that: it joins the UV archive and helps form part of an important historical record in a place where the institutional memory is so short. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve sat down to start drafting an article, searched the UV archives, and learned that the same concern I’ve had has been echoed by those decades before me. Preserving your thoughts in UV is not only a great outlet to express your concerns and form solidarity (or healthy debate) with your peers, but allows you to connect with those who have already graduated. Contributing to UV really lets you become part of this ever-expanding community.
I echo the words of a wise former Editor-in-Chief of Volume 13, who I had the privilege of interviewing last year: “I’m not worried about the fucking journal continuing because absolute keener, kiss-ass, resume-stuffers are always going to want to volunteer for that pointless job. But UV is an institution that is really just there to augment the joy of student life. It’s not good for the resume; it has no ancillary benefit other than making U of T Law a great place to go and a fun place to be a student.”
I agree. You can painstakingly review the McGill Guide to edit citations for an article that a handful of people, at best, will read. You can also spend hours preparing to moot fake problems for fake court that will largely make no impact on anyone but yourself, if that. Having done both of those activities, I can guarantee that you’ll have much more fun, and likely make a much bigger difference, contributing to your student newspaper. When I look back at my three years at U of T Law, I don’t remember studying for torts, editing footnotes for journals, or drafting factums. What I do remember is my 1L study group sending me flowers after my grandma passed away during our property law exam, breaking a heel (or two) at Law Ball as my friends and I danced to bhangra, and all the laughs, gossip, and pride that came from publishing a new issue of UV. Your time here feels long, but it goes by quickly. Make sure when you graduate that you have fond memories to look back on.
Editor’s Note: Sabrina Macklai was co-Editor-in-Chief of Ultra Vires for Volume 23 in 2021–22 and an Associate Opinions Editor in 2020–21. Much to the current Editor-in-Chiefs’ likely chagrin (sorry, Harry and Shae!), she stuck around in 2022–23 in her very official role as Editor-in-Chief Emeritus.
Message from Harry and Shae: We love you Sab, thanks for everything!
