McGill Tribune Vol. 34 Issue 19

EDITORIAL

Tuesday, February 17, 2015 Volume No. 34 Issue No. 19

Debating divestment: Dissenting editorials pg. 6

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www.mcgilltribune.com

McGill knock Carleton out of the RSEQ Playoffs with dominant 10-0 display Martlets firing on all cylinders with Daoust back on ice

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ZIKOMO SMITH Staff Writer

ven with the team up 4-0 against the Carleton Ravens (3-15-0) at the end of the first period, McGill Martlets Head Coach Peter Smith had no interest in the score as he went to address the squad (15-4-0) before the second period.

“We don’t really look at the scoreboard,” Smith said. “What I say in the room has nothing really to do with the scoreboard. It has more to do with what we are doing on the ice.”

McGill is a process-focused team that takes nothing for granted, a key to its sustained success over the course of the past decade. As such the Martlets did not relent over the next two periods of the game, putting another six goals past Carleton. The loss eliminated Carleton from contention in this year’s playoffs.

“It’s a hard game to play when you get up by that many goals,” Smith said. “As coaches, we keep on them to stick with the plan to stick with the habits. I thought we got away from it a few times. There are certainly lots of positives […] and when you score 10 goals, that’s positive.”

Continued on pg. 23

(Emma Hameau / McGill Tribune)

Thousands march to commemorate missing and murdered indigenous women

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SIJIA LI Contributor

pproximately 2,000 people marched to raise awareness for missing and murdered indigenous women in downtown Montreal on Saturday.

The march was organized by Missing Justice, a Montreal grassroots collective focused on indigenous women’s rights. According to Monica van Schiak, who was in charge of the march’s public relations, it was one of the biggest

gatherings they’ve ever had.

“Today’s march is for missing and murdered women—all women,” said van Schiak. “It’s important for us to have many different representatives come, and we made sure to make contact with many different communities.”

Similar marches also took place on Saturday in dozens of other Canadian cities. The marches are a part of the Annual Memorial March for Missing and Murdered Women, which was founded

in 1991 in B.C. after the murder of a Coast Salish woman in Vancouver.

According to the Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world, indigenous women and girls represent only 4.3 per cent of the female population, but 16 per cent of female homicide victims. There are over 1,200 women listed as murdered or missing in Canada. According to a report released by Amnesty

International Canada in December 2014, the issue of missing and murdered women in Canada is a national human rights crisis.

The marchers walked around two kilometres along Sainte-Catherine Street, from Cabot Square to Phillips Square, stopping to hear various speakers and drum performances. Two native drum groups, Odaya and the Buffalo Hut, performed healing songs to memorialize the missing women.

Continued on pg. 2

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Tuesday, February 17, 2015

McGill students organize vigil for three Muslim students killed in North Carolina

Community stresses that shooting is an issue of social justice

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JULIA DICK Contributor

cGill students gathered at a vigil last Thursday night to mourn and honor the three Muslim students who were killed in a shooting at UNC Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The three victims, Yusor Mohammed Abu-Salha, Deah Bakarat, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, were murdered on Feb. 10 by Craig Stephen Hicks, a resident of Chapel Hill. Hicks turned himself in and was later charged with three counts of first-degree murder.

The Chapel Hill police made a statement on Wednesday explaining that they are still investigating the incident, which they believed to be motivated by a parking dispute.

Students and members of the Montreal community gathered in front of Roddick gates, and moved to stand outside of the Arts building as the vigil grew. A hundred or so people gathered to hold signs and candles in support of the Chapel Hill community.

While not affiliated with a particular group on campus, the organizers of the vigil, Summia Saed Aldien, U2 Engineering, and Yara Hammami, U2 Arts,

stated that they wanted to commemorate the victims and raise awareness within the McGill community.

“When we heard the news we were shocked,” Hammami said. “We were also shocked that no specific organization [...] took the stance and the action to do something.”

Their Facebook event quickly went viral in Montreal. As of Thursday afternoon, over 4,000 people had been invited to the event on the Facebook group.

