McGill Tribune Vol. 35, Issue 19

The McGill Tribune TUesday, FEBRUARY 16, 2016 curiosity delivers

Volume No. 35 Issue No. 19

Editorial: M c Gill must address failure in equitable hiring

feature: The history of eugenics in Quebec and at m c gill

pg. 05

pg. 10 - 11

m c gilltribune.com @m c gilltribune

Blast from the Past: The evolution of football Christopher Lutes Arts & Entertainment Editor

Ban Ki-moon speaks about climate change, North Korea, and youth empowerment. (Jenna Stanwood / McGill Tribune)

un secretary-general ban ki-moon speaks at mcgill PG. 02 Looking at the effects of international tuition deregulation What the provincial policy means for student bills Jenna Stanwood News Editor On Feb. 2, an article published in La Presse claimed that the Quebec government planned to significantly cut funding to universities in the 2016-2017 school year. To compensate, the province suggested that universities raise tuition for international students by up to 25 per cent. Though it is too early to know if McGill will act on this an-

nouncement, it comes in the wake of a long history of support for tuition deregulation from the McGill administration.

“McGill is currently, and has historically, lobbied the provincial government to deregulate the supplementary fee that international students pay on top of their tuition,” said Emily Boytinck, vice-president (VP) External of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU). “So inter-

national students are charged the base Quebec fee but they’re also charged the supplementary [fee], as are out-of-province [students].”

In 2008, the Quebec government deregulated international tuition for six programs, leading to a rise in tuition for the faculties of Science, Engineering, Management, and Law. Currently, according to the McGill Student Accounts website, an international undergraduate student in the Fac-

ulty of Arts pays $18,258.61 a year, while a student in the Faculty of Engineering pays $37,054.55 in tuition and fees. The differences comes from fees charged to international students that, when tuition is regulated, go towards equalization payments for the Quebec government. According to McGill VP Communications and External Relations Olivier Marcil when tutition is deregulated, McGill keeps the money from these fees.

McGill great again.

On the campaign trail, Trump has won the respect of many American voters with his tough stance on illegal immigration, including his proposal to build a wall along the Mexican border. This is exactly the kind of attitude that is needed at McGill.

In recent years, McGill’s campus has been devastated by the flow of illegal samosas pouring across

its borders. These ethnic snacks are causing tremendous problems on campus. With their cheap prices, foreign samosas are taking the job of feeding McGill students from hardworking local foods and restaurants like poutine, timbits, Subway, and Première Moisson. These foreign indulgences need to be deported immediately.

PG. 04

Make McGill great again David Watson Contributor There is a huge problem at this university: McGill doesn’t win anymore. However, the expiration of Principal Suzanne Fortier’s term in June 2018 provides an important opportunity to reverse McGill’s decline. In 2018, the McGill Board of Governors should appoint Donald J.

Trump to the position of principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University, provided Mr. Trump is not at that time serving as president of the United States.

Through his impressive campaign to secure the Republican nomination for president of the United States, Trump has displayed the vision, qualities, and leadership skills necessary to run McGill, and is uniquely qualified to make

PG. 05

Every sport has a rubicon to cross, a dividing line between infancy and legitimacy. A concoction of traditions, house rules, and conventions huddle together and break apart across time, forming and reforming to become an entity that doesn’t look anything like its predecessors, but has elements of all of them.

For football, that moment came on a crisp November day in New Haven, Connecticut, 140 years before last Sunday’s Super Bowl.

Though it is now the most widely-followed American sport, football was invented in Canada.

First known as “mob football” where peasants would try to transport a ball from one location to another by any means necessary short of murder. The teams’ sizes were elastic, there were no designated playing fields to speak of, nor any written rules for that matter. Settlement in the United States gradually brought the game from the streets of England to America’s elite universities where schools like Princeton, Yale, and Harvard would play semiorganized matches that resembled modern soccer more than anything. Generally, two teams of 25 players on a field would try to kick a ball (they couldn’t touch the ball, but they were encouraged to physically attack their opponents any way they could) into the other team’s goal. These games became so violent that football was banned at the collegiate level for a few years. Meanwhile, the game became popular at McGill University in the form of rugby, different from American football in that the ball was oblong instead of round, and players could carry it instead of just kick it. Players could also score ‘tries’ by moving the ball past the other team’s end of the field, a way of scoring that evolved into what we now know as a touchdown.

PG. 18

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NEWS

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon discusses necessity of youth empowerment Suggests potential tactics for addressing issues in North Korea Laura Hanrahan News Editor McGill University welcomed the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) Ban Ki-moon on Feb. 12 as part of his three-day visit to Montreal and Ottawa. Ban spoke to a group of law, political science, and international development students from McGill and other Montreal universities on topics ranging from youth empowerment to addressing nuclear weapons testing in North Korea.

McGill Principal Suzanne Fortier introduced Ban, and spoke to the importance of the United Nations as a whole for students in university.

“The United Nations is an important arena for crucial dialogues about subjects such as education, health, human rights, the environment—all areas of great importance to universities,” Fortier said.

Throughout his speech, Ban addressed the importance of empowering today’s youth and involving them in political considerations.

“We have to put young people in influential positions,” Ban said.

“Humanitarian action must address the concerns of young people and we need to mobilize young people in our humanitarian discourse.”

Ban reminded McGill students to be aware of their potential for global change.

“You are not here at McGill University just for yourselves,” Ban said.

“You are given highest learning just to become a global citizen, [and] have a global vision [….] You have immense

Ban Ki-moon addresses issues that will be faced by today’s youth. (Jenna Stanwood / McGill Tribune) potential, your future is wide open, [and] therefore it’s up to you to choose how you can contribute to this world.”

Ban additionally spoke to issues that today’s youth will need to address in the immediate future—particularly, climate change.

“Climate change represents an intergenerational injustice,” Ban said.

“The older generation has not taken care of the planet that young people inherit. You will be continuously affected and influenced by this lack of what our generation and our previous generation have neglected.”

Following the speech there was a question and answer period moderated

by McGill Political Science Professor

Krzysztof Pelc. Pelc raised concerns over the UN’s inability to prevent North Korea from testing nuclear weapons.

“Last week North Korea tested another rocket launch,” Pelc said. “Is it time to say that the UN’s strategy towards North Korea has failed?”

In response, Ban expressed his frustrations with the lack of effective action that has been seen in regards to North Korea.

“It is really agonizing, very frustrating, not only as secretary-general, but more as one of the Korean citizens who have been working for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula,” Ban said. “Sometimes I feel ashamed.

How come I have not been able to make any meaningful contribution to [the] current situation?”

In terms of future plans, Ban recommended the resumption of six-party talks as a possible step in the right direction.

“I think we should […] try to negotiate if necessary,” Ban said. “There is an interesting format, known as sixparty talks. Six parties should sit down together [to discuss] how to realize denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. That is, I think, the most proper way.”

Five rounds of six-party talks initially took place from 2003 to 2007 following North Korea’s withdrawal

from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. North Korea, however, pulled out of the talks in 2009, citing the UN Security Council’s Presidential Statement condemning a failed North Korean satellite launch.

Ban emphasized the necessity of responding quickly to any weapons testing undertaken by North Korea.

“My message to Security Council members is that they should take action as soon as possible,” Ban said.

“It has been more than a month [….]

The longer it takes, it may just give the wrong impression [...] to North Korea that they may just keep on going with another test, another launch, so that is not a good message.”

MISC hosts inaugural Indigenous Knowledge Holder Series Issues faced by indigenous people in North America discussed Josh Dimakakos Contributor Over the past week, McGill has hosted the Indigenous Knowledge Holder Series, held by the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada (MISC) as part of the Canada on the Global Stage Series. Events included a student writing workshop, conferences, and presentations on the resurgence of indigenous communities.

Indigenous History Professor Allan Downey, who was responsible for organizing much of the week’s events, spoke to the importance of learning from indigenous knowledge holders.

“As part of the newly established indigenous studies program, we developed [this] idea of an inaugural [...] series, which

invites an indigenous knowledge holder to spend a week at McGill and in the community to share their scholarship, work, art, or advocacy,” Downey said.

“Indigenous knowledge holders, whether they be wampum belt holders, storytellers, artists, activists, hereditary title holders, or academics, encompass generations of knowledge of indigenous communities, and the series seeks to act as a bridge between that knowledge and the institution, while placing an emphasis on community collaborations and partnerships through things like community workshops and presentations.”

According to Downey, the indigenous knowledge holder who the series was constructed around is Leanne Betasamosake Simpson of the Alderville First Nation.

“Leanne is a prolific Mississauga Anishnabeg Storyteller and activist who has played a significant role in the decolonization and resurgence of indigenous nations through her literary and social activism,” Downey said during his introduction to Simpson’s presentation. “[Simpson has] and really helped us to imagine a reality that we cannot yet face or experience as indigenous peoples,” Simpson has published two books of short stories and poetry, Islands of Decolonial Love and This Accident of Being Lost, as well as many papers and academic books such as Dancing on our Turtle’s Back. Simpson focused her talk around her writing, particularly spoken word poetry, as well as the issues indigenous people in North America face.

“Indigenous bodies are not just flesh and bones, but they are political orders,” Simpson said.

“They house all of the relationships that give us meaning. But indigenous bodies are in the way of natural resources, Indigenous bodies get in the way of settlement, Indigenous political orders get in the way of Canadian sovereignty. Indigenous bodies attached to and in love with Indigenous land is a problem for settler-colonialism.”

Simpson closed her presentation with an anecdote concerning the future of indigenous territory in Canada.

“A couple of years ago, I was one of the people involved in the Idle No More movement, and in my travels around speaking to the issues that we were bringing up at the time, I kept getting asked the question ‘what

do you people want anyway?’”

Simpson said. “This is my answer to what do you people want anyway: I want my great-grandchildren to be able to fall in love with every piece of our territory [.…] I want them to live without fear, because they know respect. Because they know in their bones what respect feels like [.…] I want them to be valued, heard, and cherished by our communities and by Canada.”

Will Straw, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, lauded Simpson in his closing remarks of the Thursday keynote.

“In my job, I have to read a lot of books—because I’m a professor—but in the last long, long time, the book I have learned the most from is Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back, which I really think you should all read.”

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NEWS

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

McGill’s Board of Governors interrupted by Divest McGill Davos, Royal Victoria Hospital development also discussed Liam Kirkpatrick Contributor Members of Divest McGill interrupted the McGill Board of Governors’ (BoG) first meeting of the new year on Feb. 11. The students demanded recognition of their petition to remove university investments from the fossil fuel industry, presenting it as an opportunity to work with the board towards making McGill a more environmentally conscious place.

The BoG also heard from Principal Suzanne Fortier on McGill’s international prominence at the World Economic Forum (WEF), and on the progress made in developing the Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) site into a constructive part of McGill’s campus.

Divestment from fossil fuels Members of Divest McGill joined the meeting unannounced to appeal to the governors to consider their petition to have McGill University remove investments in the fossil fuels industry.

“Where we put our money is the most important effect we can have on the climate crisis […] because of this we recognize that we need to move our investments out of fossil fuels,” said Victor Frankel, PhD candidate in biology, and environment commissioner of the

Post-Graduate Students’ Society of McGill (PGSS).

More than 40 McGill alumni have pledged to return their diplomas if the board has not moved to divest from the fossil fuels industry by March 30.

“We have support from almost the entire McGill community who are ready to support you when you chose to divest from fossil fuels,” said Robert Thibault, a third year doctoral student in neuroscience.

“We hope you take this amazing opportunity to prove McGill as a leader in the world and in Canada.”

Interim Chair of the Committee to Advise on Matters of Social Responsibility (CAMSR) and Chair of the BoG Stuart Cobbett updated the board on the status of the committee report on Divest’s petition.

“We are now […] working on our report and we expect to be able to come back to the board for the consideration on schedule,” Cobbet said.

The report is expected to be completed in time for the board to make a decision at a special BoG meeting to be held March 22.

When asked by another member about the possibility of community consultation prior to the release of the preliminary report, Cobbett announced the committee had decided against it.

“Our decision was that we thought that we should issue our

Divest McGill protests outside of James Administration Building. (Luke Orlando / McGill Tribune) report and not get involved in a toand-fro on a preliminary report.”

Cobbett said.

colleagues I am working on that so McGill will be a participant in the forum for many years to come.”

The World Economic Forum

RVH project

McGill Principal Suzanne Fortier travelled to Davos, Switzerland last month to attend the WEF. McGill was the only Canadian university represented in Davos and one of only 25 universities invited from around the world.

“As a result of this participation we have been approached to establish a more long term partnership with the World Economic Forum,” Fortier said. “With my

Fortier went on to discuss the RVH development task-force’s progress. She stressed the importance of the multi-purpose nature of the new campus space. The goal of the task force is to break down the boundaries of a more traditional campus.

“The vision is really to create a real neighbourhood where there is a dynamic environment- an environment also that will bring us into the smart city/smart campus

mode,” Fortier said. “We are building for the long term: If we do this project it will be for the next 100 years at least of McGill.”

Fortier reminded the board that the future of the project is contingent on acquiring the former RVH from the Quebec government.

“We are in the middle of a feasibility study and if the conditions are right we will move to acquire the site,” she said. “We are very clear on what conditions are needed for us to be in a position to acquire the site and develop it successfully. If the conditions are not right we will not move to acquiring the site.”

Smoke-free campus town hall sparks controversy McGill takes first steps towards reducing secondhand smoke on campus Regina Wung Staff Writer The McGill Senate Smoking on Campus Working Group held a town hall meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 9 to discuss establishing a smoke-free campus. The meeting, led by Medicine Senator David Benrimoh, included a brief presentation of proposed smoking shelters as a solution to reducing secondhand smoke on campus, followed by an open discussion.

“The purpose of this town hall was to get as many people as possible to talk about [...] smoking in general on campus and our approach to that,” Benrimoh said. “What we’re talking about today is the right to smoke everywhere—so not the right to smoke, not whether smoking is evil or good, not any of those things— just in our community, [and] on our campus: How do we want to manage people’s right to smoke in certain places for reasons of student health and wellness?”

According to Benrimoh, one

such method of approaching the matter is education.

“We want to work with partners like Healthy McGill to address the things that make people smoke or the things that [make] it harder to quit smoking on a university campus,” Benrimoh said.

“So things like stress, [...] social smoking [...], weight loss, and other university-specific causes.”

Another part of the proposal focused on providing resources for smokers who may be interested in quitting. If McGill does choose to implement such a policy, the university would offer cessation resources and services to current smokers. These services are also being considered as alternatives to a smoke-free campus.

