In a public statement last week, the University of Toronto announced its plan to exile the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, citing “lack of space, funding, and the overall displeasing nature of the program’s faculty and students.” Campus police lured department members out of their homes last night with flyers for a Polish-Canadian street festival, and subsequently drove them into the untamed hinterlands of North York.
“They snatched me from my home,” sobs Ewan MacDowell, a dislocated third year found limping along Keele Street with a bindle stick in hand. “I was ripped from the halls of the Jackman Humanities Building, forced to start my life anew in the chambers of this cold, commuter college. What I wouldn’t give for a chance to ignore just one more UTSU election, or to scrub my windows with a fresh copy of the Varsity.”
In spite of their migration disorientation, outcast students and faculty have already managed to establish a UofT Diaspora Studies Diaspora Association on campus. They remain hopeful that one day, by the clemency of either God or UofT President Meric Gertler, they will be granted a return to the land that was once theirs.
“Maybe it won’t be us,” shouts MacDowell, “and maybe it won’t even be our children, or our children’s children, but eventually our descendants will return to our ancestral home. They will taste the sweet cuisine of the brown food truck, hear the sweet sobs of overburdened engineers, and realize the justice we have fought for.”
Until this great repatriation occurs, the York administration has released a public statement welcoming the emigres to their new home, and expressing hope that “the noo [sic] dipartment [sic] may contrib-youte [sic] to the rich akademik [sic] & scholarlly [sic] tradition at Yorke [sic]”.
Photo Credit: Daniel Golden & Jonathan Katz