Aldien stated that the vigil was about establishing solidarity with the three victims.

“We [...] have to stand together.”

Aldien said. “If we [...] do not do this together, then who’s going to stand up to crimes like this that are happening on a daily basis?”

Anna Marchese, a second-year Arts student at McGill, heard about the event through Facebook and stated that she attended the event to stand in solidarity against the shooting.

“I’m here just to combat [...] general populations or groups within America that feel as though this act is justified, that feel like it’s all right to attack people because they’re different,” Marchese

McGill students stand in solidarity with those killed at the UNC Chapel Hill shooting (Photo courtesy of Anas Wattar) said. “We’re here, and we’re trying to show our support for the family first and foremost.”

Alaa Moussa, a finance student at Concordia, also heard about the vigil through Facebook. Moussa criticized the media coverage of the incident.

“From what I heard—and unfortunately there is not much serious coverage—it is probably not a parking spot issue,” Moussa said. “[Hicks] maybe

hates all religions, but he killed Muslims.”

Since the shooting, various social media campaigns and public vigils have been held in solidarity with the victims and their families. Social media was also used to decry the shooting as a hate crime and criticize the media for failing to cover it adequately. #ChapelHillShooting and #MuslimLivesMatter became trending topics worldwide on

Twitter for most of the week.

The organizers also emphasized that they hoped that the shooter would be brought to justice.

“There’s a sense of dehumanizing it, in a way, and it’s just that we’re trying to highlight that [...] Muslim lives matter as well,” Hammami said. “There should be justice for everyone; all lives are equal no matter what, and all innocent lives should be treated [equally].”

Thousands march to commemorate missing and murdered indigenous women

Homicide rates in indigenous communities deemed national crisis by Amnesty International Canada SIJIA LI Contributor

(Continued from page 1) In Phillips Square, volunteers from Missing Justice had written out the name of every disappeared woman on individual signs. The signs had been left in the snow as a reminder of the tragedy.

The speakers at the march spoke out against the issues of neocolonialism, racism, and misogyny that they feel are behind the government’s slow reaction to the disappearances.

“I would like us to take a moment to consider the land beneath the concrete we are standing on,” said a representative from Missing Justice, reading out from the organization’s mission statement before the march began. “To consider that any efforts to address violence against missing women is occurring on unseated Kahnawake land, on Mohawk territory. And I would like for us to reflect on the impossibility of separating violence against women from an ongoing legacy of colonial violence.”

To the protesters in Cabot Square, there were many reasons to gather that day. Celia, a student at the Université de Montréal, who did not provide her last name said that she was there as

a feminist in support of women’s issues.

“I like to be informed, I read many articles,” Celia said. “I noticed that native women don’t have the same services as we do, and I thought we had to do something about it.”

A representative from Missing Justice spoke to the crowd regarding the broad scope of the issue.

“I don’t know why any of you are here; I don’t know for whom you are here; I don’t know if there is anything essentially common to our experiences, to what we mean by violence, to what we mean by women, or to what we mean by memorial,” they said. “So my hope is that beyond any sense of a common understanding, we can still walk beside each other today. We can support each other in a unity that’s composed of our unique and complicated realities.”

A number of different wom-

Thousands marched to commemorate missing and murdered indigenous women (Emma Hameau / McGill Tribune) en’s organizations also attended the march. Representatives from the Canadian Association of Congolese Women (CACW), the South Asian Women’s Community Centre, and the Regroupement de Centre des Femmes à Québec all participated to speak out on an issue they felt affects all women.

One of the guest speakers from the CACW, who provided her name only as Selemona,

chanted “Mille femmes qui tombent, deux mille se lèvent,” meaning “A thousand women who fall, two thousand rise up.”

Protesters also held picket signs reading “A thousand is more than just a number.”

John Cree, a Cree man, who led the opening and closing prayers for the event, said that his goal working with Missing Justice is to keep the subject of the missing women prioritized.

