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THE BULL & BEAR
December 2013 Issue 004 Vol. 11
Ryan Holiday: A Man For All Seasons Confronting Sexual Assault Mental Health at McGIll: Keeping Sane Participation Marks: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
Walking in a Winter Wonderland
bullandbearmcgill.com
A publication of the
Editor’s Note Aimee Pellegrino LEAD NEWS EDITOR
NEWS 4 Confronting Sexual Assault 6 Extended Family 7 Education Reform in McGill Classrooms
BUSINESS 9 Will This Startup Self-Destruct in 8 Seconds? 10 Lessons from a Venture Capitalist 11 An Interview with David Abramson 12 “Be Your Own Biggest Champion”
FEATURE 14 Ryan Holiday: A Man For All Seasons 16 Your Holiday Gift Guide 18 (Tele)visions of Sugarplams 20 McGill University: Can I Get a Refund?
LIFESTYLE 23 Super Smash Christmas 24 Away We Go 26 Trying to Keep Sane
OPINION
27 The Curtain Call for St-Laurent 28 Participation Marks: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly 30 A is for Effort... or Adderall
Cover Photo by Alain Kasparian
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W
ell, that’s a wrap! The semester has come and gone in a blink of an eye, excuse the cliche, but it really has. OAP was almost four months ago, finals have usurped midterm season, the sun now sets at 4:23 PM, and alas, here we are, about to ring in 2014! At least this New Year’s will be filled with a little less worry than last year’s, because I am pretty sure the world isn’t predicted to end. As some of us look on to fresh starts and resolutions we are statistically likely to break, I look back at my last three and a half years at McGill and my now two years at The Bull & Bear. As I prepare to graduate, all I can say is, “Where the hell did the time go?” Over the past year, we have welcomed a new Principal, have been barricaded from our beloved Ice Capps by never-ending construction, and fortunately have had just one flood of McTavish. With all the excitement that the end of 2013 has brought our campus, I hope we all can take a deep breath and look back—look back at the friends we have made, the laughs we have had, and hopefully, the things we have learned. I know that in just one month’s time I will be looking back on my McGill years with nostalgia and listening to Green Day’s “Time of Your Life” on repeat. But until then, allow me to memorialize every moment spent behind the Roddick Gates and implore you all to take it easy, relax, and enjoy all the special moments that the end of the semester brings amidst the chaos of finals. After all, it is the most magical and the most wonderful time of the year. Happy Holidays! Aimee Pellegrino aimee@bullandbearmcgill.com
Briefs
BRIEFS
Your guide to events around campus Exams
Telus Fire on Ice
December 6 - 18
December 14, 21, 28, January 4, 8PM Old Port
In case you didn’t know, exam season is upon us at last. Good thing we’re all perfectly prepared.
Bundle up warm and head over to the riverfront for music and awesome pyrotechnics. Presented by the least hated of our Big 3 phone companies.
The Principal’s Holiday Skating Party
Christmas Day December 25
December 15, 2-4PM McConnell Winter Arena Practice your axel jumps with Suzanne Fortier at the 25th annual skating party. I hear Santa’s gonna be there!
Merry Christmas! Give each of your loved ones a copy of The Bull & Bear to light up their season. Also makes good wrapping paper (after you’ve read our awesome articles, of course).
Christmas in the Park
Management Carnival January 12 - 18
December 1 - 31 Parc des Compagnons de St-Laurent
Wooooooooooooooo!
Enjoy live music, wine and fireworks in Montreal’s very own Christmas village.
The Bull & Bear is published by the Management Undergraduate Society. The content of this publication is the responsibility of the Management Undergraduate Society and does not necessarily represent the views of McGill University. The Bull & Bear - December 2013
Tarun Koshy Executive Editor
Marisa Samek Lifestyle Editor
Max Feinsot Managing Editor
Laura Thistle Lead Opinion Editor
Doron Lurie Editor-at-Large
Alex Petralia Opinion Editor
Matthew Hunter Chief Layout Editor Alain Kasparian Nat Carson Media Editor
Flora Bertin Anthony Heinrich Hayley Lim Michelle Paspe Sisi Ye Layout Editors
Aimee Pellegrino Lead News Editor
Kapil Mehra Advertising Director
Jonathan Craske Lead Business Editor
Henry Fuz-Keeve Lead Web Editor
Andrew Marcovitch Business Editor
Charlotte Plamondon Social Media Rep
April Wu Lead Lifestyle Editor
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Confronting
Sexual Assault McGill and other Canadian Universities urged to develop sexual assault policies
The Bull & Bear NEWS STAFF
S
exual assault has recently become a widely discussed topic on university campuses across Canada. A recent case where three male McGill students were accused of sexually assaulting a former female Concordia student has drawn national media attention. Combined with a string of six sexual assaults on the University of British Columbia campus this past spring, the incident has many people discussing the alarming prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses, and what should be done to address this issue. Despite the recent increase in discussion, sexual assault on Canada’s
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university campuses is by no means a new problem. According to a National Survey, 15-25 percent of women attending university or college will experience some form of sexual violence during their academic career. Four out of five female undergraduates surveyed at Canadian universities said they had been victims of violence in a dating relationship, and 29 percent reported incidents of sexual assault. Yet while the incidence of sexual assault is disturbingly high on university campuses, only 11 out of 98 Canadian universities have sexual assault resource centres on their campus (Concordia
University became the 11th school less than a month ago). The majority of on-campus centres that do exist are student-funded and student-run. Even fewer of these schools have a formal, written policy on sexual assault. The Sexual Assault Center of the McGill Student’s Society (SACOMSS) recently released a statement attacking the McGill administration’s response to the allegations of sexual assault brought against the three McGill students. The statement reads: “it has become increasingly apparent that McGill fails to address sexual assault in any meaningful way. In fact, McGill has no sexual assault
NEWS of sexual assault using broad policies that address violent acts or sexual harassment on campus. While sexual assault refers to unwanted sexual contact, harassment is a broader category including unwanted advances and inappropriate verbal conduct. Cases of sexual assault require different approaches than other forms of harassment. The lack of sexual assault policy is not unique to McGill. Concordia University also responds to reports of sexual assault through their policies on violence or sexual harassment. Of all Canadian universities, The University of Guelph, University of Victoria, and University of Alberta are anomalies for their policies that are specifically tailored to addressing sexual assault. Approaches to addressing sexual assault are unique to each campus. According to a study of sexual assault policies on college campuses conducted by The U.S. Department of Justice, the most effective sexual assault policies include: a definition of sexual misconduct, a report procedure for victims of sexual assault, a list of people on campus trained to respond to reports of sexual violence, resources available to victims, and procedures for investigation of reports. An increasing number of universities are being forced to confront systemic failures with regards to treatment on campus assault. This has been seen at York University, which experienced an incident on September 2, 2007 where two men entered a university dorm and raped two first-year students. This led to calls to reexamine protocols in the form of rallies discussing student safety. Since this incident, there have been numerous reports of assaults on and and near the campus. In response to instances of sexual assault, the university, among other actions, spent $8.9 million on campus security– an increase of $535,000 from the previous year– and created a Sexual Assault Initiative Committee to streamline efforts against on-campus assault. Anecdotal evidence suggests that these efforts have been in vain; however, it is impossible to determine their effects as the university does not release data concerning incidence of sexual assault. In the Fall 2013 semester alone, there have been two reports of sexual assault on York’s campus, and another near campus. Two of the three The Bull & Bear - December 2013
reported incidents resulted in arrest. York seems to suppress discussion of assault, having recently issued a libel lawsuit against Toronto Life Magazine for publishing an article concerning sexual assault on the York campus. The York University Sexual Assault & Awareness materials do not discuss the realities of assault on campus, but are limited to basic information on sexual assault in general. The York Sexual Assault and Survivors Line and Leadership did not respond to The Bull & Bear’s request for a comment. In contrast, the University of British Columbia has taken a proactive rather than reactive approach to issues of assault on campus. In the face of a string of on campus sexual assaults, the university is working closely with local authorities to disseminate sketches of the alleged attacker and promote campus safety. Students have joined the cause, organizing a march on November 22 to launch The Campaign to Reclaim Consent, a six month initiative in response to the increased number of assaults. This comes in the wake of a widely criticized frosh cheer that glorified abuse of underaged girls used by the UBC Sauder School of Business. In response to this incident the school has pledged $200,000 to expand sexual assault counseling and education services on campus. Similar student-led initiatives have taken place here at McGill. The Union for Gender Empowerment released an online petition in response to the recent allegations, claiming that “McGill needs to address its grossly inadequate sexual harassment and discrimination policies.” The petition demands that McGill reshape its sports culture, and require consent and sexual assault workshops for all athletes and staff, in order to generate a culture of accountability and awareness. The petition also demands disciplinary action against all three recently charged McGill students. Disciplinary measures against the three students poses a set of unique issues due to McGill’s urban setting, and that the complaint was not made by a McGill student. In an article released by The Gazette, Deputy Provost Ollivier Dyens is reported as saying that because the alleged assault did not take place on campus, the university would wait for the outcome of the judicial process before taking disciplinary action against the student.
On Thursday, November 21, McGill issued an MRO to all students on behalf of Dyens. The MRO outlined the steps being taken by University administration to address concerns about the university’s response to the allegations against the three students. McGill will hire a fulltime Coordinator who will collaborate with Rez Project and SACOMSS in creating a safe campus environment. In January, the University will hold a public forum on the subject of consent. The existing harassment policies offer procedural recourse for survivors of assault, but the lack of a sexual assault policy means that every reported assault is treated on a case-by-case basis. Although the MRO is taking constructive measures to address the issue of sexual assault on campus, no mention has been made about the development of a sexual assault policy. The actions taken so far are concrete steps, but there are still great strides to be made. A policy specifically tailored to sexual assault is important for creating the type of campus environment in which members of the community feel safe in reporting and discussing their experiences. Part of implementing an effective policy is ensuring that the community is aware of the recourse and services it offers. Universities and their centres need to be accessible and open to discussing sexual assault. In attempting to understand current policies surrounding assault across various Canadian university campuses, The Bull & Bear News staff found all services and administrators unresponsive to our requests for comments and interviews. As a result the article has been comprised largely of independent research taken from outside statements, letters and resources. We would encourage students and staff to examine and investigate this issue, as well as to participate in furthering discourse surrounding sexual assault policy on campus. If you have experienced sexual assault, student resources on campus are available. The Bull & Bear encourages all survivors and their allies to reach out to SACOMSS. For support and more information on SACOMSS’ services call their line at 514-398-8500, drop in to the Centre, or visit www.sacomss.org.