“We’re actually meeting with Health Services [...] later next month to discuss what kind of services they’d be able to offer,” Benrimoh said. “We’re not expecting everyone to want to quit tomorrow, but maybe some people want to reduce, some people want to quit, some people don’t know [or]

want to think about it; we want to cover that broad range.”

Another possibility is the construction of smoking shelters around campus. If built, the shelters would become the only areas on campus where smoking would be permitted. Currently, the university policy follows provincial law, which prohibits smoking within nine metres of building entrances.

“The idea is to create a place to smoke that’s out of the cold, that’s convenient, that’s close to people who already smoke, but that would sort of isolate the smoke from people who don’t want to get secondhand smoke,” Benrimoh explained.

In a survey distributed in faculty listservs in the weeks preceding the town hall meeting, over 600 students shared their thoughts on the topic of smoking on campus. While the majority seemed to be in favour of smoking shelters, the survey saw varying opinions towards smoke-reduction in the comments section.

“An outright smoking ban across the entire campus would be [heavy-handed],” read one comment. “[The university] should keep in mind that smoking is addictive and forced withdrawal has negative consequences for smokers (thereby making it harder for them to study). The smoking shelter idea sounds promising.”

One student smoker left a comment speaking out against the campaign for a smoke-free campus.

“School is stressful,” reads the comment. “I like smoking cigarettes. Don’t take that away from me. The campus is large, and making it entirely smoke free would be a huge inconvenience for people who want to smoke, especially after dark. Who is standing around inhaling second degree smoke in the winter? Seriously, if I can buy cigarettes I should be able to smoke them. It’s my campus, too.”

Ultimately, according to Benrimoh, as well as other members of the working group, what this initiative lacks are the voices and

opinions of smokers on campus.

There were almost no smokers present at the town hall, despite the group’s best efforts to attract them to the meeting. “We’re really trying to get smokers to give their opinion,” Benrimoh said. “It matters to us.”

Arts Senator and member of the Smoking on Campus Working Group, Erin Sobat, agreed that one of the working group’s main goals moving forward would be to obtain more feedback from smokers.

“This was the first of several consultations to hear from students on this issue,” Sobat said. “We had a good discussion with those who came, but definitely need to reach out to more smokers themselves.

Our priority is finding ways to reduce student exposure to secondhand smoke while developing a more supportive environment for students who want to quit or cut down. Transitioning to a smokefree campus is one option, but one we would only pursue with more effective cessation and support resources in place.”

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NEWS

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Looking at the effects of international tuition deregulation What the provincial policy means for student bills Jenna Stanwood News Editor Continued from Page 1.

“The problem we have currently is we feel that it’s unfair that Quebec is the only jurisdiction in North America to have a system of equalisation,” Marcil said. “What it means is that when an international student and [an] out-of-province student pay tuition at McGill, that money doesn’t stay at McGill, it goes back to the government to distribute [...] as part of the [provincial student] grant [...] system. And so what [we’ve been] advocating for for many years is that the money should follow the student [....] It’s just fair for the student that that money will be reinvested for services that that student will receive in exchange, and not being distributed in other institutions or [taken] back by the government.”

Marcil stated that deregulation would allow the university to put the money students already pay through fees into programs that international students can access instead of paying it back to the province.

“The other problem with the current Quebec system of equalization is that the international students, [and out-ofprovince students] pay [...] for the Quebec student aid program [in their tuition fees],” Marcil said. “But students from out of the province do not have access to that program [....] Fifty per cent roughly of our student body do not come from Quebec [.... Whereas] there are some institutions in Quebec where 95 per cent of their student body [come] from Quebec. With a new model of funding where the money follows the student, the money stays with the institution [and] it’s fairer for those students because we’re going to strengthen our student aid program [and students won’t have to pay] for a program that’s not available for them.”

The McGill Scholarships and Student Aid Office has seen an increase in contributions from the university in recent years. “[The university has] a commitment that 30 per cent of net new revenue derived from tuition increases was going to be set aside for student financial support,” explained Cara Piperni, director of the Scholarship and Student Aid office. “So it started in 2007-2008, I believe,

where we had about $1.7 million given to us from this source and in the last [school] year [20152016] that’s grown to $8.3 million [....] We try to be equitable [in distributing aid], we try to meet a certain portion of tuition costs. If you’re an international student in Arts program versus an international student in the

Every time tuition has been deregulated we have seen an immediate increase in tuition for international students.

Engineering program, [and] if you have equivalent demonstrated [financial] need, then you will get a similar proportion of your fees given to you in the form of bursaries.”

However, according to SSMU VP University Affairs Chloe Rourke, the truth behind the university’s proposed increase in student aid from tuition deregulation is uncertain.

“The University has responded by saying that they intend to uphold their commitment to set aside one-third of every tuition dollar for financial aid,” Rourke wrote in an email to the Tribune. “They also emphasize that unlike many other universities in Canada, McGill provides financial aid to international students [....] However, in our recent Senate question we saw that the percentage of the cost of attendance covered by McGill financial aid is lower for international students in deregulated programs than in regulated programs. This suggests that the increase in financial aid is not enough to compensate for dramatic increases in tuition. As well, covering 30 per cent of the cost of attendance for a student who is paying $40,000 to attend each year is not the same as covering 30 per cent of the cost of attendance for a student who is paying $18,000 per year to at-

tend.”

In addition, Rourke is concerned about how deregulation will affect the cost of attendance for international students.

“The university has also stated multiple times that tuition deregulation does not necessarily mean a tuition increase,” said Rourke. “Due to Quebec’s complicated funding formulas, the deregulation of tuition would lead to millions of dollars more for McGill even if tuition rates remained constant; however, our concern is that these statements are misleading. Every time tuition has been deregulated we have seen an immediate increase in tuition for international students.”

SSMU has vocally opposed tuition deregulation due to concerns about its impact on the diversity of the student body.

“My primary concern with tuition deregulation is its impact on the socioeconomic diversity of our student population,” Rourke wrote. “McGill has an unusually high percentage of international students (approx 25 per cent of our population). We pride ourselves on our ‘diverse, international’ learning community, however socioeconomic diversity is an important aspect of a diverse campus that cannot be ignored. We know that students from middle-income families, particularly from the US, often choose to study a B.A. because the Faculty of Arts is still regulated, unlike Science, Engineering, or Management. If tuition is deregulated in all faculties, it would seriously threaten the ability of many students to study at McGill.”

Additionally, deregulating tuition will leave McGill free to set tuition fees at any price.

“McGill [administration] will try and argue that it’s economics [... and] they can’t raise it above the Canadian market average, because then [...] they would be pushed out of the market, [...] but they are forgetting that a lot of our international students are American, so a lot of their [economic] competition [...] is often not other Canadian universities but other American universities,” Boytinck said. “So there’s absolutely nothing stopping McGill from raising those fees to American levels which is totally financially inaccessible and against everything that SSMU stands for.”

The Quebec government has yet to officially deregulate tuition.

Tuition and fees for students enrolled in Fall 2015

Infographic by Hayley Lim

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OPINION

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

e d ito r i a l Editor-in-Chief Mayaz Alam editor@mcgilltribune.com Creative Director Hayley Lim hlim@mcgilltribune.com Managing Editors Shrinkhala Dawadi sdawadi@mcgilltribune.com Morgan Alexander malexander@mcgilltribune.com Julie Vanderperre jvanderperre@mcgilltribune.com News Editors Jenna Stanwood, Laura Hanrahan, Aislinn Kalob news@mcgilltribune.com Opinion Editor Julia Dick opinion@mcgilltribune.com Science & Technology Editor Chloe Nevitt scitech@mcgilltribune.com Student Living Editor Hailey MacKinnon studentliving@mcgilltribune.com Features Editor Natalie Wong features@mcgilltribune.com Arts & Entertainment Editors Christopher Lutes and April Barrett arts@mcgilltribune.com Sports Editors Nicholas Jasinski and Zikomo Smith sports@mcgilltribune.com Design Editor Domitille Biehlmann design@mcgilltribune.com Photo Editors Natalie Vineberg and Noah Sutton photo@mcgilltribune.com Web Developers William Burgess webdev@mcgilltribune.com Matt Smith online@mcgilltribune.com Copy Editor Adrien Hu copy@mcgilltribune.com Advertising Executives Mingye Chen and L-A Benoit ads@mcgilltribune.com Publisher Chad Ronalds

McGill must address failure in equitable hiring McGill’s overall failure to fulfill its equity policy is a matter of concern for the university as a whole. In a report commissioned by the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), entitled “Equity in the Hiring of McGill Academic Staff: An Investigation,” researchers found that although McGill has had an equity policy in place since 2007, it has failed to improve equity in hiring practices. Not only has the university done a poor job of providing resources to support equitable employment, it has also gotten worse in its hiring of Aboriginal people and people with disabilities. McGill must improve its mindset towards equitable employment across the university, otherwise it risks becoming a petrified relic of archaic hiring practices, unbefitting a 21st century institution of higher education. It is one thing to have a policy in place, quite another to implement it successfully at all levels of the university.

According to the SSMU report, McGill is far behind other universities, including Dalhousie, Queen’s, Western, York, and Windsor, in terms of its equity practices. The policies at these other universities ensure supervision of overall hiring practices and include proactive measures to include people of colour in positions where hiring decisions and policies are created. Though the exact mechanisms for doing so vary between institutions, it is clear that these universities are doing more than McGill. If the university is to maintain its reputation, it must show that this is true not only for its research and academics but also its equity. Despite

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within the administration and within hiring committees throughout the university. The SSMU report contains strong recommendations for what the administration ought to do in order to improve equity, such as establishing an employment equity committee, training those who hire academic staff in equity, and showing more leadership and commitment to equity. Yet there is also work for students and professors. In a 2010 report published

by McGill’s Equity Subcommittee on Race and Ethnic relations, researchers found that non-tenured faculty members of colour do not speak out about their experiences in order to protect their employment.

Non-visible minority professors must therefore be aware of their own position within an inequitable campus, and communicate this to students. This being said, the onus to invoke change should not fall on minority professors and students.

All students and professors must put in a concerted effort to pressure the university to prioritize equity.

Equity is above all a practice.

It necessitates an overarching policy that applies and is enforced at all levels of the university. While McGill may not be hiring frequently and must wait for vacancies to open, it must take every opportunity to hire equitably—this includes all possible positions in the university, from part-time staff to tenure-track professors and high-level administrators. Progress has certainly been made, but the overall picture is far bleaker than such optimistic headlines.

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demic hiring decisions rest “almost entirely” within their respective departments, according to the SSMU report. The Social Equity and Diversity Education Office (SEDE) is an important player in the McGill context, but has limited influence on the upper administration. As a result, the departments and faculties under scrutiny in the report hire at their own discretion. The Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Engineering both received employment equity training from SEDE. This, however, was only at the request of the Faculties themselves. This may in part be improved by greater communication between the various actors responsible for hiring, but the policy itself must also fall under scrutiny. Clearly, however, even with a policy in place, there is a lack of a cohesive framework for implementing that policy throughout the university.

The Equity Policy, nearing its 10th year of implementation, is outdated and lacks actionable goals and measures for its progress.

Going forward, the university must create a policy that will clearly monitor and measure the opportunities for equitable hiring. Currently, there is a definitive lack of transparency in the data on diversity in the student body and staff.

For there to be progress, the entire university community must know where it stands. Such measurements must also take into consideration the systemic issues at play whereby people are dissuaded from entering certain fields.

Change must, of course, occur

C o m m e nt a r y

Sam Pinto, Mayaz Alam, Maryse Thomas, Nicolas Tuech, Luka Ciklovan, Adrien Hu, Chloe Nevitt, Mingye Chen

Tribune Office

its financial situation—the common excuse for a shortcoming at McGill—the university must show that equity is a priority.

Students and the university as a whole must understand that hiring equitably does not mean hiring less qualified candidates. Instead, equity means actively creating opportunities where there were formerly none.

Equity in employment is defined by the Canadian government as a policy that “encourages the establishment of working conditions that are free of barriers, corrects conditions of disadvantage in employment, and promotes the principle that employment equity requires special measures and the accommodation of the four designated groups in Canada.” These four designated groups are expanded to six at McGill: Women, Aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities, members of visible minority groups, members of sexual orientation minorities, and gender identity minorities are included in equitable hiring practices. As of 2010, when McGill’s Senate last published census information based on self-reporting, there had been little change in the amount of representation of any of these designated groups. There has been no further information made publicly available since then.

It seems that the administration has been sitting on its haunches for the past nine years. At the administrative level, the Academic Personnel Office (APO) is responsible for overseeing the administrative functions of academic hires; however, its role is limited in terms of employment equity, and so aca-

David Watson Contributor Continued from Page 1.

To keep all samosas out, Principal Trump should promise to build a wall around McGill’s campus, and make Concordia pay for it.

Trump has also garnered much attention for his obsession with polls and his determination to always be a winner—an attitude that is sorely needed at McGill. In the 2015-2016 Times

Higher Education World University Rankings, McGill was the third-ranked Canadian university, finishing behind first place University of Toronto, and University of British Columbia. Clearly, our leaders don’t know what they’re doing. U of T is laughing at us.

Much as he promises the American people he will deal with China, Mr. Trump should, if appointed Principal, send “smart people” as negotiators to U of T, and get McGill a “better deal.”

With such dismal rankings, Principal Trump would not rest until McGill reclaimed its spot as the number one university in Canada, and would surely promise McGill students “so much winning you may get bored of winning.”

However, persuading Trump to accept the position of Principal at McGill will require some small sacrifices from the McGill com-

munity. In order to make Trump feel at home on campus, the university must be prepared to rename a building in Trump’s honour, and have his name written on it in “yuge” golden letters. The McConnell Engineering Building would be an ideal choice: McGill already has a McConnell Arena and a McConnell Residence— the Trump Engineering Building would help avoid further confusion. Mr. Trump would likely also wish to modify McGill’s curriculum to better suit his business views; students and faculty must be prepared for new courses such as ECON 3000: The Art of the Deal, or ACCT 4500: Small Loans of a Million Dollars.

As he will no longer be campaigning against Jeb Bush, Trump will also need a new target for his bullying. I suggest Buzz, the Concordia Stingers mascot, since

the McGill community would be more accepting of Trump’s mean tweets if they were directed at a representative of a rival school.

Plus, if the online feud ever escalated into a real-world fight, many McGill students would surely find the image of Donald Trump wrestling a man in a giant bumblebee costume quite amusing.