“I was told a long time ago that if you want to destroy a nation, you take away the women, and the nation dies, because that’s our foundation—that’s our strength,” Cree said. “It seems like we’ve lost a lot of native women and nothing has been done. The government hasn’t moved on it, and the police force hasn’t. I wonder if sometimes they don’t want to know what is happening.”

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

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Public school teachers protest austerity measures, proposed changes to contract agreements

New collective agreement could affect education job market in Quebec

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JENNA STANWOOD Contributor

n Feb. 9, the Montreal trade union of kindergarten to high school teachers, the Alliance des Professeures et Professeurs de Montreal (APPM), staged a protest outside Roddick Gates. The APPM represents teachers’ interests before the Commission Scolaire de Montreal (CSM), the Montreal public school board.

According to APPM members, the union is facing the end of its current contract with the Quebec government on March 31, and is in ongoing negotiations with the government over a new contract. As a part of the austerity measures currently being implemented across Quebec to cut back on public spending, the Ministry of Education has proposed numerous changes to its contract with the APPM, which would affect public elementary and high school institutions.

Anger over the Ministry’s proposed deal sparked the protest, according to Carolyne Hebert, a teacher at École primaire des Amis-du-Monde, an elementary school in Côte-St-Luc. Among the potential changes are an increase in the number of students per class for grade three and up, a two-year freeze on salaries, changes to maternity leave and retirement age requirements, and cuts to special education programs.

“The rate [of students] per class usually is about 25 students, [and] they want to raise that,” Hebert said. “We have many students that [...have] learning dif-

ficulties or [...] behaviour problems, so it would be even worse if we had more students in our [classes].”

Christine Fahndrich, a teacher in Montreal for 26 years, voiced concerns that the proposed changes will ultimately harm students. According to Fahndrich, the proposed contract may also affect the chances for younger teachers new to the field to secure permanent employment.

“They want to change the [hiring] conditions [...] for younger persons getting [teaching] jobs, so that it’s hard for them to get a permanent job,” Fahndrich said. “[It’s] the kids that are going to pay. The conditions are going to be harder, more kids, more handicapped kids […] with less service, less teachers [...and] less professionals to help those kids.”

James Wilson, a supervisor of student teachers with the Faculty of Education at McGill, explained that there are two types of contracts a teacher in Montreal can be offered: Tenured positions and part-time contracts. Under a part-time contract, a teacher may be working full-time, but their contract will stipulate an end date for the job.

Usually [the teacher with the part-time contract] will be going in and replacing somebody for a year,” Wilson said. “When that year ends and that person comes back [...] that job disappears.”

A teacher who receives two of these part-time contracts is put on a short list for hiring in the event that another part-time or tenured position opens up. This system leaves many teachers

constantly looking for a job and long application lists for tenured positions.

The effects of the government’s proposed contract, if it is accepted as the new agreement, could have grave consequences for those looking for employment in education. According to Wilson, a large component of the offer would feature increasing class sizes to decrease the number of teachers needed per school.

“If you’re saying to teachers, ‘Look, you’ve got to stay in the job longer,’ it means it reduces the number of posts which would become available to young people looking for a job,” Wilson said. “If you increase the workload, [that] means that you need less teachers anyway. So this is not good news for people [who] are thinking of getting into the job.”

Wilson explained that the Quebec government has the final

say in the contract negotiations. “[The school boards are] just a mouthpiece that the government speaks through—in the end it’s the government that calls the shots.” Wilson said.

Though the negotiations are

Infographic by Cassie Lee likely to last for a while longer, according to Wilson, if an agreement is not reached by March 3, the current agreement will be automatically extended to cover the gap until a new contract is decided on.

PGSS interim secretary-general candidates introduce platforms Voting period begins Wednesday, winner to serve until end of May

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CECE ZHANG News Editor

onstituents of the PostGraduate Students’ Society (PGSS) heard the platforms of the two candidates running for the position of interim secretary-general in a debate on Feb. 10. PhD students Yony Bresler and Saturnin Ndandala submitted their candidacy for the position after previous Secretary-General Juan Pinto’s resignation on Jan. 20.