PHOTO BY ANA MALJKOVIC
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NEWS
EXTENDED FAMILY What McGill has to offer for student-alumni connections and why you should take advantage Devin Kesner NEWS WRITER
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am making my way through my final year at McGill and I have a problem: I’m being followed. Not followed in the sense of ominous trailing footsteps, but rather I’m being followed by a persistent, nagging voice in the back of my head. You know the one – the question that makes you want to avoid family gatherings, and when you hear it (and hear it you will!) all you can really do is nervously smile, only because it’s all too predictable and yet all too unanswerable. It has many forms, but here it is at its purest: “This time next year, what will I be doing?” While this question will undoubtedly continue to be a constant, unwelcomed presence in our lives, there are ways in which we can better prepare ourselves to answer it. One of those ways is through building a connection with alumni who have already transcended the formlessness and dubiousness that is graduating and who can offer valuable insight into the process. In this regard we are lucky, as McGill offers a
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range of resources that help to connect current McGill students with alumni. Among these are services offered by the Development and Alumni Relations (DAR) office, the Student Organization for Alumni Relations (SOAR), and Career and Planning Services’ (CaPS) Mentor Program. DAR serves as a link between McGill and its 215,000 graduates around the world, offering various opportunities to make connections with alumni. They provide funding for student groups to pursue community-enhancing projects, and will assist these student groups to reach out to relevant alumni to attend and speak at their events. They also host the ‘Backpack to Briefcase’ series, which has been on hiatus for the last few years but will be returning in March 2014. This includes alumni-led seminars and presentations on important postgraduate know-how such as dining etiquette and networking skills. Temi Akinaina, who works for DAR in Alumni Relations and Alumni
Career Services, emphasized DAR’s role in maintaining a community amongst current and past McGill students. “We host quite a few different events and programming to continue the relationship that alumni had while they were on campus, encourage lifelong learning, and essentially strengthen their ties and connection to the university,” she explained. Another important branch of DAR is the Student Organization for Alumni Relations (SOAR), whose mandate is to “connect students past, present, and future.” They plan events such as James McGill’s birthday and Hockey Night for which they invite alumni to attend. “Having the ability to talk to people who have already gone through what you want to go through is really helpful because then you know what you have to do, you know what’s possible, and you know what other options are out there,” said Payal Patel, Co-President of SOAR. “It’s definitely motivating and they can teach us lessons that we haven’t had a
NEWS chance to learn yet,” added Tara Sullivan, SOAR’s other Co-President. Another important – and more direct – way in which McGill works to create a community between current McGill students and alumni is through the Mentor Program, run by CaPS. The program, which has around 1,400 participating students and almost 850 mentors involved, pairs students with a mentor (i.e. a volunteer McGill alumnus established in their field) of their choice. The mentor and student are paired for a period of four months, during which they can communicate via email or meet in person. Muhammad Omer Juma, the program’s coordinator, emphasized the uniqueness of the bond that can be built during the four months. ”You don’t get that personal with anyone you meet at
the career fair,” he remarked. “Students should take advantage of that.” A final way in which students can try to benefit from connections with and guidance from alumni is through the network of alumni and young alumni branches located around the world. These branches host a variety of events, some of which welcome current McGill students to join along, like the Boston branch’s ‘speed networking’ event. While connecting with alumni is not a panacea for all of your post-grad anxieties, doing so can certainly help in getting your bearings. It is important to know and take advantage of these opportunities that unfortunately often remain lost in the fearsome depths of the CaPS newsletter and other listservs. Akinaina strongly believes in the importance of these opportunities. “I
think people who come to McGill didn’t come to McGill to be isolated. They came here for the opportunity to be part of the community, and I think that the alumni who give back by interacting with students certainly see it like that, but they also get something from it. It’s important for students both to see these opportunities before they leave and also to internalize them as things that are important for them to do as they move on.”
This article explores some of the major avenues for connecting with McGill alumni. If you would like to find out more about these and other opportunities, you can contact Tess Kelley, in charge of DAR’s Student Programs at McGill, at tess. kelley@mcgill.ca.
Educational Reform in McGill Classrooms The Office for students with disabilities promotes new teaching methods on campus Tess Wrobleski NEWS WRITER
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rederic Fovet became the new director of McGill’s Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD) in 2011. His direction of the OSD reflects a broader paradigm shift in the way educational institutions across North America approach disability. In effect, the OSD has shifted from a medical model of disability to a more social model. Now, they are starting to take action to reform both services on campus and the classroom. The social model of disability states that a disability is not a problem inherent to the individual, but rather something that stems from how the environment is
The Bull & Bear - December 2013
designed. “The social model recognizes that just as our physical environment is designed for the “able-bodied,” our educational curriculum is designed for the “average student,” or one without physical or mental disabilities,” explained Tanja Beck, the Access Services Advisor for the OSD. To align with the social model of disability, the OSD has redesigned their office to create a model for other services on campus. Students are no longer required to provide medical documentation pertaining to a disability at their first meeting with the office. This makes it easier to register with the office.
In addition, students may now register online to take their exams in the office. Over the past 10 years, the number of students seeking accommodations from the OSD has increased dramatically. In addition, there has been a shift in the reasons students have for registering with the office, with the majority of students seeking accommodations for “invisible disabilities,” such as mental illness, learning disabilities, or ADHD, rather than physical handicaps. In fact, mental health issues such as anxiety and depression are the most common disability among students registered with the OSD.
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As a result of this changing dyanmic, the OSD has recognized that the current system of accommodations for all of the registered students is no longer a sustainable practice. Currently, the OSD must provide separate accommodations for every student registered with the office, for each of their classes, for every separate term. By altering the university environment, the OSD hopes to effectively and efficiently reduce barriers to learning without needing to provide separate accommodations for each student. This aspect of their mission can be seen in the OSD’s promotion of the adoption of the Universal Design for Learning Principles (UDL) in McGill classrooms. UDL is a teaching approach that encourages professors to use multiple means of representation, expression, and engagement when presenting and assessing course material. In this way, the classroom is made more accessible to different learning styles. The Office for Student’s with Disabilities at McGill offers UDL workshops for faculty staff and students, as well as one-on-one consultations with professors and TAs. In meetings with OSD faculty, professors will receive suggestions for UDL tools they may find effective in their classrooms. Professor Hans Beck of the History and Classical Studies department is a leading figure for the use of UDL principles at McGill. “I started easy, with the implementation of some basic principles such as accessible class notes, powerpoint presentations that are made available before class, and revised regulations for the submissions of assignments,” Beck commented. “This is nothing really earthshaking, but the sum of these minor steps really allows students to connect to the curriculum in a different way.” Since then, he has experimented with an “inverted classroom.” This requires that students listen to a lecture outside of class and then write homework assignments or engage in some type of learning activity during the class period. Professor Beck noted that this alternative learning style was at first met with confusion and resistance, but students gradually grew more comfortable with the new learning environment, and even come to enjoy it.
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McGill is joined by four CEGEPs in Quebec – Centennial College, Dawson College, John Abbott, and Marianapolis – in a project examining the implementation of UDL principles in higher education institutions. The project will help identify both the challenges and benefits of UDL in classrooms and student services. Angela Bourgos, Head of School at Centennial College, is a strong proponent of UDL. “UDL is a learning for the 21st century,” she asserted. “It is most effective for students with learning challenges, but everyone benefits. It requires teachers to design courses with learning in mind, not just teaching.” Cederic Ferland, U3 Cultural Studies, works for the OSD creating videos that explain and promote UDL principles to the McGill community. The videos offer student, faculty, and staff perspectives on the benefits of UDL and its potential to enrich the learning experience at McGill. Ferland is currently enrolled in a class (MUPD 204) that meets in an Active Learning Classroom. In an Active Learning Classroom, the classroom includes round tables and numerous
computer screens linked to the professors’ computer. The layout of the classroom facilitates interaction between the students and the professor, as well as among the students themselves. Ferland describes the experience as positive, productive, and even fun, but recognizes that while the system works well for the 16-person class, it may not be conducive to a larger class size. In May of next year, the OSD will offer workshops for students on how to start a conversation with course instructors or professors about UDL. These workshops will be open to students with and without disabilities. “Talk to your professor if you experience certain barriers in accessing course material, and raise awareness of what might create barriers in the classroom,” Beck encouraged. “We need student allies to push UDL and move the idea forward.” Beck sees a bright future for UDL at McGill. “I think the more faculty is asked by students to provide more access when it comes to their courses, the more they’ll see the need for education reform. The more this message comes from the students, the stronger it speaks.”
BUSINESS
Will This Startup SELF-DESTRUCT in 8 Seconds?
Understanding Snapchat’s
$4 billion valuation
Natalya Hibbert
BUSINESS WRITER
“T
hat’s insane!” declares Lydia DePillis of the Washington Post. Just months after Snapchat, a picture messaging app based in California, was valued at $800 million, new reports have seen that number jump to $4 billion. The valuation has raised questions throughout the industry, with many analysts suspicious as to the company’s true value. Among the frontrunners in establishing a stake in the company is China’s Tencent, the internet company behind the popular WeChat messaging service. Tencent is reported as potentially paying $200 million for a position, which some investors see as questionable. How is it possible for this relatively simple app that has no revenue to be valued so high? What is the reason for this huge boost in value? The value lies in its potential. In a day and age where extensive personal information can be easily tracked over the internet, an app that allows users to send photo messages that are permanently deleted in seconds taps into a growing desire for privacy. Thus, the impermanence of Snapchat is the source of its explosive popularity. The app has gone global. with approximately 26 million users, and does not plan to make any money off of them. It does, however, have plenty of potential for continued growth. The company launched its Stories product last month, which allows users to create status updates (similar to Facebook) using pictures and videos. CEO Evan Spiegel is also looking into ways to play music through the app. Many analysts seem to think that this valuation is too high. If the deal goes through with Tencent, Snapchat will be worth more than Instagram, which was valued at roughly $1 billion shortly before Facebook acquired it for $715 million. A valuation that is viewed as so exorbitantly high will certainly raise red flags in the market, as investors become increasingly vocal over their suspicions of a price bubble. MoreThe Bull & Bear - December 2013
PHOTO VIA FLICKR
over, many see it as an indicator of far worse consequences for the industry as a whole in the very near future. Investment banker Josh Felser states: “There was just no justification that any of us can come up with. When I saw that, I thought, are we at the end? Is the bubble about to burst? On the outside looking in, it looks outrageous.” Others believe that the price tag is just a number, and the only thing that really matters is how much is actually paid for the company if it sells. Tencent’s investment is driven not by the valuation itself, but by the expected return upon sale at a later date. Looking at this from Tencent’s perspective, they are investing in something that could be worth a lot (emphasis on the uncertainty) and they are getting their hands on it before anyone else can. Eyes have namely shifted to Facebook, who has made attempts to buy Snapchat in the past, but was flat-out rejected. Although these firms feel that adding Snapchat to its ranks may make them more competitive in global tech markets, the inherent risks are magnified when it is considered that the app’s popularity may be short lived.
