McGill Tribune vol. 37 issue 25

THE COMMUNITY ISSUE The McGill Tribune

Vo l . 3 7 I s s u e 2 5 | A p r i l 1 1 , 2 0 1 8 P u b l i s h e d b y t h e S P T, a s t u d e n t s o c i e t y o f M c G i l l U n i v e r s i t y m c g i l l t r i b u n e.c o m | @ m c g i l l t r i b u n e

Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Jasinski editor@mcgilltribune.com Creative Director Noah Sutton nsutton@mcgilltribune.com

NEWS pages 4-8

Managing Editors Audrey Carleton acarleton@mcgilltribune.com Emma Avery eavery@mcgilltribune.com Selin Altuntur saltuntur@mcgilltribune.com

photo page 9

News Editors Holly Cabrera, Domenic Casciato, Calvin Trottier-Chi news@mcgilltribune.com Opinion Editors Jackie Houston & Alexandra Harvey opinion@mcgilltribune.com

SSMU Exec reviews pages 10-11

Science & Technology Editor jade Prevost-Manuel scitech@mcgilltribune.com Student Living Editor Catherine Morrison studentliving@mcgilltribune.com Features Editor Marie Labrosse features@mcgilltribune.com

student living pages 12-15

Arts & Entertainment Editors Dylan Adamson & Ariella Garmaise arts@mcgilltribune.com Sports Editors Stephen Gill & Selwynne Hawkins sports@mcgilltribune.com

feature pages 16-17

Design Editors Arshaaq Jiffry & Elli Slavitch design@mcgilltribune.com Photo Editor Ava Zwolinski photo@mcgilltribune.com

opinion pages 18-20

Multimedia Editor Tristan Surman multimedia@mcgilltribune.com

arts & entertainment pages 21-24 science & technology pages 25-27

Advertising Executives Grayson Castell & Katherine Hutter ads@mcgilltribune.com

TPS Board of Directors

Tribune Office 2075 Boul. Robert-Bourassa Room 505 Montreal, Quebec H3A 2L1

Cover illustration by Arshaaq Jiffry Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Business Manager Daniel Minuk business@mcgilltribune.com

Nicholas Jasinski, Daniel Minuk, Katherine Hutter, Anthony Kuan, Elli Slavitch, Holly Cabrera, Jeeventh Kaur, Katherine Milazzo, Becca Hoff

sports pages 29-32

|

Copy Editor Ayanna De Graff copy@mcgilltribune.com

Publisher Chad Ronalds

cartoons page 28

2

Web Developers Daniel Lutes webdev@mcgilltribune.com Julia Kafato online@mcgilltribune.com

The McGill Tribune is an editorially autonomous newspaper published by the Société de Publication de la Tribune, a student society of McGill University. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of The McGill Tribune and the Société de Publication de la Tribune, and does not necessarily represent the views of McGill University. Letters to the editor may be sent to editor@mcgilltribune.com and must include the contributor’s name, program and year and contact information. Letters should be kept under 300 words and submitted only to the Tribune. Submissions judged by the Tribune Publication Society to be libellous, sexist, racist, homophobic or solely promotional in nature will not be published. The Tribune reserves the right to edit all contributions. Editorials are decided upon and written by the editorial board. All other opinions are strictly those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the McGill Tribune, its editors or its staff. Please recycle this newspaper.

THANK YOU The McGill Tribune would like to thank all of the contributors and staff who have been involved with the paper this year. Without our core of contributors, producing this paper would not be possible and the Editorial Board is grateful to all those who put in their hard work and dedication to produce content for the McGill community. Every item we produce, from the idea to the final product, is shaped by Tribune staff and contributors, photographers, designers, illustrators, web developers, videographers, and other students. We understand the difficulty of balancing extracurricular involvement with academic work and you all deserve to be proud of your contributions. We recognize your achievements and thank you sincerely for all your work.

For those graduating, we wish you the best of luck and hope that the experiences you had at the Tribune will carry into your future. For those returning in the Fall, whether you contributed once over the past year or every single week, we hope that you will continue to be part of the Tribune next year.

STAFF

CONTRIBUTORS

Andras Nemeth Andy Wang Avleen Mokha Bilal Virji Ceci Steyn Cherry Wu Cordelia Cho Emma Gillies Erica Stefano Gabriel Helfant Gabe Nisker Gabriel Rincon Grace Gunning Janine Xu Jordan Foy Kendall McGowan Laura Oprescu Margaux Delalex Miguel Principe Miya Keilin Oceane Marescal Sophie Brzozowski Sam Min Virginia Shram Winnie Lin

Abeer Almahdi Alec Regino Alissa Ziber Allegra Mendelson Amanda Fiore Amin Guidara Amina Magnin Amrit Grewal Amy Hauer Ana Earl Ana Mayne Ananya Nair Andras Nemeth Andrea Kilajian Angel Yu Angelina Giordano Anna Wallin Anthony Kuan AnthonySchokalsky AntoineVandenborre April Barrett Ari Charles Arindam Das Arvaa Balsara Avery Warkentin Benji Taubenblatt Brandon Kaufman Brenda Thompson Brenna Yang Briana Vanular Caitlin Kindig Caitlyn Atkinson Caitlyn McConnell Caleb McKend Cass Morten

Christina Stackpole Cicily Du Claudia Leung Cordelia Cho Danica Jekic Daniel Freed Daniela Garabito Daria Kiseleva David Watson Delphine Polidori Domenica Cirone Dorothy Yip Elijah Wenzel Elizabeth Strong Ellie Solloway Eloise Haliburton Emilie Macfie Emma Carr Emma Hameau Ender McDuff Felicia Chang Fiona Khan Fionn Adamian Flaminia Cooper Florence Min Gabriela McGuinty Gabriela Rey Gal Sandaev Grace Bahler Grace Hu Gwenyth Wren Gwyneth Boone Hana Shiraishi HannibalDePencier Helen Wu

Ian Rodgers Isaac Berman Isabella Lyons Isabelle Oke Izze Siemann Jackie Yao Jacqueline Yao James Collier James Zhu Janine Xu Janson Kappen Jasmine Acharya Jen Wang Jia Wen Wang Jitika Shah Johanna Cline Jonah Dutz Josh Marchesini Jovi Sidhu JozĂŠphine Crimp Julia Briand Julia Kossakowski Julia Metraux Julie Demet Julie Guichard Justine Touchon Katherine Milazzo Karim Wadjih Karl Neumann Katia Innes Kaylina Kodlick Keating Reid Keira Seidenberg KellyPanichnantakul Kellyane Kodlick

Kellyann Levac Kelsey McKeon Kendall McGowan Kevin Reynolds Kevin Vogel Kimberly Johnston Koji Shiromoto Krithika Ragupathi Kyle Dewsnap Lauren Jelinek Leanne Young Leo Stillinger Leyla Moy Liam Kirkpatrick Linqiao Zhou Lisa Perrett Lucas Bird Lucas Harvey Lucy Keller Luke Sarabia Madeline Kinney Madison Palmer Mairead Shaw Margaux Delalex Maria Blanco Mary Keith Mary Lynne Loftus Mason Posival Mathilde Hourticq Matthew Hawkins Maxime Scraire Meagan Peters Miranda Shepherd Miya Keilink Morgan Davis

Muhan Zhang Myriam Driss Nadia Boachie Natalia Savkovic Natalie Vineberg Navneet Kaur Nicholas Raffoul Nina Russell Nishat Provat Noah Simon Owen Gibbs Ozanay Bozkaya Paloma Jacquet Patrick Beacham Phoebe Balshin River Ludwick RonnyLitvack-Katzman Ryan Canon SabrinaGirard-Lamas Sam Lottes Sam Wendel Samantha Ling Sanchi Bhalla Sarah Bentivegna SebastienPentlandHyde Selen Ercan Shanell Fan Sophia Kopyna Daria Kiseleva Sophie Panzer Stephanie Sim Summer Liu Sunny Kim Susan Gaskin

Sydney King Taja De Silva Tali Zuckerman Tarina Gupta Taylor Burnett Teagan Chapman Tianyu Zhang Tynan Jarrett Victoria Flaherty Victoria Sturgess Wasif Husain Winnie Lin Yara ShaheenAbuelreish Zoe Doran ZoĂŠ Yalden

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING ON SATURDAY, april 14 THE tPS Board of directors IS HOLDING ITS

AT 12:00PM IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE (2075 ROBERT bOURASSA bOURASSA, ROOM 505). aLL UNDERGRADUATE AND postGRADUATE MEMBERS OF THE TRIBUNE PUBLICATION SOCIETY ARE WELCOME. Wednesday, April 11, 2018

|

3

news 4

|

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Open letter demands external investigation on faculty sexual Over 2,000 students across campus join forces in solidarity with victims Cherry Wu Staff Writer On April 5, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) held a press conference to discuss an open letter addressed to the McGill administration regarding sexual violence on campus.

The letter, which was sent on April 4, accused at least five professors of sexual misconduct within the Departments of History, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, and World Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.

Additionally, the letter demanded the launch of an external investigation into the way the Office of the Dean of Arts responds to complaints against faculty members. Currently, the letter has signatures from more than 2,000 students and over 70 student organizations, including faculty associations such as the Social Work Students’ Association (SWSA), the Department of English Students Association (DESA), and the Political Science Students’ Association (PSSA).

At the press conference, three students delivered speeches, followed by a question period moderated by SSMU Vice-President (VP) Internal Maya Koparkar. VP External Connor Spencer delivered the first speech, stressing the urgency of addressing the culture of sexual violence that exists on campus.

“A few weeks ago, we brought to the attention of the administration our concerns of the safety and well-being of a student who was being targeted by a professor who thought they were behind a guerrilla sticker campaign calling him out for violence,” Spencer said. “We presented a dossier of evidence and no action was taken.”

Spencer emphasized that this incident is far from isolated: Acts of professor-on-student sexual violence occur frequently, and worse, the administration is aware of many of them.

“Common things that are reoccurring are [the] open secret of faculty members sleeping with undergraduate students, or having abusive relationship with graduate students, and inappropriate behaviour during office hours,” Spencer said. “[There are also] folks [who feel] like they are obliged to do extra, outside classroom work that are not related to the content of the class, because they feel like it would affect their academic

careers [if they refused to do so].”

Additionally, Spencer cited a warning that she received in her first year at McGill as an example of widespread rape culture on campus.

“The culture at McGill is one that led [...] some older woman in the program I was entering [to give me] a list of professors and [teaching assistants] to avoid, and to never go to their office hours,” Spencer said.

The second speaker, Maeve Botham, student representative from the Sexual Assault Centre of the McGill Students’ Society (SACOMSS), echoed Spencer’s sentiments. In particular, Botham denounced the administration’s silence in response to sexual misconduct allegations against professors.

“The University knows who these professors are,” Botham said. “By not taking any action, McGill is failing its students. Students have the right to be safe on campus [....] without the fear of experiencing sexual violence.

For students to be truly supported, the structure that is used to protect these professors must be torn down.”

Although handling issues regarding the sexual violence policy does not fall strictly under her mandate, Spencer expressed her frustration with procedures for reporting sexual violence.

“We are no longer accepting that the reason for administration inaction in addressing problems they are aware of stems from the students’ inability to file complaints,” Spencer said. “Instead, we wish to focus on the complaint process itself as the problem, as contributing to a culture of folks not wanting to come forward.”

Spencer elaborated that the current process in place to file complaints against faculty members is ovely complicated, thereby dissuading victims from coming forward.

“One of the things that McGill likes to fall back on is the policy against sexual violence passed by the Senate on Dec. 1 2016,” Spencer said. “However, the policy against sexual violence actually [points to the procedures within] the Code of Student Conduct, which you can only pursue complaints against students under.”

Spencer also said that the policy on sexual violence has no procedures outlined for complaints against faculty members, creating a huge obstacle for survivors.

SSMU VP External Connor Spencer publishes open letter demanding action from McGill. (Leanne Young & Noah Sutton / The McGill Tribune) “One of the things that I’ve heard very often from folks is that, ‘I didn’t come forward because I didn’t think they would believe me, I didn’t think they would do anything,’” Spencer said. “Another reoccurring thing that I have heard [....] is that the [negligence victims] experienced from dealing with the University afterwards [only] perpetuated that violence even further.”

The open letter accuses the Office of the Dean of Arts of being ineffective in handling complaints. In order to catalyze policy change, the open letter demanded the launch of an external investigation into the Office of the Dean of Arts. The investigation is partly inspired by a similar case that took place at Concordia University in January, where faculty members in the creative writing program were accused of sexual misconduct. Within days, the Concordia administration responded with the promise of an external investigation.

“We have been having the same discussions here at McGill since September [2017,]” Spencer said. “When we looked over to our neighbour and saw that [changes] are taking place there, we just cannot accept [inaction] anymore.”

Beyond an external investigation, SSMU will also produce a report by the end of June 2018, outlining appropriate steps to improve the current reporting channel in the Faculty of Arts.

“We need to make sure that everything is documented, [including] exactly what’s going [on], exactly what our demands are, exactly what we want to change, and exactly McGill’s response to these things, [in order to] move forward next year as well,” Spencer said.

Responding to the spotlight the

letter places on the Faculty of Arts, Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) VP Internal Rebecca Scarra expressed her Society’s support for the letter.

“We also want more action, more transparency, and more effective communication with our administration,” Scarra said. “When the system that has been in place for so long does not work, we need to change the system. We can no longer work within [a] system that has been built against us.”

With the help of the SSMU report, incoming executives will be able to continue pushing for policy changes next year. VP University AffairsElect Jacob Shapiro expressed his commitment to work with members of the community on this next year.

“I have already spoken briefly with [Spencer,]” Shapiro said. “I am going to seek out as many opportunities as possible to listen to and learn from those leading this work and anyone who wants to share their experience, insight, and opinion on this. Additionally, I know that we have a skilled group of incoming Senators, some of whom know a lot more about this than I do. I am looking forward to working with them.”

As of April 9, McGill University has not responded to interview requests regarding the letter. Meanwhile, McGill and Concordia student communities are coming together to stage a public walkout on April 11, in front of the James Administration Building at McGill University.

“As students, it really shouldn’t be our responsibility to make sure that we are protecting each other,” Koparkar said in her closing remarks at the conference. “But if this is the kind of work that we need to do [to get change], then so be it.”

Wednesday, April 11, 2018 | 5

news

Facebook remains integral to student success despite controversy

Students remain frustrated with inability to access McGill’s online community Kyle Dewsnap Contributor Amid an international movement to delete Facebook and outcry from McGill first years who have not been able to join the McGill Facebook community, recent survey data found that students rely on the site for their academic success. According to a survey The McGill Tribune distributed from April 2 to 4, students use Facebook for academic purposes more frequently than dedicated messaging apps like SMS, iMessage, and Skype.

The survey found that 100 per cent of its 41 respondents use Facebook; 98 per cent of students use Instagram, which Facebook owns; 85 per cent of students use Snapchat, and 44 per cent of students use Twitter. Students’ preference for Facebook messenger over iMessage supports the worldwide trend away from dedicated messaging apps to more holistic chat-over-data services that provide direct messaging in addition to other features, such as stories and post-creation.

Although respondents ranked Facebook equally as important as email to their professional success, students expressed continued frustration with McGill’s lack of action over managing its Facebook community. A widespread glitch has prevented some new students from using their McGill emails to become members of the community, meaning that they are unable to join Facebook groups such as “Free-And-For-Sale,” in which students offer to buy and sell their used goods, groups organized for each of McGill’s graduating and entering classes, and groups that serve

extracurricular clubs and student organizations on campus.

As a result, over 800 disgruntled freshmen joined a Facebook group dedicated to forging an alternate space to network and raising awareness of first years’ inability to access McGill’s Facebook community.

“It would be nice if groups didn’t require a ‘valid McGill email,’” Dezso Lovicsek, U1 Arts, said. “I’m part of the large group of forgotten freshmen, so I am excluded from most groups, from frosh groups to class pages.”

While Facebook provides Groups for Schools to help universities organize their online communities, the social networking service is not responsible for managing the groups, meaning that the onus is on McGill to determine who is admitted. In the survey, respondents expressed frustration at McGill for failing to address the Facebook glitch. Khaled Bucheeri, an engineering student, suggested that McGill should consider using an alternative platform for its groups. “[An] alternative to [the] McGill Facebook community wouldn’t lock out people who need important services such as the Housing and Free & For Sale groups,” Bucheeri wrote in the survey.

Despite receiving multiple complaints and suggestions from students, McGill IT has denied any responsibility for managing the McGill Facebook group.

“We are unable to comment on this issue as this does not involve McGill IT services,” McGill IT wrote to the Tribune. “Facebook’s McGill community is not affiliated with nor endorsed by McGill.”

SSMU Council debates far-right ideology in McGill community

Council members also consider how sexual violence policies will shape campus Kendall McGowan Staff Writer The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Legislative Council convened on April 5 to discuss methods to prevent the spread of far-right groups within the campus community, and implement policies against sexual violence. Additionally, Council voted to update SSMU’s equity policy, to support the Fiat Lux library improvement plan, and to change the Arab Students’ Network’s status from a club to a service. Council also heard reports from the SSMU Environment Committee and the First Year Council (FYC).

SSMU’s relationship to “far-right” politics in a local context Council members considered adopting a policy to not affiliate with any groups with a connection to the far-right, and to prohibit any individuals with farright affiliations from working for SSMU. According to SSMU Vice-President (VP) External Connor Spencer, the policy would use RationalWiki’s definition of “far-right” ideologies, which describes them as values rooted in inequality, like segregation. The motion mandates future VP Externals to annually update a list of far-right groups in Montreal.

Speaker Nikolas Dolmat and other council members questioned whether this ban could violate discrimination laws. Some also argued that any candidate with far-right affiliations

would likely not be elected anyway.

“My one concern [...] is are we allowed to ban people in our society from positions?” Engineering Senator and 2018-19 SSMU President-Elect Tre Mansdoerfer said. “Is that OK legally with McGill and the Charter of Student Rights, and Quebec legislation? [...] It would scare me to pass something that was immediately violating multiple laws.”

Other Council members, including Spencer and Social Work Representative Matthew Savage, defended the legality of the motion by stating that genocide and other far-right beliefs are too hostile to be considered legitimate political opinions and therefore are not protected grounds for employment. SSMU Council considered a motion banning far-right students from running in elections. (ctv.ca) They also pointed out that the motion Additionally, Council voted is becoming increasingly relevant with Legislative Council, which passed by a unanimously to mandate anti-sexual the growing presence of the far-right in vote of 16 to seven. violence training in the 2018-19 school Montreal.

“The sentiment that I’m hearing Progress on anti-sexual violence year for all SSMU officers, directors, and councillors and at the clubs workshop from a lot of people here is that they initiatives discussed Guest speakers Caitlin Salvino, the and services summit, a requirement want to protect that one person that might have some slightly right co-creator of the Our Turn National that Salvino hopes to continue through tendencies,” Arts Undergraduate Society Action Plan and SSMU’s Gendered the GSVP. Spencer predicts that the final (AUS) VP External Alice Yue said. “But and Sexualized Violence Policy (GSVP) draft will be passed next academic year.

“We’re trying to push McGill to that’s not the purpose of this motion. Coordinator, and Priya Dube, a student The purpose of this motion is to make policy advisor, presented the progress better support their students,” Salvino sure that that one far-right person does they made in drafting a GSVP. They said. “We tried to mandate this in the not get to run and make thousands of explained that the Policy covers sexual policy so that we’re not just relying students feel unsafe on campus [....] It’s violence prevention, advocacy, and on an exec who’s passionate [...] but response. The GSVP will also offer it’ll be every year that SSMU has to totally fine to be conservative.”

After the debate, Mansdoerfer survivors both formal and informal continuously advocate for survivormoved to postpone the question to the responses and resolutions to their centered policies and appropriate responses.” second meeting of the 2018-2019 SSMU disclosures.

