UNDER THE RADAR
Ta b le o f Contents S P E C I A L U nder the R adar C O N T E N T
E d i to r - i n - C h i e f
Mayaz Alam editor@mcgilltribune.com
Business Manager
Sam Pinto spinto@mcgilltribune.com
C r e a t i v e D i r e c to r
NEWS / THE ssmu THAT STUDENTS DON’T KNOW p. 4-5 ESTABLISHING A FALL READING WEEK AT M C GILL P. 3
OPINION / EDITORIAL: Narrowing the scope of student politics P. 7 WHEN USERS PERISH, THEIR SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNtS LIVE ON P. 7 An exchange student’s perspective on McGill students P. 8
Hayley Lim hlim@mcgilltribune.com
M a n a g i n g E d i to r s
Shrinkhala Dawadi sdawadi@mcgilltribune.com Morgan Alexander malexander@mcgilltribune.com Julie Vanderperre jvanderperre@mcgilltribune.com
N e w s E d i to r s
Jenna Stanwood, Laura Hanrahan, Aislinn Kalob news@mcgilltribune.com
O p i n i o n E d i to r
Julia Dick opinion@mcgilltribune.com
S c i e n c e & T e c h n o l o g y E d i to r Chloe Nevitt scitech@mcgilltribune.com
STUDENT LIVING / The night owls of Ckut radio P. 10 Three hole-in-the-wall resto-bars in the Plateau P. 10 Under the radar fashion trends for the winter P. 11
St u d e n t L i v i n g E d i to r
Hailey MacKinnon studentliving@mcgilltribune.com
F e a t u r e s E d i to r
Natalie Wong features@mcgilltribune.com
A r t s & E n t e r t a i n m e n t E d i to r s Jack Neal and Christopher Lutes arts@mcgilltribune.com
FEATURES / The changing nature of Canadian and American border security P. 12-13
S p o r t s E d i to r s
Elie Waitzer and Zikomo Smith sports@mcgilltribune.com
D e s i g n E d i to r
Cassie Lee design@mcgilltribune.com
SCITECH / BIOCHEMIST NAHUM SONENBERG FAVOURS THE PREPARED MIND P. 14 THE SCIENCE AND POLICY EXCHANGE GROUP IS PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE P. 15
P h oto E d i to r
Natalie Vineberg photo@mcgilltribune.com
Web Developers
William Burgess webdev@mcgilltribune.com Matt Smith online@mcgilltribune.com
Co p y E d i to r
Adrien Hu copy@mcgilltribune.com
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT / A walk through the Wallflowers: EXPLORING MCGILL’S VISUAL ARTS p. 17 Film Review: Bonjour Hi P. 20
Advertising Executives Mingye Chen and L-A Benoit ads@mcgilltribune.com
Publisher
Chad Ronalds
T PS Bo a r d o f D i r e c to r s
SPORTS / Unlisted: The secret weapon behind REdmen Lacrosse’s success P. 22 Behind the scenes at M c Gill Athletics P. 21 Simplicity in concept, duplicity in design: The state of daily fantasy sports P. 23 10 Things: Unlikely sports journeys P. 24 Discouraged and overlooked, but still competing P. 24
Sam Pinto, Mayaz Alam, Maryse Thomas, Nicolas Tuech, Luka Ciklovan, Adrien Hu, Chloe Nevitt, Mingye Chen
St a f f W r i t e r s , S T AFF P h oto g r a p h e r s , & S T AFF I l l u s t r a to r s Lauren Benson-Armer, Audrey Carleton, Cordelia Cho Margaux Delalex, Zachary Carson, Luka Ciklovan, Sara Cullen, Evelyn Goessling, Emma Hameau, Nick Jasinski, Clare Lyle, Eric-Noble Marks, Albert Park, Aaron Rose, Ellie Slavitch, Elizabeth Willcock, Alissa Zilberchteine
Co n t r i b u to r s Emma Avery, Young Jin Cho, Clare Fogarty, Ty Fox, Daniel Galef, Ariella Garmaise, Alexandra Harvey, Daria Kiseleva, Tiffany Le, Jin Lee, Sarah Leinwand, Elie Lubendo, Natasha Michaeloff, Stephanie Ngo, Nicole Spadotto, Emma Whitehall
Tribune Office
The McGill Tribune would like to thank all readers and contributors from this semester! Find us back on stands Tuesday, January 12, 2016. 2
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Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Shatner University Centre Suite 110, 3480 McTavish Montreal, QC H3A 0E7 T: 514.398.6789 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.
Establishing a Fall reading week at McGill Exploring the benefits and tradeoffs of more days off
Infographic by Hayley Lim
PR O PO S E D O C T OB ER B R EA K M OD EL
NEW DAY OFF
Fr i
THANKSGIVING
Sat
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NEW DAY OFF
Mo n T u e (Natalie Vineberg / McGill Tribune)
SHRINKHALA DAWADI Managing Editor In recent years, many universities, including Brock University, Western University, and McMaster University, have implemented Fall reading weeks. The University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus will have its first Fall reading break in 2016. McGill currently does not have a Fall reading week, although the idea has been discussed several times in the past few years. This year, however, administrative headway has been made. Last June, a a working group created by Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens published a consultation draft of a Fall reading break proposal. Since then, there have been several rounds of discussion between students, faculty, and administrative staff. According to Executive Director of Enrolment Services Kathleen Massey, the proposed reading break would add two extra days of holiday in the Fall term. Although no models have yet been finalized, one includes extending the Thanksgiving holiday to include the Friday before Thanksgiving weekend and the Tuesday after. Another model includes incorporating the two days of break into a weekend in November, creating a long weekend. Although further consultation and revision of the proposal is required, it could be implemented by the 2018-2019 school year.
Benefits and trade-offs According to Arts Senator Erin Sobat, who is a member of the working group, a Fall reading break would have positive mental health outcomes for students. “The mental health benefits of an added break seem intuitive,” Sobat said. “However, we do have data from other Canadian universinews
ties showing that a Fall break generally decreases stress levels and improves academic performance, particularly for first-year students. More and more schools are moving towards a Fall reading break as a proactive response to concerns around student mental health and well being.” In order to accommodate the extra days off, several adjustments to McGill’s calendar were proposed. Sobat underscored that the proposal aimed to preserve course time—McGill currently allocates 39 hours of meeting time per semester per course. “When consulting students, we knew that there [were] going to have to be trade-offs,” Sobat said. “We knew that we couldn’t compromise too much on the teaching days, because that has been a concern, certainly, from faculty members in the past. [This is also a concern] of some students who don’t necessarily want to get less for what they’re paying for, for example, in terms of the course.” Other trade-offs that were proposed included having Saturday exams and beginning the Fall semester before Labour Day. “Saturday exams [...] wouldn’t happen every year, given the calendar,” Sobat stated. “It would depend on the calendar dates [...] maybe once every three years. We thought it was a reasonable compromise, and students took that as the least bad.” Holding Saturday exams would also cost an additional $25,000 per year. “These are the Enrolment Services’ costs for opening rooms, paying for porters and cleaners, and exam staffing,” Massey said. “It doesn’t take into account any additional costs that may be incurred by the faculties. I don’t know what those costs may be yet.”
Renee Sieber, associate professor in the Department of Geography and a council member of the McGill Association of University Teachers (MAUT) explained that faculty members were generally in favour of a Fall reading break, but they were against starting the semester before Labour Day. “The one thing that we didn’t favour is [...] a Fall reading break forcing classes to start before Labour Day,” Sieber said. “We’ve had [experiences where] students don’t tend to come to class if it’s held before Labour Day.” Sieber continued to highlight the need to re-evaluate the current structure of McGill’s course calendars. “Why do we have 13-week courses?” said Sieber. “[...] A number of Canadian universities are moving to shorter semesters.” Another point of discussion was the potential date of the Fall reading break. Although most students favoured incorporating the days off into the Thanksgiving weekend, Massey underscored the concerns about holding the break in October. “While the students prefer Thanksgiving, some faculty believe believe that that’s too early in the term, [and] that not enough has happened yet to make it a worthwhile thing to do that early,” she said. “By November, you’ll have experienced more work as a student.” Another concern was how a Fall break would affect scheduling of classes with lab components. “The variety of class types across the university is staggering,” Sieber said. “For classes that have labs, [a Fall break] could affect a considerable number of labs in the course. A student may have a Friday [or] Monday lab—there’s two labs that disappear from the
schedule.” Sieber also stated that some faculty members questioned the need of students’ to have a Fall reading break for mental health purposes. “There were some faculty who felt that [the] summer was a sufficient mental health break,” she said. “In fact, [MAUT] requested that the university supply us with empirical evidence that a mental health break was necessary.”
Faculty and student consultation Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens, explained the process of introducing the proposal to the McGill administration. “The first thing [the working group did was], we brought it to [the Enrolment and Student Affairs Committee (ESAC)],” he said. “ESAC is a sub committee of the Senate. ESAC is an advisory committee. The people who sit on ESAC, most of them are associate deans from all the faculties [....] We brought the idea of the Fall reading week to ESAC and they thought it was an interesting.” Last semester, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) additionally released a survey to consult students about a Fall reading break. MAUT also conducted a survey amongst its members, and the Faculty of Arts is currently conducting a survey for its students. Sieber explained that MAUT was displeased with the level of consultation they had received from the McGill administration. “[MAUT] was asked by the administration to investigate [the proposed Fall break],” Sieber said. “This was long after they
talked to other organizations so we were not pleased that they spoke to us, what seemed to be after the fact [....] Some faculty were [consulted early on], but that’s not the way MAUT does things. MAUT was hoping that as an association, we would have been consulted because we represent the faculty.” However, Massey explained that members of faculty had been included in initial discussions with the working group and ESAC. “[ESAC] included a number of students as well as a number of associate deans of student affairs, and directors of advising and so on,” Massey said. “Many of them are faculty members so they also teach, so they would be able to comment on the effect [of a Fall break] on professors.” Pending further consultation and revision of the proposed Fall reading break draft, the proposal will have to get approved by the Senate. “We were hoping that it would be able to go through [the Senate] this term, with the goal of bringing a revised calendar to [the] Senate to actually revise the 2017 [to] 2018 year,” Sobat said. “It’s not looking like that’s going to be possible at this point, I think we’re too late. So we’re probably pushing [it] to 2018 [to] 2019, which is too bad, most of us will still be around.” Nevertheless, Massey remains hopeful that the proposal will pass. “People are in favour of a Fall break in principle,” Massey said. “It’s just about figuring out that ideal set of tradeoffs and addressing these challenges. I feel very positive about it, particularly since I’ve seen positive survey feedback from [students and] the faculty.”
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
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The SSMU that students don’t know Jenna Stanwood News Editor
A lot of the day-to-day work of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) executives goes largely unnoticed. After many rounds of recent elections, a lot of students are left wondering what that work actually entails. The Tribune reached out to the execs, and they explained, in their own words, the more ‘under the radar’ aspects of their portfolios.
The most unexpected thing I’ve done in office would have to be buying earplugs for the babies in the Nursery when there was construction being done outside - definitely didn’t see that one coming for all sorts of reasons.
SSMU President
KAREEM IBRAHIM With the many [...] resignations [this year], many of the tasks I am now responsible for are not in the presidential portfolio. With regards to the absence of the GM, I supervise two additional student staff and four additional permanent staff, and am responsible for the supervision of all processes related to human resources. Traditionally, my involvement in human resources is limited to staying in the loop regarding the work of the GM, but this year it includes much of their work, [which entails] conflict resolution, staff supervision, the Social Committee, [...] and demonstrating leadership in ensuring that all of the staff, part-time and full-time, are well-supported in their work. In addition, one of the permanent staff members supervised by the GM is the daycare director, who has also been absent as of May 2015 [....] As a result, I have taken on many of their responsibilities, namely getting the finances in order, liaising with the Daycare Parent Committee, conflict resolution for daycare staff, upcoming lease negotiations with McGill and correspondence with the government regarding our subsidy. Lastly, the absence of the VP Internal resulted in me taking on the entirety of organizing events for the Centraide Campaign and the General Assembly, traditionally the president oversees the political aspects of said events, while the VP Internal takes on the logistics for the events. On average, these tasks take up 60 per 4
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cent of my time, which is roughly 51 hours [out of] 85 hour work weeks. This means that [...] I have less attention to dedicate to my regular duties, but I [also] do not have as much room to dedicate to improving the processes we currently have in place. The ideal situation would entail prompt email replies, no missed deadlines and full attention given to important things like the work of my staff, our governance document review, legal and financial issues and more, but with the workload this year, much of this cannot be done to the fullest extent. I would not be in favour of changing my portfolio to include [more] things due to how unmanageable this workload has proven to be. The ideal situation involves all of our staff positions being filled [....] We want to provide great service to students, not ‘good’ service, or even service of questionable value. The most unexpected thing I’ve done in office would have to be buying earplugs for the babies in the Nursery when there was construction being done outside – definitely didn’t see that one coming for all sorts of reasons. I would say the vast majority of our work goes on behind the scenes, [particularly] my own [....] A lot of the work of the executives is very administrative and repetitive [...] and therefore is easy and quick to report, but requires a lot of work behind the scenes. The sheer volume of emails we receive takes up a substantial amount of our time, although this, too, doesn’t add up to much in terms of reporting content.
Probably one of the most unexpected aspects of my portfolio is simply the amount of my time that is spent solving crises as they occur. Around half of my work day [is] spent solving problems as they are brought to my desk (or inbox) by student groups, staff, and other executives. VP Finance and Operations
Zacheriah Houston The [SSMU] constitution is quite vague regarding the responsibilities of the VP Finance and Operations. Included in my constitutional responsibilities are [...] overseeing the Society’s business operations, ensuring the financial stability of the Society, and reporting regularly on the financial status of the Society. In addition to the [aforementioned] responsibilities, this year I have several [...] that typically would not fall under the VP Finance and Operations, due to the absence of the [GM] and several other positions [....] The amount of hours required just to keep the portfolio running leaves very little time for the [VP Finance] to do any long-term visioning or to take on any additional projects. There are certainly tasks that take up significantly more time than I had expected. One example of a task that I had never anticipated would take up so much is the approval of expenses. Because [...] SSMU issues more than 100 cheques per week, I spend around an hour each day--at times, more--reviewing various types of payment requests. I am now responsible for supervising the accounting department [....] Another responsibility that was delegated to me as a result of the numerous vacancies is the negotiations for the renewal of the Society’s Memorandum of Agreement with McGill [the MoA]. The MoA has traditionally been negotiated by the President and the [VP] University Affairs. However, due to the large number of tasks that the President has taken on this year, the VP University Affairs and I are now representing the Society in the MoA negotiations. I would be in favor of changing the job description of the Vice-President (Finance and Operations) to explicitly include dealing with legal matters and contract negotiations. Both of these responsibilities are already included in the portfolio to a certain degree, as the VP Finance and Operations must sign off on all expenses and contracts; however, these responsi-
bilities are currently not well articulated in our governance documents, and I think that the VP Finance and Operations must be involved in the negotiation of contracts and in dealing with legal issues, due to the significant financial implications of both and due to the overlap of the skillset of a typical VP Finance [as well as] the skillset required for legal matters and the maintenance and negotiation of contracts. The removal of certain responsibilities, such as the management of the Society’s business operations, would allow for more responsibilities to be added to the portfolio. This is something we have discussed at length during various consultative efforts regarding proposal for the addition of a seventh executive position. Probably one of the most unexpected aspects of my portfolio is simply the amount of my time that is spent solving crises as they occur. Around half of my work day [is] spent solving problems as they are brought to my desk (or inbox) by student groups, staff, and other executives. In terms of hours, the Finance and Operations portfolio involves around 80 hours of behind the scenes work each week. However, this measurement does not even include the student staff within my portfolio, some of whom work up to 20 hours per week to ensure that their respective areas of the Finance and Operations portfolio are functioning smoothly, nor does it include the many overtime hours put in by the SSMU full-time staff who work to manage the Society’s finances and business operations. One thing that I feel students do not really know is the number of issues that the SSMU executives have to deal with. While we always try to complete tasks as quickly as possible, the sheer volume of work, much of which pops up at the last minute, that SSMU executives have to complete in a given week often renders it impossible to do everything within our ideal timeframes. As such, I try my best to prioritize tasks accordingly, but things often take more time than I would like, and more time than one might expect, simply due to the sheer volume of responsibilities [....] news
VP External
Emily Boytinck
When I came into the position, one aspect of the portfolio which I significantly underestimated was the external affairs [section]. I was looking at how many times I’ve gone away for the weekend, and it’s over a dozen weekends since my term started [that there] have been times where I’ve gone away [...] or been in Montreal and had a congress all weekend
A lot of my work is pretty public [but] I think that a lot of what I do, it’s not clear that SSMU has a hand in it maybe because I do a lot of coordination work, so I do a lot of liasoning with for example the Divest McGill campaign or the Antiausterity campaign [....] I do a lot of those sort of work for other people’s events, and it’s very much more of a support role [....] I do a lot of work with student associations across the province [....] I would like students to know that the VP External position, contrary to popular belief, is not a position that aims to shove my own personal political views on the student body. Every political campaign that’s been taken on has been voted on by the society often by overwhelming majorities [....] As the VP External, these are mandates that I’ve been given, many of them have been voted through referendum or General Assembly [GA] ratification. Some of the work I do, especially on community relations, is a lot of [...] listening and being there for the community--and that’s not something that’s reflected in an actual initiative, but it’s important that the community feels like their issues are being heard and are being addressed, and that’s something that’s definitely less public [that I do]. I spend four hours a week in executive committee, and like a couple of extra hours doing [things] like, reading [...] bylaws or doing General
VP Clubs and Services
Kimber Bialik
The most unexpected thing was the volume of all-nighters [... also] being called in to look at a two year old mouse skeleton was certainly a highlight of the strange things I’ve dealt with, with finding a trapdoor in the SSMU office coming in a close second.