The interim secretary-general position will serve from Feb. 24 to May 31, spanning the remainder of the 2014-2015 academic year.

Bresler was absent from the debate, as he was away from Montreal at a conference, but prepared a letter which was read by PGSS Chief Returning Officer (CRO) Colby Briggs.

Bresler cited his two and a half years as a PGSS Councillor and his service as Vice-President Social and CRO in the McGill Graduate Association of Physics Students as relevant experience for his candidacy.

“This year, I also served on the university appeals committee for student discipline,” Bresler said in his letter. “This experience in PGSS and other student government has given me the initiative to assume a more substantial role at PGSS and allow me to develop the qualifications to facilitate such involvement.”

If elected, Bresler stated that his priority would be assisting the rest of the current PGSS executive team in fulfilling their portfolios.

“My main goal will be to facilitate and assist in the activities of the current executives and of-

ficers,” Bresler said. “I believe we have a great team in place, and with the CFS [Canadian Federation of Students] referendum completed, together we can make some great headway into various portfolios.”

Bresler also added that he is aiming to increase transparency at PGSS. “One issue I’d like to promote is transparency, whether it be our various governing bodies or to our PGSS members,” he said. “I intend to achieve this goal by improving regulations by introducing strict timelines for existing practices—such as the release of minutes—and looking into various new methods by which to increase transparency of the PGSS.” Ndandala introduced himself as a first year PhD student at McGill with extensive political experience at universities he previously

attended in Cape Town, Paris, and Toronto.

“I was the president of the student society of the University of Cape Town,” Ndandala said.

“When I was studying in ParisSorbonne [University], I participated in [...] campaigning for Francois Hollande [....] When I came to Canada [...] I was the chairman of the NDP party at the University of Toronto.”

Ndandala said he planned to run for the position of secretarygeneral for the 2015-2016 mandate as well. He proposed some of his ideas for improvement at PGSS, including increasing transparency in the organization, working on fundraising strategies for PGSS to increase its budget, and increasing communication between international and Canadian students.

“I would also like to [...] re-

solve the problem of sexual harassment on campus,” Ndandala said. “I’m thinking to organize a plan where all new post-graduate students will have a quiz [...] for learning about sexual harassment.”

Ndandala also added that he would work towards obtaining minimum funding for all PhD students at McGill.

“Some students in different departments don’t have the same [opportunities] for funding,” Ndandala said. “My proposal is [...] to challenge the leadership at the university to make a minimum [for] funding for all PhD students at the university.”

The voting period for interim secretary-general will run from Feb. 18 to Feb. 24.

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Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Dangerous Spaces workshop challenges conception of safe spaces Event held as part of QPIRG McGill’s Social Justice Days series

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ASHLEY KONG Contributor

s part of the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) Social Justice Days series, the “Dangerous Spaces: Trauma-Informed Facilitation Skills for Holding Triggering Conversations” workshop took place on Feb. 13. Kai Cheng Thom, community worker and mental health professional, facilitated the event.

The workshop was held as a critique to the concept of ‘safe space,’ conversations which allow participants to discuss issues including, but not limited to, sex, gender, and race without being judged, stigmatised, or physically attacked. These conversations often involve marginalized minorities, queer individuals, and sexual assault survivors who have personally experienced oppression.

Contrary to the popular per-

ception that a ‘safe space’ provides a platform for traumatised persons to talk about their experiences without disruption and discomfort, Thom suggested that these types of conversations may actually be emotionally triggering and make participants more vulnerable.

“Sometimes along the way, we’ll encounter something that’s very, very painful for us, and be flooded by emotions,” Thom said. Instead of ‘safe space,’ he calls the platform ‘dangerous space.’

According to Thom, such conversations are necessary for the sake of confronting the past.

