BLOG: RSU president-elect Toby Whitfield taped, accused of defacing U of T campus

March 14, 2010 10 | By Meaghan Zabinsky

RSU president-elect Toby Whitfield was recently caught on tape hurriedly walking away from defaced posters at University of Toronto’s St. George campus.

The video, filmed and uploaded by U of T student Antonin Mongeau, depicts Whitfield pacing in front of a wall of posters, before cutting to a shot of crumpled EFUT French Club posters advertising a crepe lunch and other EFUT events. Mongeau, whose YouTube username is Brahpster, approaches Toby about the crumpled posters, but Toby ignores him and busies himself with his BlackBerry.

“I said ‘Hi, Toby,’ because I recognized him,” recalls Mongeau. “I negotiated a poster truce with him. I often poster for the French Club, so I showed him our posters and I said “It would be real cool if you could not cover our posters and we could not cover yours.” Mongeau then says he continued to poster the St. George campus.

Mongeau and Whitfield’s second encounter is the one initially shown in the video. Mongeau perceived Whitfield’s presence as ‘interfering’ with the U of T student elections, and wanted to ask Whitfield himself. “…I approach him with my camera, and that’s the footage that you see in the video of me asking him questions, asking if he is Toby Whitfield of the RSU, and he’s not very forthcoming.”

It is a few hours later when Mongeau sees Whitfield for the third time. “I was out in the back of Sid Smith … I literally see Toby come out rip down our posters – and just our posters!” Mongeau catches Whitfield on film, but a building between Mongeau and Whitfield causes Mongeau to miss catching Toby’s actual defacement on film.

Mongeau called the campus police, whom, according to eventually apprehended Whitfield outside of the Gerstein Library, while postering for Stronger Together. “If you look at the video, I think I ask him five or ten times, and at no point does he deny tearing down the posters, because he knows he did it,” says Mongeau. “He 100 per cent did it. I saw him do it. Without a doubt.”

EFUT president Sitelle Cheskey was both disapointed and confused when she heard about the incident. “Why?” she asks, “What did we ever do to him?”

‘[I am] disappointed, because as a student leader, he should know how hard it is to run events. Postering is one of the most important things we do as a club, and his actions showed complete disrespect for club involvement in general,” she says.

Despite the defacement, Chesky says that the crepe event was a “great success.”

“I am not disappointed in Ryerson itself, or its students,” says Chesky, “but I think that Ryerson students should be aware of the fact that one of their paid representatives is spending time outside of his university and therefore duty, interfering with another university’s property, and that they should know where their money is going.”

As of March 14, the YouTube video has 1,179 views.

You can watch the video for yourself:

Comments

March 15, 2010 at 11:13 am | by anon

He just can’t stay out of trouble can he?

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March 16, 2010 at 6:25 pm | by Jonobonazza

no wonder mainstream news is the way it is. The people producing it were probably over-hyping baseless accusations regarding insignificant matters for years before they hit mainstream.

You DO realize this video demonstrates absolutely nothing except for the fact that Toby was at UofT? Which is perfectly legitimate…

I could produce this quality of evidence about any act being associated with any person.

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March 16, 2010 at 6:30 pm | by Toby Whitfield

Thanks for representing Ryerson students Toby Whitfield you douchebag

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March 16, 2010 at 11:41 pm | by Anon

Why is this crap in a business newspaper? This type of useless stuff belongs in the ryersonian or eyeopener. Oh The Commerce Times you too have lost your way over the years.

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March 17, 2010 at 1:23 am | by TOBY WHITFIELD

Vote for me for BoG…ill represent Ryerson students to the fullest at UofT…

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March 17, 2010 at 3:20 pm | by frank

This is the dumbest article I’ve seen in a long time, can’t believe it is actually posted on this website.

And on top of that, the video doesn’t even show him tearing down posters.

It actually shows him walking with some paper in his hand, and then WALKING PAST THE BIN WITHOUT PUTTING ANYTHING IN IT.

He continues inside with the same paper in his hand…duh.

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March 19, 2010 at 3:57 pm | by Chris

I agree with Frank.

Furthremore, if you’re president of an organization that represents 24,000 people and you’re accused of something with a camera in your face you stay silent and don’t confess or refute. Saying something makes you quotable by irresponsible journalists.

This article lowers The Commerce Times in my eyes.

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March 25, 2010 at 7:40 pm | by La'Kisha

the paper isn’t stating their opinion on what happened, they just published an interview with someone who made a video. it doesn’t reflect poorly on the paper to publish one person’s viewpoint, but rather shows that this publication has the balls to look at a situation from the other side. furthermore, the article is very well written, and is not “crap” at all. we could all take a lesson from this Meaghan Zabinsky, she appears to be a very objective and intelligent writer, with the spine to explain somebody else’s perspective. good work, m’am.

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March 27, 2010 at 2:07 pm | by anon

I’d like to remind everyone that this is a blog and not an article. The two are very different. The Commerce Times didn’t publish this in their paper. Also it seems like Meaghan did some great investigative reporting, for a blog. Usually blogs are just someone ranting about something stupid. Not only does this article relate to students but she did some investigation into the situation. Toby Whitfield gets into trouble at Ryerson by doing stupid sh*t and now he looks be going to other schools and doing more stupid sh*t. Who voted in this cluck anyways?

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June 16, 2010 at 9:21 am | by registry cleaner

I twittered this..Ubbertwitter…yeah

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