News
The job description and constitutional duties of the Vice-President [VP] Clubs and Services are very vague [....] While the duties that fall under this portfolio are managing relations between the Society and its clubs and managing the building, [the job description] fails to specify what that actually means. Because both those aspects of the portfolio are so large and all-encompassing, nearly nothing that I actually do day-to-day is named in my job description but all falls within the broad goals that are outlined in the constitution for the portfolio. I think the most important thing I would like students to keep in mind about the Clubs and Services portfolio in particular is the sheer volume of things that fall under the portfolio’s jurisdiction. The work that goes on in the portfolio on a daily basis involves supporting roughly 270 groups--240 Clubs, 20 Services, and 10 Independent Student Groups--to say nothing of the building. While that would be true of a typical year, there definitely are tasks I am now responsible for that [which] falls outside of what is traditionally within the portfolio. These are all a function of the delegation plans established due to the vacancies of SSMU staff, namely the [GM], building director, VP (Internal), and events manager. All of the tasks that I outlined above are primarily maintenance of the portfolio. The investment of hours for simply keeping the portfolio running to its full capacity—which is a task split between myself and nine student staff who work directly within my portfolio—excludes the completion of any projects that I want to take on in this role. The administration and maintenance is so time consuming that it isn’t realistic for the VP Clubs and Services to develop and follow through on new projects or to participate in general visioning on how to improve the portfolio or the SSMU as a whole without other areas of the portfolio suffering as a result. That being said, there definitely are tasks I am now responsible for that I didn’t anticipate having to take on as a result of the vacancies of a number of staff positions [....] This includes things like liaising with SSMU’s insurance provider and managing our
Manager (GM) recruitments or doing ssmu restructuring or all those sort of administrative tasks that we do as a team [and] are not really reflected in what we do individually. When I came into the position, one aspect of the portfolio which I significantly underestimated was the external affairs [section]. I was looking at how many times I’ve gone away for the weekend, and it’s over a dozen weekends since my term started [that there] have been times where I’ve gone away [...] or been in Montreal and had a congress all weekend [....] Those external affairs weekends were quite a bit more [work] than I was anticipating, and largely because even when I was running for this position that was not something that I knew a whole lot about. I come from a background of doing political campaigns and community outreach through [the Science Undergraduate Society] so I don’t have a strong background in external affairs, and I don’t think anyone who comes into this role has that background, because this is the only position in the school that does that kind of work [....] That sort of surprised me--how much time that takes and also how much I’ve started to care about it-- because I’ve realized how important it is, but it is largely invisible because [that’s] only one person doing it . People don’t realize that, for example, I supervise 11 staff [....] I sit on a bunch of committees, I spend hours of my week in executives meetings, I spend hours of my week at legislative council [....] There’s just so many different things.
insurance renewal process, the supervision of [nine] new staff members, the (arms-length) supervision of Elections SSMU and Judicial Board, coordination of the Student Engagement Committee, compiling the SSMU’s weekly listserv, and most recently, the approval of room bookings in the building. While I was well aware of the day-to-day responsibilities of my role as per the constitution and my job description, these tasks are all taken on in addition to that. At this point, I would not be in favour of adding any additional responsibilities to the position, as any additions would need to be made with the knowledge that other areas of the portfolio which are already significantly under resourced would suffer. Nearly the entirety of the Clubs and Services portfolio, as is the case with the other more administrative executive portfolios, goes on behind-the-scenes. Aside from the roughly four hours a week I spend in open office hours, the vast majority of what I do is work from behind a desk to assist in the facilitation of operations for student groups and the building. I can comfortably say that within the Clubs and Services portfolio in particular, at least 90 hours a week go into this behind the scenes work that students [as] a whole rarely see. Students certainly feel the effect of this work each time they attend an event run by one of our student groups or every time they spend time in the SSMU Building, but much of this work is relatively invisible to the student body. In these cases, the spotlight is on the individual student groups who are supported by the work we do--as it should be! Because each of these groups is so different and requires individualized support, there are not nearly enough hours in the day to provide each group with the support that [it] deserves, and as a result , we often hear from student groups that they don’t feel like SSMU is able to provide them with enough support. This is a recurring problem that the portfolio will encounter until the responsibilities of the position are reassessed. The most unexpected thing was the volume of all-nighters [... also] being called in to look at a two year old mouse skeleton was certainly a highlight of the strange things I’ve dealt with, with finding a trapdoor in the SSMU office coming in a close second. Wednesday, December 2, 2015
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SSMU hosts forum on possible executive restructuring Creation of a VP Operations position discussed LAURA HANRAHAN News Editor
Students may soon have a seventh Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) executive according to a forum held this past Thursday. VP Finance and Operations Zacheriah Houston, VP Clubs and Services Kimber Bialik , and VP University Affairs Chloe Rourke addressed concerns and answered questions about a potential new structure, as well as the responsibilities of SSMU executives. Proposed ideas Houston presented the proposed ideas for a seventh executive portfolio. The plan involved creating a new VP Operations position and renaming VP Clubs and Services to VP Student Life. “The VP Student Life would [...] basically be the VP Clubs and Services, minus the building aspect of that portfolio,” Houston said. “[The] VP Student Life [could then] take on some of the workload from the VP University Affairs. The VP Finance and Operations portfolio would be split into a VP Finance, doing all the financerelated aspects of my current portfolio, and VP Operations doing the student run operations […] as well as our building operations […] and environmental sustainability.” Bialik stated that for a seventh executive to be added for the following academic year, a referendum would need to be held early next semester. “Over the next two months or so, we would do more [consultation...] and then run a referendum to amend the constitution in January if that’s what students [...] wanted,” said Bialik. Houston addressed questions regarding the allocation of funding for the salary of the seventh executive. He stated that a specific source is yet to be determined, given current budget constraints from last year’s addition of a permanent staff position, and the loss of commercial tenants in the SSMU building. “Right now [there] is not a lot of room in the general administration budget,” he said. “You would have to restructure permanent staff positions and different student staff positions to shift the salaries 6
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around, or there is no money [....] I actually don’t think that adding an [executive] would necessarily make [the total amount of the collective executive salaries] increase above what they are now [...] but in the short run I don’t really see an easy way to pay for it.” Houston additionally addressed the possibility of raising the SSMU base fee to garner extra funding. “You can always increase the base fee, but that’s not something I would do for an exec,” he said. “But that’s something that needs to happen at some point any way. [The base fee] hasn’t been increased [for] quite a long time.” The need for restructuring According to Rourke, one of the driving factors behind the addition of a seventh executive, as opposed to student or permanent staff, is the lowered salary that executives receive. “The reason we’re in favour of a seventh exec is that we’re the cheapest way to get an increased amount of work done,” she said. “Every other student staff gets paid minimum wage, permanent staff get benefits, and we work way more than full-time hours. So from that perspective of money for labour, we are the cheapest option.” Houston explained that the discussion of whether or not to add a seventh executive has been ongoing since the summer. “We started talking about how working upwards of 70 hours a week is possibly not the most sustainable thing - once school hits, that number goes up to 80 on a good year,” he said. “This year, we have many executives working 90 to 100, or 100 or more hours a week.” Rourke echoed Houston’s sentiments, citing sustainability and mental health issues as a major problem with the executives’ current workload. “Eighty hours a week is not accessible, it’s not equitable, and it’s not sustainable,” Rourke said. “It’s not fair to expect that out of someone and not everyone is capable of working 80 hours a week. I know I’m not [….] I get burnt out, my mental health takes a huge toll
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
and I’m less of use to the people around me […] and the ones that really suffer at the end of the day are students.” Houston also noted the absence of a general manager (GM) and VP Internal as factors that made this year’s hours worked per week by the executives particularly high. When the floor opened to questions, Alexei Simakov, U4 International Development Studies, asked whether this year’s excessive work hours should be considered an isolated incident due to these absences. “Concerns from previous years of execs being overworked have never been as prevalent as this, so would it not resolve itself if there were a full-time [General Manager (GM) and] a VP Internal?” Simakov asked. In response, Rourke stated that past years have also seen serious cases of executives being overworked. “I’ve raised [concerns] in the past that this is unsustainable, and this is not cool from a mental health perspective,” Rourke said. “This isn’t the only year that executives have been overworked […] and that’s evident from every single exit report that you read. VP Clubs and Services, more than any other position, has reported [things] like alcohol problems as ways to deal with the work load, extreme burnout, [as well as] rage and anger towards club executives because they can’t handle any more people coming to their door.” Houston noted that while the addition of another executive member will not necessarily fix the problem, it will alleviate some of the work that current executives do. “We definitely realize that adding a seventh executive isn’t the answer to everything,” Houston said. “However, we are here because we believe that the portfolios are too loaded and one of the things that can happen in order to, in the long run, create a sustainable structure is to add an executive. The last time this was done was about 10 years ago, when they added the VP Clubs and Services and SSMU has grown immensely since then.”
SSMU executives discuss possibility of seventh executive member. (Laura Hanrahan / McGill Tribune)
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editorial
arrowing the scope of student politics
Last Thursday, Nov. 26, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) held a forum on restructuring the SSMU executive positions. It has been 10 years since the portfolios of executives we laid out in their current form; in that time, SSMU has grown such that these roles are no longer sustainable. This semester has been marred by the resignations of the vice-president (VP) Internal and general manager, forcing SSMU to focus on internal operations, but restructuring the portfolios alone will only improve one aspect of the body. Given the inner turmoil of this year, now is the time for SSMU to reconsider the political aspect of its mandate in
order to be a more focused political body. SSMU should be political insofar as it lobbies for student interests and mobilizes students; however, it should not allow the political mandate to stretch beyond its bounds as a representative body. Without opening old wounds, it is time to reconsider the viability of SSMU as a political entity. Considerable amounts of work done by SSMU go unseen by the majority of the student body, but political controversy stirs anti-SSMU sentiments and disenchantment, ultimately attracting negative attention. When the “Motion Calling on SSMU to Stand in Solidarity with the People of the Occupied
Palestinian Territories” was brought to the Fall 2014 GA, students were, (and many still are), confused about what actually transpired. Though the motion itself was postponed indefinitely, the whole proceeding left a bad taste in many students’ mouths. When it comes to addressing issues that directly impact education, such as austerity and Fall reading week, SSMU’s role is invaluable. The VP External works to lead student protests and engage the student body in these concerns. SSMU should spend its time on the issues that it can have an impact on, such as provincial policy and McGill’s investments. It is not that the broader, international issues do not matter and do not warrant student attention; it is more so that SSMU is at its core a student union, and attempting to reflect the values of all students on such hot-button issues is an impossible task. This year has seen relatively less controversy surrounding SSMU’s political positions. Its “Motion Regarding the Adoption of a Climate Change Policy” went by
be sure to focus on issues that it has an impact on. Student activists are a cornerstone of the university experience, but expressing perspectives through the SSMU is not successful unless it is rooted in the McGill experience. Stances
that SSMU has taken—which are distinct from what students vote on in a GA—against austerity and in favour of divestment are appropriate because they focus inwards and on issues that directly impact student life. With the recent election of Omar El-Sharawy as the new Vice-President (VP) Internal, the potential for SSMU to expand its engagement with students can be realized. Such efforts must not only focus on what was left undone by the vacancy in the position earlier this Fall, but also work with students to address loose ends. The political mandate is certainly one of those; communicating the options that are available in terms of restructuring SSMU, including its mandate, will be essential. Students do not need SSMU to express political perspectives, and SSMU should not be a microphone for any perspective—there is too much potential for disaffection. Restructuring SSMU must be accompanied by a reevaluation of what defines SSMU as a representative body.
Facebook friends with family members, the latter will be locked out from the memorialized timeline, which defeats the purpose. To top it off, proof of death is not always easy to come by. Without an obituary, only the immediate family of the Facebook user may have access to hard proof of death. Memorializing the account is then up to the family’s discretion and technological know-how. Facebook’s policies on memorializing users is deficient. A better procedure should be available—one that integrates automation to aid active reports. Phrase recognition algorithms
detecting posts with phrases such as “RIP” can be considered. Accounts lacking a set number of posts from the user per year should be flagged for review automatically. But perhaps most importantly, a deceased person’s accounts should be memorialized in a way where no future posts by others is possible. Unlike a physical funeral, an online memorial of continuous messages defies the timespan of death. On Facebook, posts by friends and family stretching out over years after death make it seem as if a loved one is still forever suspended in a state of dying. By eliminating this, social media can preserve an authentic representation of a person’s life, and allow for a peaceful end on Facebook. Death is a physical inevitability, and we should give it the same closure on social media that it has in real life. In the case of my friend’s suicide, this right to die must not be outweighed by our need to remember on social media.
largely unnoticed, and no motions were brought to the Fall General Assembly (GA). GAs provide a forum for students to raise issues of concern, and then discuss and vote on them; the executives are not the final arbiters. Nevertheless, SSMU can be more selective, and must
SSMU should spend its time on the issues that it can have an impact on, such as provincial policy and McGill’s investments.
