Western University Goes Full Retard
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Western University Goes Full Retard
Western is the only university in Canada to mandate Covid booster shots
Most of my readers are American.
Let’s try running this poll again, with a bigger sample size, now that I have 2,700 subscribers:
I would guess that 50% of these American readers have never heard of the University of Western Ontario before — or should I say, “Western University.”
The University of Western Ontario was founded 144 years on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, and Lūnaapéewak Nations. Today it has grown into one of Canada’s biggest and best schools with over 30,000+ undergrads set to attend in September.
If you google “top university rankings” and click the first result, it says Western is ranked #172 school in the world. To put this in an American context, schools ranked slightly lower than Western on this global list are University of Pittsburgh, Vanderbilt University, and University of Florida. Some schools ranked slightly higher are University of Maryland, Texas A&M, and Michigan State University. These are apparently Western’s peers.
I have a masters degree in financial economics from Western University.
For the record — not that I am insecure about prestige, or anything — but it should be noted that Western has the 3rd highest ranked econ department in Canada, right behind UBC & Toronto. Both the current and former governors of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem and Stephen Poloz, hold econ PhDs from Western’s econ department.
I have always had nothing but glowing things to say about Western… until now.
When you truly love someone, you tell them the truth. When Western is acting retarded, and I point out that they are acting retarded, please know that it comes from a place of love.
In fact, as an alumni with a moderate sized public platform, I would argue that exposing Western’s severe retardation to the world is my solemn duty. Forcing this botched medical experimental on students is ruining the University’s reputation.
“An acquaintance merely enjoys your company, a fair-weather companion flatters when all is well, a true friend has your best interests at heart and the pluck to tell you what you need to hear.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly,
This reminds me of how I was an RA at UChicago econ department, and I went on to write this article exposing frauds in the UChicago accounting department. No mercy for UChicago, no mercy for Western. The truth is blind to institutional affiliation.
This scandal at Western is developing/ongoing/unfolding and nobody really knows how it will end. If, by writing this article, I can increase the chance if resolves positively by even 0.001%, then it is worth writing. I know for a fact that hundreds of chairs/deans/provosts/presidents subscribe to Karlstack, and I also know that academia is a small world. Maybe I can nudge the needle by 0.001%, who knows.
If nothing else, let this article serve as a cautionary tale for other, more competent, university administrations who subscribe to Karlstack — this is what NOT TO DO. Canadian universities are woke, retarded and incompetent. Heed our warning.
Some journalism purists who went to “journalism school” may thumb their nose at this approach — “Hey! Karlstack is rooting for one side over the other! He’s picking sides! He’s an activist! This isn’t proper journalism!”
Activist voices are needed to counter the woke voices, since an overwhelming majority of woke Canadian journalists who purport to be impartial arbiters of the truth actually support Western’s booster mandate. They mustn’t be allowed to claim victory in the public sphere. They musn’t be allowed to control the narrative.
There aren’t two sides to every story, and I’m tired of pretending there are. Some stories have many sides. Some stories have only one side: the correct side. Pick your team; moral clarity means never having to say you’re sorry.
Every mainstream journalist is already an apparatchik activist, anyways… at least I am being transparent about my anti-apparatchik bias.
That gets to the thesis of Karlstack: that people would rather subscribe to naked honesty on Substack than mainstream subterfuge from the Bell + Rogers + CBC media oligarchy in Canada, even if the honest blogger uses crass vernacular like “retarded” in article titles.
The future of Canadian media is not this unholy trinity of Bell + Rogers + CBC; they must be crushed in order for democracy and freedom to flourish. The future is decentralized.
The Scandal
This is legit the #1 trending news story in Canada this week — people are freaking out over it. It has been covered by the CBC, National Post, Toronto Sun, True North, London Gazette, London Free Press, CTV News, Epoch Times, Global News, Canadian Press, Post Millennial, & Globe and Mail.
On Substack, this has been covered by Andrew Lawton:
And by Dr. Paul Alexander, an infectious disease specialist:
This is a huge brawl on twitter, too… thousands of woke Covid fearmongers are locking horns with thousands of anti-mandate tweeters. I was going to embed some of the more explosive tweets in this article, but decided not to. You get the picture: it’s a shitshow.