Despite these minor adjustments, Donald J. Trump is still the best qualified candidate to assume the position of McGill principal in 2018. By cracking down on illegal snack immigration, and resolving to restore McGill’s ranking as the number one university in Canada, Trump has the potential to turn this university into a winner. In 2018, the Board of Governors must chose the principal that will make McGill great again!

6

Opinion

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

C AM P U S C O N V ER S A T I O N

What defines a modern library, and how does the library contribute to university life?

Zachary Carson Columnist

Libraries are integral to university life. They are where the vast majority of students work and study, and are the main repository of knowledge. Some might argue that this is no longer the case with students being able to access online books and journals, but most of students’ abilities to do so are due to the online resources of the library itself. Although many people would define a library simply as a building that houses physical texts, it is important to distinguish between the role of a public library and a university library. The role of a university library should be to provide students with knowledge, and a modern library should use all means available to provide knowledge in the most accessible way to as many stu-

Chloe Forgie-Williams Contributor

A modern library has a diverse collection of print books in all manners of subjects and a vast online collection of e-books. A modern library has row after row of neat, well-lit desks with endless databases and resources, all with the purpose of maximizing productivity and efficiency.

The books are stacked high on their motorized shelves, expanding when we want them, then quickly retreating to their compact state when we don’t. On the quiet floors, the clicking of keyboards and the low hum of computer monitors have replaced the sound of turning pages. This is almost the ideal space for studying, but one essential element that defines

C. Colleen Cook Trenholme Dean of Libraries and Archives

If I ever have any doubts about just how important the library is to McGill’s students, all I need to do is take a stroll through any of our branches during midterm or final exam season. Seat after seat, room after room, and floor after floor, the library buildings are full to the brim with hardat-work students who have chosen to make the library their home away from home.

During stressful times, these young women and men, some of the best and brightest minds in the scholarly world, turn to the library to be their intellectual safe haven—the place they know will provide them with the academic,

dents as possible—even if that means shifting the focus from physical volumes.

I love reading real books. I am the guy who has to print off every reading if the class doesn’t have a course pack because I cannot read off of a screen.

But I am also a pragmatist. When I go on a vacation, as much as it pains me to do so, I bring my Kindle because being able to bring 10,000 books while only carrying the weight of 1/10 of a book is a hard deal to beat. Fifty years ago, the most efficient way to provide students with knowledge would have been to prioritize physical collections in an accessible way. But that is no longer the case. Today, electronic books and articles provide benefits that physical collections never could. An infinite number of students can access the same book simultaneously, and they can never be lost or stolen. And this

is not to say that physical collections will not be available, but that prime library real-estate should not be given to resources that students are using less and less. I cannot deny the feeling of awe that comes from walking through the aisles of McLennan, looking for that one book you need for a paper, and feeling like a part of all the accumulated knowledge that surrounds you.

But one has to look at the facts.

According to the assessment study sponsored by the Friends of the Library, 51 per cent of physical space across McGill’s library system is taken up by physical copies, while only 7 per cent of students who visit the library do so to consult physical collections.

On the other hand, students intending to work make up 81 per cent of those visiting the library, while only 32 per cent of physical library space is being used for students. The implication is

a library—print books—are slowly being replaced by e-books and databases.

The e-book satisfies student demand for accessibility and convenience—but then what is the point of print books? Why bother calling the McLennan-Redpath Library a library if we intend to slowly move the books underground and out of sight?

Why not ‘McLennan-Redpath Study Space?’ A library should be more than just a mass collection of information. The Internet already serves that purpose; why waste the land and the space to have books and shelves when you can have everything on your laptop at the tip of your fingers? The answer to all of these questions is the atmosphere. The atmosphere should act as a portal for people to transport themselves as they read all sorts of

books set in a variety of times and places. The chairs should be soft and the only noise should be the flutter of a turning page. While a good portion of the library needs be devoted to studying space, students would benefit from having a comfortable space devoted to reading and quiet contemplation. Therefore, as people continue to streamline our researching and information storage, universities must be careful not to lose the legacy and tradition that make libraries so special. If a modern library is to be successful, it should incorporate the useful technological advancements such as databases and e-books but it should never do so in place of traditional reading space and print books.

The library is the heart of the university—a place for students and academics to gather and share knowl-

informational, and technological support to achieve their goals. On average, the library welcomes 2.3 million visitors per year, an average of 60 visits per enrolled student every year.

Much has been made of the supposed decline of libraries. Nobody takes out books anymore, they say. It’s true that a significant portion of our physical collection rarely circulates. Technology has radically altered the very mandate of libraries. While the book will always be a part of the library landscape, information now comes in many forms and the library must deliver materials whenever, wherever, and however students need them. The demise of the library, like the death of Mark Twain, has been greatly exaggerated.

Today, libraries are incubators for innovation, the great forums of

modern times, where great minds congregate to learn and discover.

But rather than poring over tomes in flickering candlelight as did scholars in the first libraries, today’s minds crave technology and innovative spaces to meet their deep drive and determination.

Our students’ needs are changing. We’re ready to evolve with them.

The preponderance of feedback we constantly receive from students is clear: We need more user space in buildings open 24 hours a day. Currently, we are facing a significant seating shortage; students want to use the library but just can’t find the room to study effectively. Last Fall during exam time, groups of students resorted to kneeling on the ground using benches in the Humanities and Social Sciences Library hallway as

apparent—too much library space is taken up by books.

The purpose of a modern university library should be to provide students with knowledge. Ensuring that there is space for students to work together and individually would fulfill that mandate. This is not to say that the library should be transformed into one giant workspace, and that there is no place for physical volumes. Physical books will always be a part of the library, but realities have changed.

McGill is one of the few major Canadian universities that holds all of its collections on site, unlike the Universities of Toronto, British Columbia, Montreal, and Alberta, which all hold some amount of their physical collections off site. I think it’s fair to say that if a student has not used a book in 20 years, then it might be safe to store it elsewhere. This does not mean the

“

book becomes permanently inaccessible—it will just take time for it to be transferred from another space or a matter of minutes to be retrieved by the Automated Storage Retrieval System (ASRS). With the issue of continued accessibility to physical collections solved, the only argument left is that libraries need to house physical collections so that everyone can see them in order to satisfy an outdated, static definition of what a library is—a place that holds books.

The classic conception of a library, with aisles and aisles of dusty old books, is a romantic one; however, that ideal no longer represents what students need in order to access knowledge today. Just like when I look at my carry-on suitcase, filled with books that I want to bring but know I do not have room for, the answer here is simple, although it might be hard to accept.

As people continue to streamline our researching and information storage, universities must be careful not to lose the legacy and tradition that make libraries so special.

edge. The library is a place where students can be alone with their thoughts in peace and quiet, yet be surrounded by other people. The peaceful and scholarly atmosphere provides a refuge from the packed lecture halls and the pages of a book are the perfect place to rest tired eyes. Sitting amongst shelves filled with the research and knowledge of scholars and students before us motivates us. Libraries help students focus; they draw minds away from the dirty dishes left in the apartment, a bad grade on a midterm, or missing home. By creating a calm peaceful environment, libraries help students get through what begins as an overwhelming amount of readings and assignments to something manageable. Students leave the library with a little less weight on our shoulders.

makeshift study tables.

It’s that type of student feedback that led us to embark on the Fiat Lux Feasibility Study to reimagine the library to meet the needs of our 21st century students.

The ambitious but prudent vision, designed with input from representative stakeholders across campus, would rebuild the McLennanRedpath Library Complex as the vital center of the campus. An automated storage facility under the Lower Field would allow millions of physical books to be transferred from the library, freeing valuable floor space to double effective user seating and services space. Innovative study and research environments would be created in the Humanities and Social Science Library, with books still being retrievable at need within a few minutes.

We librarians can be a nostalgic bunch, enamored with tales of monks in ancient scriptoriums and the grandeur of the Great Library of Alexandria. Since the dawn of libraries, all librarians have shared a common raison d’être on behalf of humankind: To acquire, organize, preserve, and make accessible our recorded knowledge.

That mission hasn’t changed over the centuries, but the manner in which we fulfill it is constantly evolving.

The library remains the heart of this university. While libraries have always existed so that no one had to re-discover, re-learn or re-teach what came before, the university library of the 21st century is also where great minds meet physically and virtually, our time’s forum for discovery, learning and teaching.

7

Student Living

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

C A M P U S S P O T L IG H T

vent over tea

Student-run mental health service provides peer-support over hot drinks Amber Hord Contributor Many of the mental health services at McGill take place in a formal office setting, and some require a wait time from a few weeks up to two months.

Vent Over Tea offers a different approach—one that requires little wait time and can take place at any café in the city.

Sarah Fennessy, founder of the program and recent McGill graduate with a B.A. in psychology, first proposed the idea for a casual, empathetic listening-based service last April on Spotted McGill. From there she recruited a small group of volunteers to form an organization which pairs together a student who needs to vent and an empathetic listener.

“We will meet you at any café in the city and it appears like a conversation between two friends, which makes the service more approachable,” Fennessy explained.

The ability for conversations to take place within a cafe or any other casual venue is what sets apart Vent Over Tea from other mental health services offered at McGill. Providing a comfortable space, and an ideal audience for the person venting to talk through their issues with is the fundamental goal of the program.

Though not a substitute for other

mental health treatments, for some, speaking with an empathetic listener has proven to be just as effective as traditional forms of therapy. In a study by Hans Strupp and Suzanne Hadley, two researchers at Vanderbilt University, college-aged males with mild symptoms of depression were gathered and then split into three groups.

Two groups of men were treated by a psychologist, and the third group spoke with a professor who was described as an empathetic listener. According to the study, “Patients treated by professors showed, on average, as much improvement as patients treated by professional therapists.” This inspired Fennessy to co-ordinate a similar service for students.

Chloe Chow, volunteer for Vent Over Tea and another recent graduate from McGill with a B.A. in psychology, explained that ‘ventees’ undergo training through a mandatory active listening workshop in order to learn how to be effective listeners, such as using open body language and good eye contact. Many are also trained in mental health crisis counselling, and have experience with organizations like McGill Nightline and Sexual Assault Centre of the McGill Students’ Society (SACOMSS).

“We look for people that are committed to helping others,” Fennessey said. “To interview people

I would vent to them and see if I was comfortable, and if they could facilitate the conversation [....] We chose the people who were described by friends as the person they would go to talk to.”

Chow and Fennessey have both been ‘ventees’ and claim that the one hour session is a gratifying experience for them as well as for the person venting.

“Sessions usually start with them very stressed out and by talking it through you can watch them solve the problem on their own and gain some clarity just from talking about it,” Fennessey said. “It’s really rewarding.”

Letting clients come to their own decisions is an important aspect of the program. Ventees are instructed to ask questions that help their partner look more deeply at what is bothering them, and through doing so come to their own conclusions.

People come to vent for many different reasons—the most common being relationships, academic stress, and stress about the future. The goal for the volunteers is not to give advice, but to allow people to talk through their current challenges.

“Everyone is coming because they really feel like they need to get something off their chest,” Chow explained. “What we want to bring back with this service is a sense of interconnectedness—to

Vent Over Tea pairs an empathetic listener with a student who needs to vent.

(Claire Wang / McGill Tribune) make [people who are venting] feel mentorship for student entrepreneurs validated and heard.” at McGill. The winners of the For now, Vent Over Tea is competition are awarded funding currently in a transition period. They for their business to grow, and if are remodeling their website and successful, the two are hoping to are hoping to have an app soon to expand the program outside of the link “venters” with “ventees” more McGill community. easily.

“The goal is to be accessible “We always make the joke that to anyone in Montreal who needs it will be like a Tinder for venting,” to vent, and ideally we would want the service [...] to be available in Chloe said.

Fennessey and Chow are any city,” explained Fennessey. currently contenders for the Dobson “Everyone in every demographic has Cup—a competition that provides something to vent about.”

Five alternative nap spots on campus How to sneak in a 30-minute snooze now that SSMU lounge is closed Morgan Alexander Managing Editor When the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) closed the doors to the lounge in the Shatner University Centre, they took away more than a faculty-free place to study—they took away the prime napping location on campus. While students involved in clubs with offices can sneak in a mid-day snooze on their private couch spaces, the rest of the student body is now even more hardpressed to find a spot to get in the extra z’s needed to fulfill the doctor-recommended seven to nine hours of sleep. During the summer it was easy to curl up on Lower Field and double dose on sleep and vitamin D, but given the extreme weather warnings, other options are needed for sleep-deprived students. Read on for five alternative places to grab a quick nap on campus.

Arts Lounge

The Arts Lounge, located in the basement of Leacock, is a well-known spot for studying during the week and, more importantly, for Bar des Arts (BDA) on Thursday evenings.

It’s a perfect place to hang out, work, and nap because it’s generally quiet and provides relatively clean couches. The highlight of this nap space is that it’s not usually crammed with students, so you should be able to find a free couch on which to curl up. The con, of course, is that you need to be an Arts student to get into the lounge, but students from other faculties can always knock on the door and hope someone lets them in.

First floor of Birks A little-known treasure to those outside the department of religious studies, the first floor of the Birks Building features a study area equipped with 8

couches and two comfy chairs.

Because students are required to remove their footwear during the winter so as not to damage the marble floors of the building, you’re automatically assured the freedom of a shoe-free nap experience. During peak hours however, the couches fill up fast, and some students won’t take very kindly to you taking up a couch that could fit three people, so make sure you plan out your nap schedule accordingly.

Third floor of Morrice Hall Despite being one of the most beautiful buildings on campus, Morrice Hall is an oftenoverlooked treasure-trove on campus. Aside from being home to Tuesday Night Café Theatre and the Islamic Studies Library, which is arguably the quietest and most visually appealing library on campus, it also features a prime nap space on the third

floor. Space is limited, and the room can get overly warm during the winter, but because of the relative anonymity of this area you’re almost always assured a spot to snooze.

McLennan HSSL - RM-07D For those who don’t know, HSSL - RM-07D is the official name for the room in McLennan filled with bean bag chairs and no actual seats or desks. As a group study spot, it’s completely ridiculous and unhelpful, but as a nap room, it’s brilliant. Like all group study areas in McLennan, the bean bag room can be booked for 30-minute intervals throughout the day. This means you can schedule in a slot for a power nap at your convenience with the complete assurance that no one will bother you until the next appointment starts. Because the room has a door, you can also trust that none of your things

will get stolen while you sleep.

In terms of maximum efficiency and security, it’s really the only on-campus option.

Lobby of New Residence Hall Desperate times call for desperate measures, and if sleeping in the lobby of a residence isn’t desperate, it’s hard to say what is. That being said, there are immense pros that come with sneaking in some shut-eye here. Because sleeping on the incredibly comfortable couches located in the lobby isn’t something most people would have ever considered, you’re always assured a couch.