Off the Board
Two weeks ago, I received a rather typical notification from Facebook. “One of your friends has a birthday this week,” prompted the note. “Wish her a happy birthday.” To a vast number Facebook users, this notification is oftentimes annoying, yet surely innocent in its intentions. But one thing Facebook failed to take into account was that this particular friend of mine had committed suicide two years prior. What ensued was even more disturbing. Two years after her death, my friend’s profile page was full of updated links, holiday wishes, and I-miss-yous. Her social activity had continued as though she were still the person behind the screen—she even added new friends and changed her profile picture. Although all of this was done with good intentions by family and friends in an attempt to remember her, I could not help but Opinion
of the deceased, Facebook’s policies allow for users’ accounts to be reported and memorialized. To do this, a user must report the deceased’s name, approximated date of death, and proof, such as a death certificate or obituary. This innovation is part of an attempt to honour a person’s memories respectfully on Facebook; but, while thoughtful, this strategy is too naïve. Already, many users have been kicked out of their accounts when obituaries with identical names were submitted as proof of death. Simon Thulbourn, a German software engineer and famous victim of this phenomenon, discovered that there was, ironically, no way to submit proof of his ‘aliveness.’ Only after taking his frustration onto Twitter and going viral, did this prompt an apology from Facebook, and his account’s reactivation. Also, once the Facebook account is memorialized, new friends cannot be added. In cases where the deceased is not yet
What will your onlin e tombstone look lik e? (Stephanie
Adrien Hu Copy Editor
wonder: What would she think if she saw this? Was this really what she wanted? For me, this desperate social perpetuation of the deceased is no longer authentic. It strips these individuals—who can no longer defend themselves—of their right to death and peace online. As death is the literal end of a person’s life, updating that individual’s social media post-mortem is inauthentic and disrespectful. Facebook must do more to guard against this. Currently, the social media behemoth has over one billion users. Due to Facebook’s popularity, three out of five people who die will own active accounts. As of December 2014, over 4,329 Facebook users die each day. Interestingly, death on Facebook was not always this prevalent. Founded in 2004, the site’s demographic initially consisted only of young college students; death here was rare. As Facebook grew in popularity, more people over the age of 65 began registering compared to any other age group. Now that the overall age of Facebook users is growing older, the problem of deceased Facebook users has, and will, continue to increase. To remedy the social presence
Ngo / McGill Tribune )
When users perish, their social media accounts live on
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The corporate Implications of
Marijuana Legalization Alexandra Harvey Contributor
O
n Friday, Nov. 13, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the first step towards fulfilling one of his most discussed campaign promises: Legalizing marijuana. In a letter to the Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould, Trudeau asked her to begin looking into a “process that will lead to the legalization and regulation of marijuana.” Now that the question of whether or not marijuana should be legalized has been replaced by the question of how it will be legalized, the question must be what marijuana legalization really means from an economic perspective. Canadians have to be wary of the corporatization of marijuana, and the possibility of the profit landing in the hands of a few individuals. Activists have been protesting against prohibition for years, and have advocated for the legal distribution of the drug in what they deem to be a quest for justice. The criminalization of marijuana possession is seen as a misuse of public tax money. The cause has swept across the nation; according to a 2015 forum poll of a random sampling of Canadian voters, 60
per cent of respondents approve of marijuana legalization. Many assert that Canadians (of legal age) should have the opportunity to safely access the drug. Legalization would ultimately help to regulate underage use of marijuana, and promote awareness about the effects and consequences of the drug, treating it as a health issue rather than a criminal issue. While the poll is by no means decisive, it indicates that the tide has turned in favour of legalization. Gone are the days of staunch moralism, but in this new context Canadians must maintain focus on the implications of legalization. They must be wary of potential problems relating to the structure of marijuana distribution. In the aforementioned poll, 18 per cent of adults admitted to using marijuana in the past year, and an additional 13 per cent who do not currently use it are now likely to use it legally. The expected market for pot is three out of every 10 adults, which suggests a consumer-base of approximately eight million Canadians. The current worth of the medical marijuana industry is between $80 and $100 million a year, and analysts estimate that the
market for legal marijuana could top $5 billion, with $1 billion in government tax revenues. The tremendous size of this emerging industry begs various questions about how marijuana will be regulated, and who will profit from its sales. Canada must take heed of what has taken place to the south. In Ohio, the answers to those questions led to a statewide controversy, which eventually resulted in a rejection of the legalization initiative on Nov. 3. Yet 65 per cent of those who voted “No” “rejected the idea of monopoly, not legalization.” Essentially, Ohioans supported the idea of legalizing pot, but decided that the vast economic implications were far too divisive. It will be up to the Canadian government to decide how the industry will be structured—a decision that may have an enormous social impact. The Ohio Marijuana Legalization Initiative proposed a system in which just 10 marijuana farms that would be run by wealthy campaign donors, transforming pot into an oligopolistic industry. Legalization
activists were forced to watch as the ‘corporate takeover’ of marijuana destroyed the authenticity of their cause, as new actors came into the realm that were primarily concerned with profit, and not motivated by a sense of injustice. Pro-legalization groups began to vocally oppose the legal marijuana initiative, referring to the distribution structure as “crony capitalism at its worst,” and calling it a “constitutionalized drug cartel.” Ohio has shown us that the details behind how to legalize pot can lead to dispute and division; it is clear that the debate about how to structure and regulate marijuana distribution becomes larger than the discussion about whether or not it should be legal. Canadian citizens and the Liberal government need to be cautious about similar effects happening in Canada, given the extreme value of the industry that has already been projected. Before Canadians get too excited, it’s important that Canada takes note of the profit in pot, and exactly who it would go to.
An exchange student’s perspective on McGill students
David Patterson Contributor There are many things that you are told before going on exchange to McGill: “Watch out for ice rain in winter,” “try poutine,” and “be prepared for endless midterms” are just a few. Yet what they don’t tell you is what an average McGill student is like. Before I left Scotland for Montreal no one mentioned that I should “watch out for samosa sales” or how nearly every student carries a MacBook. Is there some sort of Apple 2-for-1 deal that I don’t know about? McGill students are a baffling species to those on exchange, but perhaps not to those who have spent their entire university life in one place. So, as you dribble hot samosa chutney over the keys of an Apple Mac, please note the following things that set McGill students apart from other universities. 8
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First up, the three things you notice sitting in any class are Macs, jars, and slim people. Why choose a Mac over a PC anyway? Not only are Macs less bang for your buck compared to your nonMac options, but you get royally screwed whenever you want any halfway-decent Mac machine. PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customize it into oblivion. In all the places I have been to, I have never seen such a large concentration of Macconverts. But I guess this is forgivable, and not nearly as strange as drinking hot beverages from a glass jar. What possesses students to put something that is hot in something with negative insulation? Not only is it illogical, but makes me wonder if people are trying to send an ironic message of “Hey, don’t be so wasteful with your recyclable coffee cups.” While many reading this may be thinking “Nah, Macs aren’t for me and Tim Hortons don’t give out jars,” the majority will most likely fit the slim-trim bracket of McGill student. Seriously, why does everyone here wear blanket scarves and jogging leggings?! Whilst in a city with
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
winters colder than former prime minister Stephen Harper’s soul, a huge sheet may be practical, what is so undesirable about a normal scarf? As for the jogging leggings, I can only imagine they’re worn in a readiness to get to the nearest samosa sale. As someone who studied in a Scottish city where you can genuinely go into any fast-food place with any food and they’ll stick it in the deep-fat-fryer, this is both unsettling and unnatural. I will admit, there are less annoying things about the average McGill student. One is the out-ofseason Sangria Wednesdays. I love the fact that even though it may be 20 below freezing, people still enjoy a drink invented by Spaniards because red wine didn’t cut it when you can fry an egg on the road. Or the irrational love of samosas, which someone has yet to provide
a reasonable explanation for. Every day I receive a new Facebook notification for a samosa sale. It is a well-known fact that when strolling around campus you are always 100 metres away from a hot, spicy Indian snack. Personally, I think this is brilliant. While discussing why samosas are such a big deal, the best theories I’ve heard are: “It’s the only thing propping up oncampus charities,” “all the proceeds are stemming the current education cuts to departments,” and easily my favourite: “The Hells Angels are diversifying before weed becomes
legal.” These are just a few of the reasons that place McGill students as unique to the global student population. And after several months here, these initial peculiarities are starting to look like the norm. I can only hope that by the end of my time on exchange here, I do not come back totally assimilated. Otherwise, I may receive strange looks if I were to walk into my local fish & chip shop in Glasgow, carrying a steaming jar of espresso and asking for my samosa to be deep-fried. Opinion
Why McGill needs to talk about race
Emma Avery Contributor
At McGill, issues surrounding sexuality, gender, and consent have come to the forefront of campus dialogue in recent years; however, the same awareness of racial equality and representation does not exist. Conversations about racial issues are so invisible that many students are not even aware that there is anything to talk about at all, despite the fact that, in my experience, racist comments are still present in day-to-day conversation. Even though racial tensions in Canada have not yet reached the boiling point that they have in the U.S., it does not mean that they don’t exist. Every time another headline-making incident of racism is exposed, Canadians become briefly aware of localized issues—but once media coverage stops, so does the discussion. Rarely do single events translate into sustained dialogue about equity, diversity, representation, and racism as a whole. These are not singular events, but connected phenomena. Although awareness-raising initiatives do exist at McGill
and are important catalysts for change, what is really needed is change in the education structure in order to increase awareness and understanding throughout the entire student body. The lack of representation among faculty and within education curricula must be made visible so that the conversation about race can extend across campus. Efforts are being made by administrative and student groups to raise awareness about racial issues on campus and in Canada. One of these is Rez Project, which is launching a mandatory workshop, Race and Colonialism, for students living in residence. Initiatives such as these are great in theory and important for bringing such topics onto McGill students’ radars, but are not solutions by themselves, and they do not reach the entire student body. Inevitably, some students don’t notice or see them as warranting attention. Furthermore, racial issues can be extremely individual and may require more discussion and context than Rez Project can provide. Although it is a good start, simply expanding these initiatives wouldn’t have the desired effects without simultaneous change in McGill’s actual education structure. Weaving the conversation into classroom discussions is crucial to increasing awareness and understanding because it is the only way to ensure that visibility is achieved amongst
the entire student body. For example, L a k e h e a d University and the University of Winnipeg have started requiring students to take an indigenous studies course before graduating. Another part of restructuring e d u c a t i o n involves better representation among faculty. This might also lead to a greater range of courses being taught, based on works from varying cultural perspectives that are often left out of curriculums. Compared to other Canadian universities, McGill falls short in terms of minority representation at the faculty level, with only one fulltime indigenous faculty member relative to other Canadian universities: the University of British Columbia employs 33 indigenous professors across faculties, and the University of Manitoba employs 22. Currently, there are no black professors in the department of history, even for classes of African history, and only one black political science professor. McGill is committed in its mission statement to “offering the best possible education” to
its students; but to fulfill this, it needs to expose them to a diverse range of perspectives. If this diversity is not visible to students, it is difficult to have thorough conversations about race, diversity and ethnocentrism. Indeed, universities are the most important places to have these conversations because racial issues, both past and present, are relevant to a wide range of disciplines and influence the way students learn, form opinions, and go on to use their knowledge in society after graduating. Visibility of such issues requires the continuation of initiatives to promote equity and fight discrimination by students, as well as a change in administrative
practices. McGill must work towards greater equality through better representation of minorities among faculty and course subjects, as well as the creation of mandatory courses on minority issues. Mandating a class on indigenous studies for example, is no less justifiable than requiring engineers to take an arts elective (which is the current practice at McGill). Many McGill professors and students are aware of these issues, but anyone can look at the demographic of McGill’s faculty and see that it is disproportionately skewed. Greater diversity is necessary to foster greater dialogue, which is central to everything education is about.
Yoga is not cultural appropriation
Zachary Carson Columnist The discussion around the recent cancellation of a yoga class at the University of Ottawa has been focused on whether or not practicing yoga is cultural appropriation. Claiming that practicing a form of exercise that originated in a different culture is cultural appropriation is far fetched; one could just as easily say that people who play lacrosse are appropriating indigenous culture, or that those who Nordic ski are appropriating Scandinavian culture. Not only that, but the teacher of the class later told CBC that her focus was on the physical benefits of yoga, Opinion
and did not even get into the spiritual aspects. Most of the responses have been geared toward arguing that yoga is more of a spiritual than religious exercise or that by its nature it is meant to be accessible to everyone. These are important points, but they miss a more central issue: Denying people the ability to engage in foreign cultural experiences. In a globalized world, cultures constantly bleed into one another; calling this cultural appropriation is simply incorrect. People should be able to engage in cultural practices that are not theirs, as long as they do so out of honest interest, and do so respectfully. Genuine cultural dialogue is the best way to increase understanding and cooperation between people with different cultures. Denying someone who is interested in another culture this opportunity hinders
greater respect and understanding. Imagine that a student takes this class and becomes genuinely interested in Indian culture as a result. There is a point where individuals have to, and should, engage in a culture that is not theirs for the first time; likely they will not have a complete knowledge and understanding, but that comes with time. The important thing is that people have a genuine interest, and approach other cultures with respect. This is not to say that cultural appropriation—when one culture is seen as stealing elements of another culture—is not an important issue. Donning a headdress and moccasins as a costume is wholly different from genuine attempts to learn more about another culture. Going to McGill’s annual pow-wow (which is always open to everyone) to learn more about indigenous culture in Canada cannot be equated with dressing up
in a headdress for Halloween. The difference is in the sentiment that each individual has, and the reaction of the people who are supposedly being disrespected. This not always so obvious, which makes distinguishing
People should be able to engage in cultural practices that are not theirs, as long as they do so out of honest interest, and do so respectfully.
between genuine attempts to engage and cultural appropriation difficult, especially with those who do not have a lot of experience with the new culture—nevertheless, it is an important distinction to make. The issue it ultimately one of intention. The central question is whether people who are practicing yoga, or playing lacrosse, or going to a pow-wow are honestly interested in the culture. In the case of the first two examples, they may just want to exercise; if individuals are genuinely interested in engaging with new cultures that are not necessarily theirs, they should have the opportunity to do so. The amount of people who would benefit is far greater, on both sides of the cultural exchange, than the small number who might abuse these opportunities.
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Three hole-in-the-wall restobars in the Plateau Three spots to celebrate the end of the semester Icehouse
(Cordelia Cho / McGill Tribune)
Liz Willcock Staff Writer Nowhere has the term “hole-in-the-wall” been more applicable than in Montreal’s Plateau-Mont Royal. Every few blocks, in between the Plateau’s signature brownstone apartments, a bar is hiding on the corner of a residential street. The appeal of the hole-in-the-wall bar is undeni-
able. There is something about these places that makes you feel as though you’re a regular regardless of whether it’s your first time or your hundredth. Whether celebrating the end of midterms or mourning a fallen GPA, these bars along Rue Roy are the best places to feel at home over a pint of beer.
Icehouse is the perfect place for southern comfort food and a welcoming environment. Located on the corner of Rue SaintDominique and Rue Roy, it is completely unassuming from the exterior. It is set apart from surrounding apartments by the white fairy lights strung around the outdoor patio. On the inside, however, the restaurant keeps to its Texan theme. The menu features fried chicken served in white and red striped buckets, tacos with pulled pork and fried shrimp, and pitchers of bourbon lemonade. Before the food arrives, a host will set the table with a brown paper tablecloth. Although the paper is perplexing at first, it is explained when the server dumps food meant for sharing directly onto the table. The cozy white lights, Texan flags, and old-school pictures of pin-up girls make for a unique experience on this inconspicuous street corner.
Bar Watts
Bar Watts, on Rue Roy just west of Rue Saint-Denis, is identifiable only by a small white sign which bears its name. However once inside, Bar Watts is anything but plain. At times, the bar verges on a slightly Gothic ambience; behind the DJ booth stands a three foot tall statue of the Virgin Mary which looks down on the dance floor. The restaurant is dimly lit by candles, and bottles line the walls, flickering in the light. In the front, there are sit-down tables and seats at the bar where patrons can bask in the stylish atmosphere. From there, people can watch as servers bring out delicious personalized pizzas and mini meatballs from a window that overlooks the kitchen. Their fancy pizzas have toppings like cauliflower, prosciutto, and arugula. Half-price pizza nights on Wednesdays and Sundays make this the perfect place to amble over with friends.