One story on Twitter that stood out was Jason Falbo:
Jeez… dropping out of your Engineering PhD in your 7th year. That’s gutwrenching. This guy is a hero. That is integrity. That is courage. These are the types of people Western should be churning out, not woke, compliant, retarded, quintuple-boosted sheep.
I wonder how many Jason Falbos there are out there.
Western doesn't give numbers about how many students this booster mandate will impact, but third-dose uptake in the 18-29 age group is currently about 39 per cent in Ontario, lower than any other adult age group. By comparison, roughly 85 per cent in that young adult cohort have two vaccine doses.
Most college-aged kids who got the first two doses decided they did not want to get the third. That is their decision, and it needs to be respected. I, personally, would sooner commit seppukku than let some random boomer provost make my medical decisions for me.
Let’s be charitable and assume the average 18-29 year-old at Western University is super woke and compliant and therefore twice as likely as the general population to have taken the booster — that would mean 80% of Western students are boosted. This means ~20% of Western undergrads are unboosted, 6,000 students!
My advice to these 6,000 unboosted student is to not get boosted.
They can’t expel all 6,000 of you you.
It’s especially super fucked up to expel these students because they all ALREADY GOT THE FIRST TWO JABS. They probably thought they were safe and in the clear, now that the entire “jabs prevent transmission” narrative has gone up in flames, surely nobody would force them to take the botched science juice for a third time, right? Wrong! Bend over for shot #3, or be expelled.
We don’t care that we are the only University in Canada doing this. Bend over.
“We found that pivoting back and forth is what students and faculty and staff found the most stressful, and preserving and protecting that in-person learning experience without interruption is really what matters to us,” Florentine Strzelcyk, provost and vice-president (academic), said in an interview with CTV News London.
This is Florentine Strzelcyk, one of the retarded boomers forcing you to get boosted. Let’s put a face to the deed. The Karen jokes write themself.
The scummiest part is that Western announced this mandate only two weeks before classes begin. After mulling it over for months and months and months, they sprung this policy on August 22. Tuition was due on August 15th.
Come the fuck on. Even if you believe boosters should be mandatory, you at least have to admit that its retarded to drop this bombshell on students IMMEDIATELY AFTER TUITION WAS DUE, right before classes start.
Western administrators knew this day would come… they had years to plan for it… and they left it to the last minute… why, exactly? To milk some extra tuition out of students…? To purposely fuck over the thousands of students that they KNEW would be unwilling to get boosted…?
This is straight-up incompetent communication by incompetent administrators.
Someone should get fired — someone needs to be held accountable, someone needs to fall on their sword. Someone needs to commit seppuku. But sadly that won’t happen since University administrators have no concept of honor or accountability.
“The timeline is definitely a piece that we’re hearing a lot about … Maybe if the information was delivered a bit earlier, it may have been easier.”
We are not done yet… the retardation of these bureaucrats goes several layers deeper.
Consider Western’s policy on who classifies as exempt from the mandate:
This is such a illogical list that it makes my brain hurt just looking at. None of this make any sense. So many contradictions.
You’re telling me that an unvaccinated elderly “donor” can walk around freely on campus, but a healthy unvaccinated freshman can’t? I guess in these elitist circles that if you’re cutting the cheque, that means you can flaunt the rules.
These people are the types to attend dinner parties where the butlers/servants are masked, but the attendees are not. It’s some sort of weird power trip for them.
“Convocation attendees” MUST comply with the booster mandates, but “donors” are exempt.
How does a virus distinguish between a “convocation attendee” and a “donor”?
These two circles overlap heavily!
I emailed Western to ask them this question, but they did not respond.
Digging one level of retardation deeper, we find that 2 of Western’s 3 affiliated colleges, Huron University College and King’s University College, mandate boosters and masks while the 3rd, Brescia University College, doesn’t.
“Brescia is choosing to emphasize recommendations that align with each individual’s needs rather than dedicating important resources towards enforcing mandates,” Brescia spokesperson Rachel Macaulay said in an emailed statement to Global News.
“Our top priority is our students’ ability to access an inclusive and empowering education. Therefore, at this time, students will not be required to have their booster to attend classes or engage on Brescia’s campus. At this time, we will not mandate masking on Brescia’s campus.”