What record voter turnout means for the McGill community Large number of ‘abstain’ votes evidence of single-issue voting, political disengagement Andras Nemeth Contributor Voting for the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) 2018 Winter Election and Referendum closed on March 21 with a voter turnout of 32.8 per cent. Despite less than a third of all eligible SSMU members voting, this figure represents the highest voter turnout in the past 14 years.

7,100 of 21,636 eligible electors cast online ballots in the election—a far greater proportion than the 21.8 per cent turnout in Winter 2017, or the 17.5 per cent turnout in Winter 2016 ballots. The referendum questions, which students voted on alongside six SSMU executive positions, included one concerning SSMU’s policy on the implementation of a Fall reading week.

According to Matthew He, Chief Electoral Officer at Elections SSMU, this year’s relatively high voter turnout is likely due to the presence of the Fall reading week question. In an interview with The McGill Tribune, He interpreted a high level of ‘abstain’ votes on questions unrelated to the Fall reading week as evidence that many student voters were interested in only one question.

“While acknowledging [that this year’s election had] the highest turnout we’ve had in the last 15plus years, we do have to realize that there are a substantial number of people who abstained in every single vote except the Fall reading week referendum,” He said. “I understand that what tends to happen when you combine the referendum with the candidates ballots [is that] people will go vote for the one issue that they are passionate about and abstain from all others because they are not informed enough.”

He also described the new strategies that Elections SSMU used to encourage people to vote, like distributing promotional material, tabling to answer questions concerning the voting process, and collecting feedback from SSMU members who did not vote.

“I sent out an email to those who had not voted by the [final] day of the elections,” He said. “The most common feedback I got was that they simply did not have enough information on the candidates or referendum. They didn’t know what they were voting for. A lot of the feedback was expressing disinterest in the elections.”

Most questions in the Winter Election, including the SSMU presidential ballot, had over 2,000 abstentions. Taking abstentions into account, the underlying voter turnout for executive positions was an average of 19.6 per cent, which is consistent with last year’s low turnout.

This apparent lack of student engagement is mirrored at the graduate level, where voter turnout and candidate nominations have consistently been even lower. In the last McGill Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) General Election, which closed on Apr. 1, only 755 members, or 9.8 per cent of the electorate, cast ballots. Moreover, three of the executive positions—Financial Affairs Officer, Internal Affairs Officer, and Membership Services Officer—featured no candidates, and will be voted on in a by-election opening on Apr. 28.

Tre Mansdoerfer, U2 Engineering and SSMU president-elect, identifies a culture of institutional 6 | Wednesday, April 11, 2018

(L-A Benoit/ The McGill Tribune)

McGill’s low voter turnout rates are similar to those of other large Canadian universities.

(Lauren Benson-Armer / The McGill Tribune) disconnect as one of the potential reasons for voter apathy at McGill.

“For whatever reason, at McGill, there’s a disengagement with the school and a disdain between students and McGill University,” Mansdoerfer said. “I think it has to do with [the administration] and how they interact with students, [and] I think it has to do with the culture they created. For whatever reason, McGill has been founded upon a lack of pride in the school. A good chunk of people aren’t happy being at this school.

They’re here for the prestige and not their own happiness.”

Voter apathy and low voter turnout are not problems unique to McGill. Other large research universities in Canada continue to struggle to get students to vote in elections and referenda.

The general elections of the University of British Columbia’s student union, the Alma Mater Society (AMS), have voter turnout percentages similar to those at McGill University, with a 20.7 per cent turnout in 2017, and 12.5 per cent in 2016. In 2016, the University of Toronto held a referendum for a fee levy for the campus radio station, with a proposed fee increase from $4.85 to $12.85. The levy of nearly 200 per cent, which represented an increase of over 100,000 dollars in funding for the radio station carried with only 59 members voting.

Zak Vescera and Ryan Jones, student journalists at UBC, investigated the low voter turnout rates for The Ubyssey and found that politically apathetic students tended to fall into one of two categories.

They explained the results of their surveys in an email statement to the Tribune.

“In our reporting, I’d say we found two primary types of ‘apathetic’ students,” Vescera and Jones wrote to the Tribune. “The first group simply didn’t know what the AMS does or how it benefits them [....] Others knew what the AMS does, but didn’t feel like the result of an election would impact them in any concrete way. These students were often part of demographics that they felt the AMS doesn’t advocate for enough [….] Students directly involved in ‘campus life’ almost always vote, but [students who are less involved] told us they felt left out of the

whole thing.”

These shared difficulties in politically engaging large student bodies may also stem from characteristics unique to Canadian student unions. According to Alex Usher, president of Higher Education Strategy Associates, Canadian universities tend to be more complex and more concerned with running on-campus businesses like bars and restaurants than their counterparts in the United Kingdom, which are smaller and tend to focus on advocacy and academic affairs.

“In the UK [and other countries], the student unions are very focused on being a part of the quality assurance process, [....] and somehow that’s never caught on [in Canada,]” Usher said. “Although we have lots of students who are interested in political issues, we tend to define the political issues as being dollars and cents issues, and not [questions pertaining to academic quality and relevance.]”

However, metrics like election turnout may not necessarily be the best way to measure a student society’s impact, according to Usher.

“Voting is one measure of engagement, but another measure is simply how many people are involved in the governance structure,” Usher said.

“If the central student union is engaging everyone in the faculties and department and [making suggestions and offering support in academic affairs,] I think doing that stuff increases the quality of the engagement rather than the quantity [....]

At the end of the day, you’re doing something that matters more to students.”

The incoming SSMU executives are currently considering a number of changes to increase member engagement with the organization.

Outlining his plans for next year, Mansdoerfer said he intends to refocus SSMU’s efforts on projects that matter to students.

“It really feels like people involved in SSMU are dissociated from what students really want to see,” Mansdoerfer said. “It’s really easy to get focused on your personal projects, and it’s easy to miss out on what really matters [.…] I really hope that I can bring the structural and institutional change that has to happen for good leadership.” news

SSMU building closure disrupts campus clubs

Communication issues leave SSMU-building clubs scrambling for space Lucas Bird Contributor Student clubs and services previously housed within the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) building encountered logistical burdens in their search for alternative work spaces after the building closed on March 17. The closure was the the first step in a long-term schedule of renovations and repairs which are planned to continue into Winter 2019. While the move has left some student groups scrambling, both the clubs and SSMU have made efforts to maintain a cohesive community.

Nineteen clubs, which normally occupy the SSMU building, have relocated to other workspaces in buildings on Robert-Bourassa Boulevard and Peel Street. The Plate Club, a service that lends out dishware for student groups holding events, faced countless difficulties securing a new office before eventually relocating to 3471 Peel Street.

“At first, we weren’t given a new space because [SSMU General Manager] Ryan [Hughes] didn’t know what we do with our office space,” Plate Club Internal Coordinator Doug Lebo wrote in a message to The McGill Tribune. “We told him we didn’t need to move our dishwasher and his very next email essentially indicated that we didn’t have a space because we ‘would need dishwashing capacity.’”

However, after pushing SSMU for accomodation, Lebo has been pleased with the new arrangements.

“Overall [...] the physical move was really easy,” Lebo wrote. “[SSMU Building Director] Wallace [Sealy] was kind enough to install a realtor box to keep our keys in since we now operate with locked cabinets in a public space.”

Some displaced groups such as Midnight Kitchen (MK), a non-profit collective known for serving vegan lunches on campus for donations, perform services which need specialized equipment to continue operating.

MK employee Wade Walker found the relocation a struggle given the group’s need for a kitchen.

“At one point, SSMU thought they found us a space but it fell through because it wasn’t a commercial kitchen,” Walker said. “The only kitchen we could find is actually in Saint-Henri, so now we aren’t doing lunch servings.”

He also lamented that the relocation planning lacked cohesiveness.

“I really wish [SSMU had] had a complete plan in place before they came to us about the building closure,” Walker said. “They’ve been trying to communicate effectively, but there aren’t enough people working on the project, so they miss and forget things we’ve told them.”

Players’ Theatre, a student theatre company formerly housed in SSMU, was evicted from their office without warning on Feb. 12. Its new office is now on Peel Street and SSMU has given them funding to rent out MainLine Theatre on boulevard Saint Laurent for their productions.

Events Coordinator Cheyenne Cranston said that, while the move has been challenging, it has reminded her of the strength of the campus community.

“It has been truly amazing to see the student body be so willing to help us when we need it, and support us through the move!” Cranston wrote in an email to the Tribune.

Jemark Earle, SSMU Vice President Student Life, hoped to prioritize the community of clubs. SSMU often didn’t have solutions to the challenges faced in organizing such a massive undertaking, leaving the clubs in limbo.

“We tried to make sure that even if we didn’t have much information, the clubs and services within the SSMU building knew everything we knew as soon as possible” Earle said. “The building [on Peel Street] was offered to us originally in August. We had been meeting with groups saying we could house them there, we had set down floor plans by the end of September, and then the administration said, ‘never mind this is off the table.’”

The building is scheduled to reopen in stages: Gerts will likely be back by the start of the fall semester, the first and second floors by the middle of October, and the rest of the building by December.

McGill doctors advocate for medical transport reform

Quebec policies allegedly discriminatory toward Indigenous communities Helen Wu Contributor Doctors from the McGill Faculty of Medicine are currently fighting to repeal a Quebec policy that prevents parents from accompanying their children during health-related air transport. On March 21, they gave a 90-minute testimony to the Commission on Relations Between Indigenous Peoples and Certain Public Services in Quebec on the matter.

Dr. Samir Shaheen-Hussain, a pediatric emergency physician and assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University, spoke in the testimony.

He sees the policy as an example of the government’s mistreatment of Indigenous communities. Children in these communities often have to be transported from remote areas by plane in health emergencies, and face the greatest linguistic barriers in communicating with their doctors. Further, he claims that neither he nor journalists, lawyers, or the Commission’s legal counsel are able to locate the actual wording of the policy.

“There have been plenty of opportunities for the provincial government to lead the way as an innovator in the field of medical air transport by being responsive to the concerns raised by Indigenous communities,” Shaheen-Hussain wrote in a letter to the Quebec Aeromedical Evacuations (EVAQ). “Instead, it chose to opt for the status quo, which is why Quebec is an aberration across the country by maintaining such an antiquated airlift policy for kids.”

In December 2017, Shaheen-Hussain worked with two colleagues at the Montreal Children’s Hospital to demand reforms from EVAQ. He is disappointed news

by the government’s reluctance to act, and praises movements like the #aHand2Hold campaign for highlighting the importance of support during medical airlifts.

“The concerns of Indigenous communities and the well-being of their children are not priorities for the provincial government,” Hussain-Shaheen wrote.

“Otherwise, the government would have reviewed its egregious pediatric airlift policy long before the public outcry from the last few months forced it to do so.”

Hussain-Shaheen reports that several children are airlifted alone every week. What’s more, the medical teams are often not versed in Indigenous languages, and have difficulty speak to their patients. The language barrier can be a major issue, with supporters of reform arguing that communication is key to effective medical assessment. “[The language barrier] is an obstacle to many because they feel they can’t properly tell the doctor and nurses how they feel, what happened,” Isabelle Picard, a member of the Hurrone-Wendat Nation, said. “When it is kids that fly alone and don’t speak English or French, it is a major obstacle. Plus they [have] never been in a big town with so many non-Indigenous people.”

Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, has consulted Indigenous leaders and community members about the trauma of sending sick children alone to a hospital. She adds that it is also a struggle for family members to book a commercial flight to be by their children’s side. Overall, Blackstock finds the solitary airlifts reminiscent of Canada’s colonial past.

“For some parents, the sight of their children leaving

Indigenous communities, which are often geographically isolated and far from major hospitals, are the primary recipients of medical airlifts. (blog.tugo.com). alone on a plane also brings back traumatic memories of children being taken by plane to residential schools,” Blackstock said.

Shaheen-Hussain intends to continue pressing the provincial government to address systemic barriers that Indigenous peoples face when receiving health care.

“We emphasize that every single child living in Quebec must be accompanied by a member of their family for aeromedical transport, but this is especially true for Indigenous children due to the innumerable injustices inflicted on their communities,” ShaheenHussain wrote. “Assuring that parents can accompany their children would be a step to mark a rupture of yet another practice that separates these children from their parents; a practice that risks perpetuating public distrust in Quebec’s healthcare system.”

Wednesday, April 11, 2018 | 7

The good, the bad, and the weird A look into the top campus headlines of the past 30 years Laura Oprescu Staff Writer

December 1984

The Quebec Court of Appeals ruled that the French-only provision of Bill 101, which mandated that French be the sole official language of Quebec, ran contrary to Quebec’s Bill of Rights. Pro-independence activists responded with graffiti and violence, including several bomb threats and fire bombings around downtown Montreal.

January 2001

Two McGill professors testified against gay marriage before the federal court. Students responded by demonstrating for LGBTQ+ rights.

March

2003

SSMU spent $30,000 renovating Gertrude’s, renaming it Gert’s Pub.

The Daily published an open letter calling SSMU presidential candidate Saeed Fotuhi a “schmuck.” Believing this jeopardized his candidacy, Fotuhi printed stickers reading “slanderous and biased” and put them on Daily newsstands around campus, some of which were in full view of polling stations. He was subsequently disqualified from the race.

March

March

The SSMU presidential debate plunged into absurdity.

One candidate suggested that professors’ grants [should] be used for providing jobs to students and that all the staff in the McGill administration [should] be fired and replaced.

His opponent argued that faculties should be responsible for deciding budget cuts. The final candidate wanted to rename the SSMU building the “Kurt Cobain Youth Drop-out Centre,” and spend half of SSMU’s budget before resigning, with the third item on his platform being his resignation.

As per SSMU’s electoral by-laws, which stated that students cannot hold an editorial position while campaigning for a motion, 10 editors at The McGill Tribune resigned in order to help run a fee levy campaign. The Tribune became independent from SSMU following the Winter semester referendum.

November 1996

A water pipe burst on a Docteur-Penfield Avenue construction site, sending mass floods down McTavish Street. Flood Girl became famous following a campus-viral YouTube video.

The SSMU General Assembly voted in favour of a oneday strike in reaction to the Quebec government’s plan to cut $770 million from provincial education funding.

October

September 1989

1995

September 1999

McGill considered entering a controversial 11-year partnership deal with The Coca-Cola company, ditching PepsiCo. However, concerned about becoming reliant on corporate financing and being associated with the company’s less than favourable reputation, McGill students voted against the deal in a referendum.

January 2000

The SSMU building was robbed. Thieves made off with $74 in cash and $2,000 worth of bus passes.

September

2000

In the year prior, SSMU asked The McGill Daily to give up 230 square feet of its office space in order to create an accessible entrance on the ground floor of the SSMU building. The Daily claimed that SSMU was trying to evict them as part of a campaign to suppress the free press and refused to move. Over the summer, SSMU changed the locks on the Daily’s offices, and a legal battle ensued.

2010

January 2013

2017

Someone dressed as a milkman robbed the Arts Undergraduate Society’s student-run convenience store, SNAX, of $1,000.

December 2017

Former McGill student Conrad Gaysford was sentenced to 12 months of house arrest after assaulting fellow McGill student Kathryn Leci, who was an undergraduate student in engineering at the time.

In 2015, Gaysford physically assaulted Leci, causing permanent brain damage and her withdrawal from McGill for a year. Following several delays in the legal procedure and lack of a response from McGill administration, Leci filed a civil lawsuit against Gaysford in May 2017.

January 2018

Canadian police raided McGill Associate Professor Ishiang Shih’s house as part of an investigation into his alleged theft of military technology from the United States.

His brother Yi-Chi Shih, adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, was also arrested in the FBI’s 10year investigation.

photo The best photos of 2018

Wednesday, April 11, 2018 | 9

Photographs by (clockwise from top-left): Ava Zwolinski, Gabriel Helfant, Margaux Delalex, Gabriel Helfant, Ava Zwolinski, Arindam Das.

ssmu executive year-end reviews 10

|

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Photos by Ava Zwolinski, Esteban Herpin

VP Internal

Muna Tojiboeva

VP Student Life Jemark Earle

Grade: 4.78/10 = F

Muna Tojiboeva ran on a platform of transparency and accountability. Her experience as Chief Justice of the J-Board at a time when student distrust in the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) was at an all-time high led many voters to believe that she had a unique capacity to both navigate and shake up the bureaucracy of SSMU. Yet, interpersonal dramas plagued her tenure, preventing both Tojiboeva and her executive from working productively.

It’s worth noting that Tojiboeva has made headway with several projects during her time as President. She worked with her executive team on standardizing SSMU documents and creating a handbook for incoming student staff. She also worked with Spynit Technologies to launch the SSMU Eats App. Despite these achievements, Tojiboeva’s presidency has been characterized by a divided executive and an unwillingness to engage with the student body. Conflicts among the executive dominated public discussion in the Fall semester, and it never was made clear to the student body if those divisions were resolved, or if they continued to affect developing SSMU projects for the rest of the year.

Tojiboeva is far less present publicly than the President needs to be as the face of the Society. Tojiboeva failed to attend the April 6 press conference on the Open Letter Regarding Complaints Against Professors alongside the rest of the executive. She also neglected her duty to facilitate the collection and publicity of Winter General Assembly (GA) motions on time, On top of this, her goals regarding accountability and transparency have fallen flat; Minutes from Board of Directors meetings have not been posted online since January. It appears that she became bogged down by the bureaucracy she once promise to reform.

Earle’s tenure has largely been defined by a single event entirely out of his control: The SSMU building closure. Since the announcement of the building closure in October, his mandate for assisting SSMU’s clubs, services, and independent student groups has dominated the rest of his portfolio, leaving other initiatives to fall by the wayside.

One of Earle’s main platform points when campaigning in Winter 2017 was improving student access to mental health services, so much so that it seemed to obscure his focus on the day-to-day responsibilities of VP Student Life. His dedication to the cause excited voters, but, aside from his involvement in the organization of Mental Health Awareness Week, Earle has largely set this cause aside due to the logistical demands of the building closure.

To Earle’s credit, he has straightened out his priorities since his campaign, realizing that some of his mental health goals were beyond the scope of his portfolio. Aside from the early and abrupt closure of Players’ Theatre, the transition away from the building has been relatively smooth, thanks in part to Earle’s work behind the scenes as a liaison between tenants and administrators; However, much of this work was done by SSMU’s permanent staff.

In a year that has seen interpersonal conflicts hamper the efficacy of many SSMU executives, Earle managed to organize two highly successful Activities Nights, with Fall semester’s edition breaking record numbers for attendance.

Nonetheless, even given the building closure, Earle’s lack of portfolio initiatives in the Winter semester has been disappointing.

President

Grade: 6.5/10 = B-

Maya Koparkar Grade: 7.74/10 = B+

Due to her extensive experience with the Students’ Society Programming Network prior to being elected VP Internal, Maya Koparkar was successful in achieving many of her campaign goals this year.

She liaised with relevant McGill campus organizations to plan safer, more inclusive events, and trained all committees under her portfolio in inclusive event planning, harm reduction, bystander intervention, consent, and conflict resolution. Additionally, she restructured this year’s 4Floors Halloween event by partnering with the MacDonald Campus Students’ Society, and ensured that none of her events ran deficits, as has been the case in previous years. Furthermore, she oversaw major projects like the signing of a Memorandum of Agreement between faculties and the administration for Frosh and the SSMU website redesign.

Koparkar also expanded the reach of the First Year Council (FYC) by increasing membership and overhauling the council’s constitution. However, FYC elections did not happen until late in the Fall semester, leaving only the Winter semester for the committee to have any impact on first-year life.

On the communications front, while Koparkar worked to make the SSMU Instagram more personable, readership of the SSMU listserv declined at various points during the year, and the casual tone of some listservs has not always been effective.

Beyond her own portfolio, Koparkar has been an active member of SSMU Legislative Council and the Board of Directors, and should be commended for her work with the VP External on developing a SSMU gendered and Sexual Violence Policy as well as the Our Turn action plan. All in all, she’s had a relatively productive and successful year, despite internal conflicts within the executive.