Else’s
Else’s location at the corner of Rue Roy and Rue De Bullion earns its hole-in-the-wall status, but this restaurant is anything but anonymous. Famous for its neon blue exterior, Else’s is hard to miss. This neighbourhood bar was opened 21 years ago by a Norwegian woman named Else, who had newly arrived in Montreal. As the name itself implies, Else’s feels like stepping into a friend’s house. Potted plants hang from the windows and the tables are arranged in a haphazard mess; there is little sense of formality to the pub. You can chat for hours with friends over a hot cider or a pint of beer, and not want to leave. Else’s also puts a funky twist on typical bar food. Instead of your standard burger and fries, their menu includes everything from mini bison, quinoa, and fish burgers to veggie tacos and spicy chicken wings with sesame noodles
The night owls of CKUT radio William Shatner’s Whiskey Tears takes over campus radio’s nighttime programming
Radio waves go on into the night. (Daria Kiseleva / McGill Tribune) Audrey Carleton Staff Writer CKUT 90.3 FM has provided McGill students and Montreal residents with community news, alternative music, and culture shows since 1987. Like any radio station, the majority of its headline programs occur during the day; however, CKUT’s programming does not stop when the day ends, and a large portion of the radio station’s programming occurs when the majority of its listeners are asleep. “William Shat10
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ner’s Whiskey Tears,” informally referred to as “Whisky Tears” by its hosts, is one of these programs. The music-dominated show is held from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. on Thursday mornings. It has rotating hosts selected on a volunteer basis to choose their own music and spoken content each week. With any media programming that airs, when the majority of regular listeners are asleep, there is the question of where the program gets its audience. The hosts of the program themselves can only guess
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as to whom their music and voices reach. “It’s so hard to know how many people are listening, or if anyone is,” Celia Rabinovitch, U1 Social Work and volunteer host, said. “The world just seems dead at that time [....] I think that there’s something about doing a show at a late hour that makes you feel super anonymous, and it actually does make you feel under the radar.” Some of the hosts have their own speculations as to who their main listener demographic is. “I think it’s mostly people who work nights,” Rabinovitch said. “Once, I got a call at 4:45 [a.m.], the first time I did Whiskey Tears from someone saying [she/he] liked the music. [This listener was] like, ‘Yeah, I’m driving to work, and this song’s really good, what’s it called?’
and I was like ‘[Wow], does this happen every time?’” Whiskey Tears is also not a nighttime program all across the world. Depending on the time zone, international audiences are able to tune in to the show live during the day. “I’m from the [United Kingdom], so they’re five hours ahead,” Xavier Pillai, U3 History student and volunteer host, said. “At nine in the morning, my friends are all waking up, and I’m like ‘I’m on the radio!’ and they’re like ‘Oh cool, I’ll listen in on my way to school.’” The unconventional timing of Whiskey Tears allows the hosts more freedom and control than most other CKUT programming. While Whiskey Tears hosts aim to follow CKUT’s standards, the nature of the program allows them more freedom
from these rules. “There’s a certain element of it that you know your show is from four to six a.m.,” Rabinovitch said. “So you’re like ‘Okay, let’s go for the weird ambient noise.’ It gives you a sense of huge liberty to be like ‘I’m going to play some weird video game music remix’ [....]” Ultimately, the feeling of control over the spread of music that results from hosting a radio show is well worth the nerves and debate over listenership that come with it. “It just is really validating I think,” Rabinovitch said. “It’s also fun to put together a mix if you’re someone who’s really into music [....] When you’re someone who makes playlists just for fun [...] it’s [cool] to feel like music that you chose is getting put out there.” STudent Living
Under the radar fashion trends for the winter (vogue.com)
Suits for all Make a statement this year by playing around with the simplicity of a suit. For so long, the options for men attending a black-tie event were simple: A sleek jacket and loyal pair of pants that can be worn time and again. Now it’s the ladies’ turn to give this look a go. Try black-on-black like Victoria Beckham, or recreate your own version of the timeless menswear look of a white shirt and black suit. Another recent trend that has been popular among the top models is combining two trends—the deep V cut and the suit—by simply omitting an undershirt and buttoning up the blazer. This is definitely a more daring option, but if the confidence is there, fashion followers everywhere will applaud your boldness.
Emma Whitehall Contributor
Make your winter coat pop If it’s time to invest in a new winter coat, take a risk and go for a bold colour—don’t let the fear of wearability stop you! How often are your winter outfits going to include a bright colour that would clash, anyway? Embrace the wowfactor, move away from neutrals, and make a striking coat your primary winter look. This will add some life to the gloomy, frostbitten streets of winter, and maybe even perk up someone else’s day with your radiant choice. If you’re not sure which colour to try, take a note from legendary New York Times street-style Reporter, Bill Cunningham, whose most recent video blog identified cobalt or sapphire blue as the colour that stylish New Yorkers are flocking towards.
Up your style points with a side of sensibility No one ever said a good-looking high-heeled boot had to be uncomfortable, but for so many years it felt like an accepted part of the fashion industry. Classic brands like UGG, Sorel, and Hunter are often typified in our minds to forever be associated with their one comfy look. Yet all three of these brands have recently branched out. UGG has moved towards exploring laceup booties, while Sorel has gone for a classic, sleek black leather boot with a splash of colour. Hunter, on the other hand, has developed both the aforementioned styles, and now offers a wide selection of heeled boots. There is finally the option to have a stylish night out in heels while keeping your feet warm, dry, and comfortable.
Oversized denim Gone are the days of finding the perfect fit for jeans that hug your body in all the right places. Oversized denim is popping up everywhere, with Rihanna as the trend’s fearless leader. Rihanna has continually acted as the queen of ‘anything goes’ in fashion, and she has boldly taken oversized denim where few others have dared. The options are ever growing; jeans are getting wider, higher, looser, and longer. Denim jackets have also followed the move towards an oversized look. With winter coming, these options luckily leave a fortunate amount of space for adding a thin layer under your jeans or a sweater under your jacket to survive Montreal’s fast approaching frigid temperatures.
Kanye takes sweats to the runway Many students are guilty of overusing their go-to pair of comfy black leggings, especially when they are too tired and overworked to put together a nice outfit. Thanks to the self-titled Yeezus himself, leggings and a massive sweatshirt are now an acceptable look to wear out of the house. This year, Kanye West’s clothing line, Yeezy Season 2, closed out New York Fashion Week with an A-list audience and a wide range of reviews. On par with oversized denim, baggy sweatshirts, and jackets were common threads—usually styled overtop a comfortable spandex bodysuit or leggings of a similar shade or colour. Slowly, Kanye West might just be making high fashion easier and more adaptable to everyday life.
STUDENT OF THE W EEK
DA W N TIFFANY Le Contributor Dawn Cheung, U4 English Literature major and East Asian Studies minor, is actively contributing to student life on campus in many ways, including through her management of the popular Facebook page: Free Food on Campus and in Montreal. Since September 2014, Cheung has been the president of McGill Students Spoken Word Associated Youth (McSWAY), an outlet for students to express themselves through performance poetry. McSWAY creates a safe space for students to share their thoughts through performance, and provides workshops on spoken word. “We support people gathering together to share all kinds of poetry—mainly the performance aspect by both dramatizing and having fun with it,” she said. Cheung’s most popular endeavour, however, used by countless students every day, is the McGill Free Food on Campus and in Montreal group. The Facebook STudent Living
group was created by another McGill student, Margaret Lu, three years ago. Cheung inherited it when Lu graduated, and has been the groups’ administrator for the last two years. It has since grown to more than 10 thousand members. It does not take Cheung too much time to regulate, but she does rule with a bit of an iron fist. The group is strictly for free food, and any posts that do not comply are taken down. Cheung is also always aiming to improve the group through member feedback. Recently, the group’s name was changed to specify “in Montreal.” “There’s places off campus as well that [have] really good free food, [like] the free fish and chips in Monkland,” she said. Cheung will be graduating at the end of this semester, but she is not nervous about finishing up her degree. In fact, she already has experience with convocations. For the past two years, she’s been co-head usher for convocation at McGill. “I’ve seen people graduate
CHEUN G
all the time, [I have been there] every single ceremony,” Cheung explained. “I feel okay [about graduating myself], I see it as an extended vacation.” In January 2016, the responsibility of the group will be passed on again and Cheung is looking for just the right person to hand off the group to. “I just want to make sure people can find out about the group and join it and contribute information,” Cheung said. “There are conferences and events with tons of extra food at the end that should not go to waste. We say where it is and tell people to come get it.” Under Cheung’s care, the Free Food group has successfully adapted the reality of a society with an unbelievably high amount of food waste to meet the mindset of frugal students—a service to McGill that will continue to be used and appreciated long after her graduation.
Dawn Cheung (DC): My partner was the cow and I was the farmer at a couple costume contest—we won. [Then] we switched halfway through the night because we can fit into each other’s clothes. MT: What is your greatest regret? DC: That I couldn’t get all the free
food. Sometimes I see the free food posts, but then it’s too late and there’s no time, or I was busy and couldn’t get it. MT: What is the best thing that happened this year? DC: I moved out! I no longer live with my family.
Q&A McGill Tribune (MT): What was your Halloween costume this year? Wednesday, December 2, 2015
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11
The changing nature of Canadian and American border security Aislinn Kalob
(adn.com)
T
he Canadian border with the United States is the longest un-militarized border in the world, a statistic symbolic of the peaceful relationship the two countries have held for hundreds of years; however, it does not take into account recent efforts or attitudes towards strengthening security along this 8,890 kilometre long international border. A Bloomberg poll released in September showed that 41 per cent of respondents, Americans over the age of 18, agreed with the following statement: “If a wall is good for the Mexico border, it is good for the Canada border as well.” The concept of a physical brick-and-mortar structure separating the two counties was originally brought to the public’s attention by former U.S. presidential candidate and Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker, who called this “a legitimate issue for us to look at” in terms of law enforcement. In response, Jason Kenney, then Canada’s minister for National Defence and Multiculturalism dismissed Walker’s statement, citing extensive security conditions already in place. “If you look at how the border works today, with helicopters going up and down, and security boats pa-
trolling on a constant daily basis, it’s clear that border is heavily secured,” Kenney said at the time. The rhetoric surrounding a Canadian-American border wall earlier this year was just that: Rhetoric. This serves as a reminder that even among countries coexisting so peacefully, security has increased on a large scale in recent years. Prior to the attacks on September 11, about half of the border crossings were left unguarded at night. In the years since 2001, the number of American security personnel along the border has increased from 340 to 2,220 as of 2014. Air travel to and from Canada and the United States began requiring passport identification in 2007, and via land, in 2009. In the decade following 9/11, the United States has spent $3 billion per year securing its northern borders. To understand the phenomenon of evolving security is to examine how the new laws manifest themselves on the ground. In two adjacent communities split through the middle by a fairly open border: Stanstead, QC, Canada, and Derby Line, VT, U.S.A, security has come to play a role in the everyday lives of residents, apparent even to the casual visitor.
Communities divided
The context of toay’s heightened security and the laws thereof manifest themselves in unique ways in the border towns of Stanstead and Derby Line. With the post-2009 advent of passport requirement to travel between Canada and the United States, three former crossings— Church Street, Lee Street, and Ball Street—were gated off, restricting legal border entry to only two locations. All vehicular border crossing traffic is now diverted to either the Canusa Avenue border crossing, which separates Beebe Plain, VT from the Beebe Plain area of Stanstead, Quebec, or across town at the Derby Line, VT and Rock Island area of Stanstead border crossing on Dufferin Street. The introduction of the gate on Church Street in 2011 caused concern among residents of the town when erected, as the absence of a barrier held a symbol of trust in the community. Former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper visited Stanstead that same year and noted the importance of balancing the new state of security in keeping with
friendship between Canada and the United States. “I think we have to keep making the point to our American friends that it’s essential that our borders be bridges between us, and not barriers,” Harper said on the matter, while visiting Stanstead to announce the construction of a hockey arena that year. Today, Church Street is barricaded by a row of flower pots. Aside from the blocked streets between Stanstead and Derby Line, the international border cuts through the two towns for many kilometres and is not divided by a physical barrier. Technically, people could cross the border by foot at any number of locations. But by law, anyone crossing the border, whether by car or on foot, must present themselves to the nearest border station or risk a penalty: A fine ranging from $200 to $3,000, or imprisonment. A border official on the U.S. side of the Dufferin Street border crossing—who requested anonymity because he was unauthorized to speak on the matter—believed there was an overall positive response among the community towards the strengthening of border crossing security.
“Some of the people [...] may view this negatively [...] because you have some wait time,” the border official said. “Most of the people [have] accepted it [...they] don’t have much of an opinion […] not too many people are outright hostile [….] Since September 11, people know [...] things have changed, and they’re accepting this.” Despite the potential for long wait times, this border official cited that crossing into the other country remains a part of people’s daily lives in both Stanstead and Derby Line. “It’s the same people crossing all day,” he said. “Some of them cross five or six times a day, because they have family on this side, the kids are babysat in Canada; they work over there in the U.S., but they actually live in Canada, [or] their exgirlfriend lives in the U.S.” Robert Sheldon is general manager of Granite Central, a museum devoted to the history of granite in Stanstead. It stands less than 500 metres from the Dufferin Street border crossing, within view. During the summer holidays, he notices traffic backed up for three to four kilometres at the Dufferin Street crossing, due to its location on Highway 143. The crossing along Canusa Avenue
has a much lighter flow of traffic due to its location in a residential area. “I’ll get into my truck,” Sheldon said. “I’ll drive up to the border and tell people, [...] ‘Why don’t you just come down to this museum, and after you visit the museum, I’ll show you another crossing, and you’ll pass within minutes [….] Customs officers in Beebe get upset with me sometimes, saying ‘you’re sending so much traffic down here.’”
Small-town life, the way it was before
Prior to the passport requirement for crossing the border, traffic to and from the two countries was more fluid. In the ’80s, when the Canadian dollar was particularly strong in relation to the U.S. dollar, Canadians would often participate in crossborder shopping, purchasing food, cigarettes, alcohol, and gasoline in Vermont and New Hampshire with ease. Former residents recall the relaxed experience living a slightly more unique version of small-town life fondly. Peter Scowen, current editorial writer for the Globe and Mail, bought the local newspaper, the Stanstead Journal, with a co-worker and friend in 1987 when its existence was at risk due to financial trouble. Together, the two of them ran the entire operation until 1991, and the Journal is today in its 171st year of publication, documenting facets of small-town life. “From [1987] to [1991], you’ll see my name or initials on almost every story, I wrote everything,” Scowen said. “I wrote editorials, I did all the layout, I did the photography, it was a tiny one-person operation. My partner took care of the business side, he sold the ads, did all the accounting and booking. He was grandiosely called publisher, and I was grandiosely called editor.” The Stanstead Journal covered the news of these villages, the greater Stanstead County, and news on the opposite side of the border. “Border stories weren’t, in my memory, a big issue,” Scowen said. “We didn’t write a lot about the border; we wrote about both sides of the town. If there was a big crash in Derby Line, an accident […] we would cover it, because it was local news. People probably knew the person, or they would have heard about it.” In some cases, the differences between either side of the border worked to his benefit. “One night, we were trying to put the paper out, and we had a blackout in Rock Island,” said Scowen. “The lights were on in Derby Line, and my partner’s sister worked there, had an office [….] So we packed our computers into a car, we went down
to the border, and we told them what happened. We set up an office used their power to get the paper out. I don’t think you could ever do that today. I don’t think you could come to the border with a bunch of computers to run a business with for 24 hours. It would be so complicated and impossible.”