Moreover, because the lobby is a low-traffic area during the day given that most people are on campus or in their rooms, you’re less likely to be disturbed by someone than you would be if you were napping on the floor of McLennan. Win-win.

8

Student Living Pierogies in creamy mushroom sauce Jenna Stanwood

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Unfortunately for students, the temperature is not expected to rise far above zero degrees in the week ahead. In the absence of a tropical breeze or a miraculous climate change, another option to keep warm is to stay home with a hearty dinner; however, when one thinks of comfort food, they shouldn’t be limited to macaroni and cheese or chicken noodle soup. Pierogies, a Polish dumpling usually filled with potatoes and cheese, make for the ultimate warming meal, and can be found in the frozen section

of any grocery store. In this filling recipe, they are combined with mushrooms and (optional) kielbasa, a Polish sausage, in a creamy sauce to warm one up on cold winter nights. Be sure to remove the pierogies from the freezer an hour or two before cooking to allow them time to thaw. Any variety of pierogie can be used here, and the recipe can be made vegetarian if desired. Feel free to increase the amount of bell pepper or mushrooms if desired. This recipe makes four servings, but can easily be doubled

Ingredients

DIRECTIONS

1 teaspoon of olive oil 2 cups of mushrooms (or 4 if vegetarian), sliced 1 package of kielbasa (optional), sliced 1 onion, sliced 1 bell pepper, any colour, sliced ¼ teaspoon of salt ¼ teaspoon of black pepper 2 tablespoons of dry sherry wine (or dry white wine) 1 tablespoon of all-purpose flour 2/3 cup of milk (dairy or soy) ¼ cup of chicken or vegetable broth 1 (1 lb) package of frozen pierogies, any flavour, thawed 2 tablespoons of sour cream 1 bunch fresh parsley, chopped (optional, for garnish)

1. Heat the oil in a large nonstick skillet or frying pan over medium heat. Add mushrooms, onions, salt, pepper, bell peppers, and kielbasa. Sautée for around four minutes, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are tender and lightly browned.

2. Stir in sherry (or white) wine and cook until evaporated. Mix in the flour.

3. Stir in milk, broth, and pierogies. Bring the mixture to a boil.

4. Remove skillet from heat and stir in sour cream.

Season with salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle with fresh chopped parsley if desired. Serve immediately. Allow leftovers to cool completely before transferring to an airtight container and refrigerating.

A hot meal for a cold semester. (toqueandscalpel.com)

s t u d e n t of t h e w e e k

W

Emma solom e u1 engineering

By Emma Whitehall (Natalie Vineberg / McGill Tribune)

hen transitioning from first year to second year, Emma Solome knew she was looking for something more from her university experience. Her focus this year is incorporating extra-curricular ventures that she is passionate about while balancing a challenging degree in chemical engineering.

“In first year, I wasn’t really involved in anything,” Solome said. “I didn’t do any extra-curricular [clubs or volunteer work] for me, or to help other people, which I found left me feeling very stagnant. I wasn’t super satisfied at the end of last year.”

Solome decided to volunteer with Organic Campus and the Fair Trade Corner.

She chose them for their environmentally conscious nature, providing students with options for local, organic food and fairtrade coffee, respectively.

“It's a low cost way for students be more environmentally conscious in their day-to-day routine,” Solome said. “I think these two organizations are worth investing time into since they make McGill more sustainable.”

Solome is also a member of the youth engagement venture of Engineers Without Borders (EWB), a group on campus that works to make incremental and sustainable changes to the education system in order to foster the growth of a more diverse group of young people.

“I joined [...] knowing that in high school I was really unmotivated to learn in class,” Solome said. “I had a couple really good teachers [...] but on a whole, there is a problem with the education system

in the sense that it caters to a certain type of person [....] What we’re doing this semester is going to an elementary school here in Montreal and actually giving them workshops on problem solving and resolving local issues.”

Having previously trained for 10 years in classical ballet, this year Solome was also excited to return to dance. She joined a jazz dance class at the McGill Athletics centre, run by a passionate instructor with a heavy focus on dancing for the joy of it—something she found to be missing in the world of classical ballet.

“I’ve met all these different people who I would have never met otherwise,” Solome said. “Meeting like-minded people is key. That was the turning point so far.”

Another factor that has led Solome to becoming involved in an array of clubs this year has been her attempt to find balance outside of her school work.

“I enjoy hiking, travelling, being outside, [and] I sometimes find it funny that I’m in chemical engineering,” Solome said. “I feel like I should be in geography or something that would really get me out into the field.”

Looking to the future, travel is at the forefront of her plans, but Solome mentions an interest in urban planning as a possible career option.

“Growing up in Vancouver with the housing prices being so expensive all the time, trying to find unique ways to fit people into a city that has become so unaffordable seems interesting to me,” Solome explained.

For now, which city (or cities) she would find that career evolving in is up for debate “The hardest thing about picturing myself somewhere in a distant future is that every time I go somewhere, I always wish I was there for longer,” Solome said.

Reflecting on her time at McGill thus far, and whether or not she feels it has changed her in any way, Solome points to noticeable shifts in her personality and outlook.

“I feel different,” she said. “I feel like I’m more open-minded, and more content with where I am, regardless of where I am.”

Q&A McGill Tribune (MT): Chocolate or candy?

Emma Solome (ES): Oh my! Right now I’d say chocolate.

MT: If you had to live with one famous person for the rest of your life, whom would you choose?

ES: Maybe Ellen DeGeneres, she’s so funny MT: Best movie you saw recently?

ES: The new Star Wars.

MT: Number one ‘must see’ city in the world?

ES: Palermo, Italy.

9

Student Living

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

BSN x CKUT: Black Talk Black Students’ Network of McGill revives 1990’s radio programming

BSN has taken the airwaves. (Natalie Vineberg / McGill Tribune)

Audrey Carleton Staff Writer On Monday, Feb. 15, Black Students’ Network (BSN) collaborated with CKUT 90.3 FM to produce Black Talk, 13 hours of afrocentric radio programming. As part of their Black History Month series, the BSN-involved McGill students and Montreal locals alike fostered conversations on the black experience and issues within the black community.

The program was founded

by McGill students in the BSN in 1987, yet Black Talk’s disappearance in 1996 meant the program was kept under the radar of the BSN executive until this year. It was only after serendipitously finding remnants of the program in its office, including an old poster and tapes of recorded segments, that the BSN decided to revitalize the program.

“We were cleaning up our office, and we found a lot of documentation, a lot of posters for stuff that [the BSN] had done before,” Isabelle Oke, U2 Arts and BSN External Coordinator, recalled. “One of them was Black Talk [...] and we got inspired to try it out again.”

Because the BSN executive had limited knowledge of what Black Talk programming consisted of in the 1980’s and 1990’s, they took their own approach to choosing content to dedicate air time to, rather than limiting their programming to that which had been done in the past. The BSN held a call-out for volunteers to host programs on the topic of their choosing, empowering students and community members to contribute to the discussion on

the black experience in Canada.

“We didn’t actually find the schedule from the last Black Talk,” Oke said. “We approached the programming this year [by] trying to have a mixture of community organization [and] personalities [talking about] topics brought forward by students, and some historical content. We also just tried to give air time to anyone who wanted it, which wasn’t a problem because everyone had really interesting stuff to talk about.”

The BSN hoped to bring the program back to life this year and re-establish it as an annual occurrence.

“The struggle right now is just trying to connect what it was into what it is now,” Michelle Blassou, U2 Arts and BSN Social Coordinator, said. “Hopefully it’ll revive back up and it’ll grow to what it used to be.”

To pay proper homage to the original Black Talk programming, Monday’s schedule included archived segments from versions of Black Talk that took place in the 1990’s. Among these was Hair Talk, a discussion on hair in the black community.

“Listening really helps to centre discussions and attitudes we have about hair today,” Oke said.

The guests on this archived program discussed the cultural and political implications of their choices of hairstyle. One guest explained that institutional systems of oppression put immense pressure on the hair styles of black women.

“The way society is now, we’re made to feel ashamed of not having ‘good’ hair,” a guest, Melanie, explained. “I began to feel like people have been

brainwashed into thinking there is something wrong with the way their natural hair looks.”

Another guest noted that she felt as though wearing natural hair was a political statement of pride for her heritage.

“There came a point where I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m making a statement [with my hair], and I like the statement I’m making,’” she explained. “It’s a way for me to say that I am proud of my naturalness and my natural African heritage.”

The BSN also enlisted the help of Shanice Nicole, an ambassador at Four Brown Girls—an organization that aims to provide an outlet for empowerment and selfexpression of women in the black community. She conducted a question-and answer-segment on sexual health in the black community. By holding a call-out for queries from the community, the BSN was able to answer questions that students found relevant in an anonymous manner.

The overarching goal of these programs was to create space for marginalized voices in the McGill and greater Montreal communities, and to spark dialogue on the black experience among students and locals.

“Black Talk was probably founded because of an absence of these kinds of things on campus [in the 1980’s],” Blassou said. “I think Black History Month is a good opportunity to see something like this—blackcentric programming. But at the same time, this is the only time we’ll see programming like this, so there’s really a need for these kinds of conversations on campus and [a need] to foster this kind of community,” Blassou said.

Oke quoted a professor at McGill, Rachel Zellers, who noted that building this conversation composed of black voices talking about shared experiences is important in today’s cultural climate.

“Black people just seem to miss each other, and it just leads to a type of isolation in this space,” Oke quoted.

Furthermore, CKUT’s mandate aims to bring light to voices that are silenced in Western society, which makes for a strong collaboration with the BSN. “[CKUT] is an awesome partnership just because [ours] are the kind of voices that they’re trying to prioritize,” Blassou said. “This is just a really

different kind of collaboration for BSN, and hopefully it’ll pull in a different kind of audience.

The nice thing about CKUT is that they have a really good following of a lot of people who [regularly] tune in, so it should be interesting to see how that expands our network.”

Ultimately, the organizers of Black Talk hoped to engage a wider audience of people at McGill and within Montreal in conversation about their lived experiences of racial oppression.

“There’s something [...] covert about [the black experience in Canada],” Blassou said. “It’s not talked about a lot, so [it was nice to show] this is what it’s like here in Montreal, this is what it’s like at McGill.”

The history of Eugenics in quebec and at mcgill HAILEY MACKINNON

(musee-mccord.qc.ca)

M

cGill University is known for its cuttingedge scientific research. Many may not know, however, that during the early 20th century, McGill was a communication hub between eugenicists in Britain and Canada.

Eugenics has its roots in England—the term was first coined by British scholar Francis Galton in 1883. Galton took eugenics to be “the science of improving stock—not only by judicious mating, but whatever tends to give the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing over the less suitable than they otherwise would have.”

Eugenics aimed for an enhanced human population by encouraging the reproduction and marriage of those with high moral character and physical attributes, who were considered ‘fit’ (positive eugenics), and halting reproduction of the ‘unfit’ (negative eugenics). This evolved in a time of rapid increase in birth rates among the lower class, which incited fear

in middle to upper classes that the human race was facing national degeneration.

Eugenics grew out of two realities: The desire to avoid the degradation of the human race in the wake of racialized fears about illness and poverty, and an era of faith in scientific positivism and empiricism. It became a scientific way to assure the prosperity of the human race in the face of urban social ills like disease, alcoholism, and divorce.

Within a Quebec context, eugenics theories were largely disseminated among the anglophone community in Montreal—particularly within McGill’s academic circles. McGill was the most prominent university in Canada at the turn of the 20th century, and attracted professionals from England to research and teach at the school.

Sebastian Normandin is a professor of history and the philosophy of science at Ashoka University who has studied the eugenics movement within Que-

bec. According to Normandin, McGill was the centre for dissemination of eugenic ideas and theories between Britain and France at the turn of the twentieth century.

“The idea [of eugenics] was brewing in the community of Fabian socialists, and also in a lot of the progressive movements in the [United States],” Normandin said. “The only place where you saw that going on [in Canada] on any scale was at McGill.”

Dr. Alexander Peter Reid is regarded as the first person to have brought forward the ideas of eugenics within a Canadian context. Reid, an English scholar, received his early education in London, yet moved to McGill—then known as McGill College—where he received his M.D. in 1858.

Reid introduced the concept of eugenics in 1890 in a talk before the Nova Scotia Institute of Natural Science, in which he read his work Stirpiculture/ The Ascent of Man. Drawing from Darwin’s biologi-

cal science and applying it to the human population, he argued that, “racial improvement” based on positive and negative eugenics would ultimately lead to social progress.

The issue of solving social issues was an especially prominent concern within Quebec, and Montreal specifically, at the turn of the century. Montreal, in the early 20th century, was similar to cities like New York or Chicago that were rapidly industrializing. Infrastructure, plumbing, and clean housing were all concerns during this period. As such, early eugenic theory was largely concerned with social reform to mitigate the perils of urbanization. Normandin notes that eugenics was situated within the language of public policy, yet had a noticeable religious undertone of Protestant-inspired ideas of social reform.

“The idea of the social gospel that’s been talked about quite a lot—a kind of strange mix of secular

elements of state-support social reform, mixed with elements of moral reform that [were] inspired by [a] particular view of Christianity,” Normandin said. “It’s hard to separate some of the moralizing and religious biases from these supposed reform ideas.”

At the same time, eugenics can also be traced to the idea of immigration and social control. In the early twentieth century and into the 1920s, Canada saw an influx in immigration from southern and eastern Europe. Early eugenics policy was understood to be a way to control for fears about ‘feeblemindedness,’ alcoholism, and poor genetic heritage being passed on. Yet the groups and people considered to be ‘feebleminded’ were judged with inherent cultural and linguistic biases, which ended up being a poor indicator of mental capacity.

Feeblemindedness was measured by arbitrary and culturally biased intelligence tests, which evaluated people in terms of language skills and comprehension.

“It depends on what language you were doing it in [and] you could do quite poorly in some [areas] if you didn’t understand the cultural context,” Normandin noted.

In 1906, a new set of Canadian immigration regulations prohibited the entry of the “feebleminded, idiots, epileptics, the insane, deaf, dumb, blind, and infirm.” Later in 1910, the Immigration Act further defined three categories that were to be restricted: “The mentally defective, the diseased, and the physically defective.” “[Eugenics] is heavily influenced by this fear of immigration and the change in demographics that it represented,” Normandin said. “[These] ideas [were] intermixed with [thoughts] about class bias [and] racial issues.

You have this strange blend of theory and politics [which] was really just bad social policy, but ended up being packaged in the whole framework of a science.”