Great, so Western doesn’t even have coherent policy within its own 3 colleges.
Of course they don’t. Western’s leadership is schizophrenic, contradictory, incompetent, and rooted in dogma rather than science.
Here is a map of Western campus, with Brescia College circled in red.
This red circle is a special zone for special people who don’t need to follow the same rules as everybody else.
Science!
Conclusion: There Is Maybe Still Hope
You may notice in this article that I didn’t explain the actual science of masking/boosters. I figure that if you are reading this article, chances are high that you already made up your mind about boosters beforehand. You don’t need me to rattle off studies to you. I am not going to change any minds.
Suffice it to say that boosters do not stop or slow transmission, boosters offer minimal benefit for college students, and boosters pose a serious and non-negligible health risk to college students. None of this is controversial.
There are conspiracy theories on Canadian twitter that Western’s booster policy was driven by Bill Gates, Rockefellers, Pfizer, new world order, WEF, etc.
These theories may or may not have some kernel of truth to them, idk, I didn’t really do my due diligence on them so I can’t say. My guess, though, is they probably played a negligible role, if any, in forcing Western’s hand.
My conclusions is that we are dealing with a terminal infestation of retarded Canadian boomers. Boomers control all the decisions and policies at Western, and Canadian boomers are very guilty of being brainwashed on Covid. These specific boomers want to feel special and cutting-edge by being the only school in Canada to push the boundaries of wokeness to protect the elderly.
It gradually emerged on Twitter that Western’s faculty union are the driving force behind the mandates.
This is generational warfare — as Sabrina Maddeaux writes, “younger Canadians have already disproportionately borne the social, educational, mental health and economic burdens of the pandemic. The cost of further alienation and disenfranchisement won’t just be individual, but likely ripple throughout society and politics. Angry, isolated young people rarely lead to happy endings.”
Here is a scathing statement on Western’s booster mandate from Dr. Julie Ponesse. In the fall of 2021, Dr. Ponesse saw her academic career of 20 years fall apart after she refused to comply with a Western’s previous COVID vaccine mandate.
Here is another compelling statement from Dr. Matt Strauss:
Some of the best years of my life (2004-2013) were med school, internal medicine residency and ICU fellowship at Western. I still bleed purple. This mandate will hurt people and threatens to ruin a very special place.
Western claims to be enacting their three dose mandate after consultation with their experts. Which "experts" are these who do not seem to know that third dose effectiveness is roughly zero (0.6-6.5%) at 4 months?
Why would you kick someone out of school because they didn't take a booster 8 months ago that is currently providing ~0% protection against transmission? Pretension? Malice? Callus disregard for people who think differently than you? I'm struggling to understand.
What sort of "expert" doubles down on the failed measures that spectacularly failed to contain Omicron just last Fall?
It seems to me that a clique of preening zealots who understand very little about the whole of human health have taken over my alma mater.
They congratulate each other in an echo chamber and distribute dubious credentials in a daisy chain of obeisance. Unencumbered by actual clinical experience, regard for the scientific evidence, or fealty to our standard ethics, they claim a mantle of unearned "expertise." If you have never had to tell someone "sorry the hospital didn't let you visit your husband for the last ten days because you traveled out of country. . he has died," you are not an expert in the harms of these policies. If you have never intubated someone who got Covid from their vaccinated and masked caregiver who "did everything right," you are not an expert in the the failures of these policies.
I spoke to the actual medical experts at Western today, my friends and former colleagues. They were, oddly, not consulted about this policy.
hese kids about to start first year, whose futures you would casually foreclose upon (with two weeks notice!), were 15 when this madness started.
They didn't have dances. They didn't have sports. They didn't have theatre. They deserve to have college. With smiles. Next week.
This statement from Dr. Strauss ends on a note of hope & optimism — it mentions the possibility that the thousands of unboosted students at Western might be able to attend school next week. Students have taken this message of hope to heart, and grassroots organizations have formed.
If you have Instagram, please follow and support students4agency.
Follow them on Twitter too:
Two days ago, they marched across the campus of Western University carrying a banner reading “Enough Is Enough” while chanting those words.