Today’s experience
Ann Kasowski is the owner of Boutique Veranda, a collectibles shop located on Principal Road in Stanstead, or what used to be Beebe. Kasowski moved to Beebe in 1984, and was in the unique situation of living only a number of houses away from the Canada - U.S. border, a less complex arrangement at that time compared to today. “When I first moved here […] I’d take the dog and walk to the post office,” Kasowski said. “I’d wave at the Canadian guy, wave at the American guy, go get my mail [...] and go home. That was it. They used to say Beebe here was the friendliest border [….] You’ve seen what you have to go through now. And not only do I have to have [my passport], I have to have papers for the dog to go get the mail, which is seven houses away in the States.” Although the border plays a distinct role in her everyday life, Kasowski has few complaints. “Most of the border guards know me,” Kasowski said. “They’re very friendly, usually. The odd time, you get somebody who hasn’t served here from the big border, and they’re much rougher, because they’re not used to a small town and who the locals are.” Sheldon takes a different stance on the border. The increased difficulty the border guards give tourists negatively affects his and other surrounding businesses. He is concerned that the policy of questioning visitors has become overly harsh. “A lot of Americans don’t dare come this way, because coming this way [into Canada] is easy, but going back, you’re a terrorist,” Sheldon said. “In the past, you always were innocent until proven guilty. Now you’re guilty until you’re proven innocent. It’s more difficult for the Americans to go back, so there’s not a lot of tourists coming this way [….] It makes it difficult for [businesses].” His personal estimation is that only 25 per cent of Stanstead’s population of around 3,500 residents cross into the United States, despite the appeal of cheaper goods and services just across the border. He claims that for some, it is fear of the border crossing that deters them. “A lot of [people] have a file,” he said. “They’re on welfare, they’ve gotten into problems, they’ve got
a DWI, they went to jail—so they’re just scared of the border.” Sheldon crosses the border into Derby Line, Vermont three or four times per day to pick up his mail, get groceries, or purchase gas. He uses a NEXUS card rather than his
passport, which allows for speedier crossing, although he finds it an unsettling measure of security. “The computer knows more about me than I know about myself,” Sheldon said. “That’s what gets me [....] And [the border guard’s] attitude sometimes, instead of smiling, saying ‘Welcome, what’s your name, where are you going,’ it’s [the] crazy things that they ask. ‘What are you going over here for?’ I always say, ‘to stimulate your economy!’
Stanstead and Derby’s line: United and divided
The Haskell Free Library and Opera House, a building which purposefully straddles the border, was intended by its founders in 1901 to foster community and international harmony Despite the novelty of a building constructed on an international border, the line painted across the floor is more than just a symbol. Within the building, visitors can cross back and forth without reporting to the border station. While watching the opera you can be seated in one country while the actors are performing in the other. The idea for this structure was conceived of by Martha Stewart Haskell, who was born in a granite house on Canusa Avenue, another international structure in Stanstead, just down the street from Kasowski’s residence. “The granite house was the store and post office for both countries until 1916,” said Kasowski, who also used to serve as archivist at the Stanstead Historical Society. “[Haskell’s] father was the postmaster for both countries. In memory of her husband, she built Haskell li-
brary, also cut by the border.” Sheldon takes issue with the tighter border security and its visible effect on unity between the two towns, noting that it had affected relations significantly. “We try to do things together, or in the past, we did,” he said. “We used to have parades, for the first of July or the fourth, whereby the floats would come across and we’d join into each other. Now they have what they call their ‘town day,’ around the fourth, and we have our […] festival, which is separate. You’d have very few Americans coming.” Despite it all, even prior to the recent heightened security, Derby Line and Stanstead are in two different countries. Logistically, there always has been, and always will be, very real elements of separation. “While people came and went very easily and they had friends and family on both sides, and they went across just for lunch or to buy their milk and their gas, they were still two very different countries,” said Scowen. “Different economies, different wages, it was remarkable, actually, the differences you see.” Whether it’s two different insurance companies covering the two respective international halves of the Haskell Library and Opera House, cheaper gas prices on the U.S. side of the border drawing Canadian visitors, or Scowen’s power outage anecdote reflecting the dif-
ference even of electricity suppliers. “The power grid was different, the water supply was different, the economy was different, how much [money] you make was different, prices were completely different,” Scowen said. “It’s funny how it’s such an arbitrary line that has deep significance in the way people live.” Over 400,000 people cross the border between Canada and the United States per day for business and leisure, but in two towns that are split down the middle by a seemingly arbitrary line drawn on the pavement, the border is a stark reality. In a post-9/11 world, it’s more a reality than ever, bringing vast changes to all 8,890 kilometres of the Canadian and American border. Derby Line and Stanstead are in the unique situation of needing to balance practical security measures, while working to maintain their former sense of unity. They remain two towns that share emergency services, a sewer system, and snowplowing duties in winter, home to people who had been accustomed to easily crossing an international border for a slice of pizza. The experiences of individuals, affected on a daily basis by each change in border security laws, only serve to humanize a calculated, deliberate, and expensive matter of foreign policy.
Chill out—sea levels aren’t rising as quickly as predicted Daniel Galef Contributor Scientists have been warning for years that it may actually be too late to stop climate change despite concerted efforts by the global community. But the world may not be doomed after all. According to a new paper coauthored by McGill Professor Natalya Gomez from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, humanity might just have a bit more time than previously predicted. The paper, published in Nature Communications, outlined the effects of factors that had been ignored by earlier computer models used to evaluate global warming. By including these new aspects, the scientists determined that the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) will melt at half the rate previously predicted. This means there will be more time to plan for and prevent sea level rise and coastal flooding. Among the new phenomena examined by
Gomez are the fluid properties of the earth’s mantle beneath Antarctica. These include viscosity, elasticity, and even the gravity produced by the mass of the ice itself. Previously, these had not been included because scientists believed their effect would not be significant compared to other more obvious factors, such as sunlight, ocean currents, and greenhouse gas retention. Gravity makes the water level higher near the icecaps, due to the enormous mass of ice pulling on the sea in a similar manner to the tidal effect of the moon. As the ice sheet melts into the ocean, it loses mass, and the water level drops. Ice, however, melts more slowly when it is not in contact with water. As the AIS melts and loses its gravitational pull on the surrounding water, the surface area of contact between the ice and water decreases, and consequently, the ice melting slows down. The other factor taken into account for the first time is the fact that Earth will ‘bounce
Biochemist Nahum Sonenberg favours the prepared mind Chloe Nevitt Science & Technology Editor McGill Biochemistry Professor Nahum Sonenberg likes asking simple questions. He believes that every problem can be broken down into pieces and put together like a puzzle to answer a bigger issue. “I started [my PhD] on something that I’m still working on,” said Sonenberg. “Ribosomes.” Ribosomes are the very large and very complex molecular machines that make proteins. To do this, ribosomes rely on a molecule 14
known as mRNA for information. This ‘reading’ of mRNA to make proteins is known as translation. To understand human disease, and in particular, cancer, defects in this process must be understood. The bits and parts of these reactions were just beginning to be discovered when Sonenberg was born in 1946. “I was born in [Wetzlar, Germany],” said Sonenberg. “My parents [had] come from Russia [to a] displaced persons camp [in Germany]. In ’49, we immigrated to Israel on a ship from Marseille.”
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
back’ as weight is taken off of it, known as Earth’s rebound. The Earth beneath the ice sheet possesses a degree of elasticity like any other substance. As the sheet melts, and the enormous weight of the ice is taken off of it, the ground underneath the ice sheet will expand upward, and limit the contact of the remaining ice with the surrounding seawater. The rise in sea level from melting ice mostly comes from a small handful of ‘outlet’ glaciers fed by snowfall and driven by gravity into the sea. Chief among these, as identified by Gomez in a separate article in Nature News and Views, is the Thwaites Glacier, a small but significant site of ice loss in a sheet of ice known as the Amundsen Sea Embayment (ASE). This relatively unpredictable process is cited by the paper as a major cause of the uncertainty related to predicting levels of destruction. The effects of icemelt do not end with flooding. The ecosystem is complex and every unbalance has a Sonenberg completed a master’s degree in Microbiology and Immunology at Tel Aviv University, and later completed a PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Sonenberg’s PhD was focused on the enzymatic activity protein peptidyl transferase, found in a ribosome. Peptidyl transferase is responsible for connecting amino acids—which are the building blocks of a protein—together using a special kind of linkage, known as a peptide bond. When Sonenberg was doing his PhD, however, much of this was unknown. “My project was to identify the peptidyl transferase—the protein that makes the peptide bond,” Sonenberg explained. “I was a little naïve, I thought I can solve this—I can find the protein.” Ultimately, the structure and mechanism of the ribosome was solved by other researchers via X-ray crystallography rather than biochemical assays. “Whatever experiment you’re [doing], you have to be persistent,” Sonenberg said. “Rule number one is do not despair.” Over the years, Sonenberg’s habit for giving short, motivational, and practical tips to survive in the lab evolved into a loose set of rules,
domino chain of consequences, explained McGill Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Professor Bruno Tremblay. “It stratifies the ocean,” Tremblay said. “It isolates the surface water from the warmer water beneath. When you melt glacier ice, you decrease the salinity of the surface water. And freshwater is much lighter than salty water. It’s like a lens of oil sitting on top of water. It’s two different densities, and it prevents vertical exchange between the two layers.” This has additional ecological implications. Ocean stratification prevents the vertical exchange of nutrients as well as salt. When nutrients are trapped below the photic zone where sunlight reaches, phytoplankton and other basic organisms starve, which can have severe continuing repercussions up the food chain. Estimates over the next few centuries warn of coastal devastation and runaway
Natalya Gomez has been examining natural phenomena to better understand the risk of rising sealevels. (Natalie Vineberg / McGill Tribune) ecological upheaval—both from heat expansion and the shrinking of polar ice caps. Even with this new information, it’s only a little extra time that should be used wisely to prevent further damage. “Antarctic ice loss would add meltwater to the oceans and contribute to future sea-level rise, posing a threat to coastal communities and environments around the world,” Gomez said.
known as ‘The Wisdom of Nahum for the New Millennium.’ “Rule number six: Trust no one: You have to see it with our own eyes. Rule number 10: You can’t be ‘first and wrong’ or ‘second and right.’ Always be first and right. Rule number nine: Ask simple questions to obtain simple answers.” Rule number nine is what led Sonenberg to discover the eIF4E protein. “The simple question was: There’s a cap structure on mRNA, what’s the protein that binds to it?” said Sonenberg. In 1979, Sonenberg answered that question while working at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology. “I discovered the protein called eIF4e—the cap-binding protein,” Sonenberg said. “It turns out that this protein is involved in cancer, so now scientists and companies are devising drugs to fight cancer based on this protein.” eIF4E plays a critical role in protein translation regulation. When problems with this problem arise, cells will not translate proteins properly, which can result in many kinds of illnesses. Consequently, researchers around the world study eIF4E, and Sonenberg has many
collaborators. This communication between scientists has been vital to the survival of the field. Originally, the study of science was the study of details. To understand singular cellular processes, a scientist would isolate one protein to examine, and then see how it would respond to different stimuli. Today, the approach is very different. “Everything that we are studying now is system-wide,” Sonenberg said. “We understand a simple problem through the whole system. When we look at things like heart disease, we want to see the effect on every organ in the body.” There is no doubt that the life of a scientist is as rigourous as the scientific process itself. It requires long days and even longer nights. But for someone like Sonenberg, the journey has been worth it. “In the end, when [I] think about this, I would do it all over again,” Sonenberg said. “I [have] had the opportunity to do important things in science. I don’t see it as a sacrifice. It is something I had the privilege to do.” An extended version of this article is available online at mcgilltribune.com/sci-tech/. Science & Technology
The Science & Policy Exchange group is planning for the future Transparent policies and educated policy-makers are essential to a succesful government The Science & Policy Exchange group is looking to inform the public about the importance of educated decisions. (Natalie Vineberg / McGill Tribune) Clare Lyle Staff Writer Consider the space race, which occured between 1955 to 1972 and saw the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. competing for superiority in space technologies. This resulted in a drive in innovation and increased incentives to do research. Alone a similar line, consider the impact of education policy decisions. In Canada, most universities are public—meaning that a large percentage of their operating budget is provided by the government. The impact a government has on the study of science is enormous. McGill and other universities are working together to promote the interests of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students in the decision-making process. One such organization is the Science & Policy Exchange (SPE) group. One of the problems they hope to address is life after graduation for scientists. With the number of PhDs awarded increasing year after year, this education policy is becoming increasingly important. “In general, I think that the way [...] universities are set up to teach science at the doctoral level is still really designed as a pipeline for academia, and increasingly more students are not able to get jobs in academia,” Liam Crapper, a Neuroscience PhD student at McGill and a member of SPE, said. “You do develop a lot of the skills you need for other jobs, but not in a very explicit way. A lot of it is opportunities you have to seek out yourself. I think there’s a lot more that could be done to prepare students for the workplace when they leave. Some of that would be business management skills, or communication skills, or even just how to write a business CV.” SPE, which features roughly 15 students from Montreal universities, has run conferences since 2010 with the purpose of facilitating conversations on the relationship between science and science & technology
public policy. Past speakers came from a variety of backgrounds—from academics such as McGill Professors Howard Bergman and Joe Schwarcz, director of the McGill Office for Science and Society, to professionals from industry like Jesse Vincent-Herscovici, a senior account manager at the NGO Miltacs. “It started as a group that was doing a lot of awareness activities, so we hosted conferences over the years,” Crapper said. “Lately, we’ve been trying to get into policy advocacy. We focus on a lot of student involvement and getting a lot of student perspectives.” Despite the value of starting conversations, SPE was still looking to do something with more tangible results. “A the end of the day, everyone enjoyed themselves and seemed to really like it, but [...] what can we do [with] that?” Chelsea Cavanagh, past president of SPE, explained. “There’s not much we produced from that—the impact is harder to measure.” Across the world, scientists frequently find themselves in the heart of governments, taking up positions dedicated specifically to promoting scientifically-informed policy. In Quebec and New Zealand, for example, the position of chief scientist has been created to facilitate communication between science and policy. The current Canadian cabinet features two portfolios related to science: A minister of Science and a minister of Innovation, Science and Economic development. Not all governments have been following this trend. The same week that the European Space Agency landed the Rosetta probe on a comet, the European Union (EU) eliminated the position of chief science advisor to the EU president in 2014. That year also saw the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada close seven of its 11 libraries across the country. Compared to hot-button issues like the economy, pensions, and international relations, science can seem comparatively dull at best, and irrelevant at worst. “It’s important that decision-making
be done with a large evidence base, and that we invest a lot of money as [a] country in science and in innovation, and in developing all this knowledge base,” Crapper said. “Sometimes we go to form policy or make decisions and it get left out or ignored, and that results in both poor policy making and in some ways a waste of money.” According to a report from the British government, when scientists and policymakers interact, there are very real results. “Research confirms that engagement between innovators and the science base creates real welfare benefit,” the report reads. “In fact, a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that 1 per cent growth in public research and development (R&D)lead to a 0.17 per cent increase in total factor productivity in the long run. Moreover, this effect increases with the share of public science conducted
that we’re going to bring together a bunch of students who are actively thinking about these kinds of issues related to science and technology and education, and bring them together with experts in different fields and different stakeholder groups,” Crapper said. “They’ll come up with a set of guidelines, and at the end, we’ll put the solutions they’ve developed into a formal document.” This year, the SPE is trying tackled the role of public policy in shaping STEM education. This approach is unique because most reports about STEM education policy in the past have not come from groups that are directly affected by policy decisions. “We’re actually listening to the students here, and taking their thoughts into account,” Cavanagh said. Ultimately, the group hopes to bring the students’ perspectives to the attention of policymakers. “The naïve optimist hopes to see
In 2014, the EU eliminated the position of Chief Science Advisor to the EU President, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada closed seven of its eleven libraries. in universities.” This year, the SPE is trying something different. On Nov. 28, SPE brought together 15 students and 11 professors to discuss STEM education policy and produce a white paper outlining their conclusions and recommendations. “The goal of the event [... was] to come up with policy guidelines that can be sent to government and people who are involved with making these kinds of decisions,” Crapper explained. Dialogue between groups that don’t normally interact with each other was a distinguishing feature of the event. “Basically the idea of the event [was]
all of our suggestions put into policy,” Crapper said. “I think one of the biggest challenges after [the white paper] is done, but also one of the most important things is making sure it gets into the hands of decision makers [....] From there, the ball is in their court.” The group hopes that by giving them more information the policymakers will be able to make better and more informed decisions when designing science education policies. “[Hopefully] the voice of the students will be represented in their decision making in the future,” said Crapper. Wednesday, December 2, 2015
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01
Pumpkin and mammoth pies
Americans who celebrated Thanksgiving last weekend have mastodons and mammoths to thank for the pumpkin pie on the table. In a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, researchers established a link between the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna—mastodons, mammoths, giant sloths, and others—and the existence of modern pumpkin and squash in North America. The researchers theorized that ancient humans did not originally eat pumpkins and squash because of their toxicity and bitter taste, which results from a compound called cucurbitacin. This acted as the plant’s built-in defence system against predators. “Initially, humans probably ate the seeds of the wild gourds after some washing to get rid of the bitter taste,” explained archaeologist Bruce Smith to Smithsonian Science News. “[Then, over the course of thousands of years] humans selected for non-bitter forms—they would have grown them and cultivated them and then selected through
Research Briefs Natasha Michaeloff Contributor
Mammoths played a crucial role in the spread of prehistoric wild gourds. (pbs.org) the seeds, finding seeds that had less bitterness and planting them selectively.” In order to be able to selectively breed plants, however, there must be a variety of plants to choose from— and this is where mammoths come into play. Scientists have discovered fossilized mammoth dung that suggests that the megafauna who lived 12,000 years ago consumed bitter wild gourds. Since the mammoths’ bodies were so massive, the fruit presented a comparatively small amount of cucurbitacin and posed no harm. The seeds would pass through the animal’s digestive tract and be deposited along with ‘fertilizer,’ which would help new plants grow,
and spread pumpkins and squash across North America. This created a large pool from which farmers could choose from to domesticate. “It’s been suggested before— and I think it’s a very reasonable hypothesis—that wild species of pumpkin and squash weren’t used for food early in the domestication process,” said Penn State University post-doctoral fellow Logan Kistler in an interview with ScienceDaily. Pumpkins and squash have been tested and tweaked to meet the needs of mankind. Like dogs, corn, and wheat, the domestication of squash and pumpkins was a slow and deliberate process, relying on a number of large factors. Today, this has enabled it to become a staple in
the diets of people around the world, especially on Thanksgiving.