“It’s like healing a broken bone: When a bone is healing, it often heals [imperfectly]—kind of crooked,” he said. “To fix it, it has to be re-broken and reset.”

During the interactive session, participants were paired up as ‘mothers’ and ‘children.’ Each ‘mother’ used a special sound

signal, such as clapping or snapping fingers, to lead their respective blindfolded ‘children’ to navigate around the room. Then, the ‘mothers’ and ‘children’ were forced to separate. The ‘children’ had to find their way back to their ‘mothers’ by listening to the pre-decided signals.

The game was meant to simulate a triggering experience, or a ‘dangerous space.’

“It directly addresses some of the anxieties physically: Not seeing in public, interacting with strangers,” Thom said. “The reason I wanted to do it was just to demonstrate a very possibly triggering, dangerous activity [...] and to show that it can be done in a way that is slow […] consensual […] well-explained and contained, but not necessarily risk-free.”

Sabine Grutter, U3 Arts and Science, and participant in the workshop, said she was pleased with the event.

“I found the workshop very informative and useful for community organization,” Grutter said. “One of the best things we can do in communities is […] to allow solidarity, [to acknowledge] spaces that we’re having […] and to help each other to improve.”

The event was a part of the 10th annual installment of Social Justice Days, a series of activities that explores social justice issues through workshops, demonstrations, screening and performances, hosted by QPIRG McGill, a campus group dedicated to environmental and social justice. From Feb. 12 to 13, six workshops were held on campus, with topics ranging from state violence to queer politics.

Kira Page, external coordinator of QPIRG McGill, explained how activities were chosen for the series.

“There’s a big committee, eight or nine of us who are most-

ly student volunteers, and some of our board and staff,” Page said. “We brainstorm topics or ideas that would be interesting [….] We sent e-mails […] and asked the community groups and campus groups to submit workshop ideas.”

Page also explained the two main objectives of the Social Justice Days events.

“One is to […] create a diversity of political voices on campus and bring in perspectives and topics that often don’t get discussed at McGill,” she said.

“The other part is to give students a really concrete [opportunity] to actually get involved.”

The topics covered in the series vary year by year, according to internal coordinator of QPIRG McGill Kama Maureemootoo.

“We see what are […] important and relevant [issues] in the moment—that’s how we do our programming,” Maureemootoo said.

Bill 10: MUHC concerned about new network structure “Superregional healthcare institutions” remain undefined

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PHILLIPE DUMAIS Staff Writer

n Feb. 7, Bill 10 was passed in the National Assembly of Quebec. The Bill is set to abolish the 18 regional health agencies, which are currently responsible for coordinating the health care and social services of a given area. These include child protection services, elderly care, hospitals, and other additional services.

In their place, the bill will re-organise the current Health and Social Service Centres (CISSS) in a way that would seek to fulfill the gap created by the abolition of the regional agencies.

The bill will merge the current 184 CISSS to form 28 new ones, each covering a larger area. The newly administered CISSS’s will have board members appointed by the Minister of Health and Social Services Gaetan Barrette, and resources will then be allocated to each of the 16 administrative regions of the province. Montreal will have five CISSS’s.

The McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) declined to comment on how the reform will affect its daily operations. However, its administration expressed concerns towards how the Montreal community would be affected by any forthcoming changes to the MUHC as a result of the Bill.

“Our consultation has revealed considerable concern about the important role our community plays in the governance of our hospitals,” reads the MUHC’s press release regarding Bill 10.

The MUHC also raised questions

about its new status as a superregional institution under the Bill and demanded more clarity from Barrette.

“The problem with this is that it is unclear what defines a superregional institution and how it fits into the proposed network structure,” the press release reads.

Even though the MUHC is not directly impacted by most of the effects of Bill 10, the reorganization of resources in the area alters the number of specialists it will be allocated.

“Under a clinical reorganization by the Quebec Health Department, the MUHC would lose 83 specialists over the next five years,” Aaron Deferel reported for Post Media.