Among those advocating for social reform was Carrie Derick, who became the first female to achieve professor status at McGill, and any Canadian university, in 1912. As a professor of botany, a prominent Montreal feminist, and a social reformer, she had the platform to disseminate ideas about eugenic social control of national ‘degeneration.’

Many middle and upper-class women were frightened by increasing crime, poverty, and disease on the streets. Derick held a strong belief in the need to halt reproduction among those she considered “feebleminded” or suffering from other forms of “mental degeneracy” in order to cure societal ills. At the same time, she believed that the key to dealing with the families of feebleminded parents was through both moral virtue through education and emancipation for women.

Similarly, John George Adami was a British professor of pathology at McGill University. Adami was concerned with public health issues within Montreal, and held a strong belief that eugenics could be the best form of “hygienic defense” against the

1902

1869

social problems facing the city. In 1909, Adami was named president of the City Improvement League, which dealt with issues relating to improving the general cleanliness and order on the streets. Tuberculosis, in particular, plagued Montreal, and led to the committee’s focus on the issues of infant mortality and child welfare.

Adami was the chief organizer for the Child Welfare Exhibit in 1912—the same year as the First International Eugenics Congress in London. Two McGill professors would attend this congress: Adami and William Osler.

Adami continued to give speeches that veered into the realm of eugenics theory, which, similar to much scholarship in the field, were largely racialized. He believed Caucasians were naturally more resistant to diseases in comparison to people of different origins. As such, social issues were further linked with immigration.

The legacy of eugenics is thus complicated in its political origins. According to Normandin, it was hard to trace eugenics to either the left or right side of the political spectrum. “[There was the] idea that you can engineer society in some ways for the good—and go so far as even to engineer into someone’s family and lineage,” Normandin said. “That was sort of the step that these social reformers took [...] that went too far. [But] I think you also see [...] a lot of the justification for it, and the rationale for it as time goes on, being much more associated with right-wing politics; the history of anti-immigration and the social conservatism that is involved in it becomes more seen as a right-wing phenomenon.”

Due to particularities within the province, eugenics did not propel into the mainstream in Quebec as in other provinces. The French-Canadian community was particularly disadvantaged politically, socially, and economically, causing tensions and differences with the English population within the province.

“There [were tensions] between the English elite who were connected to this McGill community—who might go to literary and public lectures—[...] and the people who worked twelve-hour shifts in shipping or in factories along the Lachine Canal,” Normandin said.

In this way, FrenchCanadians, who were often poor and disenfranchised in comparison to the educated progressive

scholars and intellectuals at McGill, were often considered not only a different race, but were racialized by the English community and by eugenics discourse.

“I think [French Canadians] were paranoid enough, and alienated enough, from the English scientific elite that they might be justified in [opposing eugenics] for fear it would be directed at them,” Normandin said.

Eugenics discourse often targeted those from disadvantaged backgrounds, many of whom turned to crime, alcohol, and prostitution—the key social ills that social reform sought to mitigate. This meant many FrenchCanadians would be at risk of being subjected to eugenic policy as there existed endemic poverty within the community.

Moreover, the Catholic church, which was a powerful institution in Quebec during the first half of the 20th century, was wary of the study of eugenics. While it could get on board with its goals to cure social ills, sterilization was against the religion—as noted in the encyclical of 1930 Casti Connubii—a document which declared the Pope’s official stance against eugenics, and sterilization in particular. Stopping the process of reproduction unless it was an issue of life or death—even in an individual who had mental health issues—was a crime against nature and God for Catholics.

“The [Church] put a real block on [eugenics] from the French-Canadians’ point of view,” Normandin said. “And then there isn’t that much of a paper trail in terms of figuring out what happens when the Depression starts to get going [....] I think the government has other things to worry about at that point. And then the war changes the whole context.”

In particular, the use of eugenics among Nazis during the Second World War horrified the public about the extent to which eugenics could be taken in the name of racial hygiene.

In the Third Reich, inhumane experiments and euthanasia were conducted on individuals considered to be inferior or sub-human. While many believed that this tainted the practice of eugenics, as well as a gradual discreditation by the scientific community, state-sanctioned eugenic practices legally continued in Alberta and British Columbia into the 1970s.

The same types of legislation were never realized in Que-

bec.

“The rhetoric was there, but it never actually came to fruition,” Normandin said.

However, while official policy enforcing eugenics never came to light, the church’s official stance on eugenics did not necessarily dictate individual choices. For example, Allison Bashford and Philippa Levine—the authors of The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics—note that children considered “unfit” might have been put in orphanages operated by churches, and doctors have made private arrangements with families with mental or physical disabilities from reproducing. Thus, many eugenic practices also occurred outside of the law.

At the same time, certain modern policies within Quebec recall the desire for certain groups to reproduce in larger numbers.

“In the modern era, [the government gave] some of the subsidies [...] to native Quebecers for having children,” Normandin said. “In an odd way, [that] was an attempt to encourage a certain amount of positive eugenics through social programs, and funding, and social support since the [Parti Quebecois] came into power.”

The history of eugenics within a broader North American context is still being uncovered. For example, Tommy Douglas’ legacy as the pioneer of universal Canadian health care, was complicated because of his history in eugenics. Douglas wrote his 1933 master’s thesis titled “The Problems of the Sub-normal Family,” in which he advocated for the sterilization of those considered to be mentally defective or incurably diseased—people which he viewed imposed a burden on the government’s health budget—as well as the segregation of those considered to be sub-normal, or in other words, of low moral character and mentally inadequate.

While Douglas later rejected such measures—and eugenics theory more broadly— this stain on Canadian history represents the popularity of eugenics among medical professionals during the 20th century. In Alberta, over 2800 sterilization procedures were performed on patients considered to be “unfit”— often without consent—with the passing of the 1928 Sexual Sterilization Act. In particular, Aboriginal and First Nations women were disportionately affected due to racist assumptions about their mental capacity. The act was ultimately repealed in 1928, and to date over 700 survivors have gotten settlements with the government. Norman notes, however, that there is still much to investigate.

“There’s still a lot of places where the story hasn’t been told fully,” he said.

While current technological advancements further the capacity for scientists to genetically engineer and alter human DNA, one must look to the past—especially the history of eugenics—as well as the future, to ensure that marginalized groups do not suffer in the name of science, progress, and positive social reform.

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#OscarsSoWhite After the nomination committee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences once again selected a group of all-white actors for nomination at the Oscars, multiple high-profile stars of colour are preparing to boycott the awards ceremony. But should viewers boycott it too? For more, check out our new podcast, Cult Mentality, on mcgilltribune.com

(Alissa Zilberchteine / McGill Tribune)

Don’t Boycott

Boycott

Diversity at the Oscars is not so black and white

The Oscars’ issues are more than skin deep Recently, the annual Academy Award nominations have come under fire for their lack of diversity. For the second year running, all 20 Oscar nominees in the acting categories are white. This failure on the part of the Academy has become a major subject of contention after Jada Pinkett-Smith released a video calling for a boycott of this year’s awards ceremony, in part spawning the #OscarsSoWhite movement on social media and bringing criticisms about Hollywood’s lack of diversity in representation to the forefront of this year’s Oscars buzz.

While the movement has garnered support from notable figures in Hollywood, including Will Smith, Matt Damon, Lupita Nyong’o, and Ava Duvernay to name a few, it has also drawn criticism. Some suggest that having a “diversity checklist” when naming nominees creates a sort of token effort to diversify and prevents merit from being the sole deciding factor. These shallow criticisms fail to understand that the imbalanced voting body of the Academy, comprised mainly of white men (around 72 per cent) has historically shown a clear bias towards films made for and about white people—take last year’s snub of the critically acclaimed Selma and the six nominations that went to American Sniper as one example.

Yet the root of this mess can be traced back to Hollywood’s abysmal record of inclusion where whitewashing roles by hiring from an elite pool of white actors has become the norm. In the past year alone, Emma Stone has portrayed an East Asian character in Aloha, Rooney Mara played an aboriginal woman in Pan and McGill graduate Mackenzie Davis portrayed a character in The Martian that was originally of Korean-American descent. Much of the time, for a person of colour to be nominated for a role in Hollywood, there must be an explicit reason—it must be relevant to the character’s story. If race isn’t considered relevant, a white actor is the default choice.

In the case of the Oscars, it makes sense that

there is little inclusion of people of colour in the list of nominees when they receive little consideration at a studio-level.

What a boycott of the Oscars can accomplish is, most importantly, to direct attention and awareness toward this cause and begin to take steps towards making changes. The Academy has already promised to double the number of non-white members in its voting body. This is progress, but it is not enough. It does not fix the fact that both the Academy Awards and Hollywood are built on a foundation of racial bias. Creating a lasting change from within must come from innovators who want to be active in combatting the issue. Filmmakers who are allied with the cause must focus on projects where people of colour can be chosen for roles that don’t come with specific racial requirements.

In the meantime, it is worth considering that since the Oscars have had such consistent issues with inclusivity, they should not be thought of as the most prestigious and important ceremony in film. By being seemingly unable to adapt to calls for change, they are becoming a relic of Hollywood’s past where issues of racial bias were brushed under the rug and never questioned. Winning an Oscar is not going to be seen as all that important if the status quo persists. After all, filmmakers, actors, and actresses don’t need to live up to the Oscars’ narrow standards to be recognized anymore.

Ultimately, a boycott of this year’s ceremony will send an important message about how the Academy has failed to rectify its history of bias and exclusion. It can also help foster change in making Hollywood a more inclusive space where whitewashing is a thing of the past; however, it is vital to remember that Hollywood must get itself together and eliminate racial bias in order for the Academy Awards to make a lasting change.

— Selin Altuntur

Visitors to the Hollywood Reporter website and navigate to the Oscars section, they would find multiple articles on display. One of the articles is about Prince winning an Oscar in 1985.

It is the only article that is not directly about the #OscarsSoWhite campaign and even then, its first sentence addresses this year’s hottest Oscar topic: The lack of diversity at the Oscars. This topic has been misguidedly blown out of proportion.

Cries of outrage are being heard across social media platforms about the lack of actors of colour nominated among the 20 acting nods.

Fingers are being pointed at the 94 per cent white voters in the Academy, with an average age of 63. How could Will Smith have been overlooked for Concussion or Idris Elba for Beasts of No Nation? This campaign has reached such a fever pitch that those who have not yet supported it are being persecuted as opposers of diversity.

Unsurprisingly, in this day and age of immediate reaction and unsubstantiated outcry, the facts have been overshadowed by the passion to see people of colour nominated. The demand for diversity at the Oscars is by no means a bad cause, but it’s hard to say that racism is prevalent in the Academy when looking back at the past few years of Oscar nominees and winners. Since the turn of the century, 10 per cent of the Oscar nominations have gone to black actors and in the past decade, and 10 per cent of the winners have been black despite 2015 and 2016 having no black nominees. Seeing as about 12 per cent of the U.S. population is black, the Oscars are more or less proportional in this sense. The real issue is when it comes to other minorities. Latinos, for example, represent roughly 17 per cent of the U.S. population yet have only held 4.9 per cent of roles and also received zero acting nominations this year; however, few have made any effort to debate the omission of Benicio Del Toro for best supporting actor in Sicario. Even though this campaign claims to focus on diversity, black actors are the ones getting the most attention.

Furthermore, the Oscars are and have always been about showcasing the best performances in film, rather than providing a platform for diversity. In spite of the fact that the last two years have yielded no black

nominees, it is debatable that actors like David Oyelowo (Selma), Jason Mitchell (Straight Outta Compton), Smith, and others were better than the white actors that did get nods. Every year, many actors vie for the five exclusive spots in each category, but a select few manage to get there.

The Academy Awards for acting are meant to reward the best performances regardless of race; using it to protest the lack of diversity is simply misplaced. Almost every other award ceremony, such as the Screen Actor’s Guild Awards and the Critic’s Choice Awards, also mirrored the nominations of the Oscars, a clear indication that the demographic makeup of the Academy is not as biased as they are being made out to be.

The lack of black nominees is clearly due to the limited amount of prominent black roles rather than a vendetta by the Academy to not recognize non-white performers.

The issue of black representation is not a fight to be taken to the Oscars, where black actors have been proportionally represented, but instead to Hollywood in general. The real injustice towards non-white actors is the opportunity, or lack thereof, given to them to shine, not the acknowledgement of their accomplishments.

This problem is prevalent not only for black performers, but all ethnic minorities. Stereotypical casting is a widespread practice in Hollywood, which leads to a shrinking of the pool of roles that are available for minority actors in which to break out and shine.

The thought of taking action against racism is a noble gesture, but misplaced as it is in the case of the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, it diminishes what is considered to be a prestigious honour.

If the result of this protest is that the number of nominations are increased to accommodate greater diversity, then it only cheapens the honour of being nominated. Perhaps bringing this issue to the forefront will lead to a push to give more roles to minorities, but there is no need to victimize the Academy to achieve that goal.

Boycotting the Oscars is like changing the light bulb when the switch is broken.

—Tanveer Ahmed

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT STAFF ROUNDUP

THE LIFE OF PABLO

As a long-time Kanye West fan, I knew The Life of Pablo (TLOP) would deliver in terms of innovation, and considering Kanye’s career progression it was easy to guess that TLOP would feature heavily over-processed samples and gospel-esque backing beats with strong hooks and stronger guest artists.

Admittedly, the best part of this album is the featuring artists, whose names are neither listed under the track nor the artist columns on TIDAL. Chance the Rapper’s verse in “Ultralight Beam” is clearly inspired by multiple ego-boosting sessions with Yeezy (“I made Sunday Candy, I’m never going to hell / I met Kanye West, I’m never going to fail”), while Rihanna’s appearance on “Famous” turns the track into something sultry and ironically introspective. In terms of outstanding uses of samples, “Low Lights” blows away the competition with its lyrical strength and emotion.

Unfortunately, it was features like “Low Lights” and stellar guest verses that highlighted just how lyrically weak Kanye was on this album. Tracks that could be great would get yanked down by petty, childish lyrics about Ray-J and former lovers. The most egregious example of this came in “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1,” a track that was meant to be a reflective look at Kanye’s relationship with his father and instead opened his first verse with a line about a model’s bleached asshole. However, this album really shines when Kanye returns to his College Dropout roots in tracks like “Waves” and “30 Hours” (which is basically just the updated “After Hours”). Here, Kanye provides the love he promised on Twitter and alluded to with the summer release of “Only One,” and it works well for him, in spite of his claims on “I Love Kanye.” Looking at this album in combination with Yeezy Season 3, the delayed release time, and Kanye’s multiple Twitter meltdowns, TLOP is a performance of insanity, inconsistency, and introspection, and one that far exceeded my already high expectations.