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Loneliness & the body
It has long been thought that social isolation is worse for people than consistent social interaction; however, how much worse and precisely in what way has not been determined—until earlier this week. According to recent studies conducted at the University of Chicago, the inherent stress of being socially isolated causes the body to trigger sympathetic nervous system signalling. The sympathetic nervous system controls the fight or flight response, and induces changes in leukocytes, or white blood cells.
More specifically, white blood cells begin activating what is known as the conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA). This induces the expression of genes that contribute to inflammation, and a decrease in the expression of antiviral genes. When the CTRA pathway is activated, and the expression of genes is altered, people become more susceptible to illnesses. The study, which sampled 141 adults between the ages of 50 and 68, found to be a reciprocal relationship between CTRA and loneliness, with loneliness even predicting the presence of CTRA and vice versa. “Much of what’s triggered by social isolation is non-conscious,” said University of Chicago psychologist Dr. John Cacioppo, one of the researchers spearheading the project, in his TEDTalk on the subject. When alone, the body enters self-preservation mode, which can manifest itself into feelings of paranoia. “If [one is] looking for dangers, [one is] more likely to see dangers, whether they exist or not,” explained Cacioppo. “[This] culminates in a greater likelihood of negative social interactions, when they do occur.”
The study drug debate takes a new turn Prescription drug abuse or cognitive enhancement? Clare Fogarty Contributor The use of psychostimulant drugs like Adderall, Ritalin, and Vyvanse has become increasingly routine for some university students striving for success. In fact, some studies report up to 34 per cent of U.S. college-level students use non-medical psychostimulants for increased academic performance. Use also seems to vary by social group. For a cohort of fraternity members, this number was found to be as high as 55 per cent. Pyschostimulants include a broad class of drugs normally prescribed to treat symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity common in patients with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Some of the most commonly used stimulants are derivatives of amphetamines. For example, Adderall is a mixture of two mirror-image organic molecules—called enantiomers— dextroamphetamine and levoamphetamine. Amphetamines work by binding to trace amine associated receptors (TAARs) in the brain, triggering the release of natural 16
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neurotransmitters like epinephrine (adrenaline) and dopamine from specialized neuronal compartments, called synaptic vesicles. These neurotransmitters increase signalling between neurons, and consequently enhance cognitive activity. This results in increased focus and attention. For patients with ADHD, regular use of stimulants generally shows a low rate of negative side effects. Thus, prescribing stimulants to those with ADHD seems like a clear solution to treating symptoms. The issue of nonprescription use of stimulants, however, is much less black and white. Interestingly, stimulants are generally found to have very little effect on healthy individuals, with results comparable to other study techniques like physical activity or meditation. A 2013 study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that students merely perceived the drug as strongly enhancing their cognitive ability. Discussing the ethics behind stimulant misuse, consequently, might be a moot point, as they may not actually provide an unfair advantage over other students. Still, others disagree. Biomedical ethicist
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Dr. Cynthia Forlini from the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical research, explained that while the overall effects of stimulants on students is generally low, the results may vary drastically between individuals. “There’s a phenomenon [called] the enhancement ceiling,” Forlini said. “You can only be enhanced so far. A higher performing individual will not get a big benefit from these drugs; however, if your baseline performance is lower, these drugs might help you much more. It’s an interesting idea to frame the debate around—an optimizing or normalizing of performance, bringing people to a certain level that cannot be surpassed.” The issue to be addressed then, is how to frame the debate behind stimulant misuse. “If you’re tackling something like prescription abuse, the connotation is very different than if it’s [an] enhancement or a lifestyle choice,” Forlini explained. “You’re not going to talk about fairness— it’s whether or not this is cheating. If you frame it as a lifestyle choice, then maybe—although you’re not supposed to be doing it—this is a
choice that you have to help attain your goals.” Discussing the topic in a neutral light appears to be key to reasonable debate. This avoids the implied connotation behind the different terminologies. “‘Non-medical prescription use of stimulants’ is a mouthful, but it doesn’t have that ethical connotation of implied benefit, which I think is a problem because the effects just aren’t there for everybody,” explained Forlini. “You’ll find very different effects across individuals, so the idea of enhancement doesn’t always stick. It might not make
(Elli Slavitch / McGill Tribune) sense to talk about enhancement if you’re not seeing those effects.” Ongoing research in bioethics seeks to find the causes behind stimulant misuse in order to resolve this issue. It remains unclear whether it is up to students to seek academic help, physicians to use more caution in prescription, or institutions to consider the question: Why are our students using stimulants in the first place? Science & Technology
A walk through the wallflowers: Exploring McGill’s visual arts collection CHLOE NEVITT Science & Technology Editor
Photos courtesy of flickr.com, Ernestin Tahedl. ca, and biography.ca
The art scattered around the McGill campus is the result of efforts by hundreds of artists over the past two centuries. Though publicly displaying these artworks can result in damage or vandalism, it’s a risk the the Visual Arts Collection is willing to take, explained Visual Arts Collection Assistant Daisy Charles. “The idea of the collection is for it be public and enjoyed by the community,” said Charles. “What’s the point of artwork you can’t see?” The history of McGill’s Visual Arts Collection is as old as the University itself, and today, includes over 2,300 pieces. Unfortunately, many of McGill’s students don’t realize that such a collection even exists. “I studied art history [at McGill] and I didn’t even know there was a collection,” said Charles. “I was here for three years writing about art— walking by these pieces— [without knowing] this was a collection that was managed.” There isn’t one single space or museum in which these pieces are kept. Because the visual arts collection is actually responsible for decorating the many halls, offices, and spaces of McGill’s campus. McGill, effectively, is the museum.
“The Portrait of James McGill” The collection began with the acquisition of the portrait of James McGill in Redpath Hall, which is the oldest piece in McGill’s Visual Arts Collection. “[The portrait] was done Arts & Entertainment
by a really famous Canadian portrait painter [named] Louis Dulongpré,” said Charles. “We [actually] don’t know the exact date of [when] the painting [was done] but it was donated [to McGill] in the 1830s by one of his friends.” For the last 200 years, McGill has commissioned artists to paint portraits of people who have worked for the school, like deans, chancellors, and professors—a tradition which is upheld to this day. “Every principal, still, when they leave, has a portrait of them done that is then hung in Redpath Hall,” explained Charles. “Heather MunroeBlum’s portrait is being finished now [and will be] installed soon.”
“The Caryatid Fountain” Perhaps most prominent of the sculptures is the large fountain that acts as a chair, meeting spot, and beacon during McGill’s annual Open Air Pub (OAP). “It’s called the “Caryatid Fountain,” said Charles. “Caryatid is a classical architectural term for a human used as a pillar to hold something up. The [people] are holding up the bowl, which is then being used as a water fountain.” The sculpture found at the center of the fountain is known as the “The Three Bares,” and was designed separately than the rest of the fountain. Its history is as rich as the history of its creator, American sculptor and collector, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. In the early 1920s Whitney was commissioned to make the sculpture for the New
Arlington Hotel. But then the Great Depression hit, and the Hotel was never built. “Bares”suddenly had no home. “[Whitney] was very good friends with a woman named Ellen Ballon who was a famous pianist who went to school at McGill,” said Charles. “Ballon moved to New York in the ’20s, and went to [Whitney’s] studio, and saw this sculpture, and suggested that she give it to McGill.”
“Lantern” East of the Redpath Museum, not 20 feet from “Caryatid Fountain,” stands “Lantern.” Donated to McGill in 1968, “Lantern” was done by Austrian artist Ernestine Tahedl, who was the wife of a professor at the University. Daisy Charles explained that “[The piece was] called Lantern because it was originally lit up [by] spot lights inside of it. So at night, you can imagine how nice it would look all light up.” “[‘Lantern’] wasn’t supposed to be permanent,” said Tahedl. “It was only supposed to be up for six months. [But] they decided they wanted to keep it.” The University had wanted a piece that would be seen during the winter months. “It was supposed to be lit, and it was lit for two years,” explained Tahedl. “Access to the lamp was difficult [however], so it hasn’t been lit for years.” ‘Lantern’ is made of thick concrete walls with pieces of dalles—a specialized type of thick glass—set into them. When lit, it creates an ethereal beacon for the students of McGill.
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The best of 2015 BEST SONGS
Compiled by Morgan Alexander, Luka Ciklovan, Evelyn Goessling, Christopher Lutes, Jack Neal, and Eric Noble-Marks
01 Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment “Sunday Candy” 2015 was not a good year. In the United States, police brutality, gun violence, and domestic terrorism crippled national trust and inspired the coast-to-coast “Black Lives Matter” movement. It was in this volatile climate that Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment released “Sunday Candy,” an upbeat sermon of song featuring Chance the Rapper’s sunshine verses and Jamila Woods sugar sweet chorus. The song is a welcome contrast to the atmosphere it was created in— simple but full of love. It inspires Chance’s lyrical Sunday best: “I am the thesis of her prayers / Her nieces and her nephews are just pieces of the layers / Only ones she love as much as me is Jesus Christ and Taylor.” Featuring heartwarming lyrics, gospel-esque trumpet, and excellent production, “Sunday Candy” affirms itself as the best song of the year. It’s a celebration of family, tradition, and most importantly, love.
Check out our full lists, as well as the top 10 music videos of the year at mcgilltribune.com/a-e Photos courtesy of stereogum.com, diffuser.fm, nytimes.com
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Sufjan Stevens “The Only Thing”
Kendrick Lamar “Complexion (A Zulu Love)”
Courtney Barnett “Depreston”
“Should I tear my heart out now? / Everything I feel returns to you somehow,” sings Sufjan Stevens in memory of his mother. He’s both wishing for her to return whilst also contemplating the possibility of ending his own life because living without her is simply too hard. “The Only Thing” captures the emotion of the entire record perfectly: It’s both longing and forward-looking; finding the tiniest light of happiness in an otherwise dark room; accepting and dealing with loss in order to fix a broken heart and live life fully.
In the middle of an album that’s entirely about how the world functions in the present, Kendrick Lamar audaciously jumps back 200 years to tell a love story about a relationship between a field slave and a house slave on a cotton plantation. It unabashedly embraces its soul and R&B influences, with its thumping basslines and a funky hook bringing a feeling of romance and levity to an otherwise heavy album. Despite its subject matter, it might be the most optimistic track on the album, extolling the virtues of love, no matter the cost.
On her debut album’s standout track, Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett deals with things that are all too familiar for the average twenty-something: Hipsters, urban sprawl, and the question of how many cars can fit into a garage. “You said we should look out further / I guess it wouldn’t hurt us / We don’t have to be around all these coffee shops.” But as Barnett and her partner look around a potential bungalow she learns that it’s a deceased estate, prompting her to recognize the many lives being lived around her that she’s totally blind to. “Depreston” is the most millennial song ever written.
B E S T A L BUMS
01 Kendrick Lamar To Pimp A Butterfly Every few years an album comes out that manages to take the pulse of an entire culture and perfectly verbalize its sentiments to the world. Just as rare is an album so personal and singular that no other artist could have released anything like it. To Pimp a Butterfly is both of those albums. Eschewing the narrative of his previous album, Lamar raps about everything on his mind—his crippling self-doubt and arrogance, religion, the way black people are treated in America, his complicated relationship with his past, and more. This is a dense album, both lyrically and musically, tightly winding influences from every genre under the sun around Kendrick’s typically insightful, spitfire lyrics filtered through his incredibly versatile vocal timbre. The result is an album that is almost defiantly idiosyncratic—a jazz-soaked tone poem that serves as both a ‘fuck you’ to society and a song of hope for the future in a tense, uncertain present. 18
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Sufjan Stevens Carrie & Lowell
Tame Impala Currents
Jamie xx In Colour
Growing up is never easy— especially when the death of a loved one and a troubled childhood are involved. On his seventh studio album, Detroit-based singer-songwriter, Sufjan Stevens reflects on both earlier and easier times in his life, contrasting them with the devastating and traumatic events that led him to writing the songs he finds himself including on his latest record, namely his complicated relationship with his mother both before and after her death Despite the heartache behind the songs, the achingly beautiful Carrie & Lowell provides one of the most understated, but encapsulating listens of the year.
In Currents, Kevin Parker wastes no time with simplicity; each song is wrought with layers that feel like waves of psychedelic magic. Yet in this complex swirl of sound, meticulous drum and bass lines emerge, showcasing Parker’s talent for pop riffs. Parker borrows from funk, disco, noise rock, and dream pop to create a pop/rock record that runs wider in scope than any other alt rock project of this year. Sentimental yet upbeat, the record has the melancholy tinge of a breakup album while maintaining the euphoric anythinggoes attitude of someone with nothing to lose and something like endless youth ahead of them.
Jamie xx’s LP is the best electronic record in an underwhelming year for the genre. From the squelching garage of “Gosh” to melancholic “Obvs,” In Colour is a record that boasts every hue in the electronica rainbow. The LP also shows some solid collaborations with Jamie xx’s bandmates on “Stranger in a Room” and “Loud Places,” as well as the scorching “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)” featuring Young Thug and Popcaan. Though it doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, In Colour is a satisfying listen from front to back.
ARts & Entertainment
BEST TV SHOWS
01 rick and morty Driving on the border of existentialism and comedy, the latest brainchild of Dan Harmon, creator and co-producer of Community, and notable voice actor Justin Roiland rightfully stands as this year’s best TV series. Morty, a typically persuadable and horny teenager, constantly finds himself in sci-fi shenanigans orchestrated by his alcoholic scientist grandfather, Rick. Their interdimensional adventures never fail to bring bittersweet tears caused by both laughter and sadness. Laden with numerous references to contemporary issues of race, religion, and the nature of life itself, the show never shies away from exposing the dark underbelly of humanity. The fact that each episode generally tends to explore the various philosophical implications bound in quantum theory only augments the show’s often comically veiled sophistication. Rick and Morty is ultimately a show that makes you appreciate the tiny, insignificant, and random speck of cosmic dust we call Earth… and then proceeds to ‘Get Shwifty.’