Facebook is already is starting to see its popularity fade, as evidenced by the disappointing earnings reported on Wednesday, October 30. While Facebook has struggled in the past with transparency regarding its privacy policies, as well as several poorly received amendments to how users can manage their privacy settings, Snapchat has been largely received as a safe app to use as the service deletes photo messages once they have been opened. However, many users are unaware that photos which are not opened are held on Snapchat’s servers, where they can be easily accessed. Additionally, users are still capable of screenshotting a photo under the pretense that the sender is notified when it happens. While we continue sending photos of our reaction to the latest episode of New Girl to our friends, investors will continue to worry over Tencent’s eager move on Snapchat. The uncertainty around the investment is made all the more uneasy as questions continue to circle around the valuation figure of $4 billion.
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BUSINESS
LESSONS FROM A
VENTURE CAPITALIST PHOTO VIA FLICKR
Understanding valuation, investment, and decision making Arash Nayerahmadi BUSINESS WRITER
E
ver wonder how YouTube, Google, and Facebook went from popular websites to superpowers each valued at tens of billions of dollars? In the case of YouTube, Chris Haroun had a lot to say about their success, and his firm played an influential part of YouTube’s track to going public. Haroun is a partner at Artis Ventures, where he focuses mostly on software and technology start-ups. Last month, McGill students we were fortunate enough to to have this celebrated alum speak to them about his wealth of experience. Haroun offered unique insights derived from his expertise in Information Systems and Finance. Of the many points raised, a few lessons stood out, surprising and enlightening students eager to learn from someone with such a breadth of experience. Haroun graduated from McGill with a Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in Information Systems in 1994. He then worked at Accenture before attending Columbia University for a Masters in Finance. His career flourished further as he spent four years at Goldman Sachs, managing a portfolio worth over $1 billion. Now a partner at Artis Ventures (AV), he spoke confidently and comfortably about his past. Venture capitalists are among the first to invest in new firms. They often have to make decisions based on qualitative factors rather than focusing on quantitative financial data. AV’s selection process begins with a mass analysis of over 405 companies. This list is slowly narrowed down, ending with investment in one or two firms per quarter. This is especially fascinating when it is considered that of those firms in which AV invests, few reach significant success quickly. In fact in the
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AV fund that Haroun presented, there were less than a dozen companies, and only a few needed to be successful for the fund to have strong returns. Seeing the difference in the treatment of technology start-ups versus other industry start-ups was a genuine treat for the business enthusiast. We would generally think that the success of a venture capital firm is dependent on picking mostly successful investments; however, Mr. Haroun explained the opposite. On the profitability of firms, he believed that startups should wait longer before going public. Historically, firms have been known to hastily push for an initial public offering. However, we have discovered that some of those firms, Netflix among those, found going public revealed their competitive advantage too early to the market and subsequently to their competitors. Waiting longer before the IPO allows firms to mature further in their market, making replication of their success increasingly difficult as their core competencies are given time to mature. The notion that spending more time as a private company often yields more fruitful returns was a relatively novel, especially given the fast-cycle nature of the technology industry. Throughout the presentation there was a reiteration of the importance of strong management in the companies that AV considered for investment. We conventionally assume that the most important indicators of a start-up’s future success would be the idea, business model, and current sales or financial results. Haroun, however, was quick to point out that the management team should be the key decision making criterion – looking specifically at their track records, past experi-
ence together, and ability to manage projects. Initially his commentary was surprising; however, as he covered examples of recent successful start-ups, his case became more and more convincing. Haroun cited YouTube, mentioning that the management team had previously worked together at PayPal and that the reputation they had built was a key driver in AV’s decision to invest in them; the same was true for Bracket Computing. The most fascinating part of Haroun’s presentation was his detailed analysis of Bracket Computing, specifically why AV invested in them, and why he was confident that Bracket has a bright future. Haroun explained that Bracket solves the security problem with respect to cloud storage. The analysis was especially stimulating by virtue of its relevance to our course material: virtual versus physical storage, as well as the benefits and disadvantages of each. Discussing Bracket taught us the downfalls of current cloud technology, and about the government regulations needed for it to be considered secure. Moreover, we were genuinely fortunate to be given the rare opportunity to witness how a venture capitalist selects and works with a new firm. The presentation provided a unique window into the venture capital industry in Silicon Valley. Haroun offered a fresh and new perspective, revealing insights into an unfamiliar yet exciting career path emerging from the technology and software boom.
BUSINESS
An Interview with DAVID ABRAMSON Understanding energy and commodity market research
B
usiness Writer Sean Saggi recently had a chance to sit down with David Abramson, Director of Research and Chief Strategist for Energy & Commodities at BCA Research in Montreal. The following is a segment of the interview, the full transcript of which is available on The Bull & Bear website. Sean Saggi: Can you tell me a little bit about your position? What sort of work do you do as part of BCA? David Abramson: In a nutshell, I’m a strategist. Not just an economist, not just an investment manager, but a combination of the two. You need to see the big picture but be granular. I’m a commodities strategist, but the end point is to have a commodities strategy for the investor. We’re not ever going to be zinc or natural gas experts, what we need to do is start with top-down themes like ‘China is going to have a soft-landing. What are the commodities [that] would be affected? Maybe some of them will be cheap.’ That’s what I do at BCA. The skillset usually is an economics background and some background in investing. What are you giving these people that they can’t read in the newspaper? You are writing something every week and asking them to pay a lot of money, why won’t they read it in the New York Times? This is the challenge. To differentiate yourself. S: Were there any steps or careers that you held prior to joining BCA Research? D: I’ve had summer jobs. The only real job that I had before this one was with the Bank of Canada. I was in the international department and modelled international payments while working on my masters at night. I had my bachelor’s degree in honours economics, that was 30 years ago that I graduated. And so I guess the question is what are the things you need for this kind of a job? [You] have to be able to think outside the box, have some basic macro understanding, and ... be able think like an investor. I have a degree in economics and international relations, and you can do worse than to work for The Bull & Bear - December 2013
Sean Saggi
BUSINESS WRITER
central bank. Because they teach you how to think [in a way] that is coherent and logical, but also like a policy maker. In the investment world, you get a lot of not necessarily logical thinking, because people have a gut feeling, which is okay if you’re a successful investor. But as a strategist you need to have a logical, coherent way to think about things. S: Can you briefly explain your personal take on the state of Canadian commodities? What are some of the things you look for when evaluating the market? D: Oil and gold. There are others too, but let’s stick with oil and gold because everyone knows what they are. The thing about oil and gold is that there fungible. Gold here is the same as gold there. These are very important for the Canadian economy, and there are a lot of direct and indirect implications for the Canadian economy. The state of Canadian economy is very interesting. In 2000, commodity sales were in a bull market. Sales went up year after year, month after month. It also pushed up our currency. It caused a boom in a lot of parts of Canada, but also hurt [other] parts due to the expensive loony. For example, [the city] I’m from, Windsor, was greatly hurt by the commodities boom because it is mainly a car producer, and competes for tourism with Michigan. The expensive dollar hurt Windsor’s economy. So where are we right now? Since 20082009, the prices of those commodities, especially gold and oil that Canada produces, have started to go down. It could be argued that... some parts of Canada have done better as the dollar drops in value. So what is going to happen that Canada produces it gets a little more complicated? Although oil and even natural gas are kind of the same around the world, it just so happens that it is very hard to transport natural gas or oil from North America to other parts of the world. So there has been a phenomenal boom in non-conventional energies (you’ve probably heard of Shale) across
North America. The main thing to understand is that Americans don’t need our gas as much, so can we send it to the rest of the world...Their production has gone up 2 million barrels per day, that’s a very big number. [In regards to] the movements in commodities, there are some question marks associated with the value of the commodity, because of what’s going to happen in the US, so the Canadian dollar moves with it. S: When you’re evaluating commodities or macro trends, what are some of the aspects you look at? D: The things you must understand are the prospects of what’s happening in China and what’s happening in currency markets. Those are absolutely critical. What you need to understand is that commodities prices fall, and we’re at the high end of the range right now. The thing about commodities is that you can’t differentiate between the products. Copper is copper. Unless this time is different, commodity prices tend not to go up for very long relative to consumer prices. China has come in a short period of time, 12 years, from being a relatively small user of commodities to becoming key users of [resources] such as copper or nickel. You need to understand the Chinese business cycle, and [whether or not ] it is in a middle income trap. Has it created imbalances? They’ve already built all the highways and now they’re going to do some consuming, which is not as commodity intensive. What happens with the dollar both influences, and is a sign, of things that are happening with the commodity markets. Movements in the dollar tend to be closely related to commodity prices. If the fed is taking risk with fiat money, then you can imagine why the dollar would fall and gold would go up. The full interview is available on The Bull & Bear website.
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BUSINESS
"Be Your Own Biggest Champion"
PHOTO VIA PEG BRUNELLE
…and more advice shared during the CPPIB panel discussion on Women in Finance at McGill University Guy Rene Kayomba BUSINESS WRITER
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n November 12, the Desautels Women in Business (DWIB), in partnership with the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) hosted an interactive discussion panel on Women in Finance. The delegation - headed by Jennifer Kerr, head of Private Investments at CPPIB flew in straight from Toronto to present their firm and its culture, as well as share insights on career development in the financial services industry. The CPPIB is one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated public pension investment organizations. It is a professional investment management organization that actively promotes high performance. The CPPIB’s single purpose is to invest the long-term assets of the Canada Pension Plan to maximize returns without undue risk of loss on behalf of over 18 million Canadians. The participants shared personal anecdotes about their various experiences working in the male-dominated field of finance, with one member recalling the days when she used to be the only woman on her team as an employee of another investment bank. The CPPIB representatives discussed their company’s unique culture in the realm of investment management firms. Citing personal examples, they illustrated how the CPPIB supports parents, or any person with family commitments; The conversation later shifted to understanding how the CPPIB actively promotes workplace discussion and values the opinion of all employees, irrespective or hierarchical rank.