VP finance

Isabelle Oke

VP External Connor Spencer

Grade: 9.35/10 = A

VP University Affairs Grade: 7.8/10 = B+

Isabelle Oke ran on a platform of increasing campus outreach, student rights, and accessible services. Her two biggest accomplishments during the Fall Semester were the carrying on 2017’s Know Your Rights campaign and her work with former SSMU VP Finance Arisha Khan to establish the Youth in Care bursary, a fund for students coming from the child welfare system. Her main goals for Winter 2018 were to lobby for a Fall Reading Week, survey students on reforming SSMU governance, and increase the number of free course materials available to students, all of which she was able to complete.

On Feb. 13, she also passed a motion on Consultations on Systemic Racism in Montreal, which mandates that SSMU Council push Quebec to fulfill its promise to conduct the consultations.

Although Oke hoped to speak with multiple McGill professors about Open Educational Resources (OERs), she encountered many barriers and resorted to a smaller-scale pilot project. Nonetheless, she succeeded in generating discussions about modern educational tools, bringing awareness to OERs, and setting foundations for future executives.

The University Affairs portfolio is known to move at a slow pace, given the difficulties of negotiating with administration. Given these constraints, she’s successfully made progress in the projects of former executives and set the stage for her predecessor to carry on with tasks she was unable to accomplish during her time. Moreover, Oke successfully represented underheard student voices and made herself accessible to all at McGill.

year-end reviews

Connor Spencer has used her history of involvement in local activism to champion many important causes as VP External. She worked to address campus sexual violence through a number of initiatives: She helped to publish a report

by Our Turn National Action Plan evaluating the effectiveness of McGill’s Sexual Violence Policy, contributed to the development of provincial Bill 151 which required Quebec universities to adopt sexual violence policies, passed a motion to acknowledge rape culture on campus, and published an open letter to McGill administration demanding it take action to address sexual harassment and abuses of power in the Faculty of Arts. She also organized the annual Indigeneity and Solidarity event series and created the Trash2Treasure pilot project, which helps students donate their old furniture to charities instead of leaving it on the street after moving.

One of Spencer’s main campaign goals was to secure provincial representation for SSMU by joining a student union. Hoping students would vote in favour of joining the Association for the Voice of Education in Quebec (AVEQ), she faced resistance from Legislative Council. In the Fall semester, Council voted to postpone the referendum question on AVEQ affiliation in the Fall due to criticisms of the association and SSMU members’ insufficient knowledge of it; the question was not proposed again in Winter.

While Spencer cited infighting between the SSMU executives as her main challenge, she still managed to accomplish a number of the goals outlined in her campaign. Spencer was a thoughtful, effective representative for students, and her legacy will endure far beyond her term.

esteban herpin Grade: 7.65/10 = B+

SSMU VP Finance Esteban Herpin has made a surprising amount of progress in the few months that he has overseen the society’s finances, following Arisha Khan’s resignation on Nov. 16, 2017. Despite assuming office halfway through the executive term, Herpin successfully prepared the budget for the 2018-2019 academic year, which, once approved, will be made public to the membership. Herpin worked on greater accessibility and approachability in SSMU’s finances, which were lacking in his predecessor Arisha Khan’s term. Herpin has smoothed out processing of finances within the society by developing ways to reduce the exhaustive paperwork required of SSMU clubs and services.

In collaboration with Desautels Capital Management, Herpin sought to restructure the society’s investment portfolio to incorporate a greater degree of both undergraduate and graduate student involvement, and steer SSMU toward more sustainable investments, such as strengthening the Green Fund. Unfortunately, Herpin failed to meet this goal, in part due to a lack of responsiveness from other members of this collaboration.

Ultimately, Herpin has risen above the caretaker role that he was expected to fulfill during his four-month term by focusing on his portfolio and avoiding interpersonal conflicts.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

|

11

student living 12

|

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Going for the green A look into the fight to save the Milton-Parc community’s Notman Garden from development Audrey Carleton Managing Editor

Notman Garden in bloom in the 1980s. (Montreal City Weblog)

I

t’s easy to miss Notman Garden when walking past the intersection between Milton and Clark streets on a brisk April day.

Under the strain of cold weather each year, the grass in the 1,000-square-meter area goes brown and the centuries-old trees become dry and bare. But this humble spot has a rich history to it, as the focus of activist efforts within the Milton-Parc community for decades.

Renowned architect John Wells built the garden in 1844 behind the heritage Notman House on Sherbrooke and Clark streets. The house and garden were both passed down through famed Canadian families over several decades: The Molsons purchased it in 1866, then photographer William Notman followed suit in 1876, as did the Drummond family in 1893. In 1894, the house was renovated into a hospital for women with incurable ailments, and the garden was transformed into a leafy oasis of care and comfort for patients in their last years.

Fast forward 100 years, and the garden property has been separated from the house and sold to a development company. Despite the government granting Notman House protection as a historic site in 1979, the same security was not afforded to the garden. While its sale sparked outrage in the community at the time, this and every new threat to the space over the past twenty years has led Milton-Parc residents to come together to protect the land.

“In the Milton-Parc area, people have been mobilizing for quality issues and heritage issues and green space issues, transforming back [alleys] into common gardens, since the 1970s,” Dinu Bumbaru, Policy Director at Heritage Montreal, said. “So there’s really a special culture.”

This decades-long fight came to a head in May 2017, when a local condominium development company began vying to purchase

the land, now valued at an estimated $1.8 million. But this threat did not fly with residents in the surrounding Milton-Parc community, who quickly mobilized to save the garden from being demolished and turned into condos.

“It’s not a mere green space or a set of trees for us, it is a bit of a historic garden associated with a very appreciative historic building,” Bumbaru said. “And this has been our statement since the first battle to save it around 2000.”

After months of protest and heated dispute, residents’ activism finally paid off. City council voted for the City of Montreal to appropriate and

preserve the land at its meeting on Feb. 5. The Council’s resolution will hand ownership of the garden to the city government, who will turn it into public space for the surrounding community.

While the garden will be open to use by long-time residents and McGill students alike, the student community has been relatively disengaged from the fight to save it. This is, in part, due to the transience of the student population, which turns over every four years.

During the campaign, Students’ Society of McGill University Community Affairs Commissioner Julien Tremblay-Gravel experienced firsthand the challenge of involving the student community in the fight for the garden.

“It’s a nice space and I think it’d be made nicer by student involvement,” Tremblay-Gravel said. “We have different schedules [from the permanent residents] and can fit a lot of stuff in.

So we can be very helpful, we can be a positive force in the neighbourhood.”

Being the most densely populated neighbourhood in Montreal, the Milton-Parc community has very little green space, making it all the more important to preserve. To Bumbaru, green space is essential to a healthy urban community.

“The case of the Notman Garden is quite special, but it’s a reminder that there are little gardens all over the place,” Bumbaru said.

“Frankly, the quality of life and the heritage of the city doesn’t rest in large, expansive land, like parks [....] These little green dots in the city make the difference between a good and a bearable space.”

Milton-Parc residents gathered in 2017 to protest development plans in Notman Garden. (Global News)

Slicing into the history of McGill Pizza How this family-owned magnificence came to be an integral part of the campus community Calvin Trottier-Chi News Editor Ever since humanity invented flatbread, we’ve wanted to embellish it with savoury sauces and tasty toppings. When students tire of eating overpriced wraps from La Prep, waiting in long lines at Dispatch, and digging for that elusive toonie at a samosa sale, McGill Pizza is there for them—a welcoming space to indulge in their favourite foods.

McGill Pizza has been a student favourite since it was founded in the 1960s and, although it does not have a formal connection to the university, it is regularly visited by more McGillians than your average 8:30 a.m. elective.

“It was always named McGill Pizza, just because it was close to McGill,” Chef and owner Costa Deligiannis said. “Most of my customers are students, professors, staff of McGill, all sorts of different people.”

Specializing in classic diner comfort foods, McGill Pizza offers a reminder of a home-cooked meal, with a touch of Greek influence passed down through the family over generations. “[Our menu] comes from the family, they’re original recipes,” Deligiannis said. “All my family

works here: My brother, my sister, my dad, my mom, [and] my brother-in-law as well, it’s a family business. My parents are originally from Greece, but everybody else is born here in Montreal, born up the street actually in the Royal Victoria [Hospital].”

The restaurant’s glowing neon tube sign is hard to miss when walking down Milton street—its vintage exterior seemingly packed with memories of McGill students over the years. It’s interior is no different: Vintage McGill faculty crests line the walls, modest metal napkin holders sit atop simple black tables, and paper place settings greet each new customer.

According to Deligiannis, the restaurant’s old school vibe is intentional.

“I have kids come back, this weekend actually this kid came back, graduated must’ve been 12 years ago, and he came in and McGill Pizza was the exact same way he left it,” Deligiannis said. “And that’s what I try not to change. A lot of restaurants try to renovate and do this and that, yes you paint, but you keep the same idea. The customer that graduated 10 years ago is going to come in here and is going to say it brings him back memories.”

But McGill Pizza’s connection

to alumni extends far beyond the past decade; Deligiannis has formed an iconic bond with students from long before. “[I remember when somebody’s] grandfather came back to McGill, he had gone to McGill in the ‘70s and he remembered McGill Pizza,” Deligiannis said. “He was here for his grandson’s graduation. So they were both basically two different eras, sitting at the same table, enjoying the same food which was made back then. That’s pretty cool.

It’s very special.”

Part of the restaurant’s popularity, of course, comes from Deligiannis’ own gregarious character. On most days of the week you can find him near the register, ready to take orders and banter cheerfully with customers.

“When you’re talking about the smile, being happy, it’s your business, it’s something we take dearly,” Deligiannis said. “It comes naturally, someone comes into your home you’re going to be happy, no matter what happens you serve with a smile and try to give the best service you can. And that’s it, that’s how it’s done.”

In fact, the eatery’s hours more or less follow the average student’s schedule. Deligiannis enjoys taking his vacation over the

McGill Pizza has offered more than just good food for generations of McGill students. (pinterest.com) student living

summer break (and, presumably, would enjoy time off over a fall reading week as well.)

“The [business] season is about from the end of August to the end of May, with the summer obviously being quieter,” Deligiannis said.

“We go with the McGill schedule, so during the holidays when McGill is closed we get to enjoy our holidays as well [….] So that’s another cool thing, a lot of restaurants don’t have [...] that freedom.”

Highlighting his favourite recipes from the restaurant’s vast menu, Deligiannis is particularly proud of his father’s tzatziki recipe and his Greek-inspired spaghetti sauce. But like many chefs, Deligiannis will never be satisfied: He hopes to one day serve ice cream and smoothies at the restaurant. Yet, above all, his favourite item to both eat and make is, appropriately, pizza.

“The pizza sauce [and] the dough, this is something my uncle originally came up with, it’s always been in the family,” Deligiannis said. “It’s more of a deep-dish pizza, it’s a pan pizza, lots of cheese. A lot of people say Chicago is known for the deep dish but I’d say Montreal, in fact, [popularized it] in the ‘50s, ‘60s.”

And this style of pizza—along with the rest of the diner’s menu— certainly goes over well with students. In researching students’ opinions of the restaurant, The McGill Tribune did a quick informal call for testimonials on Facebook, and was met with a flood of positive responses.

“McGill Pizza... I don’t even know where to begin... It really is a second-home for me,” Hannah Rapaglia, U2 Arts, wrote. “It is the all-day breakfast we deserve and need. McGill Pizza can be TRUSTED on all fronts: The breakfast, the pizza, and the gyro are all of the highest caliber. Also, the service is so friendly?? There is a waitress there who I really want to befriend!!! TENS ACROSS THE BOARD.” Amid the tiring cycle of university life and the stress of maintaining a respectable GPA, some students praised McGill Pizza’s reliability.

“At our lowest lows and our highest highs, McGill Pizza, there for us without compromise,” Nikolas Dolmat, U2 Arts, wrote.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

|

13

Viewpoint: Finding community at McGill as a Montrealer Learning to pop my way into the McGill bubble Selin Altuntur Managing Editor Starting university at McGill required very little adjustment for me. I had lived my entire life in Montreal, in my parents’ home in Côte-des-Neiges. By the time I was enrolled in classes, I was already familiar with the campus, given that my mother, an employee of the university, had taken me to work every couple of weeks from a very young age. I already had a post-secondary degree from Dawson College and a tight-knit group of friends whom I met in high school and CEGEP. I had a long-term partner, a part-time job, and a solid, wellestablished life in the city. However, I quickly noticed that many of my first-year peers at McGill were living very different lives from my own.

For starters, many of them lived in residence, away from their families and friends for the first time. And given that Quebec’s legal drinking age is lower than in surrounding provinces and states, it felt like the majority of students around me were just discovering what it felt like to be able to drink legally. Even though I was only about a year older than those other first years, I felt we couldn’t relate. Admittedly, this was partly due to a false sense of superiority that I had developed to shield myself from the fact that my university experience was leaving me feeling very alone. While I wanted to meet new people and become more involved, my anxiety about being unable to relate to other students kept me from taking that first step.

During my first three semesters at McGill, I was

very aware of the vibrant community of students bustling around me. Meanwhile, largely due to my lack of involvement in events on campus, I had made no lasting university friendships. While other students attended multi-day drinking events, mingled in rez, and joined clubs, I would come to campus to attend class and leave right afterward. I never went out with other McGill students who weren’t already friends of mine from high school, and I still didn’t know what Carnival was, or where all those onesies had come from. The concept of the “McGill bubble” was familiar to me—but only because I felt like an outsider with little idea of what was occurring inside that bubble.

Even though I was happy and fulfilled in my life outside of McGill, I felt a very strong fear that I was missing out on the university experience. I had already made peace with the idea that I would never explore McGill the way that first-years coming from outside of Montreal would, but I still wanted more of a quintessential student experience than I was getting.

However, I knew that in order to be happy during my time at university, I needed to get over the mental block that was keeping me from meeting other students. Following the advice of a close friend from CEGEP, I got involved with The McGill Tribune where I got to meet other students with similar interests to mine. I quickly found that befriending students from varying hometowns and backgrounds was surprisingly easy.

This shattered my assumptions about not being able to relate to people from outside the province, and allowed

Being a native Montrealer can remove the incentive that most students have to build a community at university. (Selin Altuntur / The McGill Tribune) me to develop relationships that have made me a more well-rounded human. Now, on the cusp of graduating, I am deeply proud of the community I forged at McGill, and the fact that I have done far more with my time here than simply complete my credits.

Being a native Montrealer can remove the incentive that most students have to build a community at university. However, the university experience only amounts to what one makes of it. Although finding the motivation to make that extra effort was something that didn’t come naturally to me, becoming more involved on campus was without a doubt the only way I was able to become fulfilled here, and graduate knowing I had the made the most of my time at McGill.

A tribute to the best toys of the ‘90s and 2000s

The devices that kept us entertained 20 years ago Jade Prévost-Manuel Science & Technology Editor Any McGill student can argue that everything was better in the ‘90s. Toys “R” Us was still in business, and Britney—not Kendall—was the queen of Pepsi. In terms of toys, the best have come from that decade and the early 2000s, when Bop It, Mr. Potato Head, and those strange crocodilian finger puppets were essentials for every kid to own. To pay tribute to our childhoods, The McGill Tribune has created a list of the old classic toys that kept us entertained for hours.

Furbies Harbouring an eerie resemblance to Mogwais, the creatures in the 1984 Warner Brothers flick Gremlins, Furbies were the hottest toy on the market at the time of their release in 1998. Distributed by Hasbro, their pointed ears and squat, fuzzy bodies made them a cuddly gadget that all children needed to have. Even more exciting, the little creatures spoke Furbish, a made up language consisting of short syllables and simple sounds, and could even communicate with one another through an infrared port between their eyes. Between 1998 and 2001—the toy’s first three years on the market­—over 14 million Furbies were sold at $35 a piece, making them one of the most popular toys of their day. Furbies’ 2018 descendent, the Furby connect, adds a new spin to the classic, lovable furby with the added ability of connecting to a digital world, similar to a neopet. Furby’s legacy, however, was tarnished when Furby connect was labelled one of multiple illegal espionage devices 14

|

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

in 2017. A number of federal agencies claimed that the toy’s bluetooth connection may be subject to hijacking, allowing hackers to communicate with children playing with the toy.

Tamagotchi The Japanese word Tamagotchi literally translates to “lovable egg”—and that they were. These digital pets that ‘90’s kids still remember fondly were originally released in 1996 by Japanese toy company Bandai, and hit American and European shelves in 1997. Tamagotchi pets lived inside of an egg-shaped, pocket-sized apparatus camouflaged as a keychain bobble. Long before the distraction of text-messages, Snapchats, and HQ Trivia notifications, the incessant beeping of a hungry Tamagotchi was the epitome of student distraction, causing many elementary schools to ban the toys in the ‘90s and early 2000s.

To celebrate its fandom, Bandai America marked the 20th anniversary of the American release of the game on Nov. 15, 2017 with a miniature version of the original Tamagotchi. To students craving distraction and a chance to once again neglect their poor, hungry Tamagotchis, fear not: These little bad boys are still being sold, one only needs to scour the pages of Amazon to find them.

iDog Although the iDog came out significantly later than Furbies and Tamagotchis, it deserves an honourable mention as one of the most entertaining accessories of the 2000s. If you weren’t jamming to your preteen tunes with your iDog in 2005, your millennial experience was not complete.

Developed by Sega Toys, iDog was an electronic

Remember when your only worry was making sure your beloved Tamagachi stayed well-fed?

(Cordelia Cho / The McGill Tribune) ‘musical companion’ for the millennial child that sold for about $35 in 2008. With an auxiliary port that connected to MP3 and iPod devices, this toy had an LED display that would light up and strobe in time to the device’s music. The iDog could ‘dance’ by cocking its head and flapping its awkward, plastic ears rhythmically. iDogs even had their own musicdependent personalities, displaying a spectrum of emotions based on their attitude toward the music played. The toy’s popularity eventually led to the creation of a clothing line of adorable iDog beanies, scarves, and slippers for decorating the devices.

Though its successors, the iCat and the iFish, never found the success that the iDog did, these dancing robotic animals were a notable part of any sleepover. student living

Dance your heart out

Events that cater to communities tucked in the margins of Montreal’s nightlife Miguel Principe Staff Writer Montreal’s party scene can be hard to navigate. For many McGill students, it often feels as though the only places to dance and have fun lie along a four-block strip of Saint-Laurent Boulevard. And while Tokyo and Apt. 200 have their merits, these spaces aren’t everyone’s cup of tea—nor are they particularly inclusive of a range of identities, demographics, and communities. Fortunately, beneath the pulse of the city’s mainstream nightlife lies a faction of underground dance parties that aim to offer something different.

Glitter Bomb is one such event. Hosted and organized once a month by Jeffrey Torgerson—known on stage as DJ Jeffany—and Kristopher Allnutt—known as DJ Awwful—the event was originally created as a small queer hangout at the popular bowling-alley bar NotreDame-des-Quilles. It has since grown into a popular queer pop dance party featuring drag performances at Mile End’s Bar Le “Ritz.”

“Having a space for drag that’s not in the Gay Village is important,” Torgerson said. “There’s not a lot of places for drag [outside the Village]. A lot of the queens expressed that it’s important to have this queer spot that’s inclusive also to bio queens, queens who were assigned female at birth and identify as “biological women,” [....] Also, there’s a lot of disappointing transphobic ideas about drag and we want to make sure that our space is open to having performances from all backgrounds.”

Torgerson added that Glitter bomb aims to be an inclusive space where people can express themselves without putting their security at risk.

“It’s a queer dance party so it creates a space for

queer people to come together, mingle, dance, and have fun,” Torgerson said. “But also, a space to dress up and be creative with your looks. We just want you to come as yourself, have fun, and not be worried that you’re not safe in any way.”

Starting as a simple way to experience the nostalgia for the emo music of the 2000s, Emo Night Montreal, which takes place every fourth Friday, is another community-oriented event hidden in the city’s nightlife.