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bojack horseman
THE JINX: THE LIFE AND DEATHS OF ROBERT DURST
FARGO
Often absurd, sometimes sad, and surprisingly poignant, BoJack Horseman once again delivers a good dose of reality in comedic form. BoJack, the title character, thinly veils his self-doubt and self-hatred with drugs, alcohol, and narcissism. When this veil drops, we see a sympathetic and even relatable character; no small feat coming from a talking horse and former sitcom star. It’s not hard to suspend one’s sense of reality in BoJack Horseman; despite the abundance of animal characters, because these characters are as multifaceted as any in more conventional comedy series. BoJack Horseman ’s commentary on celebrity culture and dry wit transcend genres.
The most gripping documentary in a year full of gripping documentaries, The Jinx transcended its true-crime subject matter and became an unflinching look into the idea of personal guilt and its ability to erode the soul. Starting as a standard, wellmade documentary about millionaire Robert Durst, and the three murders he is accused of committing, the series becomes truly special when director Andrew Jarecki somehow gets Durst to give an extended interview about his alleged crimes. What follows is a series of fascinating contradictions, with Durst appearing simultaneously monstrous and sympathetic, and the different threads of the murder case pointing both to his guilt and his innocence.
Inspired by the Coen Brothers’ film of the same name, Fargo examines midwestern life from the perspective of two warring gangs in the 1970s and the bystanders that get sucked into their orbit. It’s shot in beautiful widescreen, showcasing the beauty and desolation of wilderness, and uses periodappropriate split-screens to connect characters from its sprawling cast, or highlight the distance between them. Fargo wears its historical influences on its sleeve—economic stagnation, second-wave feminism, and corporate greed play a prominent role in the story. But it never feels didactic or forced, instead adding a deep thematic rooting to the violence and inviting parallels to the present-day.
B E S T F I L MS
01 mad max: fury road Mad Max: Fury Road, the newest installment of Max Rockatansky’s survival story, leaves blockbuster tropes in the dirt. The dystopian/post-apocalyptic series hasn’t failed yet to satisfy an audience hungry for wild car chases and fight scenes in its characteristic steampunk style. In Fury Road, the franchise is amped up with the budget and CGI capabilities of every modern action blockbuster, but when accompanied by creator George Miller’s signature macabre style and culturally relevant themes, the film stands apart from others in the genre. Feminism and resource conservation subtly underscore the exaggerated explosions and car chases without getting lost in the noise of spitting engines. The film is almost bereft of character development, but that’s a virtue in this case, not a flaw. Fury Road is unapologetically simple: A return to the do-or-die morality of classic actionadventure films.
Arts & Entertainment
02 inside out Following the anthropomorphized emotions of a young girl whose life is thrown off balance after moving to a new town, Inside Out explores fundamental aspects of the human mind—the subconscious self, dreams, memory recall—in a way that feels novel and exciting. It’s brought to life in the brilliant colour and attention to detail typical of a Pixar production, with an added layer of formal experimentation that shows animation is truly capable of anything. Beneath the impeccable production is a poignant, complex message about the value of sadness as a means of empathizing, personified in a way that people of of all ages can understand.
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montage of heck
ex machina
The music industry pre-Grunge was a spotlight contested by a few staple genres. Nirvana, with Kurt Cobain as their public image, was the sparkplug that ignited the vast nebula of sub genres we come to associate with the music industry today. With access to Cobain’s personal and familial archives, Brett Morgan’s Montage of Heck provides the first family backed documentary on the 90’s cultural icon. Bound with stunning remixes of Nirvana classics, animations of Cobain’s diary, and never before seen home footage, Montage of Heck will never let you hear Nirvana’s lyrics in quite the same way again.
Ex Machina is a sci-fi movie that feels decidedly real. Office drone Caleb Smith (Domnhall Gleeson) wins a contest to spend a week with reclusive tech billionaire Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac). What happens next makes for a brilliant psychological thriller. Instead of opting for the clichéd “evil robot” trope, Ex Machina explores the ethical implications of artificial intelligence. Its cast is aces across the board, especially Isaac, who is quickly becoming one of Hollywood’s best actors. Gleeson and Alicia Vikander (who plays Batemen’s AI “Ava”) are no slouches either: The movie boasts the best man-machine chemistry since Her.
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FILM REVIEW B O N J O UR , H I
A couple looks over the familiar vista of Mont Royal. (bonjourhi.ca) SARAH LEINWAND Contributor
Bonjour Hi is a multidirector film created by Sean Lee, Giuliana Mazzetta, Ben Koring, Christina Wood, and Ryan MacDowell. The movie consists of three short films with four storylines. One of the producers, Jack Johnson, inferred that the team hoped to create “an homage to the past four years” in Montreal in this 48-minute feature. The film begins with a young man holding a guitar, inviting the viewer on an exciting day in “sunny, snowy, and always cold [Montreal]. After the title card, a new, disjointed scene begins,
different from the introduction. A couple dances through an abandoned building in allwhite undergarments, then the scene cuts to the same couple in bed in their apartment. Although the cinematography is beautiful, this first scene is somewhat vague; and since it has no dialogue, lacks real substance. The silence of the scene suggests a language barrier between the couple, which would relate to the film’s title. It’s also uncertain whether the movie will follow this silent couple for the next 48 minutes, but when the couple parts on a street corner at the end of the scene, it is evident that Bonjour Hi plans on sharing more
stories. The young man from before the title card shows up with his guitar yet again; an everpresent troubadour amongst the hustle and bustle of the youthful people of Montreal. The next scene follows two young men in a cafe, where one of them makes countless jokes about the “fair trade” trend that defines Montreal’s eateries. Comedy ensues as the man grills the barista on the facts and follies of fair trade coffee and rips pages out of a Jack Kerouac novel he claims to hate. This hilarious, well-timed scene left the audience hankering for more of the push and pull dynamic of the two young men,
Heartfelt, funny, and politically incorrect: James Davis is everything stand-up should be James Davis brings wit and reality to Montreal comedy. (Margaux Delalex / McGill Tribune) ARIELLA GARMAISE Contributor Nestled atop a bar on Rue Bishop, Comedy Works is a small and intimate venue reminiscent of old-timey comedy clubs, complete with dim lighting and an exposed brick wall. On Saturday night, the usually low-key club was abuzz, as stand-up veteran and cast member of Kevin Hart’s TV Show Real Husbands of Hollywood, James 20
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Davis, was scheduled to headline. Local comic Eddie King and Washington D.C.-based Martin Amini opened for Davis, each bringing their distinct geographical perspectives to an evening of racially-charged comedy. “I love all the beautiful white faces in the room—it makes me feel good about my career progression,” Davis cracked as he peered out at his audience, encapsulating the night’s tone.
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
King and Amini had each tried to approach this dialogue as well, yet failed to deliver it in a way that was as clever or insightful as Davis’ routine. King discussed growing up within France’s black community, describing his neighborhood as being “more like a jungle than the Paris you guys have in mind.” He referenced a white kindergarten teacher who made him selfconscious about his racial identity
but, alas, more of Montreal must be explored. A new story continues in the same cafe, following a woman distressed over missing an interview. The film’s title comes into clever play as the barista greets the woman with the common Montreal greeting, “Bonjour, Hi.” The film cleverly incorporates the city’s bilingualism, showing the woman and barista speaking French, but the woman texting her friend in English. Once the woman leaves the cafe, the scene takes a unique turn, as the woman enters an impromptu silent dance party. The scene turns into a dance number, and added color adjustment shows
the brightness that can appear on a snowy day in Montreal. The last scene is much like the first: A montage of a couple’s adventure. But this time, a girl narrates the scene, reminiscing about getting to know the city and how her time in the city has come to an end. The montage shows the silent wonders of Montreal—climbing up Mont Royal, eating poutine at the top, watching the sunrises, and tobogganing down it in the snow.The film ends as it begins, welcoming the audience to say “Bonjour Hi” to the next chapter. This interesting repetition creates a sort of nostalgia that mimics the film’s portrayal of nostalgia for living in Montreal.
when she reprimanded him for drawing his mother as white (“Who cares, my father was purple!” he joked). These sound bites were endearing, but a language barrier inhibited him. King is a popular and established French comedian making his debut in the comedy scene. His material is funny, but he is yet to fully grasp the nuances of English that would propel his act to the next level. It’s something that will surely come with practice. Amini’s following act was funny but less memorable, using oft-heard lines that got some laughs but ultimately didn’t have much weight behind them. The weakness of this performance only allowed Davis to shine that much brighter. Davis began by describing his childhood in an infamously gangridden neighbourhood in L.A., describing himself as growing up “hood adjacent.” He dove into the racism he experienced going to a mostly white high school, particularly from the white coaches on his golf team when they discovered he was talented. “They go from not telling me where they live to inviting me to their homes,” he recalled. “They’re like, ‘Have you seen the movie the Blind Side?’ We wanna do that to you.”
Davis recounted these memories playfully and confidently; his Californian swagger stood in stark contrast to the stereotypically neurotic New York comedian. He even bravely explored his personal family trauma, starting with his father’s abandonment. “Dads in the black community, something happened—they just separated,” he said. “Chasing my dad is like chasing a girl I have a crush on.” He continued discussing his personal connection to police brutality in the United States— his uncle was killed by a cop. In response to the Ferguson riots, he exclaimed, “I don’t like the way the U.S .media portrays black riots—like we’re some savages who can’t wait to riot.” From playing with the stereotypes of the quintessential black friend, to questioning the millennial obsession with political correctness, Davis’s satire was both clever, meaningful, and an important critique of society’s current trepidation in approaching race. His routine was able to make the heartbreaking funny—just what good comedy is supposed to do. Arts & entertainment
Behind the Scenes at
McGill Athletics
L
isen Moore
Meet three key players who operate off the court
Manager, Varsity Sports
With nearly 30 varsity teams, McGill Athletics is a massive operation. Lisen Moore, manager of Varsity Sports at McGill Athletics, is responsible for the technical components and business needs of varsity teams, as well as eligibility registration for athletes, amongst other things. “I’ve been very lucky because I have a job that allows me to work with senior administration in the university [and...] also have the opportunity to work directly with students,” Moore said. “As far as I’m concerned, I have the best job at McGill.” With the cyclical nature that comes with working at a university, Moore’s average day varies considerably from month to month. Additionally, given the increased support for university athletics in Canada, operations at McGill Athletics have changed considerably over
the years. “We used to think that our business calendar was one that had a bit of quiet time in the summer but that’s not the case anymore,” she explained. “We’re really busy in July in preparation for August [....] We have to take in all of the new motions, amend our policies and registration packages to reflect new business [...] and roll it out. The quieter periods are December, and it’s a good time for people to recharge their batteries and reflect on what went well in the Fall [and] what didn’t.” As an employee of McGill for around 20 years—starting out as the head coach of the Martlet Basketball team—Moore has worn many hats for McGill Athletics. “I’ve mopped floors here, just because it had to get done,” Moore said. “I’ve served concessions in the past [....] It’s not necessarily in
my job description but you’re not going to not do it. I’ve sometimes represented the university or the [CIS] at national meetings or national championships.” Sport growing up: “I grew up playing soccer, it was the only sport that allowed women to play when I was growing up. I used to try playing hockey in the winter, but I wasn’t allowed to play on the big ice [...] so I used to dress up in my brother’s helmet and shoulder pads.” Best memory: “Bronze medal-winning game for [Martlet Basketball in 1996] at Laval University [....] just how hard that team battled for the win. We lost a very tough semifinal to [University of Toronto] and we had to bounce back the very next day and they were battered and bruised [but] they came out and fought.” — Mayaz Alam
(Photo courtesy of Lisen Moore) then, almost every varsity team has benefited from it in some way. Coaches reach out to Director, Sports Psychology Bloom as a resource to help Research Laboratory struggling players or to talk to the team. Furthermore, many of Dr. Gordon Bloom directs the Sports the graduate students working at the lab do their Psychology Research Laboratory and oversees internships with Redmen and Martlet teams. Sports psychology isn’t the first thing you the university’s graduate program in sport and exercise psychology. He played a lot of sports think of when it comes to optimizing athletic growing up, and says that his interest in the in- performance, but according to Bloom, it’s an terpersonal aspect of team dynamic turned him aspect of development that’s dangerous to overlook—especially at McGill. onto the field of sports psychology. “[We] make sure that [the athletes are] in “I was interested in why people behaved a certain way in that environment,” Bloom said. a good place where they’re able to balance their “Two of the people who really inspired me were sports, academics, and personal lives,” Bloom Phil Jackson at the professional level, and John said. “It’s not easy to do—McGill’s a very demanding school. If you have all three areas Wooden at the university level.” The lab was founded in 2000, and since under control and in sync, usually your perfor-
D
r. Gordon Bloom
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(Photo courtesy of Geoffrey Phillips) Sports
mance will improve; [but] if you let one slip it will carry over into your sports life.” The basic theory behind sports psychology is simple, and similar to the concept of ‘selfcare.’ If you put people in a good place and help them achieve a healthy mindset, they’re going to unlock their potential—whether that’s in the classroom or on the field. Favourite part of the job: “When people come back to me and say that the guidance that I’ve given them has worked and made them happier and healthier.” Favourite sport as a kid: “Ice hockey. I always wanted to play in the NHL, but my parents knew I was more skilled at school [....] I didn’t end up playing in the NHL, but I did end up working with players in the NHL.” — Elie Waitzer
(Photo courtesy of Dr. Gordon Bloom)
eoffrey Phillips
Assistant Director, Sport Programs, Athletics & Recreation
Geoffrey Phillips has been part of McGill for nearly 30 years: First as a student—he got his M.A. in Sports Psychology in 1992—and now as the assistant director of the Sports Programs, Athletics & Recreation. “I’m definitely more of a programming person,” Phillips said. “I’ve been involved in sports at all levels; I’ve been involved in coaching for many many years. I think it gives me a good understanding of where the coaches are coming from.” Phillips, a long-time hockey player who considers Wayne Gretzky his sports idol, is a central part of the inner workings of McGill Athletics. Working directly under the executive director of Athletics & Recreation, Phillips is the link between coaches and their programs with the university at large.