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Asked about the importance of hosting such an event, the CPPIB representatives explained that the decision was motivated by an organization-wide policy to increase the diversity and gender parity at the firm. This illustrates a noticeable trend not only in the professional finance environment, but also in all fields of business. Today, organizations, individuals, and institutions understand that smart talent management draws from the entire population. Fully integrating women in the workplace, and the marketplace, can yield significant returns. This phenomenon often referred to as the Gender Dividend. Emily Ren, Vasilia Kratsios, and Debra Kelsall, all DWIB founding executives, cite this demand for female talent as one of their main motivations for starting the Desautels Women in Business network. Driven by the need expressed by various recruiters in the industry to identify promising female talent, they created an organization that would promote the recruitment of women, and reaching out in their own faculty. However, over the course of the last several months, the club has increased its scope to provide a platform for women to share, encourage, and explore their ideas and goals as well as the various opportunities and careers available to them. “As a finance student, I have attended a variety of finance conferences and networking events. It’s no exaggeration to say that as a woman, I am almost always in the minority,” says Kelsall, an Honours Investment Management student. “While the corporate world has historically been very male dominated,
this is changing. A lot of firms are beginning to focus more on recruiting female talent. There are many top-notch female students in management at McGill and one of the goals of DWIB is to make these students aware of the exciting career opportunities that exist for them.” Danielle Dagenais, finance advisor at the Soutar Career Services, also attended the event and was generous in her advice to the bright-eyed prospective financiers attending the event. Referring to her days working in various roles in finance, she applauded the improvements in the industry and the existence of events such as the Women in Finance discussion that provide students with relevant information, real exposure, and role models. She also highlighted the crucial role men have to play in the gender parity initiative. For instance, she encouraged men not to shy away from mentoring younger women. Using the traditional example of golf course networking - which symptomizes the image of the finance industry as an old boys’ club, she encouraged men to increase their awareness and sensitivity around the fundamental issue of gender parity, and to foster an environment that would promote this agenda. Guy Rene Kayombya has also written an article exploring gender equity in the business place, and the concept of the Gender Dividend. The article is available online, and in the November 2013 Print Issue of The Bull & Bear.
The Holiday Guide
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FEATURE
Ryan Holiday: A Man For All Seasons
A discussion with American Apparel’s Director of Marketing Andrew Marcovitch BUSINESS EDITOR
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opportunities beyond the college campus. Ryan is a Wall Street Journal best-seller, director of marketing at American Apparel, media strategist for author Robert Greene and Tim Ferriss - oh, and in case you didn’t already guess - he dropped out of college. When Ryan was in college, he was faced with an incredibly tough decision: leave college to pursue once in a lifetime opportunities, or stay in school and never know where those opportunities would
have led. In hindsight, it seems like he made the right decision. We asked Ryan how he know he wouldn’t end up a bum: “You have no idea! That’s why it’s a risk and that’s why it’s so terrifying. I remember being scared out of my mind all the time. It’s actually part of the reason I’ve tried to write a lot about it since, because it doesn’t need to be so terrifying and I wouldn’t want another kid to have to feel that if they didn’t need to. What you have to remember is that you can PHOTO VIA LAVIN AGENCY
ost of us will agree the information we learn in our classes is just a tiny portion of the value we get from coming to McGill. I happen to be studying finance, but there’s no denying that if I wanted to, I could learn all the finance theory I need online. Employers always say “We hire character, we can train skill”. The Bull & Bear caught up with Ryan Holiday who makes a compelling argument that, for some people, there are better advancement
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FEATURE always go back to school, that your life is something that can go in a lot of directions but you always have the ability to turn it or change it if you feel like it isn’t working like you hoped. Doing something like taking a break from college has massive upsides - who knows what you might learn, experience or encounter - and the downside is...you can usually go back.” In Ryan’s case, it made sense to leave school - but for most people, college is the place that will provide the most value for them. Consider McGill as an example; it’s atmosphere promotes deep thought and exploration, it’s people allow students to build a professional network, it’s career services help students get jobs, and it’s professors get students thinking about ideas they may not otherwise come across. These are the reasons I enjoy coming to school everyday, not for the content on the lecture slides. The reality is that all of those
experiences, real-world responsibility, career mentors, and alternative learning methods such as books, blogs, people and websites. For some people, the combination of experiences available to them in the professional world is greater than what is possible at university. “It wouldn’t have worked for me if I was a year younger. It might not work for me two years from now. It’s a matter of energy, motivation and compulsion, I think. At that point in my life, I had sort of an insatiable appetite to prove myself and to learn and to do all these cool things. It was really hard to satiate writing papers and doing group projects. Today, if I wanted to get a degree in Ancient History or something, I might have the patience to do it in a more traditional manner. But for the stuff I was trying to do at the time in marketing and such, school just didn’t work. There was too much going on at the time that I could actually participate in
For some people, the combination of experiences available to them in the professional world is greater than what is possible in university aspects I value about higher education can be found in other places. Ryan was able to extract substantially all of the value college offered him through professional experiences. He found different ways to build his career, different ways to establish a network, and different mentors to promote his thinking. “I loved college. For me, that love just conflicted with other stuff I loved - namely doing things in the real world. I ultimately had to make a choice - the same choice a lot of young people face - and that is whether I wanted to sit in a classroom and learn about stuff or take the chance to actually DO that stuff on a real scale for real money. The only tradeoff was that if I wanted to continue to learn I would have to take that responsibility on myself (which I did through mentors and books and experiences)” I would argue that for certain people, facing the right opportunities like Ryan was, there is very little value McGill can offer that can’t be obtained in other ways. It is a matter of trade-offs. Carnival, Frosh week, networking cocktails, career services, professor mentors, and course content - in exchange for professional meetups, applied The Bull & Bear - December 2013
and do. I took it and haven’t looked back.” Recently, Ryan wrote a new book called Growth Hacker Marketing where he explains that the best marketing strategy for a growing startup is not to have a dedicated marketing team. Instead, billion dollar companies like Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, and Dropbox became huge using what is being coined as “growth hacking”. The success of traditional marketing techniques such as free samples, television advertisements and billboards that helped build some of the largest companies around including Coca Cola, Macy’s and even Apple, is coming to a screeching halt. The new way to promote companies is through testable techniques, that leverage the internet to create scalable, cost-efficient campaigns where marketers only pay for results. These tools include e-mail campaigns that can reach the masses, online ads that link back to a digital product or service, and many other means. Traditional marketing focuses on brand awareness and perception, growth marketing is all about gaining users and growth. “In fact, those companies talked about deliberately deciding NOT to think about
marketing. They thought about growth. This framework - the startup mentality - happens to be a much more effective approach for rapidly launching, improving, building and owning a business or product category. It’s scalable, it’s trackable, it’s efficient, and it’s creative. So the book is all about those strategies and the mindset that led to their development. Anyone who doesn’t have a job at a Fortune 500 company as a Marketing Director should read my book” Ryan’s final advice for all students (for better or worse): take advantage of your student title. “People LOVE to help students. I used writing for my college newspaper as a way to meet all these cool people - people I ultimately ended up working for. It changed my life. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t used my student status to get into places I otherwise wouldn’t have been allowed. Take advantage of that, you’ll regret it if you don’t.” Neither the Bull & Bear nor the author of this article recommends any student abandon their studies. The purpose of this article is to foster thinking and help students realize the world is changing. Higher education is being disrupted McGill now has serious competition, and not from U of T or Concordia, but rather from the increasing number of alternative ways to learn. Michael Porter, renowned inventor of Porter’s 5 forces model, would classify this competition as the threat of substitutes. A university degree is becoming increasingly less valuable for two reasons. The first is deeply explained throughout this article - there are simply other means of learning that didn’t exist or weren’t accessible before. The second reason is a massive spike in college participation rates since the 2008 recession. Higher education is valuable only when a select number of people have it. Porter would classify higher-education as a source of competitive advantage for students who have it, but not a differentiating strategy. In context of a company, competitive advantages are activities or ideas which improve the business, but can easily be copied and implemented by all the competitors. The end result is all competitors adopt those value-adding activities, until they become a minimum requirement to compete, rather than an advantage for those who have them. Traditional higher-education is headed down that path right now. Finding ways to differentiate yourself, as Ryan Holiday has done, is something all of you should be thinking about.
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FEATURE
Your Holiday Gift Guide
The top ten places for gifts under $25 on St-Laurent Tessa Battistin
LIFESTYLE WRITER
Freak Lunchbox
3680 Boul Saint-Laurent www.freaklunchbox.com Best Bet: Large Santa-themed Kinder Surprise for $8.99, Marble Swirled Cube Pop for only $.99 (great for stocking stuffers!), and Pac Man magnets (set of 28) for $13.99
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hinking of Boulevard Saint-Laurent conjures up images of exciting Montréal nightlife, filled with bars, clubs, and late-night poutine joints. But Saint-Laurent can have even more to offer in the light of day. Vintage shops are popular along the street, and there are plenty of charcuteries and bakeries offering up local and ethnic delicacies. With a beautiful graffiti backdrop and new places to explore along the way, a wintertime walk on Saint-Laurent promises to be fruitful in the never-ending search for unique holiday gifts. I did the research for you, so here are 10 places that are sure to catch your eye and help you check off that holiday gift list!
Freak Lunchbox’s neon exterior promises sweets and wonder inside. Walking in fulfills all the childhood dreams you never knew you had. With toys and other gizmos lining the walls and whole back room full of gummy candy, Freak Lunchbox certainly pays tribute to its name. Not only does Freak Lunchbox carry an enticing variety of candy that would put Willy Wonka himself to shame, it has unique toys—from yo-yos to smelly stickers—and metal lunch boxes that are sure to delight young siblings, little cousins, or just about anyone with a playful side.
PHOTOS BY AUTHOR
Puces POP Craft Fair organized by POP Montréal December 13th-15th Église Saint-Denis at 5075 rue Rivard popmontreal.com Over 80 Craft vendors with vintage finds Best Bet: Patent leather bag for $20, Silver Snowflake ring for $15, and Vintage Pins for $5 Puces POP is a unique opportunity for any McGill student looking for a well deserved study break. It is a flea market organized by the POPMontréal music festival, geared towards holiday crafts and vendors that will put you right into the holiday spirit. The market promises discount prices and eclectic gifts that will save you from buying someone slippers. Again.