Produced and hosted by Thierry Martineau—also known as DJ Sticks and Stones—the event started in Los Angeles in 2014 and—as it catered to a community that often couldn’t go out to enjoy their favourite music in clubs— became so popular that it was adapted in many other cities in North America, including Montreal. Martineau’s connections and personal interest in emo and pop punk along with his own thrilling experience in Toronto’s Emo Night, Homesick, led him to bring Emo Night to Montreal.

“I was in a pop punk band [...] and Vendetta Productions had booked [our band] at TRH-Bar [in November 2016,]” Martineau said. “They had the venue until three and I [suggested] Emo Night in Montreal [....]

We ended up selling out TRH-Bar, around 250 [people came]. So, we decided to do it again.”

As it became more popular, Emo Night eventually outgrew its original location of TRH-Bar. The organizers decided to move to Quartier-des-Spectacles’ Foufounes Electriques due to its reputation as a venue for alternative music, having hosted acts such as Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails.

Emo Night MTL strives to create space for those who seldom hear their music tastes played at clubs, and have become alienated from the mainstream club scene for this reason.

RBC Dominion Securities Inc.

Retiring from McGill?

Make the most of your retirement with a plan

John Archer Associate Portfolio Manager & Wealth Advisor john.archer@rbc.com 514-878-5040 RBC Dominion Securities 1000 de la Gauchetiere St. West Montreal, QC H3B 4W5

John has advised individuals retiring from McGill University for over 30 years. He takes a holistic approach to understanding your retirement needs and can help you build a comprehensive plan that replaces your salary with smooth retirement investment income.

For a complimentary review, please contact John today.

www.johnarcher.ca

RBC Dominion Securities Inc.* and Royal Bank of Canada are separate corporate entities which are affiliated. *Member-Canadian Investor Protection Fund. RBC Dominion Securities Inc. is a member company of RBC Wealth Management, a business segment of Royal Bank of Canada. ®/™ Trademark(s) of Royal Bank of Canada. Used under licence. ©2018 RBC Dominion Securities Inc. All rights reserved. 18_90313_C36_002

student living

“[Emo Night is] a place to listen to songs that you sang in your bedroom [...] and now can do with hundreds of people [who] know all of the lyrics,” Martineau said.

“In general, people want a low-pressure, fun, kind-of cringy [event] where every song is [one] that [you’re] embarrassed to like [....] Emo Night is a bit like that [where] you come in and you’re proud.”

In addition to catering to those hoping to reflect indulge in their favourite songs of the 2000s, Emo Night also welcomes lovers of today’s emo hits.

“There’s two brackets [of the emo subculture], the nostalgia ‘kids’ who are now adults, and there’s younger people who are in their [mid-20s] since pop-punk and emo [has had] a resurgence with newer bands such as State Champs and Neck Deep,” Martineau said. “[Emo Night] is meeting the needs of [both] types of people.

Music-wise, we play more of the new stuff earlier in the night for the hardcores. Later on, we’ll play the [emo] hits of the 2000s that appeal to everybody.”

While many francophones in Montreal can argue that much of the Saint-Laurent club scene caters to anglophone culture, C’est Extra strives to provide them with a community. The dance party is hosted every Sunday before a holiday—such as Easter or Thanksgiving—and showcases the best francophone songs of the ‘60s and ‘70s. This celebration of retro French music was established in May 1996 by MarieChristine Champagne, known as MC Champagne, and a few friends, and first took place at the Cabaret du Musée Juste pour Rire, which has since closed.

“I really like old vinyls and their songs,” Champagne said in an interview with La Presse. “We wanted to make an event where people came to listen [to French music].

We didn’t really think of dancing at the time, we were thinking of listening to French music [...] of ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s really loudly in the speakers [.... at] the first event, 500 people came [....Everyone asked] ‘When’s the next one?.’ With much hype and by popular demand, we did it [again.]”* This extraordinary event was held in the Cabaret Just For Laughs until 2006, when it moved to La Tulipe, a cabaret theatre situated in a 105-year-old building at Papineau and Mont-Royal. It has even led to a special edition every New Year’s Eve, which is hosted at the Place Ville Marie Observatory and broadcast for the whole city to dance to on radio station Ici Musique 100.7 FM. Still, the event has maintained its original purpose of playing classic and often-forgotten French songs.

C’est Extra works to bring together people with a common interest in French music. The event’s longevity has allowed organizers to build a community among attendees over several generations.

“Around one million people have come to dance at our nights in the [past] 22 years,” Champagne said. “First of all, we have people who have been following us for 22 years, [which] is already extraordinary. There’s those that have become parents who bring their children.”* The approximately one million attendees all contribute to the event’s sense of unity.

“It’s always a pleasure to have this night […] with the people dancing and a lot of singing,” Champagne said.

“We’re all together to create that moment […] a bunch of crazy beautiful people having so much fun. It’s a fusion of energy and craziness.”* For Montrealers who don’t particularly enjoy or feel comfortable in a traditional club setting but still want to go out and dance their hearts out, keep in mind that there are plenty of dance party options to explore.

*Quote translated from French.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

|

15

A utilitarian approach to student wellbeing How McGill’s stepped care model has failed students and practitioners alike Nicholas Jasinski / Editor-in-Chief

M

cGill’s Counselling and Mental Health Services have come under fire in recent years, as changes meant to improve care have instead focused on reducing wait times and seeing as many patients as possible. Interviews with current and former counsellors at McGill Counselling Services—some of whom would only speak off the record because they feared repercussions from their employer—reveal that while these quantifiable metrics may have improved, they translate to a lower standard of care for students, and come at a cost to morale and retention of experienced staff.

Until 2007, all student services on campus were under the provision of the Coordinating Committee on Student Services (CCSS), a McGill Senate parity committee composed of an equal number of student and staff members. The CCSS was responsible for overseeing the operations, budget, and other administration of student services including Health Services, First Peoples’ House, the Mental Health Service, Career and Placement Services (CaPS), and International Student Services (ISS). Staff members included McGill administrators, directors of various services, and professors, while student committee members included the presidents of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) and the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS), as well as representatives from each faculty.

The Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) [DPSLL] position was created in early 2006 following one of the preliminary recommendations of the Principal’s Task Force on Student Life and Learning at McGill. In spring 2005, the Task Force was assigned to review issues affecting student life and learning at McGill, and released its final report in December 2006. The first DPSLL, Psychology associate professor Morton Mendelson, began his term in July 2006.

“The idea behind my position was to have someone in the senior administration who represents student issues, so those issues would be considered at the senior table and other issues would be considered with reference to how they affect students and student life,” Mendelson told the McGill Reporter in August 2012. Current DPSLL Ollivier Dyens declined a request to comment for this story.

A

dministration of Student Services moved to the DPSLL’s portfolio in 2007, with students losing the direct oversight of services they had had as part of the CCSS. An additional administrative position of Executive Director, Services for Students (EDSS) was created to supervise all non-academic services at McGill and report to the DPSLL. Currently, the Committee on Student Services (CSS) remains a student/faculty parity committee of Senate, but can only advise the EDSS on Student Services policies and budgetary priorities.

According to former director of McGill Mental Health Services Dr. Norman Hoffman, who led the service from 1992 until 2007, several directors of services raised their concerns and confusions over the reorganization.

“We understand that the McGill Administration wishes to have a stronger liaison with Student Services, but the proposed structure would leave Directors one step further removed from the Provost,” Dr. Hoffman and other directors wrote in the Student Service Response to the Draft Report of the Principal’s Task Force on Student Life and Learning at McGill at the time.

“This appears to be going in the opposite direction to all of our goals [....] In Student Services [...] we do not have a management problem, nor do we have any need for a purely administrative manager. What we do have [...] is a communication problem with the McGill Administration. An Executive Director, who would be the employee of the Administration, would only accentuate this communication difficulty.

The position would also likely jeopardize our partnership with the students, thus leading Student Services and McGill to become less student-centred.”

In an interview with The McGill Tribune, Dr. Hoffman lamented students’ reduced oversight of essential student services after the CCSS. “When they created the office of the Deputy Provost [Student Life and Learning] it was basically a hostile takeover of Student Services,” Dr. Hoffman said. “Before [students] were the bosses. So every year as director, if I felt I needed more therapists, more psychiatrists [...] I would put it in my budget and would then present the budget to CCSS [....] What [having a parity committee] meant is that as long as the students had one staff member on their side, they had control over what the budget was. And they always had one staff member on their side because usually the student services people were on their side. The McGill faculty that volunteered to be on it were prostudent. Basically if [students] wanted something they got it, if they didn’t want something it didn’t happen.”

Control over the direction of student services was increasingly ceded to the administration, as directors of individual student services saw the scope

of their roles decrease as well.

“They took away administrative and financial responsibilities from the Director of Mental Health,” Dr. Hoffman said. “So from that point on the Director of Mental Health has only clinical responsibilities within the service and could not plan for the future, could not plan budgets, did not have the amount of contact with students that the students wanted. Everything from then on was dictated by McGill administration.”

With mounting academic and personal pressures and the stigma surrounding mental health beginning to subside, the number of students who have sought counselling and psychiatric help at McGill has grown by over 35 per cent since 2011. This increase in demand led to McGill Mental Health Services’ development of a “stepped care model” which it implemented in Fall 2016. Under a stepped care model, the least resource-intensive treatment is provided to patients first, only stepping up to more intensive or specialized services when determined clinically necessary.

As part of the reorganization, Counselling Services and Mental Health Services (now called Psychiatric Services) were combined into one administrative unit, with a single intake and triage area in the Brown Building. Counselling focuses on mental health awareness and helping students through personal or academic issues, while Psychiatric Services assists students with mental health illnesses including depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. Students arrive for a first evaluation with a therapist who will refer them to the appropriate service or resource they require, from self-help tips in an online module to group therapy to professional psychotherapy services. However, according to Dr. Hoffman and current and former counsellors who wished to remain anonymous, this model’s decreased wait times and ease of access have come at the cost of thorough and personal care for some students.

“Before [the stepped care model], we had more professional autonomy,” a former McGill psychotherapist who left the service in the past year after several years in their role told the Tribune. “As a psychotherapist or a psychologist, you could actually determine what your patients needed.

Recently, it came out of the [stepped care] mandate that we couldn’t give people more than two sessions and we were encouraged to send them all to lower-intensity services such as group [therapy] or online support. About 20 to 30 per cent of the students who come in really require intensive work and those are the ones who are really missing out.”

Group therapy options currently offered by Counselling Services include sessions ranging from academic

success workshops to multiple-session groups providing cognitive behavioural therapy for social anxiety. Dr. Hoffman compared the current intake approach to a “meat grinder,” and contrasted it with the methods employed in previous years.

“When students have a problem, they want to talk to somebody, not be sent to a peer support group or an online module,” Dr. Hoffman said.” [...When] I teach how to approach students [...], I teach what I call therapeutic interviewing, which means [if] you’re a student who’s upset and you come to see me, I want to make sure that even if it’s just an initial interview then by the time you leave, you’re feeling better [....] That there’s a person you can talk to who will understand your problems. And those problems are addressed to some degree within the first session. The intake model they have now is a superficial information gathering model where, as some counsellors who work there now have told me, their main goal is to figure out how they can get rid of the student [by referring them to a different service or resource.]”

The psychotherapist who recently left McGill also spoke to the intended outcome of a student’s first meeting with Counselling Services under the current stepped care model.

“The first meeting is basically an assessment to determine what services you can offer them,” the former counsellor said. “Very often it’s a group.

But once a group is started it’s very hard to have someone new join. They meet at scattered times. Or you can refer them out or give them therapy assisted online or send them to peer support [....The goal of the first meeting] is to triage them.”

Dr. Hoffman and two of the other counsellors who spoke with the Tribune expressed their disapproval for a high emphasis on simply reducing wait times and seeing more students, and stressed that those two metrics alone do not necessarily align with providing better service.

“It’s very difficult if you see somebody come into your office [...] who you know you can help by seeing them on a one-to-one basis, then sending them to a group,” a former counsellor said. “Because you know that you can help but you’re not allowed to [....] The whole idea is [to] see a lot of people, [...In counsellors’] reviews, one of the things that is highlighted is how many open appointments they have in their schedules.”

Dr. Hoffman believes that the root of this issue goes back to the creation of the DPSLL’s office and its assumption of student services’ administrative responsibilities.

“When they created the office of the Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning), they switched from giving [annual reports from each service] to a

system [...] in which you’re supposed to only report things that you can measure,” Dr. Hoffman said. “For mental health, what could you measure? If you want to measure actually how students improve and what are their long-term outcomes you would have to spend a million dollars doing studies. So you measure how many students you saw, what the waiting times were. If your goal is to improve your measurements of waiting times [...] you do all triage and no treatment, then your wait times go down. [That] doesn’t tend to lead to people giving better help. The metrics don’t line up.”

Counsellors who spoke to the Tribune believe that a focus on quantity over quality has had negative effects on students and therapists alike. They stated that there have been multiple staff departures from Counselling Services and Psychiatric Services over the past two years due to low morale, especially among the most experienced and longest-serving members.

“When you’re sitting in your office and you’re having somebody pour their guts out to you, it’s intense and it takes a lot out of you,” one former counsellor said. “And if you’re watching the clock and you have five minutes to wrap up and see another person, it’s demanding and people get burned out [....] I have seen really really excellent therapists there, but those things weren’t valued. What was valued was ‘can you find a resource that isn’t therapy.’ That was valued [....] That’s what really took a lot out of people, to see someone break down in their office and then say, you have to go to a group, you have to go online.”

In addition to demanding work schedules, counsellors who spoke to the Tribune described a “shape-up-orship-out” attitude from administrators in Counselling Services that demands buy-in with the service’s new mandate.

“You cannot express any dissatisfaction as a counsellor or a therapist with the stepped care model,” the former psychotherapist said. “People have been called into [Executive Director of Student Services] Martine Gauthier’s office, they’ve been reprimanded.

We were told a long time ago that the model was here to stay.”

Dr. Hoffman, who now has a private practice in downtown Montreal, said that he has seen numerous students who felt so poorly treated at their initial intake session that they chose not to return to McGill’s mental health services.

“It’s not that stepped care is inherently bad,” Dr. Hoffman said.

“All the stepped care, peer support, online modules, these are all good as adjuncts to good care. You want to provide good care where people can come in and see a counsellor or psychotherapist quickly, who will give them what they need and then you

want to add something to that for follow-up, for extra support. These things are fine as adjuncts. But they’re using them at McGill as primary modalities of treatment instead of providing proper treatment, and that’s the problem.”

In December 2017 Dr. Hoffman sent a six page letter to Principal Suzanne Fortier outlining his concerns with the management of mental health services at McGill. In a four sentence response over a month later, Provost and Vice-Principal (Academic) Christopher Manfredi reaffirmed McGill’s priorities as “amplifying the range of services available to students and reducing wait times”–underlining the focus on quantifiable metrics that counsellors criticized for detracting from providing adequate care to all students.

At the March 28 meeting of the McGill Senate, EDSS Martine Gauthier introduced the new Rossy Student Wellness Hub (RSWH), a new umbrella service with the goal of further integrating and streamlining student health, psychiatry, and counselling at McGill. The Hub is planned to open in the Brown Building by January 2019.

“Health promotion includes awareness, prevention, and early intervention,” Gauthier said at the meeting. “At this point, Student Services, in terms of our approach to student mental health, has been largely reactive.

So we’re moving to a more proactive model. We’re trying to get into where students are working, learning, and living, […] and providing support before students get to a crisis point where they need to be accessing a counsellor or psychiatrist.”

The psychotherapist who resigned in the past year gave a pessimistic assessment of the future of mental health services at McGill should the current focus on achieving easily-measurable goals continue.

“They will continue to see a lot [of patients], there will be a lot of window dressing,” the psychotherapist said. “It will look good and they will see good numbers but someone should go in and look at the dropout rate of the groups, see how many people who get referred out for therapy actually follow up, and what happens to those who really have a severe disorder can only be seen once a month or very rarely. I think a lot of therapists who have the intention of doing what they trained for but can’t do therapy, they will leave. It’s not a pretty picture.”

18

|

opinion

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Lonely campus

Keating Reid Contributor

I’m a first-year McGill student, and I’m lonely.

I did all the right things. I lived in residence. I participated in Arts Frosh. I joined a few clubs. But nothing seemed to work. None of my relationships could bridge the canyon-sized gap between acquaintance and friend.

Everyone else, it appeared, had found their social groups: Engineers were drinking at Blues Pub, Management students were drinking at 4à7, and science students were bonding over shared complaints about required classes. The Thursdaythrough-Saturday night-clubbing expeditions had begun. And, in the middle of it all, I felt entirely out of place. Specifically, I felt out of place for being out of place—as if I was the only new student who couldn’t find his people.

But, in reality, I was not. Searching the word “lonely” on the McGill subreddit returns some bleak results: “Why the McGill experience is so lonely?” “Lonely at mcgill, have no friends, failing most classes.” “Lonely, and alone in mtl this summer. Is there any way I can pay people to hang out with me?”

As the year went on, and I started to make deeper connections, I found that many other McGill students shared my experience of feeling alone in their loneliness. This shouldn’t come as a surprise: We all accept occasional loneliness as a potential fact of life. Despite this, university marketing campaigns that advertise idyllic, predictable social lives have convinced students to think of campuses as an exception.

The freshman blues phenomenon isn’t exclusive to McGill. A 2016 study by the American College Health Association found that around 66 per cent of Canadian postsecondary students reported feeling “very lonely” within the past 12 months. Still, I can’t shake the sense that McGill is an especially lonely place—and I think I know why.

In her recent book The Perils of “Privilege”: Why Injustice Can’t Be Solved..., author Phoebe Maltz Bovy observes how so-called “elite” universities have begun advertising themselves as not just schools, but as comprehensive, once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

“What these schools are promising is sort of … everything,” Maltz Bovy wrote.

“Everything in the sense of, every minute of the day will be spent with people who

were, like yourself, handpicked for all-around perfection, as well as for serving some kind of preordained role in the impeccably balanced community.”

McGill is certainly guilty of idealistic advertising. Its slick admissions website promises: “From your first day on campus, you’ll quickly realize that you’re among kindred spirits.” Even better: “This is a place where creativity is contagious, and where there is always someone who shares your interests, no matter what they are.” McGill’s targeting of heart over head promises an all-inclusive experience. Unfortunately for would-be McGillians, it’s impossible to guarantee someone the intangible feeling of belonging.

Marketing a university as an unrelentingly blissful “experience” creates unrealistically high expectations of what life at university will be. In truth, university life is just that—life. It’s filled with the same quotidian boredoms and inconveniences as every other existence, and the same loneliness, too. But when students’ experiences fall short of the admissions-website hype, what are they to make of that? How could they not assume they’re the odd-ones-out?

This is far from the only consequence of the pernicious “best years of your life” myth. There’s no chapter in the experience narrative in which the protagonist realizes they chose the wrong school and transfers, nor one in which they drop their course load to part-time for a year (or, God forbid, withdraw) to take a needed mental health break. What many students forget is that neither of these choices are bad.

Sometimes, they’re the best decisions a student can make. However, their exclusion from the advertised “experience” advertising narrative gives students the impression that such choices are not viable.

The loneliness epidemic comes as much from students’ high expectations as their bleak realities. McGill can’t offer students an effortless glide into a tailor-made social life, nor can any other university. For a lot of people, socializing is hard. Even for those lucky enough not to find chit-chat anxiety-provoking, it still demands a degree of energy. When energy is in short supply, as it’s gobbled up by exams, papers, extracurriculars, and internship applications, it’s no wonder that it’s so hard to make meaningful connections.

To those reading this who find themselves without a brochure-cover-ready group of friends—you may be lonely, but you are not alone in being so. As Billy Joel once sang, “Yes, they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness / But it’s better than drinking alone.”

“So what are you going to do with that degree?

Any plans?”