— Morgan Alexander Managing Editor

KANYE WEST

(kanyewest.tidal.com.)

After a couple weeks of strategicallyplaced Twitter beef, Kanye West has graced us with his mysteriously named seventh studio album TLOP. Pablo Picasso? Pablo Escobar? The central character of the album is as uncertain as its musical contents; each song is patchy, sonically and thematically schizophrenic. TLOP starts off with ardent gospel tunes squeezed through Kanye-typical distortion. “Famous” flexes Rihanna’s raw power as she covers Nina Simone’s “Do What You Gotta Do.” It also includes a sample from Simone’s original song, as well as a Sister Nancy sample. Amid the jumble of melodies, and despite the strong female energy, Kanye decides to reminisce about the women who owe him their careers. He gloats about Taylor Swift, “I feel like me and

It’s Kanye’s world, we’re just living in it. After four name changes, a near-dystopian fashion show and a last minute postponement (#BlameChance), TLOP is finally here. and man, is it weird. TLOP is easily Kanye’s most diverse record to date. Every track feels meticulously crafted to give us every possible side of Kanye in 2016. We get the old Kanye (the chop up the soul Kanye) on tracks like “No More Parties in LA” and “Real Friends.” We get hell-raising, scorched-earth trap fireworks on “FACTS” and “Father Stretch My Hands.”

Still, there are songs like “Wolves” and “Fade” that sound like nothing he’s ever done before.

It’s a mess at times, but man is it a beautiful one.

It’s become common knowledge that Kanye records always have great features, but TLOP might feature his best supporting cast yet.

Kendrick Lamar slays over a slippery Madlib

Taylor still might have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous,” a claim that feels neither true nor triumphant. The album includes some entertaining features from Chance the Rapper, Kendrick Lamar, and others, and the haphazard melodic jumps are actually quite interesting—but Yeezus himself doesn’t seem to be saying anything new. “Wolves” is a standout track; it feels gentle and genuinely concerned about his new family’s notoriety.

The lyrics combine Kanye’s faith and familial devotion: “Cover Nori in lamb’s wool / we surrounded by the fuckin’ wolves,” he warns Kim. This line is scary as hell, and probably the realest thing Kanye spits on TLOP. — April Barrett, Arts & Entertainment Editor

beat on the aforementioned “No More Parties in LA.” Somehow, Kanye lured Frank Ocean out of whatever cave he’s been hiding in to deliver a scene-stealing turn on “Wolves.” And then there’s Chance, the new king of Chicago hip hop, who delivers what must be the best verse on the record on “Ultralight Beam.” Chance deserves additional credit for saving “Waves,” a towering pop-rap monolith that might just be TLOP’s best song.

We put up with a lot of shit from Kanye.

To be honest, he seems like a crazy person most of the time. But then he puts out a record that makes all the twitter rants and the egomaniacal ranting somehow manageable. The Life of Pablo is one of those records. It was well worth the wait.

— Eric Noble-Marks Staff Writer

Check out the rest of our The Life of Pablo staff roundup at mcgilltribune.com/a-e

Laptop-stealing cousins of the world, beware! Kanye West is finally back after one of the most publicized blown deadlines in music history. On third listen, it’s becoming clear that this is likely his best album musically, and his worst album lyrically. He excels on tracks like “Wolves” and the 90-bar monster verse on “No More Parties in L.A.” but he too often devolves to “shocking” one-liners and lazy repetition instead of digging in and delivering the introspection and wit that made his earlier albums so great. Furthermore, he tends to get outshined by artists like Chance the Rapper and Desiigner, often feeling like a feature on his own album.

That doesn’t matter as much when the album is as wellproduced as it is. After listening to the first track, “Ultralight Beam,” it suddenly becomes clear why the album took so long.

Its intermittent gospel choir and lush organ stack up against the best of anything Kanye has ever produced, continuing his streak of fantastic album openers.

Despite the fact that the rest of the album never really lives up to the gospel vibe he was going for, there’s a lot to like about nearly every song, from the sample of Sister Nancy’s “Bam Bam” on “Famous” to the grimy piano sound of “Real Friends.” The fact that there’s no real narrative or sonic through-line to the album means it can feel more like a jumbled collection of songs than an actual album, but it’s hard to find fault with something this joyful and unique.

— Christopher Lutes Arts & Entertainment Editor

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Beyond Serial: Five podcasts worth your time Modern Love Modern Love has long been a staple column of the New York Times as a weekly glimpse into the surprises and tribulations of modern dating and relationships. Modern Love: The Podcast, brings these stories to life with readings from actors such as Broadway star Lauren Molina and American Horror Story actress Sarah Paulson.

Listeners are also privy to a follow-up interview with the author, where the epilogue of their sometimes-successful, sometimes-harrowing tales brings to life the diversity and oddity of modern life.

Best Episode: Episode 4: “An Interlude of Clarity.” The perfect date ends in the emergency room and just gets better from there- for a little while.

Brian Gittis’ tale reveals that it’s okay if a magical night doesn’t last.

—Evelyn Goessling

The New Yorker Radio Hour The New Yorker Radio Hour has all the virtues of The New Yorker in podcast form: Impeccable style, content, and production distilled into an hour of easygoing conversation. Host David Remnick’s interviews are thoughtful, sensitive, and playful. The podcast features a variety of artists, writers, musicians, politicians, and stories about and interviews with other fascinating personalities. It showcases a vast spectrum of human passion and creativity with a mash up of essays, interviews, and dramas (in one interview director Charlie Kaufman talks “puppet sex and existential dread during a tour of the Whitney Museum; in another two cartoonists discuss “the virtues of dogs versus cats, and other big questions of the cartoon world.”) If the weekly magazine is too long or too much to keep up with, this is the podcast for you.

Best Episode: “Episode 6: Two Writers and a Rock Star Onstage.”

Featuring Patti Smith and fiction writers Jonathan Safran Foer and George Saunders. Patti Smith discusses her new book M Train, a memoir and love story to New York, poetry, travel, and the smaller things in life.

—Evelyn Goessling

Radiolab This science podcast covers a broad range of topics, investigating how science, culture, and history intersect in ways that we don’t often consider. Each hour-long episode includes three segments that relate to a particular idea—like colours, words, or the Galapagos Islands—and challenges the listener to approach this idea from a novel angle. Often, an episode can succeed in altering the way we experience and appreciate our world and question aspects of life that are taken for granted. Hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich gather interviews and information from both experts and average people with particularly interesting stories to tell.

Best Episode: “Update: New Normal,” investigates whether humanity has the capacity to permanently change ingrained aspects of its behaviour through stories about a commune of peaceful baboons, domesticated foxes, and America’s first transgender mayor.

— Selin Altuntur

Not Too Deep with Grace Helbig True to its name, Not Too Deep avoids sophistication and instead dives into the absurdities of the everyday and imagination with questions like “Who would you throw a plate of cold spaghetti at?” and “What is your favorite emoji and why?” In Not Too Deep, YouTube star and author Grace Helbig chats with other YouTubers and celebrities about their projects as well as some of their most ridiculous life stories, such as Uber rides, Tinder dates, and fan encounters. Helbig’s slightly awkward but endearing sense of humour works wonderfully in tandem with the wide range of humor and creativity showcased in her guests. Internet sensation Tyler Oakley, singer and YouTuber Troye Sivan, and EpicMealTime star Harley Morenstein are among some of the most entertaining visitors to the podcast.

Best Episode: “Ep. 25 with Shane Dawson.” The stories Shane shares in this episode are just as outrageous and hilarious as his personality. In one ,a Craigslist encounter goes terribly, terribly wrong; in another, Shane meets LA’s craziest Uber driver.

This American Life This American Life is a weekly podcast that explores a theme through first person accounts of moving life stories. Often, segments explore relevant experiences and current events in an innovative, ironic and humorous way. This podcast is particularly good at getting listeners to see banal everyday situations, like online trolling, calling the wrong number, and unfunny parent jokes, in a new and insightful light.

Best Episode: “If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, SAY IT IN ALL CAPS” recounts three instances of the internet turning against everyday people. Looking at the issue from the perspective of both victim and troll, this episode addresses human universals in a way that makes you feel for the faceless bullies behind your computer screen.

— Selin Altuntur

— Evelyn Goessling

ALBUM REVIEW

BODYWASH EP BODYWASH On their debut EP, Bodywash (the McGill band formerly known as Cult Classic), sticks to a relatively simple synth-pop—or ‘cream pop,’ as the band puts it on their Facebook page—formula.

Although it is not a harbinger of anything groundbreaking, it is more than worth checking out for any fan of chilled-out, easy-listening tunes. In what appears to be a diplomatic move, the band has opted to equally showcase the dreamy, coolbored voices of Chris Steward and Rosie Long Decter, giving them each two songs in which they take the lead. On Steward’s half, “This Cruel” is the standout; the opening is peppered with delayed guitars, setting a distinct, sonically interesting tone and creating a lush atmosphere for Steward’s pleasant, wistful vocals. As for Long Decter, while “Some Place You Can Leave” is noteworthy for providing a slight departure from the rest of the EP with more of a ’50s doo-wop beat, “Clothes” is filled with a more earnest yearning and a gentle sultriness on the singer’s part. This blends nicely with Steward’s backing harmonies and the guitar vibrato provided by Steward and second guitarist Adam Macpherson.

Thematically, Bodywash does not venture out of the ordinary and mostly sticks to the tried-and-true topics of budding or fizzling relationships. That being said, the band exhibits a certain

kind of dexterity in crafting songs that sound fresh and ready to be played at any late night party worth its salt. “If only you could be this cruel,” croons Steward, coming across as both hopeful and helpless. His grasp on how to effectively articulate romantic woes can be heard in his lyrics on “Nothing At All” and “This Cruel,” while the entire band collaborated on the writing process for “Some Place You Can Leave” and “Clothes.” As far as production and sound mixing go, kudos to all those involved, in and out of the band, for putting out an independently made EP like Bodywash (recorded at McGill’s sound recording program studios) without needing to suffer any reduction in sound quality.

All in all, it’s a professional, very listenable (if too ‘safe,’ creatively) start for what is sure to be an up-andcoming band in Montreal’s extensive music scene. For a group that emerged out of the ashes of what was once “that great band at OAP,” they have certainly come a long way, and McGill should be proud to call Bodywash one of its own. It may be struggling to shed its image as a university band, but for now, the group’s unique history with the school only serves to separate them from the competition.

—Natasha Michaeloff

(bcbits.com)

STANDOUT TRACK

SOUNDS LIKE

BEST LYRICS

“Clothes,” “This Cruel”

The love child of Chromatics and Alvvays

“Well, I wish I’d played it by the book / When I’d rather be between the lines”

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

High infidelity: McGill Savoy Society’s The Merry Widow brings a classic into the modern era Christopher Lutes Arts & Entertainment Editor Opera is an art form that has been in jeopardy for at least the last few decades. With a near complete lack of any notable new operas since the early 20th century, the entire genre is in danger of becoming stagnant without the intervention of passionate fans who are willing to update them for a modern audience. McGill’s Savoy Society latest annual production delivers another valiant effort to keep opera alive in its production of The Merry Widow , its first nonGilbert and Sullivan production since at least the 1980s.

Composed by Franz Lehar, written by Viktor Leon and Leo Stein, and directed by Russell Wustenberg, the opera follows Anna (Ana Toumine), the widow of a recently-deceased banker, focusing on the question of who she will marry, and thus share her wealth with. The Baron (Jonah Spungin) of an economically floundering Baltic state tries to convince her to marry a countryman to keep his nation from crumbling. Though she has a trail of suitors from all over the globe following her, she is drawn to Count Danilo (Bruno Roy), a caddish ex-lover who now spends his time boozing and womanizing. The show wrings every bit of farce that it can from the scenario, piling up intersecting subplots about love and infidelity among the cadre of elites who find themselves in the widow’s orbit.

Despite some of the expected creakiness of an opera written in 1905, the production has a comic sensibility that is surprisingly modern. A lot of this comes from the fact that most of the opera’s comedy relies on highly versatile material: Comeuppance for the arrogant, physical comedy, and dramatic irony. In other places, the line readings are delivered with more of an edge than was probably present in its original incarnation. But most importantly, the play attempts to directly address the highly outdated gender politics of the opera. This was an explicit concern of the production team, who recognized that the mores of the past are greatly out of sync with the present.

“The biggest concern that I had […] was what was the context of the time?” Stage Director Russell Wustenberg said. “My biggest change was I actually took the most famous piece of music [from the opera…] and instead of having it entirely sung

Count Danilovich (Bruno Roy, top right) addresses the attendees of an embassy gala. (Noah Sutton / McGill Tribune). by men, I allowed the women to sing their response to the men.”

Of course, a production can only take so many liberties without losing thread of the text, so Anna never really considers the idea that she doesn’t have to marry anyone. Instead, the opera ends as one would expect, with a highly sentimental third act set in the fairy-lit glow of Anna’s ballroom, underlining the importance of love. While it’s somewhat disappointing that a production this comparably modern would end on such a predictable note, the sentiment feels earned, mainly due to the performances.

Toumine and Roy anchor the production, each bringing their own brand of charisma and playing off of each other in numbers like “All’s one to all men where there’s gold” with a fantastic ease and sense of timing. Valencienne (MacKenzie Stone) and Camille (Zachary Rubens) serve as younger, more naive counterpoints to the central couple, bringing a welcome ray of earnestness amid the cynicism of the older married couples. The rest of the cast serves a mainly comedic role with Spungin’s oblivious Baron and Talia Fuchs’ put-upon emissary Njegus as the clear standouts. The sheer number of subplots means that no character wears out their welcome, but each gets a moment to shine.

The music is top-to-bottom fantastic, accompanied by an

especially well-oiled orchestra.

Russell’s aforementioned tweaking of “You’re back to where you first began” lends a satirical edge to what could otherwise come off as woefully outdated.

Accordingly, the

choreography is loose and modern, full of anachronistic flourishes that imbue the opera with a modern energy. The sets and lighting are beautifully impressionistic, giving each act a distinct feel and colour palate that correspond with the

emotion of the main characters.

Guided by Producers Narmada Gunawardana and Maia de Graaf, The Merry Widow manages to mostly transcend the trappings of its source material, making the opera feel modern again.

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Science & technology

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

The decline of the Canadian dollar McGill professor weighs in on the loonie’s shifting power Uzair Khan Contributor On Jan. 20, the Canadian dollar (CAD) fell to a new record low: It was the weakest the CAD had been since April 2003. On that day, every Canadian dollar was worth only 68.5 American cents, part of a larger and ongoing decline experienced by the loonie. Since then it has bounced back to equal about 72 American cents.