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Kitsch’n Swell 3968 Boul Saint-Laurent www.kitschnswell.ca Best Bet: Moustache shot glasses for $6.50 each, Vintage sun glasses for $19.95 Two intertwined, full-sized taxidermy deer grace the entrance of this boutique. After you get over the initial shock of that sight, you are transported to a world that is grisly yet girly, where pink is the norm and glitter is a given. The store has a vibe of “organized chaos” accented by hot pink and lace. Don’t be afraid to explore; each shelf seems to offer something different each time you inspect it. Kitsch’n Swell’s mostly mirrored surfaces give a highclass atmosphere, as the welcoming display cases invite you to inspect their one-of-a-kind jewelry pieces. If you’re looking for vintage Playboy magazines or costume jewelry, this is the place to go.
FEATURE
Slovenia: Boucherie Charcuterie 3653 Boul. Saint-Laurent boucherieslovenia.com Best Bet: Extra Large Bar of Milka Chocolate for $6.20 Boucherie Slovenia offers a variety of hearty looking meats in its display window, but this does not do justice to all the other goodies inside. Beyond the raw sheep intestines and specialty jerky, the Boucherie carries a variety of epicurean foods, such as chocolate wafers and savoury crackers imported from Europe: perfect for Dad or any delicacy lover.
Montreal Images 3620 Boul. Saint-Laurent www.montreal-images.com/boutiques.html Best Bet: Metal Plates for $8.95, Andy Warhol Prints $19.95 High ceilings and strategically placed lighting makes Montréal Images feel like a swanky gallery. As you enter the store, a clean and calm atmosphere illuminates original products that are hung on the wall with care. Glossy prints, postcards, stationery, and posters cover the walls, along with pricier framed pieces. Montréal Images offers vintage images printed on funky metal plaques that would make a great gift for an art fan. Also of note is their collection of interesting postcards, providing a cheap and easy way to send holiday cheer that saves on shipping costs.
Centre Star 3653B Boul. Saint-Laurent (next to Boucherie Slovenia) Best Bet: Funky sock puppet mittens for $19.95, Thick wool scarf for $15 Centre Star carries anything and everything you could need for a Montréal winter. Here, you’ll find a thoughtful gift for that wacky foreign student who doesn’t know what is about to hit them come December. You can stock up on funky animal-themed mittens, classic Canadian toques, and cozy wool scarves. Besides its accessories, Centre Star carries warm winter coats and boots. Although it may not look like much from the outside, Centre Star has been a Montréal name since 1965, meaning that the store has survived at least 30 more winters than you have, and even more snow storms.
Friperie Saint-Laurent 3976 Boul Saint-Laurent Best Bet: Hot pink felt floppy hat for $15, Leather wallet for $5, Vintage board games for $10 This vintage store is one you don’t want to miss. The prices can’t be beat, and with ever-changing merchandise, anything you find is truly one-of-a-kind. Friperie Saint-Laurent is crowded with clothes and accessories, but searching through the racks is well worth your time. The store carries everything from 60’s board games to flamboyant ties and those horrible Christmas sweaters. Friperie SaintLaurent even has a friendly pet dog roaming the racks, so don’t forget to give him a pat if you choose to stop by. The Bull & Bear - December 2013
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FEATURE
(Tele)visions of Sugarplums The best TV Christmas specials LJ de Gara LIFESTYLE WRITER
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s the weather gets colder, and the days get shorter, there’s one thing that no one can deny: December is an ideal time to watch television, and lots of it. Sure, there are exams to write (ugh) and social gatherings to attend (double ugh), but those activities require changing out of your pajamas. If the universe had intended for you to leave your apartment, would it have sent Jack Frost to throttle your neck with his bony icicle fingers? Any outdoor activity pales in comparison to the season’s true calling: watching Christmas specials. Christmas specials are the best kind of television because they’re, well, special. They’re fondly remembered for their messages of hope and joy, and they’re as essential to Christmas as Bing Crosby and jokes about fruitcake being gross: it’s just not the holidays without them. Here are some of the very best TV Christmas specials to warm the cockles of your heart, and to watch over and over again.
A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) The popularity of Charlie Brown has always been a little bit puzzling. He’s easily the darkest cartoon character- he suffers endlessly with unrequited love, he’s unable to kick a football, he has constant existential crises, and is
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perennially seeking help from a clearly unqualified psychiatrist, etc. Nowhere is that more evident than in this special. Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree is sad and scrawny. He doesn’t get a Christmas card from the girl that he pines after. Both are essentially standard Charlie Brown misery. The theme song of the episode is so melancholy that it became a musical cue for sadness on Arrested Development. But things worsen when Charlie Brown notices that people don’t seem to be taking part in the spirit of the season anymore, preferring instead to focus on material goods. His little sister, Sally, is so caught up in the commercialized Christmas
that she writes a letter to Santa Claus asking for cash in “tens and twenties” because she’s all about making bank-- a woman before her time. Ultimately, Charlie Brown confides in his friends that he doesn’t feel excited for Christmas anymore because he feels that the spirit is lost in the midst of all the greediness. Linus recites the Christmas story, and Charlie Brown feels renewed hope-- and ultimately joins his friends in the Christmas pageant. Charlie Brown’s Christmas is a holiday classic, and even for the many of us that celebrate a very secular Christmas, it’s an affecting half-hour of television.
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Downton Abbey: Season 2, Episode 9 (2011) If for some reason you have not seen Downton Abbey yet (perhaps you spent the last five years in an underground bunker), you owe it to yourself to drop everything that you’re doing and binge watch the entire series immediately. “But I have an exam tomorrow!” you may protest, but I assure you that no exam will ever matter as much as Downton Abbey. This Christmas special is set in December 1919. The Crawley family are still reeling from the Great War and all of the suffering it has brought down on the Abbey, and the world. Without giving too much away for the three of you, who still haven’t seen it, things seem bleak at first. An innocent man is convicted of a terrible crime, a vengeful businessman tries to ruin the Abbey’s reputation, and a secret threatens to destroy a great love... But all that woe and sorrow is washed away in a truly magical moment out in the snow. Briefly, everything is absolutely perfect. Note: we do not talk about the Downton Abbey Season 3 Christmas special. Never ever. It didn’t happen.
Much like Christmas dinner itself, Friends is both incredibly comforting and universally accessible. While its Thanksgiving episodes were always a The Bull & Bear - December 2013
than legitimate traditions in their own right. Friends refuses to fall into this trap: Ross doesn’t want his son to grow up without his Jewish culture. He wants Ben to get excited for Hanukkah the way he already is for Christmas. Naturally, Ross solves this complex question of multiculturalism by donning an armadillo costume. Magnificent, magnificent, magnificent. Obviously. these are only three TV specials in a canon that spans literally thousands of hours, but hopefully they have whetted your appetite for television, Christmas, and staying indoors. I heartily endorse all three.
PHOTOS VIA FLICKR
Friends: Season 7, Episode 10 “The One with the Holiday Armadillo” (2000)
particular forte, “The One with the Holiday Armadillo” is competitively excellent in the holiday special category. In this episode, Ross struggles to make Hanukkah appealing to his son. The nuances of the Old Testament story are bland to little Ben, who cares far less about his heritage than he does about presents and Santa. It’s a struggle we don’t often see in pop culture-- while many recent holiday specials will have a token menorah for Hanukkah or kente cloth for Kwanzaa, they seldom mention what it means to celebrate something other than Christmas. The other holidays essentially become accessories to Christmas, rather
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FEATURE
M CG I L L U N I V E RS I T Y: CA N I G E T A R E F U N D? How my degree taught me everything I need to know about nothing Adam Banks
OPINION WRITER
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’ve been reading books since I decoded the concept of words at the ripe old age of three, and as of May 2014, I will be graduating with a BA in English Literature from McGill University. Dear world: I will have successfully completed my degree. Hurray! I’ve learned so much! Just kidding. In reality, I’ve spent three and a half years churning out papers on subjects I don’t care about, and sitting in lectures filled with apathetic students pretending to take notes while actually talking to their friends on Facebook. The seven amazing courses I’ve taken have hardly made up for the seven hundred required courses on concepts I will never use again because of how ridiculously abstract they are. I would rate the usefulness of my BA as on par with learning cursive—neat to have, but less important than I was told it would be. I both love and hate McGill, and I wonder just how many people feel the same way. Before this rant goes any further, I’d like to make it clear that this isn’t the fault of my professors. They were simply doing their jobs. I merely picked the wrong degree. McGill’s Literature program—a program that rarely discusses any novels published after the invention of the computer—just wasn’t the right program for me. I didn’t figure out that
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I was more passionate about studying film until I was in my third year and it was too late to do anything about it. As a result of studying novels that didn’t interest me, I stopped reading novels that did interest me, and it will probably take some time before I can fall back in love with books and undo the effects of academia. When it sank in that I had chosen the wrong degree, I accepted my fate and started working towards a costly piece of paper that would theoretically grant me the right to never write academic papers again. I stopped trying to write well and started to use academic jargon and buzzwords in order to impress my professors. Paradoxically, my grades started to improve, even though I was putting less thought into what I wrote. I had clear theses and a boring, tried-and-trusted structure: papers that fit the McGill mould. Isn’t higher education supposed to inspire us? Our classes are supposed to teach us interesting and useful knowledge, but required courses at McGill are often hopelessly large and out of touch with the modern world. The paper topics and lectures we receive at McGill seem like they haven’t been updated in twenty years. As a result, many students are forced to take classes they don’t want to take in order to fulfill hopelessly vague major require-
ments. Even the class names at McGill sound like textbook titles. When I see course requirements such as “Canadian Literature 1” and “Survey of English Literature 2” I feel creatively contained even before I attend the first day of lecture. There’s something wrong when institutionalized education gets in the way of genuine learning. Perhaps my experience at McGill could have been different had I entered the school as a freshman student (U0) instead of a “departmental” student (U1). The annoying truth of the matter is that McGill—“Canada’s Harvard”— pressures first year students that have a lot of credits from CEGEP, AP, or IB programs into declaring a major right off the bat. The logic behind this is that students who have done a few years in CEGEP after high school probably have an idea of what they want to study and are therefore able to skip the crucial first year and (theoretically) graduate in three years. Why is this status being applied to students who come from AP or IB programs? These programs are rarely equivalent to university courses and cannot replace the experience of being a first year at university. None of the AP courses I took in high school helped me find out what I wanted to study at McGill. Skipping the first year of university isn’t helpful—it’s a hindrance. It’s like skipping
FEATURE
"There's something wrong when institutionalized education gets in the way of genuine learning.”"