Jade Prévost-Manuel Science & Technology Editor Six years ago, I sat in a computer lab at my rural high school in southwestern Ontario for a mandatory course that the majority of my grade considered mindnumbingly dull: Civics and Careers. This one-credit program instructed 10th graders on ethics, resumewriting, and surviving the post-2008 labour market. Our assignment that day was to research a prospective field of study that would shape a larger project—a 10-year plan describing our dream job, lifestyle, and income in detail. Our respective plans, we were told, would be an important resource for us to refer to during course selections, as our eligibility for certain post-secondary programs depended on selecting the appropriate high school courses in our junior and senior years.

Six years later, I’m past the halfway mark of the 10year plan I’ve long forgotten, and I fail to recall the dream job and lifestyle I once envisioned. I have, however, over the last year, crafted a number of satisfying responses to the two questions that I’m most frequently asked regarding my impending graduation: “So, what are you going to do with that degree? What’s your plan?”

These questions often come from a place of curiosity—and perhaps even a place of concern.

Whatever the intention, both reflect the sociallyacceptable and mechanical process undergraduates are expected to follow: Work hard, earn a degree, and secure a successful—synonymous with well-paying— job in a relevant field that, with a university education,

should be easy to find.

While this may not sound like an unreasonable expectation, it fails to account for the fact that the postsecondary student experience has changed radically over the last 50 years. Undergraduates today are living in a different world than that of their parents or their grandparents. Long-gone are the days when an undergraduate degree was a ticket to a dream job, a glorious pay cheque, and a prestigious reputation among one’s colleagues. Nowadays, post-grad options for arts students seem to fall anywhere along the spectrum from attending law school to settling for barista work.

This may be due to the ever-growing gap that separates the expectations of soon-to-be grads from the realities of the labour market. A 2013 report from the CIBC World Market stressed the drawbacks of pursuing arts and humanities degrees, citing a much lower return on investment for soft degrees in comparison to specialized ones. These low-return fields—which in 2013 accounted for 45 per cent of all university graduates—make up the largest share of university students. Students in humanities and arts degrees are expected to earn around $30,000 per year—less than half of the median income.

But, it’s not just arts students who should be worried. Even the engineers aren’t guaranteed a full return on the value of their degree: A 2015 report from the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE) showed that 33 per cent of engineering graduates in Ontario are underemployed, meaning that they’re working jobs that don’t require an engineering degree.

OFF THE BOARD

The OSPE suggested that universities may be at fault.

Post-secondary institutions are under-preparing their graduates and neglecting the job-related skills so critical to securing employment in today’s labour market, such as the hands-on experience gained through internships or experiential learning initiatives.

Regardless of the type of degree, these are the realities facing most, if not all, undergraduates: Dismal job prospects, preceded by inadequate preparation by the institution. Unfortunately, there’s still a certain level of perfection expected among university students— not only throughout the course of their degrees, in the form of extracurricular commitments, internships, and a high GPA, but in their post-graduate plans as well. If a student’s success isn’t defined by their acceptance to graduate school, it’s defined by their ability to secure employment opportunities, the primary value of which often lies in the associated dollar sign. Any deviation from the idealized undergraduate path—whether it means taking a year off, working a lower-end job, or enrolling in a college program—is viewed as a failure.

Ultimately, the job opportunities associated with the degrees we’ve worked tirelessly to earn are no longer guaranteed. The changing labour market doesn’t value bachelor’s degrees to the extent that it used to. This change has been accompanied by a spike in competition between students, and the failure of universities to prepare us for the new jobs landscape after graduation.

University students need to think creatively about new ways to use their degrees, and shouldn’t be bound by a model that was built for the student experience of the 1960s.

Open secrets and closed doors: McGill must do better in handling abusive professors “After Concordia, McGill faces its own #metoo moment,” an April 4 CBC headline reads.

McGill is failing in its response to allegations of sexual abuse. The Students’ Society of McGill University’s (SSMU) April 4 open letter on sexual violence and harassment allegations against McGill faculty names five specific Arts departments in which complaints have repeatedly come up, and calls on the university to launch a third-party investigation into how the Office of the Dean of Arts is handling complaints against faculty members.

The public letter makes the “open secret”—of certain professors who have a history of complaints against them—explicit. Signed at press time by 2,059 students and 73 student groups, it is a specific, thoroughly elaborated demand on behalf of student safety and well-being. Although McGill provided a statement on the letter to major news outlets and to SSMU Vice-President External Connor Spencer, it has yet to respond directly to the entire McGill community.

McGill’s silence so far is deafening. When it responds—and we sincerely hope it is a question of when and not if—the administration must convincingly demonstrate that it hears and understands students’ concerns about this ongoing issue. Moreover, and more crucially, McGill must demonstrate that it cares when students are being harmed. On this front, the litany of previous responses, all pointing students to existing procedures or claiming bureaucratic constraints as excuses in lieu of tangible action, are simply not good enough.

Student dissatisfaction with McGill’s sexual violence and harassment policy framework is not new. However, the 2017-18 school year has seen student groups and SSMU focus specifically on the handling of complaints

against faculty members: As part of its C- grade for McGill’s sexual violence policy, SSMU’s Oct. 11 Our Turn report condemned the fact that complaints against faculty and staff are processed under a separate policy than complaints against students. In the same month, the Zero Tolerance student group’s sticker campaign explicitly called for a particular Islamic Studies professor’s tenure application to be denied due to allegations of sexual misconduct.

It’s not surprising that members of the administration are aware of the problem, as the letter states, because many McGill students know of the professors with complaints against them, too. Through Reddit threads, blog posts, and word of mouth, McGill students and alumni inform and keep each other safe when the school has failed to. These informal networks arise out of necessity, but there are significant limits to their reach. Students may enroll in courses or pursue research positions under predatory professors without knowing these “open secrets” about them. This has the potential not only to jeopardize students’ academic experiences, but their safety. Alarmingly, for many first years, this letter is perhaps their first introduction to the problem.

In his statement to off-campus media, VicePrincipal (Communication and External Relations) Louis Arseneault said that every complaint or report against a faculty member is thoroughly investigated, echoing the administration’s persistent referrals to existing channels and processes. However, relying on formal complaint procedures misunderstands the barriers to reporting instances of sexual violence and harassment, particularly when a perpetrator has power over a student’s academic career. Moreover, formal complaints must be filed within a certain time period,

EDITORIAL

making them difficult to see through for students who graduate. That McGill students come and go every year, while professors can stay for decades, makes it harder to see tangible outcomes of an investigation—and easier for alleged perpetrators to continue teaching.

All that said, the more likely reason that students have turned to open-letter writing and guerrilla sticker campaigns is that the current processes simply don’t work. Even if they do, students don’t know it: Because of Quebec confidentiality laws, the university cannot disclose current investigations or the results of an investigation. All students see are professors who they’ve been warned about continuing to escape the consequences.

This lack of communication erodes student trust in the University. Skirting the need for a response by citing confidentiality laws is not good enough.

The letter does not request any specific information about current or past cases. It simply demands an independent investigation into current procedures being used, following specific criteria. McGill should follow in Concordia’s footsteps, as Concordia recently announced an investigation and campus-wide survey in response to allegations against its creative writing department, under the same provincial laws.

After the 2017 Fall General Assembly, McGill demonstrated that it is willing to act clearly and swiftly on alleged threats to student safety. It must do the same now. The administration must directly acknowledge the concerns students have raised about abusive professors, and be crystal clear about the course of action it plans to take. Doing nothing sends as clear a message as the letter does: It tells students that McGill does not care about their safety from sexual violence and abuse.

Piecing together my McGill puzzle Abeer Almahdi Contributor Growing up, university was the light at the end of my tunnel. My family, friends, and teachers always pushed the idea that at university, I would find a place for myself where I would fit in perfectly—that I was a unique jigsaw piece yet to find the rest of its puzzle. University seemed like this utopia where I would certainly meet my future lifelong friends, and maybe even my soulmate.

My background is fairly diverse. Growing up with a Muslim Egyptian father and a Catholic SyrianCanadian mother in Kuwait left me without a strong single, definable identity. I never really knew where I fit among all of these narratives, which led me to compartmentalize each distinct cultural experience instead of reconciling how they could intertwine with each other. I was Syrian when I was with my grandparents, Canadian when I was in the airport, Egyptian because of my surname, Christian at church, Muslim on my birth certificate, but also Kuwaiti. I was always a quarter or a half of something, but never a whole. I believed that university would be the place where all of my identities magically would morph into one: A student. What I learned upon coming to McGill is that none of these pieces opinion

actually exist in competition with one another: Each identity contributes its own set of challenges and advantages, and reconciling these is a complex, evolving, but not insurmountable, process.

I spent the entirety of my summer before coming to McGill deciding which clubs I would join in order to construct a version of myself where I could transcend the surface-level boundaries set by my identity. I was still proud of my culture, but I did not want to be defined by it. I did not want to fit anyone’s narrative of what a typical person from the Middle East should be like. I wanted to be known for my music taste, my passion for journalism, my art, and my academic interests. As with many first-year students, I wanted to have complete control over my identity, instead of being labelled by aspects of myself that lay beyond my control.

However, when I arrived at my residence hall, I did not find a collective community. I found cliques, and smaller communities that I could not penetrate.

I constantly hid behind my locked door, avoiding conversation with neighbours in the elevator, and only catching a glimpse of my roommate before leaving for class. Rez was incredibly isolating in contrast to the communal experiences I thought I would have. I was clearly not going to meet my

soulmate, or make hundreds of lifelong friends. I began to lose touch with being a McGillian and felt more like a visiting student.

And yet, in the chaos of my second semester, I discovered my own spaces within that society.

I found a part of myself in my Jewish roommate from Los Angeles, and in my poetry club, and in the walk to Stewart Bio. I even found a part of myself writing this for The McGill Tribune. I never found the idealized self that I hoped I would become at McGill—but I have since realized that identities are more complex than that. University is not one-sizefits-all, and I now understand that I have to create my own narrative.

I am a McGill student, and I am Syrian, and I am Egyptian, and I am Kuwaiti. My identities are not Venn diagrams that overlap. I am not half this and half that—I am wholly everything. Although I’m not the Students’ Society of McGill University president, or part of a thousand clubs, I am still just as much a part of McGill as any other student, or professor, or TA. My communities are not mutually exclusive; I can be part of all of them without sacrificing any part.

I may not have found all of my pieces yet, but I am no longer lost.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

|

19

Campus conversation First-year residence—a house or a home?

Editor’s note: For many McGill students, the first campus community that they encounter is in residence. The McGill Tribune Opinion section asked contributors to draw on their personal experiences living in residence (or not), to answer the question, “Do McGill residences facilitate community-building, and if so, how?”

Gardner Hall

Bryan Buraga, Contributor Starting at McGill University this past September, my housing situation was uncertain. I was one of the hundred or so unfortunate students who did not know which residence they would be living in until late August. I was lucky to be assigned to Gardner Hall. One of the first things I noticed after moving into residence in August was how diverse the body of residents was. I met introverts, extroverts, people from my hometown, and people from an ocean away. I felt like I could find a group that I could call my friends—and soon after, I did.

An ideal first-year community is one that is welcoming to people from all walks of life. For students who enjoy drinking and partying, the near-nightly legendary pre-games in the common rooms characterize the atmosphere of Upper Rez. However, for students who are not partiers or are more on the introverted side, this side of McGill residences risks alienating them in a place they are just beginning to call home.

At the same time, I found it easy to find friends among both groups of people. I had plenty of exposure to partiers, but was also able to reach out to more introverted people in intimate settings, such as floor teas and coffeehouses.

As I met other McGill students throughout the year, I found that I could instantly form a connection with those who also lived in Upper Rez. This was due to our shared experiences, from struggling up University Street on our way home, to dealing with co-ed washrooms. My friends in hotel-style residences considered those of us who were in dorm-style residences lucky, because it was easier for us to meet people in this setting. The familial environment in Gardner stood in stark contrast to the isolation they sometimes felt due to their style of residence. They felt that we had more of a sense of community—and honestly, I agreed with them. Like actual hotel guests, it is much easier for hotel-style residents to minimize their interactions with their neighbours. Dorms offer more opportunities to see the same people over and over again, especially in common spaces like the washrooms.

Residences provide a place for students to find their first community at McGill, and while school clubs or intramural teams can provide that welcoming space as well, being closer to other people who are going through a similar experience is more conducive to forming a sense of community. This sense of community is what built my time in Gardner into a formative student experience.

MORE House

Lucas Bird, Contributor I live on Avenue des Pins, in one of McGill’s big, brown stone MORE houses. The house holds roughly a dozen first-year students, including myself. While my housemates are lovely people, and we resolve living issues pretty well, I am not super close with any of them.

As far as I can tell, this goes for most of the other people in the house. We say “Hi” when we pass each other in the hall, recount our days when we burst into the living room, but no one is particularly atta to each other. We each have our own separate friend groups, which the other people in the house aren’t necessarily aware of—except for happenstance, like the time I encountered my floormate Wendy and her friends playing Just Dance at 2 a.m. This polite separation is exactly what I hoped for when I ranked the MORE house as my first choice, because it fosters a trait that I have cherished throughout my first year experience: Independence.

In my experience, these residences are not particularly good at cultivating an internal community. Admittedly, this might be because I don’t pay close attention to my house advisor’s emails regarding teatime and pizza parties. More importantly, though, I think it’s because that isn’t what the MORE house is meant to do. Out of all the firstyear residences, the brown stones are as close as a student can get to apartment-style living. There are separate rooms, a single kitchen, and some common areas, but all are designed around the general structure of autonomous living. Many students would say rez communities are crucial to first-year life, and they’re correct, but proximity shouldn’t be the defining factor of a community. Strong relationships are formed through agency, not adjacency.

Within the first five hours of my arrival at McGill, I was in the basement of a different first-year residence, University Hall. Hardly a day has passed where I haven’t spent at least a few hours in that very same building, because it’s home to the people closest to me. This place has served as a sheltering abode for me during my first year. I have become inseparably close with its inhabitants, to the extent that some of them were surprised to learn late in first semester that I didn’t actually live there.

University Hall has become my community because I sought it out, and it welcomed me with open arms. The MORE house didn’t hand me my crew on a silver platter—it encouraged me to go out and create a community of my own. My friends are not my friends just because we live in the same building. I chose them and they chose me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Solin Hall

Kyle Dewsnap, Contributor Like most first years in my residence, I ranked Solin Hall lowest on my rez application because it is particularly far from campus. While other residences are peppered around McGill’s Downtown campus, Solin is in the Sud-Ouest neighbourhood, a three-stop metro ride away from campus. So when I learned that I was going to be put into an apartment at Solin, I was a bit apprehensive. However, now two years into my degree at McGill, I can say with certainty that Solin Hall has created one of the best communities for me at McGill.

Although Solin is far away from campus, the unique experiences that the residence offered quickly outweighed the slight inconvenience of the commute. Solin is an apartment-style rez. Each apartment has two to four bedrooms, and a common area with a full kitchen. Meal plans are optional, meaning most people who I lived with in Solin opted to cook for themselves. I was lucky enough to be in a four-bedroom apartment, which taught me the virtues of shared living (if someone says their cast-iron pan is off-limits, that means it’s off-limits). Living in such a unique space allowed me and my roommates to form unique and genuine bonds that come from sharing an apartment, rather than just sharing a hotel room.

Our floor fellows took good care in ensuring that the first two weeks of rez were filled with ice-breakers. However, unique to Solin, one floor fellow is designated as a project manager, whose sole job is to organize a year-long project made up of monthly rez-wide activities centred on a theme. In our year, the theme was metro-based. This meant that Solinites didn’t suffer the same kind of “post-Frosh cooldown” that students in other residences did; there was always something going on at Solin that kept us excited to get out of the McGill bubble and explore the city.

Perhaps united by our collective anxiety over needing to wait in line at Berri-UQAM metro station for an OPUS card, the bond we Solinites formed was instantaneous and strong. I met my current roommate on the first night of move-in, and my old roommates and I still talk whenever we bump into each other on campus. Traditions that my friends and I began in our first semester still occur regularly today. While it was a minor inconvenience to take the metro to get to class, the Solin community helped me get through the transition to a new city and school, and was easily the best part of my first year.

20

|

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

opinion

arts & entertainment Wednesday, April 11, 2018 | 21

Montreal’s vibrant zine community How McGill students are working outside traditional publishing channels Avleen K. Mokha Staff Writer Creative McGill students are building a niche community centred around zines—small-sized, low-circulation publications. Historically used as a tool for marginalized groups to publish content, zines house dialogue that does not ascribe to mainstream rhetoric. Now, groups of university students are using zines to address pertinent social and political issues.

On the McGill campus, students have used zines to start alternative conversations. For instance, F WORD Montreal is a biannual publication that was started in Winter 2014 by a group of like-minded McGill students frustrated by the lack of feminist publications on campus. Judy Huang, U3 Science and Immunology, has been part of the collective since 2015 and believes a closeknit community is central to zine culture. “[The] heart of zine making is the community itself,” Huang said. “[Zines] are often more niche than literary magazines or scientific journals [...which] makes [them] a really great platform to link students together [...] to find other people who are interested in the same things.”

While the collective accepts members from all over Montreal, the F WORD community is mostly comprised of McGill undergraduate students. The publication features original visual and written content that discusses feminism, and holds launch parties for like minded individuals across the city.

“As a collective, we also hold events to celebrate and promote our zines,” Huang said. “We usually try to feature other Montreal artists, poets, musicians, and more.”

Though F Word is a venue for broadly feminist content, for many student associations, zines are a means to raise awareness for their unique mandate.

McGill’s Office of Religious and Spiritual Life (MORSL), which aims to promote religious literacy on campus, has been publishing its own zine for 18 years. With five installments per year, Radix collects student poetry, short fiction, visual art, and photography—all on the theme of religious literacy.

“As Radix is specifically designated

by MORSL as McGill’s student spirituality magazine, we act as a medium for McGill’s creative body,” Radix editor Mackenzie Roop, U4 Arts, said. “In this way, Radix really serves a niche community.”

Roop aims for Radix to be a space for students to express their spiritual

Zines provide a sense of community outside of academia.

(Ariella Garmaise / The McGill Tribune) needs and conflicts. She believes zines are especially well-suited to this purpose, because zine-makers work outside of traditional publishing channels, allowing for more freedom in content and style.

“It feels good to be able to have a space for thoughts that seem to have no direct application [and] to recognize and work the inner perceptions and beliefs of one’s life, which are kept separate and thus often deemed ‘less important’ than professional or educational pursuit. It’s quite a magical and special safe space for all beliefs to come alive together, as a living and breathing process, but also a physical reality.”

While all of Radix’s issues dating back to 2000 can be accessed digitally on the MORSL website, Roop believes that the physicality of zines plays a role in their popularity.

“The translation of the invisible mental and emotional processes, God, [and] the spirit,[into the] physical has been [at] the forefront of human pursuits for millennia,” Roop said. “A zine is the very essence of this [translation].”

Roop’s broad definition is useful insofar as it pinpoints the expressive freedom of the medium. But because some zines are produced at a larger scale than others, the term “zine” can be an elusive classification. Zoe Shaw, U3 Arts, is an editor of The VEG, one of McGill’s student-run creative writing zines. She believes that the label comes with a certain flexibility.

“I’m not entirely sure what we would consider a zine,” Shaw said. “When I think of zines, I think of small handbound chapbooks, but of course, it can mean other things. To me, a zine is really what you make of it.”

The VEG, founded by McGill students 14 years ago, is based in the McGill Department of English and publishes student contributors’ prose and poetry alongside visual art. The current team has worked to make its issues smaller

and more portable, which Shaw hopes makes the content feel approachable.

“One of our favourite things to do when we publish a new issue is to just leave it around everywhere,” Shaw said.

“In the Department of English, we have all these debates about the materiality of texts. But it’s really fun to be able to read poems in a [small book] you can take out of your jacket pocket or [from] between the pages of your agenda.”

The VEG is primarily based at McGill [...] but tries to foster connections outside of McGill and encourages alumni in Montreal to stay involved.