Canadian mainstream media responded by warning that this protest could be “dangerous.”
Western University then released this statement in response to the protest:
It has also come to our attention that groups not associated with our campus community are looking to use this peaceful protest as a platform to express their own grievances. We are concerned that this event will be used for reasons other than what our students have planned, creating a risk of it becoming disruptive and potentially dangerous.
Huh? Dangerous? That’s really the narrative we are going here, that Western student’s who don’t want to take the booster shot are “dangerous”?
As if the the fratbros and instagram chicks and stoners and nerds and immigrants that comprise the student body at Western are going to commit a modern Kristallnacht.
I also think it is funny how in that statement they brag about being a a centre of higher learning that encourages the exchange of differing viewpoints and ideas, while valuing constructive debate… BUT THEN THEY DISABLED REPLIES ON THE TWEET!
Here is a video of the protest:
When pressed on their vaccine policy, I notice that Western administrators *always* fall back on the argument that the same booster mandates are in place at Brown, Columbia, Harvard and Yale. Western’s PR person repeats this comparison at every opportunity.
Okay, so, right off the bat, what Western always fails to mention is that those Ivy league schools are private institutions, while Western is public. That’s an important distinction, for legal reasons.
The bigger problem about this statement is that it speaks to Canada’s national inferiority complex. We are obsessed with the USA, we always talk about how morally superior we are to the USA, but we can’t stop modelling ourselves after them.
We can’t think for ourselves.
Why can’t we be obsessed with Denmark? In Denmark 18 years-olds are banned from getting the booster. In Canada they are mandated.
Which country is following the science, Canada or Denmark?
Tucker Carlson described this national inferiority complex back in 2009:
Canada is essentially a stalker, stalking the united states. Canada has little pictures of us in its bedroom. Canada spends all of its time thinking about the United States, obsessing over the United States, it’s unrequited love between Canada and the United States! We, meanwhile don’t even know Canada’s name. We pay no attention at all.
Canada is a sweet country. It is like your retarded cousin who you see at Thanksgiving and pat him on the head. He’s nice, but you don’t take him seriously.
— Tucker Carlson
We must rise above our psychological need to emulate Brown, Columbia, Harvard and Yale. We can be better than them.
Two petitions have begun circulation . The first calls the mandates unconstitutional and has received over 4,500 signatures. The second cites bodily autonomy and has received over 1,200 signatures.
It is probably good to sign both of those, every little bit helps.
There is a very real possibility that Western administrators crack under the combined weight of the media, politicians, students, alumni, and donors buzzing around this story, and repeals the mandates.
I don’t know how this story will end. There is a chance the mandates could be lifted, and there is a chance Western doubles down and expels thousands of students.
One thing is certain — this story is not over! Classes start next week, and bigger protests are planned. Nobody is happy. Drama is brewing. Subscribe to Karlstack to get the thrilling conclusion in your email inbox!
BONUS: More Woke Retardation at Western
I considered writing about this next scandal when it originally happened a few months ago, but I made the editorial decision that it wasn’t a big enough story at the time to be worthy of a whole Karlstack article. Curation is half the job of running a successful Substack. When you click “publish” on an email that is sent to thousands of people, you don’t want to click that button frivolously.
While it isn’t worthy of its own story, it is the perfect kicker to this story; the cherry on top to punctuate the fact that Western is run by incompetent woke clowns.
What happened is that Western’s Instagram account posted this picture of two women in hijabs making out:
London's Muslim community fought back and forced school officials to delete it.
It was a whole episode of culture wars on its own, and it went mostly uncovered by the media because it showed how hilariously retarded the woke agenda is. This episode was therefore, as they say, memory-holed.
What I liked best about this episode is that it revealed the woke hierarchy. 22% of Canadians are immigrants but only 4% of Canadians are gay, so I guess it makes sense that “immigrant” outweighs “gay” on the hierarchy of victimhood.
Fascinating.
Western University Goes Full Retard
It's hard to read this as anything other than nakedly punishing noncompliance, to filter out who gets an education. The donor part is intriguing. I wonder if a student could donate a single dollar to the university to claim donor status and therefore policy exemption. Great job exposing this nonsense.
Damn fine article