kindergarten. Incoming students from high-achieving programs are treated like adults, and they should be given the choice to stay in U0 if they feel like they need that time to figure out what they should be studying. I suppose I could have dropped out or “taken a semester off ” or what have you, but then I would have been seen as lazy, incompetent, or someone who just couldn’t take the heat, because most people still think that acquiring a university degree indicates intelligence. Here’s a possibility: maybe these “dropouts” leave schools like McGill because they’re sick and tired of dealing with an institution that doesn’t have enough time or money to care about them. That being said, there’s no real incentive for McGill to hold on to their students. After all, graduating an old student means accepting more new students, which means more money. McGill keeps accepting more students each year (and building more residences) even though it is unable to care for the current number of students, like some sort of irresponsible institutional cat lady. Speaking of money, I’d like mine back, please. Is there a return policy on The Bull & Bear - December 2013
BA’s? Robin Levinson’s recent article in the Toronto Star defends the usefulness of an Arts degree, claiming that “a BA is often a signal that the student was a deep thinker, a good writer and, perhaps most important, able to finish something.” These are definitely all things I’ve learned how to do, but they have nothing to do with my degree from McGill. My brief foray into philosophy didn’t teach me how to think deeply. Academic papers didn’t teach me how to write. Rather, these are skills I’ve honed through intense extracurricular involvement. The few classes that have helped me in these areas are all participation-intensive courses where you are forced to talk or write, engaging with course material in an accessible way and interacting with professors. For some reason, courses like these are rare at McGill—a school that encourages research instead of learning. If I am getting a degree just to signal skills such as teamwork, communication, and technical experience, I’m not sure the signal is very accurate. How does sitting in a lecture hall for three hours a day listening to a lecture teach you these skills? I’ve had a grand total of one group project while at McGill, and I didn’t meet with the group in person until a day before the exam. Smells like team spirit, right? As far as communication goes, I rarely see students talking to the professor or even each other for that matter. Most of them are too busy typing up transcripts of whatever the professor is lecturing about. Participation is an afterthought, and there are several lecturers I can think of who ignore raised hands until the student has forgotten what they were saying. Technical experience? All of my relevant, technical experience has been gained through Google search results and non-fiction books that the McGill library hides away in mechanically compressed bookshelves. I’ve probably learned more from Wikipedia than from any of my overpriced course packs. There are a lot of students at McGill who will soon realize that they have nothing on their resume that will get them a job. This is worrisome. Students who think a high GPA means that they have succeeded at university have
in essence failed at preparing themselves for the real world—a big, dark, scary place that is increasingly reliant on things that you don’t learn while studying Art History. I have friends who go to grad school because they don’t know what else they’re good at, and I wonder how many of these kids are headed off to grad school so they have more time to think about what they want to do with their lives. You can procrastinate on school papers, but you can’t procrastinate on life. In my case, graduation will most likely mark the last time I attend an institution of higher learning, and I can’t tell you how excited I am. I will never have to step foot in Service Point again, or sit in a cramped lecture hall trying to write down notes while sweating due to bizarre heating patterns. Most importantly, I will finally have time to learn about the subjects I want to learn about. In May of 2014 I will be graduating with a BA in English Literature from McGill University. Whoop-de-fricken-doo. The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Bull & Bear.
"You can procrastinate on school papers, but you can’'t procrastinate on life."” 21
LIFESTYLE
Super Smash Christmas A Christmas memoir Charlie Harkness LIFESTYLE WRITER
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y older brother Rob who had come home from university for the first time since leaving in 2008, brought the whole family together for the first time in two years. While full of family fun, it always seemed that the forced togetherness of Christmas drove a wedge between my parents. On Christmas Day, it was early into the evening and dinner would be ready in a few hours. My home lit up, despite the early setting sun, with the aroma of food and the glint of red and green lights strung up on the walls. The stereo system played Christmas carols on shuff le while snow fell outside. While my parents were in the kitchen watching the turkey roast, my brothers and I camped on the couch playing Nintendo’s Super Smash Brothers Brawl, reliving the video game competition of our childhood that did not occur much since Rob had left home. Cutting through Pikachu’s cartoonish cries, we heard a yell and a smash upstairs.The three of us paused: I looked at Matt, Matt at Rob and Rob back at me. “What was that?” Matt said. “Let’s go check.” I said. “Hold on.” Rob said. Another yell, then it began, back and forth between Mom and Dad, rising and falling like a wave. The stereo system continued to play through the yells, “On the first day of Christmas.” The three of us went upstairs to see what was going on and entered The Bull & Bear - December 2013
a room that echoed the picture perfect Christmas dreams of the Little Matchstick Girl. “On the third day of Christmas,” emanated from the stereo. The turkey sat, glazed golden brown, upon the table spread with all the fixings: mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, salad, and buns. But between us and this Christmas feast was our parents’ rage. “On the fifth day of Christmas.” Matt and I asked them to stop, it was Christmas after all, but it had no effect. “On the seventh day of Christmas.” Rob stood there in silence. The argument paced around the dining room until Dad stood behind the dinner table, in front of the balcony door, and Mom stood in front of the dinner table guarding the food she had prepared. “On the ninth day of Christmas.” It was a Christmas standoff. All the citizens of tinsel town stood and watched, as my Dad removed the wedding band from his finger and set it on the dinner table. Finding herself in a situation beyond reason, my mom, for whom I can count on my fingers the number of times has sworn, looked down at the Christmas feast and quietly replied: “You f***.” Unfortunately, her next move was not as reasonable. As the final verse came through the stereo, “On the twelfth day of Christmas,” my mom grabbed the Christmas turkey off the table and hurled it to-
wards my dad. Dad, whose quickness surprised us all, stepped aside just in time to avoid the Butterball projectile. The bird f lew over the balcony railing as the Christmas carol ended with “a partridge in a pear tree.” It splattered on the walkway, covering the pavement in Christmas stuffing. Stunned, my brothers and I slunk back downstairs, back to the couch, back to the comforting glow of pixelated violence. Rob, Matt and I ordered in that night. Within half an hour we had a special delivery to our back door, one Christmas pizza, extra-large with all the fixings. I noticed the look on the delivery boy’s face when he saw the turkey fragments sprawled across the pavement. He was polite enough not to ask. Rob, Matt and I ate pizza, drank holiday wine and played Smash Brothers for a long time, reliving what had been our brotherly ritual for years. As is the custom after a dramatic family event, the lights in the house were never turned off. As the darkness grew, our house stood like a smoldering ember blanketed in the cold, white snow. This piece is the first of a new memoir series by The Bull & Bear Lifestyle section. Each month, Lifestyle writer Charlie Harkness will be sharing personal anecdotes about life as a student, life at McGill, or just life in general.
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LIFESTYLE
Away We Go
A last minute checklist for your upcoming exchange adventure Emily Barber LIFESTYLE WRITER
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s the end of the semester swiftly approaches, many students on campus have the added stress of preparing for an upcoming exchange in the winter semester. The preparation process practically amounts to the workload of a sixth course; however, it can make for a fun study break. Here are some things to keep in mind as you get ready to kiss Montreal winter goodbye.
McGill and from your host institution. Reading them may seem like a drag (it is), and the formal jargon may remind you of your awful political science class in first year. Nonetheless, they are all VERY important and contain a lot of details about key dates and deadlines. Ignoring, or even skimming, these documents could seriously jeopardize your exchange. Buckle down and treat those documents as if they are all going to be on your final exam.
Read ALL the annoying documents
Given that McGill waits until the last possible second to issue your acceptance, f light prices are going to be astronomical, so don’t wait any longer
Chances are you have received a vast number of lengthy documents from
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Book your flights
to book your ticket. Prices are not going to magically drop. Consider booking through a travel agent, as there is no charge to get a quote and no obligation to book to f light if you find something cheaper online, but it can relieve you of the hassles of booking by yourself. If you don’t want to seek out a travel agent, some helpful websites for looking up f light plans or snagging a deal on plane tickets are Google Flight, Expedia, and Kayak.
Apply for your Visa
Visa applications can be a royal pain, but it is best to get it over with sooner rather than later. It is not uncommon
LIFESTYLE to be asked to provide evidence of literally every facet of your life when applying for your visa, and gathering these documents can take time. Let’s face it, getting “deported” may sound like a funny story to tell your friends, but it won’t be cool when you arrive back in Montreal for -30 degree weather and miss out on your exchange experience.
you must look into whether or not there are any mandatory or recommended vaccinations in place. A comprehensive list of these vaccinations by country can be found at ht t p://w w w.ph a c - a s p c .g c .c a/t mp pmv/countr ies-pays/index- eng.php. Don’t forget to check countries you are considering doing side excursions to, as well. While you are at the Doctor’s off ice, renew your prescriptions and stock up on any medication you may need while you are away.
a running list of your close family and friends’ addresses.
Pack Carefully
Unfortunately, you will not be able to bring the entire contents of your walk-in closet. Do your research with regards to weather, and plan which belongings you will bring, more than one day in advance, to avoid packers remorse. Packing lightly is a blessing and a curse, but remember, coming home to “OMG where did you get that shirt?” will make it all worth it.
Arrange Accommodations This one varies from place to place and depends mostly on where you are interested in living. If you want to live on-campus, or in a large complex specif ically designed for students, you should book ASAP—spaces are limited. This is almost always the more expensive option, but can be recommended, depending on the dynamic of the international student community. However, if you are looking to live off-campus, it is highly recommended not to book any thing before you go. Get to your destination and stay in a low-cost hostel for a few days, while you apartment-hunt. You can never be sure what you see online is what you are going to get, not too mention the possibility of fraudulent posts.
Set Up a Travel Blog This is a great way for your friends and family to follow you on your travels, and in the end, it will be the greatest souvenir of your trip. Use Wordpress and you can even add it as a line on your resume— nearly 20% of all websites are powered by the platform! 3 birds with one stone? Yes, please.
Lastly, keeping an open mind and a curiosity to learn is always important when going on exchange. Sure, an exchange seems like a great way to slack off for a semester, but you can also immerse yourself in a new culture, change your outlook on life, and meet new friends if you take the opportunity. Your exchange experience is what YOU make of it. Good luck and safe travels!