“The founders really just wanted a place for younger readers and writers to be able to access the artistic work of the community at and around McGill,” Shaw said. “We’ve had a McGill [alumnus] who is doing a graduate program at UM help out because he was in the neighbourhood. The VEG is really a community open to anyone who catches on, and can keep up with our schedule.”

As The VEG is open to submissions from all over the world, the zine has featured contributors from cities such as Toronto and Las Vegas. Shaw recalls one fond experience of communicating with an artist based outside of Montreal.

“The contributor was involved in the Toronto creative scene, but he was able to come to the launch and perform,” Shaw said. “It was this pure moment of swapping between communities.”

The Department of English Student’s Association (DESA) recognized how zines bring individuals together by hosting a zine fair on campus earlier this semester. The student association elects a VP Journals & Affiliates every year, who works to strengthen connections between the English department and local literary publications.

Sylvie Schwartz, U3 Arts, is the outgoing DESA VP Journals. While she works primarily with academic journals, Schwartz believes that self-publishing is

a crucial avenue for university students.

“I think self-publishing is mainly important because it showcases student work,” Schwartz said. “Especially at McGill, [which doesn’t have] a fine arts or creative writing program, self-published journals and other related organizations are the main resources for students to showcase their creative output.”

To discover new zines, McGill students can head over to Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG)-McGill at the corner of University and des Pins, which maintains an extensive zine library. However, zine culture extends far beyond the Roddick Gates. Since 2002, Montreal has hosted EXPOZINE, Canada’s largest annual comic, small press, and zine fair. With vendors sharing content produced in both English and French, EXPOZINE has been vital in creating a space in the Montreal community to showcase alternative publishing. Another downtown resource is ARTEXTE, a library, research centre, and exhibition collective which held a zine-making workshop at McGill in January 2018.

The burgeoning zine community speaks to the limits of traditional modes of publishing. For students plagued with dense syllabi, reading and making zines can be a unique source of comfort.

“The low circulation of zines makes it easy for a person to put all of [themself] out there and express a degree of emotional vulnerability,” Huang said.

“It really lends to a softer reading experience.”

For Shaw, reading zines on her way to campus has rekindled her interest in creative writing.

“I spend three hours commuting a day on public transit [and] it’s hard to just bring out my Norton Anthology of Shakespeare on the metro,” Shaw said.

“I took some of the zines lying around in my house, and began reading them.

[As] it is my last semester, it’s been really nice to get little snippets of poetry and short fiction and essays while I’ve been standing on the metro. It refreshes my mind, and reminds me why I read poetry.”

As finals season rears its ugly head, and textbooks and MyCourses tabs gather strength in numbers, leisurely reading can feel like a distant memory, and creative pursuits a long forgotten pipe dream. Picking up a zine can remind us that reading and writing don’t need to be dictated by a syllabus, rigorously edited and fuelled by caffeine—there is a whole community of zine makers and readers out there who are the very proof of that.

Ethnographic filmmaking shines at FIFEQ

Inter-university student run film festival highlights important cultural movies

Leo Stillinger Contributor The Maison de la Culture de Cote-des-Neiges and McCord Museum will host free screenings of the International Ethnographic Film Festival of Quebec (FIFEQ). This student-run festival of non-fiction filmmaking is celebrating its 15th year with its largest program ever, playing at UQAM, UdeM, Concordia, and McGill.

passionate volunteers from all four major Montreal universities. One such student volunteer is Lydia Seo, U3 Cultural Studies, the McGill team coordinator for the festival.

“We’ve always tried to make it accessible to the public,” Seo said. “Our goal is just to share these films, we don’t have a judging panel or awards or prizes, we just want to share.”

Ethnographic films are nonfiction, but they are distinguished

Created in 2003 by a group of anthropology students at UQAM and Concordia, FIFEQ has grown steadily, expanding to Quebec City.

As it has grown, the festival has remained student-run, attracting

from normal documentaries by their connection to the anthropological practice of ethnography: the description of other cultures and practices.

Anthropologists often write

ethnographies as a means of theorizing about different aspects of society. Ethnographies can also be presented visually, as well. In ANTH 202: Socio-Cultural Anthropology, an introductory cultural anthropology course at McGill, students watched ethnographic films depicting subjects from burial rituals in India, to voodoo dancers in Haiti, to customers at an allyou-can-eat buffet in Las Vegas.

However, there are pitfalls to making films about foreign cultures.

“It’s important that the films are respectful towards the subject, and don’t exoticize them,” Seo said.

Respectful treatment of subjects was one of the criteria used to select films for the festival. This year, the coordinators of the film had to choose from 336 submissions—an indication of the festival’s growing importance.

They ultimately narrowed these submissions down to 41.

Some films are 90 minutes or longer, the length of a full-length movie; others are very short. On April 10, UQAM is hosting a special feature of nine films less than six minutes in length. These films were made by Wapikoni Mobile, an indigenous film production company that focuses on

indigenous issues.

The partnership with Wapikoni Mobile illustrates one of the festival’s stated themes for this year: “indigenous realities.”

Seo said that one of her favourite films at the festival is The Last of the Ice Hunters, depicting Inuits in Nunavut dealing with climate change and changing lifestyles. Another favourite is Living Here, which narrates the story of Martha Lucassie, a young Inuit woman living in the stark, but beautiful tundra.

Five films will be shown at Maison de la Culture de Cote-des-Neiges on April 11 at 6 p.m., and five more on April 12 at 6 p.m. at the McCord museum, including Last of the Ice Hunters and Living Here. For those who love ethnographic films, FIFEQ is a rare opportunity to see so many at once.

For those who are unfamiliar, it is a chance to become acquainted with a unique kind of cinema.

It is a chance, moreover, to become acquainted, if only briefly, with the daily realities of people around the world, living lives very different than that of a McGill undergrad. On the brink of finals season, it could provide a much-needed dose of perspective.

Blood Relations is a haunting portrait of social isolation Lizzie Borden’s story inspires both fear and empathy Sophie Brzozowski Staff Writer Sharon Pollock’s award-winning play Blood Relations, currently showing at Moyse Hall, was directed by Drama and Theater Professor Sean Carney and produced by the McGill Department of English. The story is a bone chilling, pulsequickening, and thought-provoking examination of one of the most notorious cause célèbres in history.

Set in 1902, Blood Relations takes place 10 years after Borden (Sian Lathrop) was tried for the murder of her father and stepmother. Though she was acquitted, the story of her trial has become something of an urban legend in the town of Fall River, where Borden was born and raised. The entire play takes place within the Borden family estate, the ornate and lavish furnishings creating an appropriately eerie backdrop for her story to unfold.

One day, over a cup of tea one day with one of her few remaining friends—an unnamed actress from the city (played by Georgia Pearson)—Borden proposes that the two of them play a game in which she describes the days leading up to the murder, and the actress, who will assume the role of Lizzie, will act them out, in the hopes of revealing some hidden truth, and once and for all getting to the bottom of the million-dollar, decade-old question of 22

|

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

whether or not Borden was truly guilty.

Both Lathrop and Pearson delivered spinechilling performances while the entire cast seamlessly navigated the complex and challenging script. Visual and auditory effects were seamlessly employed throughout the play to provide a brooding, haunted atmosphere.

Blood Relations is but one of several adaptations of Borden’s story. The murder mystery has been the subject of multiple made-for-TV films, songs, novels, and even a ballet, all of which imply Borden’s guilt.

Most recently, Borden was portrayed by Chloe Sevigny in the 2018 film Lizzie, which premiered on Jan. 19 at the Sundance Film Festival.

“They don’t make movies about her being innocent,” Carney said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “People want her to be a villain.”

Indeed, the version of the story in which Lizzie Borden is guilty is almost too good not to be true.

Borden was said to be abrasive and eccentric—she resented her father and despised her stepmother.

She was unmarried and socially isolated. When her tie to the family estate was in danger, she appeared to have little to lose and every motive to take drastic measures to secure her right to the family home. As far as most were concerned, Borden was a lonely, aging spinster with a temper and her livelihood on the line.

But Blood Relations depicts a more nuanced Borden than is often seen in popular culture. It

Blood Relations leaves room for ambiguity in its history.

(Sean Carney / The McGill Tribune) suggests that Lizzie was a misunderstood woman, and that she was very much alone. Lizzie had few allies and even fewer friends. She was peculiar, acerbic, and isolated.

To this day, the Borden murders remain unsolved—Blood Relations asks more questions than it answers—whether Borden is guilty is just one of them.

“One of the things that the play is about is that women in her class position and her social position in life did have constrictions [placed] upon them” Carney said. “It’s asking us, ‘What if you, a modern person, suddenly found yourself in late 19th century conditions where you had none of the freedoms you have as an individual, what would you do?’” In some ways, this is the most unsettling question of all. arts & entertainment

How Osheaga fell prey to gentrification

“Bigger and better” but at what cost?

Laura Oprescu Staff Writer Pulling big names like Arctic Monkeys, Florence + the Machine, ODESZA, Travis Scott and Tyler, the Creator for their 2018 edition, it’s cliché (but pretty much obligatory) to say that this is not the hippie-driven, muddy-camping festival envisioned by Woodstock’s creators.

Since transferring ownership to Evenko for its fifth edition in 2010, Osheaga has attracted big name sponsors,addedgoldandplatinumticket options, and pulled top 40 giants like Lana del Rey, The Weeknd, and Kendrick Lamar to headline. In 2016, the festival introduced Osheaga Play–a mixture of interactiveactivitiesandfairgroundrides that connect to RFID wristbands that allow festival goers to win prizes. The wristbandsevenallowphotographersto snap pictures of attendees and upload them directly to their social media. It’s all very… Coachella.

Festival behemoth Coachella is notorious for its commercialization of the festival experience–with its celebrity guest list and reputation for trend-setting, fans show up to be seen having a good time with L.A.’s glitterati.

Tickets range from USD $429 for general admission (GA) to $8,500 for a safari tent, which gets you entry to VIP areas, on-site concierge, and chauffeured golf course access among other.

Smaller festivals have watched Coachella target the one per cent and adjusted their prices accordingly. Some festivals realize that most people can’t affordtheirexorbitantprices—Bonnaroo now offers a payment plan for its most basic ticket, which comes to $337.50 plus fees.

Higher ticket prices mean festivals can afford bigger acts. This results in bigger sponsors and more revenue, which means next year’s festival can be even bigger. As festivals struggle to compete with this expansion, lineups

Arts & entertainment

become homogenised and lose their individuality. Everyone sets out with the goal of “bigger is better” and ends up with the same dozen headliners.

Can’t make Osheaga? Tyler, the Creator, Post Malone, ODESZA, Portugal. the Man, St. Vincent, Chromeo, BØRNS, and BROCKHAMPTON, are all playing Coachella this year too.

It’s a self-perpetuating cycle—if festivalscanpromisebignames,fanswill pay more for tickets. This encourages festivals to seek out popular bands, which means looking at other festivals and seeing what’s making them money.

Even Osheaga’s co-founder Nick Farkas admits to following trends, stating in 2015 in an interview with Billboard: “I’d imagine that pretty much every idea we’ve ever had we stole from someone else.”

Withalltheextrasavailable,festivals have become social events as well as musical ones. Yet as festivals try to satisfy asmallerandsmallerelitethatcanafford their three-figure day passes and castesystem perks, they lose out on the larger audiencethatcannolongerafford—and is no longer interested in attending— today’s oversized festivals.

It’s not just the fans who are affected. Smaller bands can no longer compete for a spot at Osheaga if they’re already reserved for the same 50 acts currently on the festival circuit. Without large festival payouts, bands end up needing to tour more to make money.

But touring also costs money; bands need a strong local base to start from beforethey can committo playing shows outside of their city. This support comes from city and provincial arts funds, local talent promotion, and venues. Artists benefitmostfromcommunity-oriented, not-for-profitorganizations,suchasPOP Montreal.

Unlike Osheaga, POP Montreal has been committed to promoting local and international talent for the past 17 years. In addition to their annual five-day festival, POP promotes concerts year-

Osheaga has succumbed to the global festival trend of homogenization.

(L-A Benoit / The McGill Triubne) round, holds stages at several festivals and organises gallery spaces and craft marketsaroundMontreal.POPisnot-forprofit, meaning the company’s focus is always on lineup quality and new talent promotion.

POP Montreal’s founder Dan Seligman believes that a city’s music scene is a delicate ecosystem. He breaks down some of the key issues of Montreal’s scene, starting with smaller venues’ licensing structures.

“When you’re a small performance space, you function differently than a bar that just sells alcohol, and that’s something that needs to be addressed,” Seligmansaid.“Smallervenuesaresetup as for-profit private companies but they function more in the realm of cultural, sometimes non-profit entities. Often smaller venues aren’t able to receive funding because they’re largely under the same jurisdiction as a bar.”

Seligman cites London as an example for Montreal to follow, where Mayor Sadiq Khan implemented a program to support small, grassroots venues that promote emerging talent.

Khan believes in the transformative power of art and has invested more in London’s culture and creative industries than any of London’s previous mayors.

Seligman believes that Montreal should adopt a similar program in order to preserve opportunities for bands that are starting out.

“There should be more of a longterm plan for the city, province, and potentially the federal government to support smaller venues,” Seligman said.

“It would be beneficial for Montreal to look at how the various levels of governmentcansupportsmallervenues that are important to small bands and emerging talent, because if there aren’t

spaces to support these bands then the whole ecosystem is hurt. Smaller bands won’t become more popular and go on to play bigger venues like Club Soda or Metropolis.”

In light of recent closures, the need for governmental investment in Montreal’s arts and culture scene is more glaring than ever. Since streaming services and piracy have replaced CDs and actually paying for downloads, it’s moreimportantthaneverthatemerging acts have access to performance spaces.

“Things have changed in terms of the ability to sell music,” Seligman said.

“A lot of artists have to tour more, and the bigger corporate festivals end up being able to pay artists a lot more than they would normally be paid. It’s hard to not play a big festival when it [could be] such a big part of their income.”

The trick is getting big enough to be on the festival radar. Play Divan Orange enough times, and you get big enough to play Sala Rossa or Le Ritz, and then you can move on to Club Soda, and then Metropolis. By this point, ideally a band is big enough that Osheaga spots them and says, “Hey, come play our festival.”

For bands that are already playing to crowds of 1000 people, this is easy enough—but for bands just starting out, venues like Divan Orange—set to close this spring—are necessary to get the word out and start building a fan base.

“It’s important to realize that there’s a greater ecosystem that supports music culture in a city,” Seligman said.

“The city administration needs to figure out a way to support different levels of cultural participation. The bands that are headlining the big festivals start somewhere, so in order for them to get started, we need to be supportive.”

Wednesday, April 11, 2018 | 23

Dollar Cinema provides a hospitable filmgoing experience

Bernie Gurberg’s independent theatre is a bastion of Montreal’s film community Katia Innes Contributor There’s a lot you can get for $2.50. A small Iced Capp from Tim Hortons costs that much. But at a movie theatre, $2.50 doesn’t go very far—it might buy you a bag of fuzzy peaches. At Dollar Cinema, however, a two-screen theatre located in the Decarie Square mall, second-run movies show for $2.50. At this bargain price, Dollar Cinema has become an unlikely haven for the many who stumble across its neon-lit marquee and $1 buttered popcorn.

Bernie Gurberg, a former garment manufacturer and one-time mayoral candidate, opened Dollar Cinema in 2004. When the old Cineplex Odeon in Decarie Square closed, Gurberg set up shop, aiming to showcase current films at budget rates to make theatre-going a more affordable experience. Besides showing new releases, Gurberg also makes a point of having special screenings for classic films, such as Pulp Fiction, at a higher price of $5.

Dollar Cinema fills the gap that corporate movie theatres have left.

With increasingly high ticket prices, it’s hard for the everyday family to simply go to the movies. Tickets at the Scotiabank Theatre cost $13.50 for an adult, and $8.99 for a child, whereas a family of four can see a movie at Dollar Cinema for $10.00.

Lorenzo (who asked to be identified only by his first name), a frequent patron of Dollar Cinema, works with special needs children and finds that Gurberg’s low prices make for the perfect outing. “[I’ve been here] about a thousand times,” Lorenzo said. “Every Saturday since it opened [....] It’s a learning experience for [the kids] because they have sensory problems [....] I can come here and [...] it’s inexpensive […] so instead of going to Famous Players where it’s a more chaotic environment, here it’s more affordable, and the parents are [comfortable] with it.”

What makes Dollar Cinema special is how accessible it is—families, newly immigrated ones in particular, make up most of Gurberg’s clientele.

Customer loyalty is hardly a factor for corporate theatres such as Cineplex.

Gurberg, however, matches his community’s dedication with his own

Bernie Gurberg has been working Dollar Cinema’s box office every day for the past 14 years.

(Christopher Li / The McGill Tribune) dependability.

“It’s affordable, and we’re not as similar to the other cinemas in the sense that I’m here, meaning that I talk to everybody […] so I [...] know so many more people than I would in the ordinary standard way, working in an office,” said Gurberg. “[I’ve been meeting] a lot of people, every day, for the past 14 years.”

Dollar Cinema is open every day until midnight, every day of the year, including holidays, and Gurberg is there for almost every showtime. In the fringes of Montreal, Gerberg has created a community of moviegoers, as dedicated to him as he is to them.

“It’s successful, but with the prices being as low as they are, the rent being high in a shopping mall, causes it not do well financially, but my heart and soul are getting the extra satisfaction,” Gurberg said.

ALBUM REVIEW

Unknown Mortal Orchestra Sex & Food

24

|

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

When Unknown Mortal Orchestra first appeared with a standalone online single in 2010, the identity of its creator was unknown, and an air of mystery surrounded the song. It featured an uncanny, lo-fi voice singing strange words over a psychedelic guitar riff, and a weird title, “Ffunny Ffriends.” Since then, they’ve released four critically-successful records, toured the world multiple times, and achieved indie hits with songs like “MultiLove” and “So Good at Being in Trouble.” Yet throughout their growth in popularity and the development of their musical style, a feeling of mystery remains present in their music, permeating their newest album, Sex & Food, which was released on April 6.

Perhaps the mystery comes from the distortion and layering frequently applied to the voice of lead singer and songwriter, RubanNielson.Fromsongtosong,hisidentity changes—at times, his voice resembles a transmission from a distant alien planet, sent to deliver an enigmatic message. The album’s lyricscontainsuchenigmasas“Awokewithlong fingernails / In the internet of love.”

Distortion is not limited to the vocals.

Nielson’sguitarreverbs,floats,scratches,and sings, depending on the song. Nielson has

alwaysbeenatalentedguitarist,andonsongs like “The Internet of Love,” his virtuosity takes centre stage. On “Hunnybee,” a hypnotic riff repeatsbeneatheveryverseuntilthesolo,when histoned-upelectricguitarslashesthroughthe peaceful background like a bolt of lighting.

Then, in the middle of the album, there is “Chronos Feasts on his Children,” a short, stripped-back number where the distortion recedesandweareleftwithNielson’srawvoice andguitar.Inanalbumsothickwithprocessing, thesongisabreathoffreshair,andtheemotion deliveredbeneaththecharacteristicallysurreal lyrics is direct.

What makes Sex & Food a success, is that every song contains an emotion: A real feeling. After multiple listens, it is these emotions which rise to the surface, gasping, beneath the layers of alien guitar fuzz.

-Leo Stillinger (Contributor) arts & entertainment

science & technology Caffeine: A brewing controversy

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

|

25

A student’s guide to safe caffeine consumption for proper growth and development Domenica Cirone Contributor Caffeine—a stimulant that is actually classified as a drug—is a saving grace for many students during exam season, when coffee and energy drinks start to replace sleep. Although this particular lifestyle can’t be described as healthy, the extent of caffeine’s harm is debated. Scientifically speaking, there is a significant amount of controversy surrounding the consumption of this stimulant—specifically around whether caffeine has the potential to stunt growth, and the limits that should be put on caffeine consumption.