The origins of this steady downfall can be traced back to 2011, when the Canadian dollar was stronger than its American counterpart. In his commentary in The Globe and Mail, Chris Ragan, an associate professor of economics at McGill, outlined the two main factors involved: The decrease in global commodity prices and the difference between Canadian and US interest rates set by central banks.

Canada is a country blessed with abundant natural resources, ranging from oil and uranium to timber, fresh water, wild life, minerals, and arable land. These products, although a small fraction of the Canadian economy, represent a large portion of its exports, and this is what affects the exchange rate. Canada is one of the few developed countries along with Russia and Australia that is a net exporter of energy and natural commodities. Recent turmoil on the global economic and political scene, from slow economic growth

in China to continued unnecessary overproduction of oil, has led to a decline in the price of natural commodities, the main one being oil.

When the world’s economic growth or an increase in a country’s capacity to produce goods and services slows down, the demand for natural resources goes down, dragging with it their prices. At the peak strength of the Canadian dollar, oil was selling at over a $100 USD a barrel. Now it is hovering at around $30 USD. The low price of oil causes the Canadian dollar to depreciate: Since less money is being earned per barrel sold, less money is being put back into the Canadian economy for the same amount of oil or other natural resources that are being exported. “[As long as Canada remains] a large net exporter of resource-based products, lower commodity prices are bad for the overall Canadian economy,” Ragan explained. “But by the same logic, lower commodity prices strengthen the US dollar because the United States is a net importer of energy.”

The difference between the interest rate set by the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of Canada is the second major factor contributing to the depreciation of the Canadian dollar. This rate is known as an ‘overnight rate,’ and is defined by the Bank of Canada as ‘the interest rate at which major financial institutions borrow and lend one-day funds among

themselves,’ depending on its available funds at the end of each business day. Changes in this rate influence other interest rates such as those of bank loans and mortgages.

This interest rate is the essence of monetary policy and the central bank is setting these interest rates as part of its overall policy in targeting inflation.

Variations in these rates reflect the strength of an economy. Higher rates correspond with a wellperforming economy and lower rates correspond with a struggling economy. In recent years the US economy has outperformed the Canadian economy, leading to a higher interest rate set by its central bank. Financial capital has consequently flown out of Canada in the hopes of reaping higher returns in the US, resulting in the depreciation of the Canadian dollar.

Though it may seem odd that the fiscal strength of one other country has such a major effect on the value of Canadian currency, ties between the US and Canada run very deep.

The US is on the other side of a $700 billion trade pipeline with Canada, making it Canada’s biggest trade partner. According to CBC, in 2009, 73 per cent of Canada’s exports went to the US, and 63 per cent of Canada’s

Over the last year, the CAD’s worth has steadily decreased. (overseaspropertyalert.com) imports were from the US. With its sheer size and important geographic location, the US economy will continue to have a major impact on the strength of the Canadian economy and currency.

“It’s rich, it’s big, and it’s right beside us,” Ragan said.

A weak dollar is bad for Canadians importing or spending money on foreign goods and services.

For example, a Canadian consumer who wants to purchase a product that costs $100 USD now will have to pay over a $140 CAD. On the other hand, an American consumer will pay less

for the same Canadian goods as he or she did when the two currencies were equal. Thus a weak Canadian dollar, as it turns out, helps Canadian exporters because in the eyes of foreign buyers, the prices of Canadian goods have fallen.

It’s hard to predict how the value of the Canadian dollar will change. A good place to start, however, would be understanding the global prices of natural commodities like oil. As the prices of oil buoy, so does the loonie’s value.

A look into the bioethics of commercialized surrogacy Annual panel addresses Canadian policy on assisted reproduction

Clare Fogarty Contributor On Feb. 6, the McGill Journal of Law and Health held its eighth Annual Colloquium, with this year focusing on legal and policy issues concerning assisted reproduction in Canada.

The discussion was held by wellknown professors, lawyers, and physicians—all meeting to debate and discuss hot topics in Canadian bioethics surrounding reproductive rights. This year’s panel was titled Assisted Reproduction: Navigating the Criminalization of Commercial Surrogacy, and focused on Canada’s decision to make it illegal for surrogates to be paid to carry someone else’s child, eliciting much debate among Canadian scholars and practitioners of bioethics.

The discussions centered on the federal Assisted Human Reproduction Act (AHRA), which criminalizes the payment of surrogate mothers, setting penalties between $500,000

or a 10-year prison sentence if violated. Surrogates agreeing to carry another couple’s child are to do so entirely altruistically. Since its passing in 2004, the AHRA

“

“The human life is precious and must never be made a commodity,” Somerville said.

has exposed rather polar views amongst leaders in Canadian public health ethics.

One of the speakers, Canadian fertility law lawyer and founder of Fertility Law Canada, Sara Cohen,

argued that the act of commercial surrogacy should be regulated rather than criminalized. “[This law was created to] protect marginalized women from engaging in surrogacy because they felt they had no choice,” Cohen said. “But most women acting as surrogates are altruistic, self-sufficient, [and] independent thinkers.”

Instead of protecting women, Cohen explained, these laws are ‘paternalistic and offensive.’

The AHRA also prohibits the selling of sperm and ova for reproduction—instead, donors must voluntarily make their contribution to banks, and often do so anonymously. As a result, few individuals donate sperm or gametes, often creating banks with tissues of redundant genotypes (identical DNA). Some birthmothers therefore receive identical gametes as those received by others, unknowingly giving birth to biological half-siblings. The anonymous nature of many of the donations also makes family lineage nearly impossible to trace,

leaving the child’s family health history unknown. According to Cohen, decriminalizing the selling of reproductive tissues would give patients more information, enabling them to make safer decisions.

Arguments challenging this opinion take the exact opposite stance; Professor Margaret Somerville from the McGill Faculties of Law and Medicine and founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics, and Law, argued that not all surrogates are able to give informed consent.

“Most cases of surrogacy in other countries are based on exploitation of poor, vulnerable women,” Somerville said.

“Surrogates are often described as altruistic in the advertisements seeking to recruit them.”

According to Somerville, commercial surrogacy is a violation of women’s rights, opening the door to the creation of a breeder class of underprivileged women using their reproduction organs for profit.

While this argument ventures close to the arguments used by

proponents against legalizing prostitution, Somerville further reasoned that ethical issues should always focus on the most vulnerable party involved—the child. Commercial surrogacy can also dehumanizing by creating reification and commodification of a child and therefore, of human life. Somerville compared the issue to organ trafficking by using human beings as means to an end.

“The human life is precious and must never be made a commodity,” Somerville said.

The consequences of the AHRA do pose issues for intending parents unable to conceive, yet also paint an eerie image of commodifying human life. The juxtaposition of ethical views at the colloquium posed an interesting discussion, but left many uncertain of their opinion on the topics deliberated. Still, discussion among contrasting views on public health policy must continue to take place, as the field of bioethics takes on an increasingly important role in our modern biomedical society.

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Science & technology

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Rewriting the history of the moon The ‘Giant Impact’ Theory updated Daniel Galef Staff Writer A research team out of UCLA, when testing the compositions of moon rocks, determined that they possessed a striking similarity to rocks found here on Earth. This has led the scientists to believe that the Earth and the moon have the same origin.

McGill Earth and Planetary Sciences professor William Minarik, who has taught and published on the origin of the moon, is well acquainted with the varying theories popular throughout history. “[The Co-Accretion Theory] was the idea that the Earth-moon system formed together, just like the sun and the planets formed together from the same nebula,” Minarik explained. “Another theory was the Capture Theory: The moon formed somewhere else, and then just because of orbital dynamics managed to somehow get captured by the Earth.”

But since the Apollo missions, the dominant theory has been what is dubbed the Giant Impact Theory, or the Big Splash. The Earth-moon system

was formed when some planetary body—called Theia, after a titaness of Greek mythology—collided with a proto-Earth, and the molten debris fell into orbit to become our moon.

This theory is nothing new, but the UCLA team’s results give it a new spin: For decades, the prevalent model was a small, Mars-sized Theia hitting the proto-Earth off-centre. Using computer modelling programs adapted from military code used in nuclear weapons testing, this was the scenario that best accounted for the orbital dynamics we see in the Earth-moon system, including angular momentum and the moon’s lack of an iron core. However, the model resulted in a moon made up mostly of the remains of Theia and an Earth made up mostly of Earth.

This conception was strengthened by the findings of a German team two years ago that used similar techniques to determine moon rocks and Earth rocks had different isotopic ratios. Because the teams used similar methods and both findings were statistically significant, scientists can not yet fully account for the discrepancy. Only one moon rock was tested by both groups, and the

measurements on that one sample agree to within the experiments’ margins of error.

Before the present results, the idea that Theia hit the proto-Earth off-centre was still feasible. The precision and accuracy of the measurements done by the researchers at UCLA are so good, however, that the group is confident the only explanation can be very thorough mixing in the impact.

The new findings cast this theory (a blob of Mars-sized Theia spinning off to become the moon) into doubt.

What now seems likelier is a young proto-Earth that was only 80 per cent as big as the current Earth taking a headon collision with a Theia of about the same size. This also means that the blob of molten planet that escaped from the crash wasn’t mostly Theia at all—the collision thoroughly mixed the two masses to the extent that both the moon and Earth, afterwards, were about half proto-Earth and half Theia. Essentially, the moon and Earth are made of the same stuff.

To come to this conclusion, the group measured levels of rare oxygen isotopes in the samples. The

App round-up: Restaurants, food, and texting Which apps are the best for students?

Scientists discovered more evidence supporting the Giant Impact Theory. (oncirculation.com) isotope levels are measured using a predict this.

“The Apollo samples—and this mass spectrometer, which accelerates particles down a long tube before is one of the benefits to long-term bending their paths with a magnet. funding—when Apollo brought back Lighter particles, like ones with fewer our samples, they were split in half,” neutrons, bend more, and so end up in a Minarik said. “Half of each sample was put into storage and never touched, and different spot on the detector.

“The mass spectrometers are just the other half was sent out to be studied. getting better,” Minarik stated. “They’re So now, as instrumentation gets better, getting bigger, the magnets are getting as the techniques get more precise, we more precise, the flight paths are longer, still have pristine samples still in our repository that have never been touched: the electronics are lower noise.”

And, luckily for the researchers, They’ve never seen Earth atmosphere, their forebears had the foresight to they’ve never been messed with.”

There’s an app for everything in 2016. Brilliant minds are continuing to create innovative concepts that simplify our lives in ways we didn’t even think were possible. But how good are all of these apps? And are they worth it? (itunes.apple.com)

By Ava Zwolinski

1. 10MinMontreal If you’re like me, every month you come precariously close to going over your cell’s data plan. When you’re out with friends, this can be a problem: Without a Wi-Fi connection it becomes much more difficult to find places to eat, study, get a quick cup of coffee or even go on an impromptu date. The app 10 Minutes in Montreal,

by McGill U4 software engineering student Dan Crisan features different restaurants that are all within 10 minutes walking distance from a Montreal metro station, and it works entirely without any internet connection or data usage. Crisan’s main focus with this app was to make it entirely accessible to McGill students.

“At the beginning, we were a bunch of friends talking about where we should bring our dates,” Crisan explained. “As a techie, I had a vague idea about a simple app where the first thing that shows up are ‘moods.’ ‘She likes Italian food?’ ‘Here are a bunch of Italian restaurants. It’s late and want to go for a drink?’ Here are some bars. I wanted something simple, and more than anything else, accessible.”

Not only is this app convenient, but it has a sleek, simplistic, ad-free layout that makes it incredibly easy to use, with more student-targeted results than other vast databases like Yelp, for example. Two thumbs up. Rating: 5/5.

2. ReeBee Being a university student brings its own set of challenges, and shopping for groceries without going broke is one of the most difficult.

Co-founders of ReeBee, Tobiasz Dankiewicz and Michal Martyniak, have created an app that allows users to intelligently shop for groceries without having to leaf through store flyers to find the best deals at the time. This app has a simple design where you type in the product you’re looking for and get a breakdown of all the different price offerings at local stores near you. ReeBee allows you to save up to 40 to 50 per cent on groceries (and even other products, like those sold at stores like Future Shop), and it also lets you price match with major department stores.

“In just one second you can tap on a product, navigate to it, show it to the cashier and get the product at the discounted price,” Dankiewicz explained.

The co-founders explain they’re looking to add a feature that allows personalization. For example, vegetarians won’t see ads for meat products. In addition, you can share your grocery lists with your roommates and family, and let others know what products you’re buying.

Rating: 4/5. Useful, but a lot of students will still just go to the grocery store closest to their apartment and not the one with the best prices.

3. Texi Texi is an app that was released this past month by the Dilawri Foundation, the philanthropic sector of a Canadian automotive group, and is an initiative for their newly launched safe driving campaign. This app has a really cool concept. It creates initiatives for safe driving through a point system: The more miles you drive without texting the more points you obtain. Eventually, at the end of the month, you are eligible to enter different drawings based on the number of points you’ve received. The drawings have a wide range of prizes, from a new smartphone to a $500 travel voucher.

Statistics show that about 20 per cent of Canadians will admit to texting and driving, and in some places, including Ontario and British Columbia, police officers have stated that there are more accidents due to texting and driving now than there are from drunk driving. Texi aims to stop texting and driving by rewarding safe drivers.

“Clearly, this is an issue becoming major enough for our foundation to want to do something about it, and this is a solution that we think is going to work,” Galit Solomon, a spokesperson for the company, stated.

Rating: 4.5/5. Super cool prizes, and for a great cause.

Sports

18 behind the bench

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

how fans shape ticket prices

Arman Bery Contributor The essence of fandom is hard to capture in words; fans tend to have a more familial connection to their favourite team than to other organizations or businesses.

The emotions they invest into sports transcend those of any other service that is provided to the common person.

Yet, the reality is that every sports team is still a profit-generating business. Unfortunately, most sports fans have limited budgets, so when local sports teams try to incorporate greater profit margins into their business model, the reaction from fans is as expressive as it is swift.

Famed football club Liverpool FC experienced this situation firsthand when they tried to raise ticket prices and institute new price regulations at their home field Anfield Stadium. Almost 10,000 fans left Anfield during the 77th minute of a match on Feb. 6, with chants such as “You greedy bastards, enough is enough.” This stunning demonstration led to rapid discussions between the Bostonbased owner—Fenway Sports Group—and senior management at Liverpool. They decided to

Liverpool supporters express their displeasure over high ticket prices. (theguardian.com) cancel their price inflations and also issued a public apology to all their fans.