Postcard Prep
Pay Your Doctor a Visit Depending on where you are going,
The Bull & Bear - December 2013
Sending postcards is becoming a lost art, so don’t let it die. “I hate getting postcards,” said no one ever! Your friends and family will be elated when they actually receive a physical piece of mail other than a bill. But gone are the days when we know the addresses of just about anyone, so start
PHOTO VIA FLICKR
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LIFESTYLE Navigating your way through McGill Mental Health Services
Trying to Ke e p S a n e
Caroline Corbett-Thompson
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lmost everyone has a horror story concerning McGill’s Mental Health and/or counselling services. This is how it usually starts: you visit the office hoping to find kind words of solace, but all you get is a psychology PhD student putting in their hours, taping your whole breakdown, and then telling you kindly that you should do yoga. “Have you tried hot yoga?” “No.” “Well, you should. It would release all that tension in you.” Helpful? No. Infuriatingly unhelpful? Definitely. With finals approaching, mental health and counselling services are being flooded with students dealing with their pre-finals anxiety. They are either put on an endless waitlist or forced to content themselves with a short 45-minute session. This article aims to help readers understand what the McGill Mental Health and Counselling services do and what to expect from them. After all, when it comes to dealing with these services, every little piece of information helps.
Counselling McGill Counselling Service prides itself on it’s “we help you discover what is wrong now, so you can prevent it later” psychological approach. In other words, their approach is to focus on a person’s potential for personal growth and then help them build the skills and tools to attain psychological stability. This takes place through a series of one-on-one conversation sessions, for which students can sign up by booking an appointment. The Counselling Service also offers a number of workshops and group counselling opportunities on public speak-
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ing and self-motivation, support groups for international students, and how to cope with your overwhelming amount of schoolwork. One of the more popular workshops is the PACE program, offered through CaPS, designed to help students find out where they fit in the professional world through a series of pep-talks and personality tests. Ultimately, Counselling Service is only helpful if you are willing to accept the help.
Mental Health The McGill Mental Health Service (MMHS) is tucked away deep in the mysterious West Wing of the Brown Building, and you literally have to go through every other medical help desk before you reach Mental Health. This service is designed for students who are dealing with diagnosable conditions, such as depression, ADHD, substance abuse, rehabilitating anxiety or eating disorders. It offers professional help from psychiatrists, who will be able to prescribe you the appropriate medication. Similar to Counselling, emergency drop-ins are available at MMHS, but the waiting list to book a regular appointment is ridiculously long. That being said, it is easier to get an appointment there if you have a referral from another psychiatrist. The main problem with MMHS and McGill Counselling Service is that they are severely underfunded, which only reinforces its inaccessibility. Even
LIFESTYLE WRITER
if you do secure a drop-in appointment, it isn’t even certain that you will see the same counsellor again. As you self-consciously watch your counsellor scribble down notes about you, you cannot help but wonder where all of those pages are going. Is there a file somewhere with my name on it? You come to seek help in what you hope is a safe and trustworthy space, where you can be honest as you seek an unbiased professional opinion. You don’t need to know your counsellor’s name; you just need to trust them. The world of mental health is strange and unique like that. As you divulge all your deepest and darkest anxieties to them, you expect to have the trust reciprocated, and hope your file is being properly taken care of. Earlier this week, Principal Suzanne Fortier said, “There is hardly a topic that deserves more attention than mental health.” Student in Mind, a conference on mental health at McGill that took place earlier this semester, commented on how in the past year MMHS has handled 995 emergency drop-ins, with 91 percent of drop-ins feeling overwhelmed by stress, 40 percent dealing with or rehabilitating from depression, and a staggering 7 percent having seriously considered suicide. These are frightening numbers, which McGill should be even more aware of. Student in Mind helps promote this important issue, advocating for a peer support network and organizing multiple conferences on the topic of mental wellness. Through raising awareness about the issue of Mental Health, revamping the MMHS system, and allocating more funding to these services, MMHS and our sanity will be on the path to recovery.
OPINION
THE CURTAIN CALL FOR ST. LAURENT Impending gentrification could damage Montreal’s nightlife
PHOTO VIA FLICKR
Sam Robinson
OPINION WRITER
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egulars to their set would call it one Montreal’s best live acts. This October, however, the music group Kalmunity met a harsh critic – the police. After a decade of performances, their modest weekly act was deemed too raucous for the Plateau borough, earning them a hefty fine at Les Bobards on boulevard SaintLaurent. Unfortunately, Kalmunity isn’t alone. Montreal’s renowned nightlife is threatened by the gentrification of its great night districts. City officials and developers are working to replace hallowed entertainment locales, favoured by everyone from students to tourists, with residential homes for bankers and their ilk. Gentrification is a scourge that has infected other Canadian cities, and Montreal is next. Apparently, some people have an issue with Montreal’s nightlife and are speaking up. Their voices aren’t those of long time residents, but rather new councillors, planners and yuppies. These groups have settled into the trendiest areas of the city and they want to transform those places into something more to their liking. They envision quieter, cleanlier, more civil neighbourhoods. Neighbourhoods that fall asleep at ten o’clock and wake up at six for work the next morning. Like the rest of Canada, the forces of gentrification have arrived in Montreal and it’s simultaneously frustrating and unnerving. Police-enforced gentrification is coming down on the Plateau, largely encouraged by a small set of residents making extreme, escalating demands at the cost of everyone else. Take Kalmunity’s fated St. Laurent performance as an example. The group was hit with the
The Bull & Bear - December 2013
$1,250 noise violation fine just before the scheduled end of their act around midnight. Apparently, a veteran act can’t even play music before twelve o’clock anymore. On the Main. Does this sound like Montreal? Gentrification and fines have also injured the Plateau’s culinary scene. Last year, Le Roi du Plateau, a rue Rachel Portuguese chicken restaurant, was hit with more than $52,000 dollars in fines for its kitchen “odour.” For years, neighbours had embraced the scent emanating from the lauded restaurant. Suddenly, however, bureaucrats cried fowl over a handful of complaints, and the fine closed the family restaurant for good. Le Roi wasn’t some outlier, either; other restaurants, like nearby Portugalia, have been hit with similar fines. It’s a methodical process. Think the gentrification of the Plateau is a one-off event? Go west in Canada and you’ll find many cultural institutions and neighbourhoods gutted by gentrification and its sibling, residential development. Ask the Vancouver artists who formerly frequented the Waldorf Hotel, a multivenue complex shuttered this year to make way for condominiums. Or visit Toronto’s Entertainment District, where two thirds of the once 90 nightclubs have been shuttered within about a decade, replaced by upscale dwellings for more than 10,000 new residents. Frightfully, Montreal looks to be the next such frontier for development and gentrification. Look at residential planning documents and a dreadful picture arises. From the heart of hard-partying Crescent, to Rue Saint Catherine and Place des Arts, planners and developers are dreaming up tall schemes. New condos have been slated for development all over. Will these residences and their inhabitants sap all life from their surroundings? Will the
complaints push neighbourhoods like the Plateau into cultural decline? Only action will determine the answers to both. With these pressures ahead, it’s clear this city’s nightlife is in need of safeguarding. The web of restaurants, bars, and music venues that exist here is Montreal’s heart. Rational people must help keep it beating. Gentrification cannot be allowed to destroy what makes this city great. Involvement with the civic process can help right it. Thankfully, a few have already taken up the task. Vincent Stephen-Ong, a saxophonist with Kalmunity, started the Save the Plateau campaign on Facebook and YouTube following his group’s runin with the cops. Ong is moving forward with borough councillors on building conversation, and is actively seeking more voices to participate. The musician’s initial protest has started something good, but the Plateau is only one slice of Montreal, and his scope is limited. There need to be Save the Plateau movements in all of Montreal’s great neighbourhoods and boroughs. Civic lobbying groups like Ong’s can ensure that these areas grow while retaining their charm. Especially in the aftermath of November’s municipal election, Montreal city councillors are determining their course for the next four years and are open to suggestions. Argue against gentrification because it hurts the core of this city – its culture and night scene. Fans of Montreal nightlife want to know they will still have a community – and a Kalmunity – to turn to. It’s not something to take for granted. The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Bull & Bear.
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The 10 Percent Lost Cause Christie Wei Faculty of Management, U1
Here at McGill, “participation” takes on a wide range of definitions, ranging from mere attendance to clicker answers to actually talking. No matter the fix, discussions at McGill are ineffective at promoting critical thinking: even with participation comprising about 10 percent of final grades, hollow comments and awkward silences still find their way into the classroom. Something is wrong here. For most students, 10 percent of a final mark is an insufficient incentive to give 100 percent of effort in participation. It’s easy to see classroom participation as a joke, a mandatory requirement to grab some airtime each class, instead of a reason to actively listen or prepare for discussions in advance. The focus is on quantity, trying to get the professor to recognize your voice amongst a class of 75, rather than quality. Within Desautels, quality discussion is neglected in the classroom. Given our
OPINION entrenched “one right answer” assessment framework of multiple choice and short answer examinations, it is no wonder that to succeed (read: get good grades), we learn to prioritize blind memorization over critical reasoning. Rote memorization is the enemy of discussion; what’s the point if everyone regurgitates the same insights and opinions? Making participation 10 percent of the final grade is a misguided attempt at encouraging discussion. The problem is not the lack of incentives, but rather the lack of emphasis placed on creating a collaborative atmosphere within the classroom. Rather than being confined to one specific topic of the course, discussion-based teaching methods should underpin the entire curriculum. If discussionbased learning was valued beyond simply the grade in class but instead by the sense of curiosity and involvement in class, the 10 percent “incentive” would be completely unnecessary. Without a well-constructed atmosphere of idea sharing and collaboration, McGill’s classrooms are still light-years away from reflecting our label as the Harvard of Canada.
Changing students’ views towards participation from a necessary chore to something inherently valuable will enrich the quality of discussions. Classes need a better framework to foster participation and a 10 percent participation grade isn’t it.
PARTICIPATION MARKS: While participation marks are a common feature of the modern classroom, do they always encourage genuine discussion?
Speak Different Alex Petralia Faculty of Arts, U3
Here’s to the introverts. The shy. The private. The reflective. We live in a society that celebrates the extraverted. We respect “the people person” as charismatic and assertive - the one who has the courage to say what he thinks and doesn’t think twice about it. Extroversion dominates the boardroom, the dining room and, most relevantly for us, the classroom. But what about students that prefer to keep to themselves? Over a quarter of the population is introverted. Mandatory participation marks marginalize the shy and instead serve as easy grades for those to whom speaking comes most naturally. As a result, universities have forced introverts between a rock and a hard place: either participate in class or lose participation marks. However, forced participation doesn’t only hurt introverts. While participation is designed to fix a lack of discussion, it instead promotes meaningless comments by students
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who exploit the participation grade. After all, “there are no dumb questions,” but there are easy participation points. Participation in class is a noble ideal but its implementation must be more thoughtful. Some introverts have a terrible fear of public speaking. Others fear their answers aren’t adequate and are not worth bringing up. Others yet may not see the benefit—if I can get an A without participating, then why participate at all? Mandatory participation, then, does not solve the root problem. Students must be encouraged to participate because they find it genuinely worthwhile to discuss the topic, not because they just want to earn easy marks. This encouragement must come from professors. All too often, it is not sheer laziness that prevents in-class participation, but rather the social obstacles and academic discipline required to have open discussions. Thoughtful, stimulating discussion starts with the professor and ends with the student, not with a mandatory grade.