Yet, that doesn’t stop North American society from being caffeine-dependent. In 2013, a study conducted by the National Coffee Association claimed that the cumulative American population drinks about 587 millions cups of coffee per day: That’s almost two cups per person per day. Similarly, according to the Coffee Association of Canada, the average coffee consumption for Canadian coffee drinkers over the age of 18 is roughly three cups per day.

The MayoClinic’s recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for caffeine is 400 milligrams daily, representing the amount of caffeine that most healthy adults can safely consume without any major side effects. While caffeine’s RDA is equivalent to about four cups of brewed coffee, for energy drinks and carbonated beverages, the number of drinks one can safely consume depends largely on the amount of caffeine

per serving. When it comes to children, however, the MayoClinic advises that this demographic should not be consuming caffeine, and advises adolescents to limit their intake.

The main concern regarding caffeine consumption among youth is when caffeinated beverages begin to replace nutritious alternatives that are important for development.

“The bones [of young people] need calcium to keep growing, to achieve optimal bone density,” Sylvia Santosa, a registered dietician and associate professor in the Department of Exercise Science at Concordia University, told The McGill Tribune. “Drinking beverages with low nutritional density, such as coffee or soda, decreases the amount of nutrients consumed for optimal growth and development. Caffeine also binds minerals from the foods that we eat and decreases their absorption as well.”

This decreased absorption of calcium can subsequently impact growth and development. In response to these findings, the Canadian government has set RDA guidelines to try and moderate caffeine consumption among youth in different age categories.

The growth effects, and other effects, of the stimulant are also dependent on the sensitivity of the individual.

“Some people are more sensitive to the effects of caffeine than others,” Santosa said. “Overconsumption

of caffeine can cause side effects such as rapid heartbeat, irritability, restlessness, upset stomach, insomnia, and tremors.”

Restlessness or insomnia caused by an overconsumption of caffeine is another factor that affects growth. According to a study in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, a large amount of growth hormone is secreted during sleep in developing children. A caffeine-induced lack of sleep could further negatively impact growth and development.

Surprisingly, however, there is a lack of evidence indicating that caffeine stunts growth. Santosa described this rumour as an old wives tale.

“In general, consuming anything low in nutrients in place of foods that are high in nutrients can theoretically affect growth,” Santosa said.

Overall, the consensus is that, if not consumed in excess, caffeine is fairly safe. A study from the National Cancer Institute has even suggested that regular coffee consumers are at a lower risk of dying from various lifestyle diseases including heart disease, respiratory disease, diabetes mellitus, stroke, and numerous infections, although no links have been associated with cancer risk reduction. The real risks start to appear with the consumption of caffeine in quantities higher than the RDA allows, and when it is consumed in replacement of highly-nutritious foods.

A McGill club’s mapping mission

Through open-source software, the Open Mapping Group seeks to cover all bases

Emma Avery Managing Editor U3 students Hannah Rebentisch, Caroline Thompson, Hannah Ker, Jan Oledan, and Cameron Power, with various concentrations in geography and geographic information systems (GIS), are bringing the mission of mapping to McGill. After attending the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Conference in September 2017, they met representatives from a global organization called YouthMappers, which seeks to build students’ capacities to map their own communities and build resiliency against natural disasters. Returning to McGill, they created the McGill Open Mapping Group (OMG), the first chapter of YouthMappers at any Canadian university.

GIS, the system used in basically all mapping efforts, is designed to analyze, represent, and interpret spatial data in order to understand spatial relationships or patterns. GIScience refers to the science behind implementing and conceptualizing the actual GIS models. While McGill offers a geography minor in Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing, OMG seeks to encourage the participation of all McGill students by using a free, open source software, rather than the paid—and notoriously difficult—ArcGIS software used in most McGill courses.

“We try and raise awareness on campus of the importance of mapping and spatial data and how you can use open source tools to collect and store this data, and then how it can be used to promote

community-building and resilience for communities and cities around the world,” Rebentisch said.

This goal can be achieved through OpenStreetMap (OSM), an online mapping site that relies on voluntary contributors around the world to create an open-source, editable map of the world.

It contains data from many regions that are not available through sites like Google Maps, and apps like Uber and Craigslist depend on its free basemaps.

Tim Elrick, director of the McGill Geographic Information Centre and the group’s faculty advisor, has extensive experience with the OSM community and has been an integral source of support for the new group.

This year, at OMG’s first two “mapathons”— where people get together to map—participants mapped building locations in Williams Lake, British Columbia, and Khairpur, Pakistan. The Williams Lake mapathon contributed to Statistics Canada’s Building Canada 2020 initiative, which aims to map all buildings in Canada by 2020. Because official government maps are incomplete in their coverage, organizations like the Red Cross rely on OSM during humanitarian crises. The mapping of an area like Williams Lake, which is particularly prone to forest fires, can increase response time and ability in these types of crises.

At the same time, OMG prioritizes community involvement and consultation in each of its projects.

The opportunity for collaboration with students in Shah Abdul Latif University in Pakistan arose

when a visiting scholar, Fayaz Baqir, from Pakistan approached Sarah Moser, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at McGill, with the idea, who then put him in contact with OMG. “It’s obviously very problematic to just [...] do armchair mapping [...] without really understanding the context or the implications of what you’re doing,” Rebentisch said. “[The idea of ethical mapping] really informed our approach with the [Pakistani] collaboration where obviously we wanted to contribute what we could, [...but] it needed to also be approved and directed to some extent [by and for] the community itself.”

In May, OMG plans to host a “mapping party” to map accessibility points on McGill’s campus, including ramps, elevators, and stairways. In this way, open source programs such as OSM reflect the needs and perspectives of those who contribute to them. However, equitable mapping is a continuous challenge, as what is represented on a map is often reflective of the person who created it. This is especially troubling given that OSM’s contributor base is overwhelmingly male—something that student mapping groups like OMG aim to change. “[There are] a lot of movements to have more women be mapping, because [studies have] found that when women make the maps they add more things that you know weren’t on there before, so they’ll add childcare centres [for example],” Thompson said. “So many different voices have the opportunity to change and enrich the map.”

Ask a Geologist: How do islands form?

The story of submarine volcanoes and their island children Emma Gillies Staff Writer Earth’s surface is constantly changing due to a number of natural processes: Rivers transport sediment, glaciers carve valleys, and colliding tectonic plates build mountains. One of the planet’s most impressive talents, however, is the formation of islands.

In recent decades, various new islands have popped up.

The island of Nishinoshima off the coast of Japan formed from an eruption in 1973, and Yaya Island formed in 2013 near Russia. In Newfoundland and Labrador, sea level rise and coastal erosion turned a former peninsula into an island called Sandy Point in the 1960s.

Although islands can be formed by a variety of processes—such as clashing continents, sediment deposition, and glacial retreat—one of the most prominent ways in which they appear is through the convection currents of the mantle, the layer of earth directly below the crust. These

currents cause Earth’s tectonic plates to move and interact with one another, which leads to phenomena like earthquakes and continental drift. When tectonic plates are pushed and pulled apart, they form volcanoes, causing eruptions when the plates are pulled apart. As hot magma rises from the crevasses created, it eventually builds up to form islands.

According to Christie Rowe, a geologist and associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, there are two types of submarine volcanoes that create islands: Island arc volcanoes and hotspots. “[Island arc volcanoes] are formed when there’s a subduction zone, so the oceanic plate is actually going down into the mantle, where it triggers melting,” Rowe said in an interview with The McGill Tribune.

In this way, a convergence of two plates can result in a long belt of simultaneously

active volcanoes, like those of Guam, Tonga, Fiji, and Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.

On the other hand, hotspots are point sources of magma that are not associated with a plate boundary. They typically form island chains like Hawaii, Réunion, and the Azores. “[Hotspots] can also come up under continents,” Rowe said. “Yellowstone [National Park] is a mantle melt source that’s not associated with a plate boundary.”

The mechanisms that create hotspots are not fully understood. Nevertheless, all volcanoes essentially work in the same way. An island is formed when magma builds up and breaks the ocean’s surface. In some cases, like the island of Hawaii, land masses merge together.

Each volcano is a bit different, and so are the rates at which they form. For many volcanoes, formation can take thousands of years, though some volcanic islands can sometimes appear quite

One of the most prominent ways in which islands are formed is through convection currents of the Earth’s mantle.

(Daria Kiseleva / The McGill Tribune)

suddenly.

“In terms of becoming an island, it depends on how deep [the] water they’re in [is] and how productive their magma source is,” Rowe said.

The formation of mud volcanoes—which are not true igneous volcanoes, since they don’t contain lava—can be observed in a day. In 2013, a 7.7-magnitude earthquake hit Pakistan and caused a mud volcano to form the island Zalzala Koh, which sank into the ocean three years later.

In the 1960s, a three-yearlong volcanic eruption off the southern coast of Iceland gave birth to a new island that

has since been colonized by plant and animal life. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Surtsey is a valuable location for scientists to study ecological succession.

“There are whole ecosystems basically based off the colonization of volcanic islands,” Rowe said.

Still, the transformation of a barren magma island to one able to support life is not unique to Surtsey. Earth is often called the ‘Dynamic Planet’ because it is always changing—volcanic islands like Hawaii and Réunion remind us of nature’s ability to do so.

March for Science to unite Montreal community The April 14 demonstration will advocate for evidence-based policy

Catherine Morrison Student Living Editor On both sides of the Canadian-American border, governments are enacting environmentally harmful policies. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is, controversially, expanding the Kinder Morgan Pipeline, and American President Donald Trump plans on weakening fuel economy regulations, which would counter former president Barack Obama’s strides in reducing greenhouse gas emissions through creating efficient fuel standards for transportation vehicles. To respond to these policies, Montreal will hold the March for Science on April 14, co-hosted by the March for Science and Evidence for Democracy organizations. This annual event has been held in 26

|

cities from coast to coast with the goal of bringing together communities by celebrating science and advocating for evidence-based policy.

Bishop’s University student Vince Scully is the main organizer of the event.

When describing the origins of the march, Scully described it as having originated from similar marches in the United States.

“It was an American event in the beginning,” Scully told The McGill Tribune. “Once Trump was elected, he started trying to silence all the scientists. To counter his actions, specifically what he’s been doing with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a march was created. Now, there have been over 50 marches in cities around the planet to support them.”

As solutions to environmental issues

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

continue to be negated, events such as these are crucial to gathering public support to make issues visible in spite of a government trying to hide the truth.

“With the march we hope to show people that without science you can’t have a democratized world,” Scully said. “Scientists are being silenced all the time, and they can’t talk about what [their] research is about [or] what [they’re] doing to make the world a better place. Similarly to what we saw when Harper was prime minister, the government continues to silence scientists and journalists.”

Scully explained that the movement also hopes to bring attention to the censorship of people working for environmental agencies in the government. Employees of these organizations are often

limited by their superiors in the extent to which they can express their thoughts on environmental issues.

“The EPA doesn’t allow people to voice their concerns about a lot of things,” Scully said. “Scientists working for the EPA can’t write a bunch of words like ‘climate change’ in their documents. We’re trying to get that voice back.”

While the event is a great way to educate attendees about current environmental issues, it also offers a space for students and scientists to come together and take a stance in showing their support for environmental action.

“Science is an integral part of society,” Scully said.

“We need it in order to move forward as a community and a country. An event like this is important for anyone who wants to be a part of working

towards a better future.

Specifically for students, what we’re trying to do [through this event] is show that they have a voice and if they work hard enough they can make themselves heard in order to make political change.”

Whether you have a passion for environmental policy, or simply want to learn about current environmental issues, Scully encourages you to do so alongside a community of supporters and attend the March for Science on April 14.

“Through making ourselves heard, we can make the world look more like what we want,” Scully said. “We can make it more environmentallyfriendly and more peaceful. If we don’t do everything in our power to get our point across, the government will keep doing what they’re doing and nothing will change.” science & technology

The Willy Trip: A student initiative to learn about rocks Founded in 1978, the trip provides students first-hand, international experience in geology Océane Marescal Staff Writer In many programs at McGill, experiential learning opportunities are difficult to access. A student group with a passion for geology has found their own solution to this frustrating barrier. Every year, students from the earth and planetary science department organize a reading week field trip to a geologically-rich region of the world. Founded in 1978 by Professor Anthony Williams-Jones, the field trip— dubbed the “Willy” trip in honour of its founder—offers McGill students a chance to gain first-hand experience in the field of geology. WilliamsJones, professor and Logan Chair in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science, is still involved in helping students facilitate the trip, though it is mostly studentrun from start to finish.

The process begins in the Fall semester, when interested students meet to decide on a destination.

They discuss a number of prospective locations, and the group votes by process of elimination. This year, the group chose Guatemala from

Student attendees of the 2017 Willy trip to Indonesia visiting a local mine. (Jordan Kasarjian) Daphne Saint-Denis, location in a triple junction—a a U3 earth and planetary place where three tectonic science major, described her plates meet. This feature has experience on this year’s Willy resulted in exciting geological phenomena like volcanism, Trip. “[It’s] an incredible metamorphism—or changes learning experience in the in the composition of rock— sense that we need to plan, and sedimentation.

“For me, a big highlight research, and organize the whole thing and as a team was our snorkelling day in too,” Saint-Denis said. “It is the southern tip of the Belize basically a really fun and non- reef,” Saint-Denis said. “We formal way to gain geology also got to climb an active field experience, which is volcano, which was huge for really important for our everyone on the trip really.”

For Zach Kowalsky, also learning process.”

After all of the planning a U3 earth and planetary this year, the students science major, the best part of enjoyed two weeks in the trip was visiting the Tikal Guatemala. The country’s National Park. Tikal, located in unique geology is thanks to its Northern Guatemala’s Petén

a list that also included Mexico, Tanzania, and Morocco.

After choosing a destination, students split the complex undertaking of organizing the trip into smaller subtasks: Some students focus on reserving flights, contacting geologists in the decided location, or fundraising. This year, the 15 student attendees of the trip raised over 10,000 dollars to fund their voyage. Others plan the itinerary, which usually includes mine visits and tours of geological features like volcanoes, mountains, reefs, calderas, or caves, complemented by culturallyenriching activities and visits.

region, is one of the most important archaeological complexes left by the Mayan civilization, and consists of numerous ruins dating back to 600 B.C. The region surrounding the ruins, known as the Maya Forest, is home to diverse landscapes and species.

Kowalsky described his experience at Tikal National Park to The McGill Tribune.

“We were there from the early morning until it closed, and it had a multitude of paths walking through the jungle, where you could appreciate the nature of the region,” Kowalsky said. “We spotted spider monkeys and howler monkeys in their natural habitat, which was pretty surreal.”

The next Willy Trip is set to take place in March 2019, with preliminary meetings beginning during the Fall 2018 semester. Although it is recommended that participants have taken one or two geology classes prior to participating, the trip is open to any McGill student with a feverish interest in geology and who is willing to commit the time and hard work to organizing the trip.

A story of community: Trees, fungi, and microbes work hand-in-hand Researchers at McGill and UdeM unearth a depolluting mechanism in plants Ronny Litvack-Katzman Contributor Researchers at McGill, in partnership with the Université de Montréal’s (UdeM) Plant Biology Research Institute, have discovered a hidden ecosystem that works to clean polluted land. The project consisted of a collaboration between Nicholas Brereton, a research fellow at UdeM’s Plant Biology Research Institute and senior author of the study, and Emmanuel Gonzalez, a bioinformatics consultant in McGill’s Department of Human Genetics. The team demonstrated the existence of a tripartite relationship between plants, fungi, and bacteria that allows trees to break up petroleum hydrocarbons in contaminated soil. This symbiosis of sorts allows trees to thrive in stressful conditions, in which their integrity may usually be compromised.

The study, published in Microbiome in March 2018, followed the lives of willow trees planted at suburban sites in Montreal, examining their roots and soil profiles.

By looking at these two factors, the researchers were able to understand the extent to which they had been affected by pollution.

“We walked in and [assumed that we] knew what the answer was,” Brereton said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “[This is] the worst way to do science. We science & technology

[assumed that] the roots established themselves and produced monooxygenases, enzymes which would degrade the oil, but they weren’t there.”

After noticing that the soil was essentially depolluted, the researchers intuitively concluded that the degree of purification was too extensive to have been the work of the tree alone.

“From a biologist’s perspective, if we had just targeted the tree, we would have walked away with the wrong story,” Brereton said. “It is a collective function.

You don’t see these complicated interactions across life unless you look [closely.]”

Using differential expression, an advanced type of genetic analysis in which genes are isolated and compared to a vast database, Brereton and Gonzalez’s team was able to observe entire pathways of genetic activity.

Bacteria, which express genes in large groups, cannot be taken apart and analyzed individually through gene sequencing. To address this problem, Gonzalez developed a novel program to decode the order of these bacterial genes and the genes themselves.

“The order [of the genes] is quite important,” Gonzalez said. “If you switch the order, the story is hard to understand. This order is what told the story.”

What they found in the soil was a rich assortment

of microbes and fungi, interacting with the roots of the willow tree. By conducting their research in the natural conditions of the ecosystem, the team was able to see the full scope of organismal interactions.

“The vast majority of [the] complexity is in the fungi directly interacting with the willow to create a response,” Brereton said.

Previously, researchers thought that the tree did the majority of the work in the decontamination process. According to Brereton, the study identified approximately 8,000 fungal genes in the genetic pathway that cleaned the soil, and only about 2,000 willow genes, indicating that the tree does not work alone.

The trees, fungi, and microbes not only rid the soil of pollutants, but reinvigorated it.

“Before the trees were planted, you looked at the soil and there was just nothing there, just small patches of grass,” Gonzalez said. “After a year you look and there is a whole forest.”

The willows present a new opportunity to address affordable and sustainable waste management practices. The impact of planting trees in contaminated land reaps more benefits than simply purifying the soil.

“We can use the biomass produced [by the trees] for renewable energy as well and for green chemistry, such as sustainable chemicals,” Brereton said.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

|

27

cartoons 28 | Wednesday, April 11, 2018

How do I leave the SSMU? / Erica Stefano

The Last Lunch in SSMU / Daria Kiseleva

Everyday Interactions / Sabrina Girard-Lamas

The Joys of Spring / Sunny Kim

Goodbye McGill / Arshaaq Jiffry

Mice @ McGill: Rat-stricted Diet / Winnie Lin

sports Wednesday, April 11, 2018 | 29

Intramurals at McGill The social side of sports Jordan Foy Staff Writer Given that over 40,000 students attend McGill every year, it’s not surprising that many were athletes before coming to McGill. For some, sports were not only a passion growing up, but a way to connect with peers. While McGill has a variety of varsity and club teams, not every student has the skill or time to play at such a competitive level.

Fortunately, the intramural program offers an accessible option for McGill students to remain involved in sports. “[Intramurals are] an opportunity for McGill students, [staff, and alumni] to participate in organized sport [in a] recreational setting,” Perry Karnofsky, Manager of Campus Recreation, explained to The McGill Tribune.

The McGill intramural program features an average of 10 sports every semester, with leagues ranging from basketball to ultimate frisbee. Every semester, approximately 3,500 members of the McGill community participate on over 300 teams. Seasons generally start at the beginning of the semester, and teams register for different divisions based on experience level and competitiveness.

For many students, the intramural program becomes an integral social component of their time at McGill: It’s an outlet for them to meet other McGill students outside of their classes, as well as strengthen the friendships they already have.

U3 Engineering student Athar Ejaz highlights intramural sports as a unique opportunity to expand his social circle. Ejaz is the league coordinator for inner tube water polo and ultimate frisbee and a member of multiple teams. “[Intramurals bring] together thousands of players,” Ejaz said. “These are people [who] you would see in your classes, or see on the street, but never say ‘hi’ to. But then after a couple times seeing them [at intramural games…] outside of the intramural context you might [reach out to them].”

For Kirk Wright, U3 Arts, playing intramural sports proved to be an invaluable method to strengthen relationships with existing friends.