“I like to wander around every morning and talk to all the coaches,” Phillips said. “I try to go around and talk to as many people [as possible] about what’s on their mind. I don’t think that’s in my job description […] but I think [that it’s important] so that we can deal with tough issues. In an environment of trust, you have to have that relationship.” Following the retirement of former executive director of Drew Love, McGill Athletics is going through a period of transition as it searches for a new director. Phillips has taken on a larger role by assisting Interim Director, Philip Quintal, while also introducing new programs, such as the burgeoning Nutrition and Wellness Program, and working more closely with the university administration than ever before. “I think that we’re on the road to the right
place now,” Phillips said. “I sense that we’re going to have a better understanding of what the senior administration is looking for from us, and vice versa and through that avenue we can all benefit.” Favourite part of the job: “Seeing the student athletes achieve their goals and develop as people.” Best memory: “The first national championship I was in attendance for—[Redmen Hockey, 2011 ...]—I was there in a capacity of administrator on site when they won; and that was an experience I won’t forget [....] Although you’ve played a minor role in the background, just bringing chocolate milk to the players every morning [...] you do feel part of it.” — Morgan Alexander Wednesday, December 2, 2015
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Unlisted: The secret weapon behind Redmen Lacrosse’s success Elie Waitzer Sports Editor Sean Steinwald looks forward to his lunch hour. He works full time as a project manager at a steel company in Montreal and has a family to take care of, so he uses any free time he can carve out of his busy schedule to work on his scouting reports. It’s either lunch, or at night after his kids go to bed. Steinwald served seven seasons as an assistant coach under Head Coach Tim Murdoch for the Redmen lacrosse team; but in recent years he has had to limit his involvement due to work commitments. After coaching for six consecutive seasons, he scaled back his involvement following the 2012 season; but while he didn’t have an official role on the team in 2015, Steinwald was hard at work behind the scenes as the team’s ‘head scout.’ “I couldn’t take myself completely out of the picture,” Steinwald said. “I love lacrosse too much.” Steinwald’s love affair with lacrosse began in the backyard with his dad. He was raised on box-lacrosse, an indoor version of the game that is played on a hockey rink without ice. After graduating high school, Steinwald decided to follow his passion and accepted an offer to play Division I lacrosse as an attackman at Cornell. In his five year collegiate career, Steinwald was a two-time All-American, named Cornell’s Athlete-of-the-Year, and played for Team Canada. Steinwald met Murdoch towards the end of his own playing career. He was in his early 30s, playing for a Montreal club team in an exhibition game against the Redmen. After the match, Murdoch approached Steinwald and asked him if he’d be interested in coaching at McGill. At the time, Steinwald’s only previous coaching experience was in his kids’ youth leagues, but with his days on the field numbered, Steinwald jumped at the chance to stay connected to the sport he loved. He brought invaluable experience to the team, and his six-year run as an assistant coach culminated in the Redmen winning the National Championship in 2012. So the next year when Steinwald told Murdoch that he wouldn’t be able to fit coaching into his busy schedule, the two sat down and landed on a solution: Scouting. “I don’t know why but I just enjoy scouting,” Steinwald laughed. 22
“It can give us a real competitive advantage. There’s a need for scouting [...] so that players know who they’re guarding and we can match up certain skillsets and know which players to watch.” While lacrosse is Canada’s national summer sport, hockey rules supreme in Quebec. Bishop’s and Concordia are the only other universities from the province in the Canadian University Field Lacrosse Association (CUFLA), and the Concordia Stingers have yet to win a single game since joining the league in 2012. With a .947 win percentage since 2011, Redmen lacrosse is technically the most successful varsity team on campus, but the program doesn’t get the funding or attention that sports like hockey and football do. If this bothers Murdoch, he doesn’t show it. Regardless of the sport’s lack of prestige in Quebec, Murdoch is committed to providing a professional environment for his athletes, and that means investing in all the bells and whistles like meticulous recruiting and scouting that Division I schools in the U.S. have. “When I was at Cornell, each week we’d have a 10-page scouting report on our opponents [...] so I was used to preparing that way at the university level, and it was something I
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Steinwald, left, and Murdoch, centre, pose with the 2012 Baggataway Cup. (Photo courtesy of Tim Murdoch) felt I could bring to McGill,” Steinwald said. “I would say that I’m one of the few people [in Quebec] who does a proper scouting report.” In Murdoch’s ideal world, McGill lacrosse would compete in the NCAA; and that’s part of why Steinwald is so valuable to the team. Besides his pedigree, Steinwald’s scouting work is an overlooked X-factor behind the team’s success over the past four years. Given McGill’s regular season dominance, having a head scout may seem like overkill, but in the playoffs, any edge you can get is crucial. This is a fact the Redmen know all too well after losing in the Baggataway Cup Finals to Guelph in consecutive seasons.
“When you go into an important game, you need to know your opponent [...] because if you have the wrong matchup, you could have their best player tear us apart before we realize that our best defenceman is being wasted,” Steinwald explained. “It allows you to focus less on figuring out who you’re dealing with, and more on [...] playing the game.” Steinwald isn’t a scout in the traditional sense. The majority of CUFLA teams are located in Southern Ontario, and he doesn’t have the ability to pack up the car and take off time from work to watch a game in Guelph or Toronto. Most of his information is painstakingly gathered from home games, online statistics,
I would say that I’m one of the few people [in Quebec] who does a proper scouting report.
Steinwald in his Cornell days. (Photo coutesy of Sean Steinwald)
and recruiting videos that star players will put up on YouTube. “It gets interesting in the playoffs where you play someone you’ve never faced and you have no regular season information to look back on,” Steinwald said. “That’s where the challenge is, and where other [teams] don’t put as much work into it, be-
cause it is difficult.” According to Steinwald, the lack of parity in the league gives McGill a key advantage when it comes to filling in the blanks on unfamiliar opponents. This season, the Redmen had a pretty good idea that they’d be facing Ottawa and Brock in the first two rounds of the playoffs, which allowed Steinwald to start preparing files on those teams a week and a half before the end of the season. The morning before each playoff game, the team has a 45-minute meeting in the hotel conference room where Steinwald hands out a report to every player and briefs them on the other team’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s an uncommon scene in Quebec, but for Steinwald, it’s business as usual. In the afterglow of McGill’s Baggataway Cup victory, Murdoch made sure to give credit to the three names under his on the team’s roster page: Assistant Coaches Simon Hudson, Nick Soubry, and Scott Bailey. The name Sean Steinwald is not listed on the roster, but Murdoch reserved special praise for his work. “The scouting reports that he put together for us—the only word I can think of is brilliant,” Murdoch said. “He sacrificed hours to put together [information] that was essential to the team’s success.” With 12 seniors expected to graduate, including all four co-captains, the team will need Steinwald more than ever next season. For now, the role of head scout fits his life perfectly, but you get the sense that if he could, Steinwald would drop everything to coach lacrosse on a full-time basis. “[I’ll] wait till there’s a little more money involved in coaching [...] but right now I don’t think I can quit my day job,” Steinwald said. Sports
Simplicity in concept, duplicity in design: The state of daily fantasy sports Élie Lubendo Contributor
(Natalie Vineberg / McGill Tribune)
I
have never purchased a lottery ticket, gone to a casino, or joined any online poker site. I can count on my fingers the amount of times I have made serious wagers with friends, and raffle tickets have always revolved around the spirit of charity rather than the thrill of betting. I would not call myself a gambler. I am, however, an avid sports fan. Having experienced the contagious nature of sports and the exhilaration in predicting the seemingly unpredictable, I understand that the world of sports can bring out the best and worst in us. I have seen how fantasy sports can be used as training grounds for fans to gain a better understanding of how the games operate, and I have seen them exploit the addictive behaviours of certain users by luring them into believing that winning is easy. Sports fans, more than anyone, should understand that winning is never easy. Winning money in daily fantasy sports (DFS) requires an in-depth knowledge of sports and a complex analytical approach; when fans, however, are bombarded with $206 million in television ads from industry giants FanDuel and DraftKings that advertise DFS as a casual and fun alternative to gambling, that point is quickly forgotten. While DFS companies should not be held accountable to teach sabermetrics to their users, they do, however, have a responsibility to accurately represent
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the complexity of DFS betting. The premise of DFS is simple: Participants deposit money into an account on a DFS website, pick a roster of players limited by a salary cap, and bet on their daily performance. Users who are knowledgeable about sports or are lucky enough can make a lot of money. So, what’s the catch? A miniscule 1.3 per cent of all DFS players win 91 per cent of total profits. Those equipped with the background and skills to employ advanced statistical models will always do better than casual fans. Despite branding itself as a skill-based game, DFS has a gambling problem. The main issue lies not in the shocking allegations of insider trading, but in the industry’s willful ignorance of the disparity of information between users. If DFS is going to survive, it will have to bridge this gap by building a central hub that offers betting in conjunction with sports analytics tools and social interaction for more casual fans—less money, more Moneyball. It could all come to an end, however, if FanDuel and DraftKings do not survive their legal battles against state regulators who believe that DFS is gambling. The debate about the gambling status of DFS all began when allegations of ‘insider trading’ broke out in early October. Ethan Haskell, a DraftKings employee, had won $350,000 as runner-up in a $25-entry tournament on rival site FanDuel the same week that there was a data leak. This created fears that employees were capitalizing on non-public information. In response to the news issue, New York Attorney General Eric Scheidermann launched an investi-
gation and issued cease-and-desist orders to FanDuel and DraftKings, calling the DFS industry a “multibillion dollar scheme to evade the law and fleece sports fans.” Since then, many states have banned daily fantasy sports within their jurisdictions. FanDuel and DraftKings have responded with statements, vowing to protect their growing industry and to fight back against the state’s gambling allegations. Come what may, DFS companies will have to move swiftly and come up with innovative ideas to secure their future. The lack of data and sports analytics on DFS websites is disappointing. Users can spend five minutes or five hours on platforms, and finish with the same results. The lack of information naturally pushes users to other websites to find the necessary information, creating one more obstacle between casual sports fans and data experts. Granted, sports analytics has never been light work, but a DFS site should not have 44 per cent of its users visit three to four websites to do their research, while another 30 per cent of users visit six or more sites to do theirs. Aside from allowing you to select a roster and a tournament, there is no utility to the online platform provided by either FanDuel or DraftKings. These sites give no statistics on user picks and profiles despite having exclusive access to them. Without the provision of advanced analytics, little separates DFS from the lottery. If the industry is to survive, it will have to learn how to enthuse sports fans
to embrace statistics, not gambling. Additionally, the lack of features makes the experience less engaging and counterproductive to the social networks they could capitalize on if they concentrated more on product offerings rather than acquiring new customers. Centralizing sports data would also increase advertising revenues as user traffic would remain on DFS sites instead of leaking to other analytic resources. Besides, it is no secret that people with more information perform better in the financial markets. An open-data system would decrease the extreme disparity between winners and losers, as the losers would gradually get better, thus increasing the competitive atmosphere of the game. Additionally, decreasing the winner-loser disparity should increase tournament entries, as players would feel more confident about betting if the gambling stigma is removed. As fans await the fate of the DFS industry and the future of sports betting in North America, FanDuel and DraftKings must ask themselves whether they are a gambling website, a sports analytics platform, or sports social media, and whether, when this all blows over, they are willing to make the necessary changes to fix their gambling problem and brand themselves honestly to sports fans.
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
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10 Things
01
Unlikely sports journeys
02 03
Warren Moon
Jose Calderon
kurt warner
(NBA PG; 2005 to present)
(NFL QB; 1989 to 2009)
Moon was the first player to be inducted into both the CFL and NFL Hall of Fame, but he went undrafted in the 1978 NFL draft. He joined the Edmonton Eskimos where he won five consecutive Grey Cups and earned a second chance at the NFL with the Houston Oilers in 1984. Moon made the Pro Bowl nine times in the next decade, and retired in 2000 with his career numbers for yards, attempts, touchdowns and completions all in the top-five of all-time.
Calderon started his professional basketball career in Spain in 1998, quickly gaining a reputation as a talented playmaker. Toronto Raptors General Manager Rob Babcock persuaded the point guard to join the NBA in 2005. Calderon currently plays for the New York Knicks, and holds the NBA record for the best freethrow percentage in a season, converting 151 of 154 shots in the 2008-2009 ear.
After going undrafted in the 1994 draft, Warner was forced to stock shelves at a grocery store for $5.50 an hour to make ends meet before landing an Arena Football League contract. In 1998, the St. Louis Rams picked him as their third-string QB and he made his first career start in the following season. He would go on to earn four Pro Bowl appearances, two MVP awards, a Super Bowl ring, and would retire with 22 NFL records.
(NFL QB; 1984 to 2000)
04
— Nick Jasinski
Jamie Vardy
(EPL Striker; 2014 to present)
After spending the first decade of his soccer career bouncing around a number of semi-professional clubs in the bottom ranks of the English Football League system, Vardy signed with Leicester City in the Football League Championship for a non-league record transfer fee of £1 million in 2012. A season after being promoted to the Premier League in 2014, Vardy scored in a record 11 consecutive matches, breaking Ruud van Nistelrooy’s 12-year-old Premier League record.
05
matt stairs (MLB 1B; 1992 to 2011)
It’s rare for a player to make it through the 40 rounds of the MLB draft without being noticed by any team, but that’s what happened to the New Brunswick-native in 1989. Signed by the desperate Montreal Expos in 1992, Stairs enjoyed a two-decade career in which he played for 12 different teams, set the MLB record for career pinch-hit home runs, and was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.
Read the rest of the list on mcgilltribune.com/sports
Discouraged and overlooked, but still competing A student-athlete’s experience with club sports at McGill
The women’s lacrosse club. (Nicole Spadotto / McGill Tribune )
Nicole Spadotto Contributor
It’s 6:30 a.m. on a Monday, the November sun is just rising over Percival-Molson Stadium, and I’ve already been up for an hour so I can practice Lacrosse with my teammates. Based on the inconvenient timing, you wouldn’t know that my team represents McGill across North America. Some of the players have serious pedigree—Rhodes Ford and Megan Muldowney both turned down NCAA lacrosse opportunities. They both explained to me that this is the only time McGill allows us to book the field. Curious about as to whether other club athletes shared similar experiences, I asked other athletes about their experience. At McGill, ‘club sports’ represent the school in various elite level leagues, but aren’t considered varsity sports. These include figure skating, women’s lacrosse, men’s volleyball, and sailing, amongst others. Many of these sports were demoted from pre24
vious varsity status after budget cuts to McGill Athletics. “Most people at McGill don’t even know [club teams] exist,” Jill Noel, a member of the skating team, said. A lack of support and chronic underfunding at McGill, has not stopped club teams performing well against their varsity competition. Last season, the club lacrosse team went .500, the sailing team ranked top three in Canada the skating team moved up the ranks against other programs who are skating a lot more than McGill. “Funding is definitely a large issue […] the boats we train on are about two decades old and are barely functional,” McGill Sailing captains Andries Feder, Amanda Ivey, and Catherine Ross commented via email. Ford echoed their sentiments, explaining that weekly road trips to Ontario and the U.S. mean costs add up quickly for the Women’s Lacrosse club. She recognizes that bud-
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
get cuts are a valid issue for McGill Athletics, but still feels that women’s lacrosse draws the short straw. After experiencing the roadblocks lacrosse faces first hand, I cannot help but to agree. “Any sort of backing would be nice, because we work independently of the school’s athletic department and that’s tough,” Ford said. The reality is that McGill sport clubs get last priority on booking fields, courts, or ice—even after intramural teams. Having played at all three levels of sport, I have found that Varsity teams (and rightly so) are able to book the best space for their athletes’ schedule, and intramurals tend to be scheduled after students are finished class. This makes booking awkward for club teams. Noel and Ford both stated that skating and lacrosse respectively do not get priority booking. “Varsity teams get priority, and then intramural teams since they’re organized by McGill Athletics,” Ford elaborated.
Even though club teams play against other universities’ varsity teams, we aren’t marketed by McGill Athletics like varsity and intramural teams, and we don’t have direct access to student-therapists. This past season in Vermont, one of my teammates was hit in the face by a stick. She was lucky to be treated by an opposing team’s trainer for medical care; otherwise, she would have had to wait to get back to a Canadian hospital to receive care. “We have seen two sailors on our team suffer major concussions in recent years and it has impeded them academically, mentally and physically,” the sailing captains commented. “It would be great to have access to a medical trainer [...to] better diagnose and care for our team members.” You can understand why club athletes tend to have an attitude of resignation—we have experienced years of paving our own way. “What’s hard is not getting the support we need to succeed,” Noel said. We accept McGill Athletics’ budget cuts, but the club athletes I spoke with don’t understand why promotion, access to facilities, and the ability to compete in the best tournaments were also cut. The skating team, for example, isn’t permitted to compete in the OUA Championships because qualifying require athletes to be verified as students of their university, a privilege McGill doesn’t grant club sports. Training hard only to miss out on the Championships year after year is terribly discouraging. “More recognition from the university could improve the team’s
confidence and attract competitive sailors to McGill,” Feder, Ivey, and Ross said. “We would love a channel to help [prospective athletes] understand the ins and outs of the admissions process.” Muldowney suggested several simple, cost-free measures. “Giving club athletes club athletes access to the varsity gym or [...] workouts, or even free admission to vasrsity games are affordable ways to help grow club programs and help integrate club athletes into McGill Athletics,” she said. Ultimately, all club athletes feel the same way. We want to compete proudly in the sports we love, and represent McGill to our fullest potential.
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