OPINION The Conference System Is a Failing, Not a Fix Wyatt Hnatiw Faculty of Arts, U3
While McGill would like us to believe that the issue of instructor attention has been solved via the conference system, in actuality, this creates more stress and pressure than meaningful dialogue. The conference is a simple idea: near-personal instruction via weekly meetings analogous to a high school class. They would be a perfect counterbalance to the impersonal lecture if not for mandatory participation marks, thereby creating two difficult situations. The first possibility: a student ignores the majority of conferences because “hey, it’s only a small fraction of my grade, so who cares?” and gain nothing from conferences. The second, more common possibility: a student hears “mandatory participation marks”, resolves to be the most talkative person in the room, and focuses on memorizing key terms and author names instead of critical thinking and application. When it comes time for the conference,
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this stressed student furiously answers questions in rants, making sure to drop buzzwords and authors every third sentence. This is the opposite of what we want. By quantifying participation, student-to-student discussion and personalized instruction is replaced by a zero-sum-game where students fight to secure their participation marks before their classmates can steal their one cogent point. Unfortunately, this practice of scoring participation has become so institutionalized that there is no quick fix. Non-mandatory conferences are only attended right before a midterm and professor office hours are used mostly for extension requests and help on term papers. The goal of conferences is to teach via dialogue and conversation; the result is one hour a week of pressure where the students learn just to pretend they have a functioning brain. We may not be able to have true discussion in a class of 300 students, but that doesn’t mean we should settle for a broken system that encourages meaningless discussion and wasted time. We already have student government for that.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Here, four of our Opinion writers speak up on where participation marks go wrong and how to make them better.
Professing the Value of Discussion Anthony Depatie Faculty of Management, U3
ILLUSTRATIONS BY LANNA LAN
The Bull & Bear - December 2013
Proponents of participation marks are quick to argue that this reward system is essential to maintaining acceptable levels of attendance in such classes. While the threat of losing 5 percent right off the bat may indeed incentivize some to attend more classes, the students who do attend will often wind up on Facebook or some other webpage in search of entertainment. Too often there are little to no opportunities to genuinely contribute anything more than a token question to which the student either already knows the answer, or is simply indifferent. As with most of us, this student simply wants the attendance marks, not the answers. Without the right teaching style, such a grading scheme is entirely counter-productive. Seen in this light, participation marks are less of a reward and more of a threat. It’s time we abandon this “one-size-fits-all” participation grade and begin allowing it only for those teachers who can actually use it.
Participation marks depend on a rather idealistic context: without the right teaching style, such a grading system is ineffective and does not come close to achieving its purported aims. Among professors, there is little consistency in the goal of participation marks: while some use them to incentivize meaningful participation, others just use them as deterrents to skipping class. At Desautels, many lectures are dry and seem to be cut-and-pasted from the material covered in textbooks. What value do professors add when students can stay at home and study straight from the textbooks? As a result, too many students either go to classes to contribute irrelevant comments for the sake of receiving marks, or lose 5 to 10 percent off their final grade because there is no real incentive to attend. Such a system threatens to punish some students, while at the same The views expressed in this opinion piece are the time increases class time wasted on useless in- author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Bull & Bear. terjections.
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A IS FOR EFFORT... OR ADDERALL The concerning prevalence of Adderoll abuse in universities Ceren Koca OPINION WRITER
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ne day left until the final exam, and she wasn’t prepared – at all. With the stream of final papers, exams, and responsibilities that she had already crossed off her list, she had exhausted all of her energy, focus, and time. Feeling trapped and overwhelmed, she knew she was going to fail her next exam. For her, and for thousands of students across North America, salvation came in the form of a small pill called Adderall. Facing intense academic pressure and high levels of competition, it is no surprise that students use drugs to enhance their academic performance and gain a competitive advantage. Illegal Adderall usage and sales have craftily flown under the university’s radar, as students’ ethics have flown out the window. While the statistics on college usage – and the imminent health consequences – are alarming, what is more worrisome is the failing of McGill University to address the pressing matter. While sound statistics on this topic are scarce, CTV News cites research approximating that 30 percent of American university students and 11 percent of Canadian students are exploiting Adderall without having ADHD. A voluntary survey conducted by The Bull & Bear with McGill students in January 2013 suggested that Adderall’s popularity may be even higher. Only 7.3 percent of respondents had a medical prescription for ADD/ADHD medicine, while an astounding 81 percent had sold or provided the pills to other students. 377 of the 590 respondents had taken Adderall without a prescription and
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89.2 percent of the 377 had done so for academic purposes. Before we pass judgment, it is important to understand the students’ perspective. It is easy to see how a stressridden college student, filled to the brim with coursework and crushed by the pressures of academic competition, could succumb to the temptation of an easy fix. In Roger Cohen’s New York Times article entitled “The Competition Drug,” he quotes an anonymous teenager: “Look, I am in a culture that constantly justifies the means to an end. All you hear is how impossible it will be to get a job… and you think without this I won’t be top of the class. With other drugs you know you are ruining your life, but Adderall manipulates you into thinking you are doing what is needed to have a great life.” This thought process is one which exists among many, and which is the result of the failings of the academic and societal system. Particularly, students believe that taking Adderall will improve their GPA. But there is a fundamental flaw in this idea. Taking Adderall does not give you a guaranteed A; it increases focus, but cannot improve intelligence, creativity, or critical thinking. The dilemma in this false notion is twofold. Even if students don’t see improvements in their grades, the deluded belief that usage will lead to a GPA increase is so strong that usage doesn’t stop. After all, if GPAs were rising in correlation to Adderall usage, McGill’s exams and performance evaluations would not actually be testing for critical thinking, but rather memorization and content regurgitation. According to a study in the
USCience Review, a number of recurrent justifications were found amongst undiagnosed students for taking Adderall: students believed Adderall to be harmless since it isn’t an illegal drug, unlike more harmful drugs such as ecstasy. Furthermore, students felt that Adderall is not a health risk when taken in moderation, and that the amphetamines in the drug are a “socially acceptable anti-fatigue aid” like coffee or Red Bull. Comically, from this study, it appears that some of our brightest students are either not bright enough to inform themselves about the drug they’re taking, or not intelligent enough to think their findings through. The rationalization is attained through weak, almost delusional, logic and a potent whiff of wishful thinking. We, as students, have a very casual attitude about Adderall. It boils down to the fundamental belief that Adderall is safe. In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. While Adderall may get you that A, the costs can be unexpectedly high. Not only is unprescribed use illegal, it also destroys your body’s natural systems. Prolonged use of Adderall can lead to dependence: once you stop taking the drug, you can develop a lack of motivation, extreme fatigue, and an inability to concentrate. This means that you can’t rely on your body to perform at its best on its own, creating a vicious cycle necessitating continual use. Most importantly, Adderall is classified as having high potential for abuse and is extremely addictive, sharing the same categorization as cocaine, morphine, and opium. For those that abuse the drug or use it for a prolonged
PHOTO VIA FLICKR
period of time off-prescription, the consequences can frightening. Countless cases exist of Adderall-induced paranoia, depression, psychiatric breakdowns, and 12 Adderall-related deaths that were reported just last year in Canada. The label on the drug even states that it “can cause heart attacks, strokes, and even sudden death” – evidently, a small price to pay for a great GPA. If that hasn’t scared you out of using, perhaps your conscience will be your guide. Adderall abuse reflects a moral failing. Many of us competed to get into McGill and are still competing for top grades. If you don’t have an attention deficit problem, your performance on Adderall is simply fraudulent advertising of what you are capable of. Your competitive advantage is a lie and you’re allowing people to have higher expectations of you than you deserve. You’re cheating. Do you really deserve to be at McGill if you can’t keep up without abusing prescription medication? But let’s be realistic: those who cheat will continue to do so, because they don’t really see it as cheating. Adderall abusers have already rationalized their actions. The health consequences hardly faze students, and sellers will continue to supply as long as there is a demand. The verdict is in: academic success is the priority at all costs, and leaving frequent Adderall users responsible to stop for The Bull & Bear - December 2013
themselves is futile. The responsibility must fall upon McGill. Yet McGill has failed us. Clearly, Adderall is a risk to student health and societal values, and yet its abuse is perpetuated within universities. While McGill imposes tight policies and condemns other forms of cheating, they have hardly done anything to monitor and reduce Adderall usage. However, red flags need to be raised not just to McGill, but several universities in Canada when it comes to raising awareness and reducing Adderall abuse. I researched the mental health and general health websites of University of Toronto, UBC, Queen’s, and University of Calgary, only to find negligible information or resources on the matter. Baffled, I tried calling each of the universities’ mental and general health services. The results were shameful. The health services of University of Toronto “didn’t know of any services on the subject”. University of Calgary’s mental health services was dumbfounded at my question and transferred me to the Director Associate of Counseling, who unfortunately had to ask me what Adderall was. UBC stated that they do not have any direct seminars or services against Adderall abuse but they do provide ‘academic coaches’ which helps students find effective study methods and grasp the concept of their studies. Queen’s put me
on hold for 6 minutes before I decided to give up. Overall, McGill isn’t going down alone; the lack of research, awareness and action against the issue is prevalent among several Canadian universities. Adderall is the anabolic steroid of academics. Testing for steroids and doping amongst athletes is a common practice and those who are caught are disqualified. Shouldn’t the general principle apply for academics? It isn’t feasible for university midterms and finals, but testing for major examinations such as the GRE, LSAT, or the MCAT should be practiced. It takes roughly 6 weeks for Adderall to leave the blood system and those caught before entering the exam should have to face certain consequences. Adderall is the elephant in the room. So many are using it, yet no action is being taken (or even spoken of) at McGill. In fact, Adderall abuse is a concerningly understudied problem across Canada. So why hasn’t McGill taken the initiative to start? As the leading school in Canada, McGill should be the pioneer and lead the way when it comes to openly spreading awareness and reducing abuse. McGill, are you ready to step up to the bat? The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Bull & Bear.
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