Wright—who has played ultimate frisbee, ice hockey, and inner tube water polo—began his intramural career on a basketball team that formed in his first-year residence. The team has maintained the same nucleus of players throughout Wright’s four years. He cites his time with the team as one of his most valuable intramural experiences “[We went] from losing a game by 100 points in our first year to now, [where] we just made the playoffs this season,” Wright said. “It’s definitely been a journey [….] We’re not necessarily varsity athletes who get to compete at a high level, but it is fun to still have that experience and grow with people and develop.”

There are other benefits to participating in an intramural sport beyond the social aspect. The heavy course load at McGill can make it difficult

McGill’s intramural program is known for a wide range of sports, but particularly its inner tube water polo leagues. (Matthew McAlear) to live an active lifestyle, but intramurals give students a reason to move from the library to the court, field, or pool. “[Students] tend to get tunnel vision [and think] academics are the only thing that matters,” Ejaz said. “It is the thing that matters most, but a lot of people don’t realize that if they have a more balanced lifestyle, they’d have a better time.”

Intramural sports provide a fun release for overworked McGill students. Natalya Dreszer, U3 Environment, relied on intramurals throughout her undergraduate degree to elevate her mood, particularly during the dreary winter months. “[Intramurals helped me] to get out of the house, [and it was nice] going and having a laugh, especially with inner tube water polo,” Dreszer said. “I can’t say enough good things about [it].

When else are you getting into your swimsuit in winter and jumping in the water?”

As the intramural program is open to alumni, some students continue to involve themselves after they graduate. Ali Sobhi, BComm ‘09, played on a variety of intramural teams throughout his undergraduate degree, although soccer was his main sport. Sobhi remains involved with intramurals at McGill, because of the community they foster. “[Your teammates] become your [friends], and then you get to know them, so you just keep playing [with them],” Sobhi said. “It’s [more fun] to play with people you know.”

Many intramural competitors get their introduction to McGill’s program via word of mouth, generally through friends who are already involved. This informal promotion system can exclude students who might not have the right connections. As a partial solution, there are free agent meetings and Facebook groups organized for most sports at the beginning of each semester, offering an alternative avenue to find a team. Still, despite the program’s best efforts, Karnofsky acknowledges that outreach is an area that needs work.

“When [students are] coming to Montreal in August [they] get bombarded with information,

and registering for an intramural sport is probably somewhere on the back-burner,” Karnofsky said.

“We have some work to do, to kind of just plant the seed, whether it’s with the floor fellows, or with some of the student leaders to present [to new students] that this option exists.”

And, despite its widespread success, many students wish that intramurals were able to offer more: Dreszer expressed frustration with its capacity, caused by what she felt was a lack of resources.

“I wish that there was more time for intramural sports, [and] that there was more space for it,” Dreszer said. “I know people haven’t been able to get on teams because there’s not enough room.

And I wish that there [were] more drop-in times, and more support for teams.”

While some are frustrated by perceived limitations, the intramural program is forced to compete with clubs, teams, and even departments for access to facilities. Karnofsky stressed that the shared facilities place boundaries on what sports and game times are available for selection.

“One of the challenges [we face is that] we share the facility with the Department of Physical Education, and the varsity program,” Karnofsky said. “In terms of priority, it’s education first, [then] varsity with all their games and practices, and we get what’s left over.”

Despite these challenging conditions, intramurals have become a regular weekly activity for many students. While sports may not be for everyone, the intramural community has the potential to broaden McGill students’ social horizons. In discussing his overall experience at McGill, Wright explained that the program was an integral part of his time at university.

“The McGill experience is a nebulous concept, because at such a big university there’s something for everyone,” Wright said. “Intramurals provide a really safe, fun, affordable way to get involved in sports [.…] It’s an underutilized outlet that people don’t really think of when they talk about their McGill experience, and how to build a good social circle, and stay active.”

The McGill Tribune end-of-season

athletic awards

Stephen Gill Sports Editor

Photos by McGill Athletics.

2017-2018 Martlet Awards

2017-2018 Redmen Awards

Team of the year:

Team of the year:

Martlet basketball

The Martlets’ 2017-18 season couldn’t quite follow up on their prior campaign’s record highs—including a first-ever national championship title.

Regardless, this year should be considered a success. Led by veterans Alex KissRusk and Frederique Potvin, among others, the Martlets made it to the U Sports semifinals by constantly improving throughout the season.

After winning just one of four matchups with the Université Laval Rouge et Or in the regular season, McGill put Laval away with a close win in the RSEQ championship, earning the squad a trip to Regina for nationals. The Martlets comfortably closed out the McMaster Marauders in the quarterfinal, and then gave the undefeated, eventual-national champion Carleton Ravens all they could handle in a hard-fought, two-point semifinal loss.

A perfect combination of experience and young talent aligned for the Redmen this season. Combining an upper class chock-full of veteran fourth- and fifth-years with an injection of youth, McGill rolled through the RSEQ and through to the U Sports semifinals with ease. After a dominant conference season that saw the Redmen beat RSEQ opponents by nearly 22 points per game—including five 30-plus-point annihilations—the squad took down the University of New Brunswick by 31 points in the national quarterfinals. Unfortunately, their offence faltered against the eventual national champion University of Calgary Dinos in the semifinals. McGill nearly bounced back to give the Carleton Ravens a scare during the subsequent third-place game, but ultimately had to settle for fourth place.

Athlete of the year:

Player of the year:

Alex Kiss-Rusk,

Martlet basketball

After earning The McGill Tribune’s nod for athlete of the year last year, Alex Kiss-Rusk’s 2017-18 campaign was similarly monstrous. The six-foot four centre easily led the RSEQ in both rebounds (11.8 per game) and doubledoubles (11 total) again, while also proving to be one of its best scorers (14.3 points per game), shooters (45 field goal percentage), and shot-blockers (1.2 blocks per game). Impressive showcases like her 27-point, 14-rebound performance against Concordia on Nov. 18 and her 18-point, 17-rebound, five-block outing versus the University of New Brunswick during non-conference play added more than enough exclamation points to her concluding season. With her memorable days of wearing a McGill jersey over, she traded McGill’s red and white for Canada’s at the Commonwealth Games from April 5-15 in Australia.

Coach of the year:

Rachèle Béliveau,

Martlet volleyball

Despite her team falling to Laval in the RSEQ semifinals, there was plenty for Martlet volleyball Head Coach Rachèle Béliveau to be proud of this season. Her squad proved to be a thorn in the sides of the RSEQ’s other top two squads—the Université de Montréal (UdeM) Carabins and the Laval Rouge et Or. With a combined 4-4 regular-season record against the two, the Martlets showed that they belong in the RSEQ’s top tier.

Still, most notable for Béliveau was her 600th career win, which came in a Jan. 27 victory against the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees.

Redmen basketball

Dele Ogundokun,

Redmen basketball

The 2017-18 season was business as usual for fifth-year guard Dele Ogundokun, who capped a remarkable McGill career in familiar, outstanding fashion, earning RSEQ First Team All-Star and U Sports Second Team All-Canadian honours once again. This season, Ogundokun’s contributions rewarded the Redmen with another impressive campaign.

Ogundokun’s stifling defensive effort helped him nab 2.4 steals per game—tied for the highest mark in the conference— while he added the second-best per-game stats for McGill in almost every other category: Points (11.4), rebounds (5.4), and assists (2.1).

Coach of the year:

Peter Carpenter,

Redmen swimming

Peter Carpenter, head coach of both the Redmen and the Martlet swimming teams, built on last year’s success to help push his athletes to new heights in 2018. At the U Sports national championships, the Redmen stepped from an 11th-place 2017 finish up to seventh place this season. The Redmen and Martlets combined to break seven school records at the meet in Toronto, while second-year Samuel Wang’s silver medal in the 50m butterfly highlighted the weekend—and Carpenter took home U Sports Men’s Swimming Coach of the Year honours alongside the University of British Columbia’s Steve Price.

Rookie of the year:

Rookie of the year:

Kellyanne Lecours,

Keanu Yamamoto,

Martlet hockey

Redmen hockey

Since scoring the first Martlet goal of conference play this season, forward Kellyanne Lecours made an instant impact on Martlet hockey in 2017-18. She followed that performance up with consistently stellar play throughout the year—including two three-point outings against UdeM— leading to OUA all-rookie honours. Despite missing eight games, Lecours finished the season with the team’s third-highest point total and second-best points per-game mark.

On June 23, 2017, the Edmonton Oilers took Keanu Yamamoto’s younger brother, Kailer, with the 22nd pick in the NHL draft. However, after a standout rookie year with the Redmen, Keanu has made a name of his own.

In just his ninth career OUA match, he broke out with a hat trick against the Royal Military College Paladins on Nov. 3. Yamamoto finished his inaugural campaign with 14 goals and 19 assists—good for the Redmen’s third-best points total.

30

|

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

sports

Sun Youth: Levelling the playing field for the community Montreal organization shines its light far beyond sport Ender McDuff Contributor When Dimitri Manolopoulos was 15, he expressed his intention to drop out to his football coach. The next week, his coach, Earl De La Perralle, took Manolopoulos on a drive to a Montreal factory where he told the student that, if he chose, there was a job awaiting him inside.

Seeing potential in the young man, however, Earl De La Peralle also highlighted the path that Manolopoulos could follow through continued education. The next day, Manolopoulos returned to class. Today, he is a Master’s graduate, National Bank employee, and a member of the Board of Directors for the organization that transformed his life: Sun Youth.

Sun Youth began in 1954, when nine-year-old Earl De La Peralle and his 13-year-old friend Sid Stevens created “The Clark Street Sun.” The Sun was a handwritten one-page newspaper that could be rented—as it started with only two copies—for two cents per copy, to raise money for their hockey team’s new uniforms. The pair went door-to-door distributing their paper. At the end of the Sun’s first year, they had raised $500 —the equivalent of 25,000 reads.

Since then, the organization has grown, and youth sports became central to its objective, as Sun Youth now provides a path to mentorship and promotes continued education.

Sun Youth’s work has led to countless success stories. According to its website, the organization serves as a way to instill in young students the importance of school. It encourages academic excellence by restricting athletic activities to non-school hours and providing student athletes with a study hall—where they can

do homework with an internet connection and the guidance of tutors and retired teachers. The Sun Youth Wall of Fame highlights over 150 students who have used Sun Youth sport to help achieve post-secondary education.

In 2019, Sun Youth will celebrate its 65th anniversary.

In those years, the organization has come a long way, from two copies of a community newspaper to an NGO that works closely with municipal government and law enforcement. The organization provides athletic opportunities and an array of emergency services— including medication, food assistance, and school supplies distribution—that ensure that basic needs are met for disadvantaged families in the Greater Montreal area. Additionally Sun Youth crime prevention services operate in the community through bike patrols and youth mentorship programs. Earl De La Perralle and Stevens—now 73 and 77—remain a part of that work everyday.

“They were immigrant kids, [...] they didn’t have a lot,” Kara De La Perralle, Sun Youth’s Assistant Director of Sports and Recreation and Earl De La Perralle’s daughter, said. “[They asked themselves], ‘what’s needed in the community? What can we do to help out?’”

Like Earl De La Perralle and Stevens, many of the staff and volunteers remain involved for a very long time. Coaches for Sun Youth’s two competitive sports— basketball and football—are often former Sun Youth participants themselves, so it’s easy for the participants to find a mentor with whom they can connect, due to their shared experiences.

“Kids look to their coaches for help, and for us it’s

Sun Youth helps kids stay in school through encouraging sport and mentorship.(Élizabeth Delage / Sun Youth) about making sure they get every opportunity they can in education to move forward and better themselves,” Kara De La Perralle said.

Sun Youth also offers an established introductory program for kids five to 11 to develop their hockey skills, and is also working on similar programs for soccer and baseball. As it expands to other sports, accessibility remains a central objective.

“We will never not take a child because [of a lack of] funds,” Kara De La Perralle said. “It’s about making sure that anyone who wants to, participates.”

Sun Youth’s objectives are twofold: To alleviate poverty and prevent exclusion. With sport as a vehicle, Sun Youth continues to push toward these goals.

“It’s about the next generation, about helping kids further themselves, [and] sport is a little piece to [that] bigger puzzle,” De La Perralle said. “With all the services we offer, we impact all communities.”

SwimAbility Montreal helps children with disabilities feel safe McGill students help make a splash in the Montreal community Miya Keilin Staff Writer SwimAbility Canada is a nation-wide organization that provides swimming and water safety instruction to children with mental and physical disabilities. University students run each of their 16 chapters, distributed across eight provinces, as not-for-profit organizations.

Drowning is a leading cause of injury-related child deaths, and children with disabilities are at an even greater risk. SwimAbility recognizes that traditional group swimming lessons are ill-suited for many children with disabilities, and has made it part of their mission to accommodate these children’s needs with specially designed programs.

The second half of SwimAbility’s mission is affordability. Each session consists of nine 30-minute lessons. One nine-week session costs only $20 which, compared to typical private lesson rates of about $30 per lesson, is a considerable discount. Josh Schiff, BSc ‘14 and member of SwimAbility Montreal’s executive team, spoke to the importance of SwimAbility’s discounted prices.

“Usually these types of services are much too expensive for many of these families, so to provide them at a low cost makes them so much more accessible,” Schiff wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune.

SwimAbility Montreal is run by McGill student volunteers, and all of its instructors and executives are members of the McGill community. They reach out to sports

the Montreal community in an effort to assist as many children and families as they can, specifically targeting schools for children with special needs.

“Sadly, many of these children don’t feel comfortable in many social situations,” Schiff wrote. “They get bullied and treated unfairly, and are made to feel like their differences are something they should be ashamed of. With SwimAbility, they all feel included, happy, and surrounded by friends and people who love them.”

One of the most important factors in working with children with disabilities is consistency. SwimAbility pairs instructors with students at the beginning of a session, and the students work with the same instructor every Sunday morning for the next nine weeks. This helps create a bond between the students and the instructors, where the students feel more comfortable in the water.

Sanya Dalal, U1 Science, is a volunteer instructor for SwimAbility. After only one year with the club, she already feels a profound sense of purpose from working with her students. She loves the hands-on opportunity that allows her to give back to the Montreal community.

“I think the greatest part of what I’m doing is actually feeling like I’m making a change doing something worthwhile and actually seeing results,” Dalal wrote in a message to the Tribune. “A lot of volunteering organizations depend on indirect involvement, like raising funds and while those are very helpful, I feel like here, I’m making an actual difference as an individual.”

SwimAbility’s volunteers share Dalal’s sentiments and are inspired by their students’ progress every week.

SwimAbility Montreal pairs student volunteers with children with disabilities to provide low-cost, one-on-one lessons. (Karam Nwilati / SwimAbility Montreal) Schiff has been with SwimAbility Montreal for six years, yet he is still impressed every week by the work of his students and fellow instructors.

“I love getting up on Sunday mornings to teach my lessons, see all the kids and the proud parents, and watch what a tremendous difference all of our amazing instructors make in the lives of these families,” Schiff wrote. “Seeing how much the kids progress throughout the year, both in terms of their swimming and their comfort around the instructors and other children is the best part of what we do [....] To see this week in and week out is so heartwarming, and it’s an honour to be a part of such an amazing organization.”

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

| 31

Joining the pack: Skating through the Montreal roller derby scene A look inside the city’s vibrant derby community Selin Altuntur Managing Editor Georgia W. Tush founded Montréal Roller Derby (MTLRD), the first flat-track roller derby league in Canada, in 2006. Today, the league consists of three home teams (Les Contrabanditas, Les Filles du Roi, and La Racaille), two “All Star” teams that compete internationally (Sexpos of Montréal and the New Skids On The Block), and the Smash Squad, where rookie skaters practice their skills before being drafted to a team. MTLRD is a non-profit organization in which all players, referees, announcers, and organizers are volunteers. In 2009, MTLRD became a part of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA), the international governing body for roller derby, comprised of 405 Full Member leagues and 41 Apprentice leagues. MTLRD currently sits eighth in the WFTDA team rankings.

Roller derby is a strategic, fullcontact sport, comparable to a cross between rugby and chess. Matches are held on a flat, slightly-lopsided oval track and divided into several rounds called “jams.” Each of the two competing teams puts five players on the track at a time. These players are divided into three main positions: One jammer, one pivot, and three blockers.

Over the course of each jam—which can last up to two minutes—jammers skate around the track and attempt to pass players on the opposing team, who move close together in a “pack.”

Jammers earn points for each player they pass. Meanwhile, members of the pack—blockers and pivots—can impede opposing skaters through regulated contact such as hip checks.

As an added twist, pivots can become jammers by “passing the panty:” If a jammer removes their starred helmet cover (also called a “panty”) and successfully passes it to the pivot, they switch roles for the rest of the jam.

First-time observers may have difficulty grasping the intricacies of the sport, but roller derby is open to anyone brave enough to try it. Brigitte Charest, known as “Eye Roll” on the track, is co-captain of MTLRD’s Smash Squad and a relative newcomer to the sport. In an email to The McGill Tribune, she outlined the process of joining MTLRD. “First you need to complete a bootcamp, which was held last summer from August to November 2017, and pass what we call the

‘minimal skills test,’” Charest wrote.

“This bootcamp is to [ensure] that you can learn the basics of quad skating and Roller Derby action to be safe for you and your teammates.

Once [I passed the test], I entered the league in December 2017 for the 2018 Season.”

After attending a roller derby match for the first time last summer, Charest fell in love with the sport.

“I saw my first derby game last summer and LOVED it!” Charest wrote. “I liked the fact that it was on quad skates (I don’t like running), that it is a team sport, athletic, rough, physical and that I saw a bunch of really strong and smart women coming all together on the track. I went to the last [two] games of the season and I knew I’d wanna try.”

For Charest, getting involved in MTLRD has been deeply rewarding.

She explained that the tight-knit derby community in Montreal has played an important role in her derby experience.

“It is truly empowering, especially as a young woman,” Charest wrote.

“The league is managed by the skaters, for the skaters! Being a part of the league is truly being part of something much bigger than ourselves. We can lean on each other, and it feels great to be there to support other people too. I like having responsibilities, helping, and mostly learning new experiences. The roller derby community in Montreal is a large family! We get to know around 200 new amazing humans in a matter of [a] few weeks!”

Although derby is a full-contact sport, Charest emphasized that the MTLRD community is open to individuals from a range of different skill levels and backgrounds.

“If you have an athletic background it will be easier to get started as [roller derby is] rough on your body,” Charest wrote. “But, skaters [come] in [all] ages, s h a p e s , heights,

genders, backgrounds and everyone uses their strength in their own way.

In this game, all we have is our body and our mind—there is no ball, or puck, or stick. Roller derby fascinates me [because of] how inclusive the community is. From the first practices you feel in a safe environment and welcome by everyone around.”

Charest stressed that even those who are not interested in participating as skaters can still get involved in MTLRD. “There [are] also great other ways to get involved,” Charest wrote. “The derby community isn’t just about the skaters, it couldn’t be. We could not be playing if it wasn’t [for] our refs, volunteers and [of] course… fans.”

Despite only having skated for a few months, Charest is deeply immersed in Montreal’s roller derby scene. The sport has helped her develop strong relationships with her teammates and other members of the community.

“In Montreal there [are] a lot of people [involved],” Charest wrote. “At first it can be a bit overwhelming or intimidating to meet all these new people. But there is a good [caring] relationship [between] everyone.

I am very close to s o m e

teammates as we do activities outside of practices, and some people I’m just starting to know them.

I would describe my relationships [as] genuine, caring, natural, honest, fun, considerate, [and] kind.”

Charest highly encourages interested individuals to explore roller derby. MTLRD provides a welcoming space for interested individuals who want to dip their toes in the world of organized sports.

“Everyone can give it a shot, really!” Charest wrote. “If you can get your hands on a pair of skates and protective gear, you’re in for a fun adventure.”

Roller derby is a strategic, full-contact sport, comparable to a cross between rugby and chess.

(Selin Altuntur and Arshaaq Jiffry / The McGill Tribune) 32

|

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

sports