In response to the controversy, representatives from Spion Kop 1906 and Spirit of Shankly, two of the supporters groups that organized the demonstrations, released the following statement: “More must be done to make football affordable; however, we have always stated that this is a journey

BLast from the past

that the owners should embark upon, and this is a positive step in the right direction towards fairness and away from greed, but it is only one step.”

Liverpool management came to the realization that devout fans expect to be treated with the respect that they have shown to their club for decades, even though the demand for tickets at famed soccer clubs is relatively inelastic. This is

a reality for many sports clubs with passionate fans, including FC Barcelona, Green Bay Packers, Chicago Cubs, and so on. The sports world is as lucrative as it has ever been.

Reflected by rising salary caps, new television deals, and bigger contracts, the common fan does not expect to shoulder a heavier financial burn.

Many cities gain recognition on a national and international

level because of their sports teams. Fans are a huge part of the esteem and pride surrounding these organizations, and they are the people who spend their hardearned money on team gear, memorabilia, and tickets. They are the driving force behind the companies and they do it gleefully, as long as they feel that they aren’t being explicitly manipulated or taken advantage of. When that does occur, fan reaction is deservedly harsh because they are the reason that the team, owner, players, and management all make millions of dollars.

Any claims by teams that they are not making desired profits should be aimed towards the league itself for poor stadium infrastructure, because even with inflation over the years, ticket prices have still increased exponentially. Teams looking to maximize economic profit cannot discount the unique role of fans as more than a customer, and instead an emotionally invested family member. In the end, it takes more than money to represent how much a sports organization means to people, and that love and passion for these teams should not be exploited.

T h e e v o l u t i o n o f f o o t b a ll

From mob football to the Super Bowl Christopher Lutes Arts & Entertainment Editor Continued from Page 1.

The American and Canadian worlds eventually collided in a May, 1875 two-game series between McGill and Harvard, where one game was played with Harvard’s rules and the other one with McGill’s.

Harvard liked McGill’s rules so much that they advocated for their use in the November, 1875 game against Yale. Yale countered with its own set of rules and—in perhaps the most important compromise in sports history—the universities sat down and negotiated for a combination of the two playing styles (though mostly favouring McGill’s rugby style), creating football’s first set of codified rules. In their game—now played annually and known simply as “The Game” for its importance— Harvard’s experience led them to a 4-0 shutout. In attendance that day was a dissatisfied Yale student named Walter Camp, better known now as the “father of modern football.”

The inaugural American football game between McGill and Harvard. (wikimedia.com) A member of the Skull and Bones Society and triplevarsity athlete, Camp was responsible for smoothing the rough edges that the HarvardYale compromise had created in the gameplay. He attended university conventions where football’s rules were debated and expanded—this included regulations such as introducing the line of scrimmage and the

system of downs to keep the game moving quickly, cutting down team sizes to 11 on each side, and changed the scoring so touchdowns yielded more points than field goals. Camp had shaped what was an awkward combination of soccer and rugby into something workable. In the years after his changes were made, college football exploded in popularity, radiating outward

from the Eastern seaboard.

Enter Glenn Scobey “Pop” Warner, essentially football’s first beta tester. A coach known for doing anything to win, Warner exploited the same loophole that would one day let golden retrievers play professional basketball: There was no rule specifically forbidding it, so it was allowed. Warner used every diversionary trick in the

book, sewing football-shaped patches onto players’ jerseys to confuse the opposition and adding pockets to the insides of jerseys so his players could run the ball with no danger of getting it knocked away. Warner, along with other prominent coaches of the time were integral to the evolution of the game; if somebody is trying to exploit the game in any way they can, then the rules are going to change to prevent them from doing that, and thus the game becomes more legitimate.

Nearly half a century after Camp walked out of the YaleHarvard match, the NFL was formed, further shaping the game into what its known as today. It’s impossible for Camp to have seen the future coming from his vantage point, but he must have been cognizant of the violent, unorganized mayhem of the game’s origin stretching back farther than he could comprehend. The compromise showed him that there was a way forward from all that--a way that wasn’t necessarily perfect or safe, but forward for the sport of football.

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Sports

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

By Nick Jasinski

10 things World’s strongest man

(youtube.com) World’s Strongest Man is an annual competition that tests competitors’ physical strength, endurance, and training. Held every year since 1977, the competition includes 16 separate events designed to push the Strongmen to the limits of their ability, with the eventual winner chosen based on his performances in all of the events combined.

In the Keg Toss, competitors must throw kegs of increasing weight–from 15 to 24 kg–over a 4.42 m wall. In past variations of this event, it was the height of the wall that increased while the weight of the keg stayed constant.

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The current title-holder is 33-year-old American, Brian Shaw, who won his third career title at the 2015 World’s Strongest Man competition in Malaysia. Shaw towers 2.04 m high, weighs almost 200 kg and reportedly eats 10,000 calories a day over eight separate meals. Just for comparison, a 450 kg horse has to eat 15,000 calories each day.

That’s only 50 per cent more calories than Shaw eats.

The Vehicle Pull involves competitors pulling vehicles such as transport trucks, trams, boxcars, buses, or planes by a rope down the length of a 30 m course as fast as possible. The vehicle pulled often pays homage to a previous winner or the host location of the competition. For example, the 2007 competition’s Vehicle Pull involved a fire truck in honour of the 2006 champion Phil Pfister, a firefighter, and the 2008 competition held in West Virginia featured a coal truck, referring to the region’s coal-mining industry.

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Mariusz Pudzianowski has the most titles of any Strongman, with five victories from 2002 to 2008. His personal bests include a 290 kg bench press, 380 kg squat and a 415 kg deadlift. Since retiring as a Strongman in 2009, Pudzianowski has begun a second career as an MMA fighter, competing mostly in his native Poland.

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The Squat is one of the mainstays of the WSM competition, performed every year since its founding. Strongmen lift items including concrete blocks, tractor tires, cars or people as many times as they can while remaining in a fixed squat position. Another regular event is the Fridge Carry, where competitors carry two fridges weighing 415 kg on a crossbar across their shoulders along a 30m course, typically completing the event in under 20 seconds.

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Hafthor Julius Bjornsson, better known for his role as Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane in the HBO series Game of Thrones, has finished in the top three at each of the last four WSM competitions. The 2.05 m, 175 kg Icelander only began training for Strongman competitions at age 20 after suffering an injury to his knee that ended his professional basketball career after only one season on the Icelandic Division 1 basketball team FSu Selfoss.

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The Husafell Stone, first introduced in 1982, involves carrying a flat, triangular rock weighing 182 kg across the chest over a set distance, with the fastest time winning. According to legend, the stone was crafted in Husafell, Iceland over 200 years ago where it is still kept between competitions.

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The Atlas Stones are typically the final and signature event of each WSM competition.

Five heavy, spherical stones are placed in front of five platforms along the length of a 10 m long course. The Strongmen must successively lift each stone–increasing in weight from 100 to 160 kg–onto waist or chest high platforms in as little time as possible.

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The away games

A fan-favourite of the WSM competition is the Car Carry. Strongmen stand inside a stripped-down automobile with a hole in the roof and in the floor, and carry it Flinstones-style the length of a 25 m course as fast as they can.

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martlets and redmen at concordia

By Nick Jasinski and Zikomo Smith

(Daniel Mortimer and Noah Sutton / McGill Tribune)

Redmen Hockey

Martlet Hockey

Redmen Basketball

Martlet Basketball

The Redmen (21-6-1) endured a 4-2 upset defeat against the Stingers (10-12-6) last Friday at Ed Meagher Arena. The defeat ended McGill’s five-game run of victories over Concordia, and provided a preview to their three game OUA East playoff quarter-finals series next Wednesday.

Concordia outplayed the Redmen for the first two periods, outscoring them 3-1— senior centre Mathieu Pompei was the only Redmen player to convert in the first two periods. Rookie winger Daniel Milne was the other Redmen to find the back of the net. McGill finished second in the OUA East with a 21-6-1 record. They will play Concordia next Wednesday at McConnel Arena.

The Martlets (12-5-2) came back from two goals down in the second period to defeat the Stingers (6-8-2) three goals to two. The Martlets have now triumphed over the Stingers on the last eight occasions the teams have met. Senior forward Gabrielle Davidson was responsible for the last two of the Martlets’ goals while freshman forward Nicole Howlett put McGill on the scoreboard for the first time at the end of the second period. Captain Melodie Daoust played in her 100th career game for McGill on Saturday and scored her 200th career point on an assist for Davidson’s first goal. The Martlets are currently second to Montreal in the RSEQ standings but have already clinched their spot in the playoffs with only one game remaining.

The Redmen (9-4) defeated the Stingers (9-5) 53-44 on Saturday for their ninth win out of the last 14 games played against their crosstown rivals. The Redmen led the Stingers 17-6 after the first quarter, but by the close of the first half, Concordia had rallied to close the deficit to only two points at 2422. The Redmen found their groove again in third quarter and never looked back on their way to a nine point victory. The team’s standout player was fifth-year shooting guard Vincent Dufort of Smiths Falls, Ontario, who recorded a “double-double” with 14 points scored and 11 rebounds collected in 36 minutes on the court. This puts the Redmen into first place in the RSEQ standings with three games left to play this season.

The Martlets (12-1) defeated the Stingers (5-9) 77-64 at the Concordia Gym last Saturday. McGill was brilliant from the floor, converting 54.9 per cent of their shots, and 100 per cent from beyond the arc and from the free throw line.

Rookie guard Gladys Hakizimana was in dominant form, scoring 19 points on 5-7 shooting, as well as converting a perfect 7-7 from the charity stripe, and 2-2 from beyond the arc. Three other Martlets reached double figures—senior forward Gabriela Herbert 17 points included a hat-trick of three pointers and 7-9 shooting from the field. On defence, McGill held Concordia to a paltry 27.4 per cent shooting performance—Alex Kiss-Rusk was formidable protecting the rim and recorded four blocks. McGill are firmly atop the RSEQ rankings and will play Laval (8-5) next Friday.

20 behind the bench

Sports

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

rooney rule ramifications on female representation

Michelle McKenna, the CIO of the NFL. (nflplayerengawgement.com)

Nicole Spadotto Staff Writer Diversity and minority visibility in professional athletics has recently made international headlines, with the inauguration of new professional women’s sport leagues, such as the WNHL, the MLB implementing programs to increase female and minority job candidates, and new awards like the British Ethnic Diversity Sports Awards recognizing the diversity of elite athletes.

Most recently, the NFL—a league notorious for an administration littered with middle-aged white males—has inaugurated a new rule to encourage more women in administrative roles, complementing their diversity-encouraging “Rooney Rule.” The Rooney Rule is over a dozen years old, and was inaugurated to combat bias against ethnic minorities applying for coaching jobs and front office positions. Now, in addition to interviewing at least one minority candidate when filling football operations positions, NFL

teams must interview at least one woman to fill league executive office positions as well.

Since the Rooney Rule was implemented, minority coaches have gained more visibility behind the bench, perhaps because the rule has worked to counteract racial stigmas within the league. Currently there are five head coaches of colour in the NFL. Before the Rooney rule, only seven head coaches in the history of the NFL history were minorities.

Behind the numbers, however, is a radically different story. Perhaps most tellingly, the number of minority coaching hires have stagnated, and even slightly declined, over recent years. The rule has definitely ensured that more minority candidates have been interviewed for NFL positions, and yet most coaches and executives are white. The same candidates tend to get recycled through a variety of teams, and most of these candidates are white. Though teams are required to interview minority candidates, it’s no guarantee that those candidates will be hired.

One cannot help but wonder whether this problem will recur in the hiring of women. Setting interviewing standards for women certainly gives talented females visibility in the hiring process, but implementing the rule just creates a soft quota that must be filled solely in the initial interviewing phase— as opposed to actually empowering women vying for a front-office position.

But similar to how the Rooney Rule de-stigmatized the visibility of minorities in professional football positions, the expansion to women might achieve a similar end, even if the outcome is not as pervasive as intended. Already in 2015, even without the rule, women have found employment in viable positions within the league. This year, Sarah Thomas became the NFL’s first female full-time official, Jen Welter became the first female to hold a coaching role when the Arizona Cardinals hired her as a pre-season intern, and Kathryn Smith of the Buffalo Bills scored a full-time

coaching role—the first female to do so. Undoubtedly, all of this is progress, and through their actions, the NFL has asserted that they are committed to advancing this progress even further. Even though elements of the rule perhaps don’t go far enough in ensuring gender-equality, it’s definitely a positive first step.

Unfortunately, the rule is limited to a small number of professional leagues. Neither the NCAA nor the CIS have adopted similar rules for executive positions, and though the NCAA mandates gender equality in athletics with Title IX, many schools have been known to exaggerate, or even lie, about the amount of rostered female athletes to fulfill their quotas.

In terms of executive positions, in the CIS only 72 out of 480 head coaches were female in 2013, and only two of those women coached men’s teams. The issue is nuanced, with questions about the qualifications of females wanting to coach remaining a legitimate problem, but the predicament remains the same: There are not enough female representatives in coaching and executive positions in athletics, at both the professional and collegiate level. Since the NFL recruits heavily from NCAA collegiate teams, they are in a unique position to pressure these collegiate teams to put similar gender-leveling rules in place because though some professional leagues have taken a necessary initial measure to increase visibility, collegiate leagues noticeably haven’t,

and they probably should.

In terms of representation of females in executive and coaching positions, McGill does adequately. Almost every varsity team has female representation on the coaching staff, the head of strength and conditioning— Laura Strenger—is a woman, and females are well represented on the executive committee. Though McGill seems to not need a policy to ensure female representation in athletics, other institutions might.

And though McGill certainly has female representation in athletic administrative positions, it is by no means an equal representation in comparison to their male counterparts. Programs to develop the coaching or business prowess of female athletes while they’re still in university might allow them to be viable candidates for future frontoffice positions in sports. In the meantime, however, implementing a policy like the Rooney Rule across all leagues across North America would be a good first step in developing future female leaders in athletics.

From the bench As a female athlete playing a male-dominated sport, it is always encouraging to see females in leadership positions regardless of how they get there. It’s no secret that females have a harder time landing a position that has continuously been male-dominated; however, in addition to the development of women’s professional leagues, it’s encouraging to know that I can still be apart of the sport I have dedicated and sacrificed so much of my life to in an executive role. Hopefully rules like this will inspire the next generation of female athletes, coaches, and business-people.”

- Olivia Sutter (Senior forward, Martlet Hockey and president of Varsity Council)