Isabelle Lavigne, spokesperson for the Centre Hospitalier de l’University de Montreal (CHUM), declined to comment, saying it is too early to determine how the operations will be affected.

“The CHUM remains an autonomous facility and we do not know yet how the reform will affect its activities,”

BILL 10 PROPOSED million dollars in 220 savings per year CHANGES

182 83

MUHC specialists would be lost over the next 5 years

current Health and Social Service Centres will be merged to create 28 larger centres

1300

full time jobs in health care administration will be cut

18 Lavigne said.

Associate Professor in Social Work at McGill Delphine Collin-Vézina was invited to appear before the National Assembly committee called the Commission sur la Santé et les Services Sociaux, which is responsible for examining all health care legislation. The committee examined Bill 10 before it was adopted.

“We were raising concerns regarding the expertise in assessing child maltreatment cases that could be lost,” Collin-Vézina said. As a result of Bill 10, local services dedicated to the pro-

tection of children will be merged into new CISSS infrastructures.

Paul Thomas, the president of the MUHC workers union (SECUSMCSN), explained that the reorganization and the mergers complicate labour relationships.

“We are concerned by the new power this reform gives to the Health Minister,” Thomas said. “If mandates or services are altered, it will force labour reorganization.”

Thomas continued to explain that the MUHC would not be affected by

regional health agencies will be eliminated

Infographic by Cassie Lee union mergers, although other healthcentres, such as the CHUM, are concerned that smaller unions may lose their voice if merged with larger ones. “[The MUHC] is excluded from the facility mergers, hence our employees will not have to vote and change union,” Thomas said. “I discussed with the president of the employees from CHUM, and they will be affected when the Notre-Dame hospital will be integrated with a different sector when the [new site for the] CHUM will open.”

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

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SSMU Council opposes deregulation, approves ECOLE referendum question Anti-provincial austerity measures also discussed MAX BERGER Arts & Entertainment Editor

Motion regarding opposition to deregulation of international tuition

Last Thursday, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Legislative Council passed a motion to oppose the McGill administration’s decision to lobby the Quebec government to deregulate international students’ tuition in all programs.

The implementation of this deregulation proposal would increase tuition revenue from international students, as it allows McGill to determine the supplemental tuition it would charge its students. Currently, the provincial government decides the amount of supplementary tuition that international students pay, then reallocates the tuition from them to universities throughout Quebec based on total population rather than international student population.

Arts representative Eddie Lin voiced his concern about the difficulties this would pose for students currently paying higher levels of tuition. “[International students] already pay about two or three times more than regular Canadian students,” Lin said.

“It’s just not reasonable to put a burden on [a group] that’s already so burdened.”

Alternatively, Engineering representative Anikke Rioux urged the Council to consider the advantages of the extra funding that would result from increased tuition.

“One of the biggest benefits is that the effect of budget cuts [...] doesn’t affect us quite as much when we’re deregulated because international students bring in a lot of money to the university,” Rioux explained.

While most Council members

were in favour of opposing deregulation, there was discussion about the possibility of amending the motion and voting on it instead at the Winter General Assembly (GA) as a means of more effectively engaging students. However, that amendment did not pass as councillors decided on the need of immediate action.

“The VP External portfolio can’t move forward if we table all actions that are political to the GA,” Arts representative Lola Baraldi said. “I don’t see it as mutually exclusive to pass this motion [...] and then perhaps [bring] a stronger discussion or a second motion building off of this one [to] the GA.”

Motion regarding the ECOLE referendum question

Council also approved a motion that will allow the Educational Community Living Environment (ECOLE) Project, a student-run sustainability initiative that houses its facilitators in a property rented from McGill on 3559 University, to run a question in the upcoming Winter Referendum regarding the creation of a $2 student fee per semester. If passed, the fee would go towards the funding needed for ECOLE to cover its $144,195 budget. ECOLE receives $44,000 in rent fees from its tenants, which then goes towards the $94,000 it is charged by McGill for the use of the ECOLE building. Currently, most of ECOLE’s funding comes from the non-renewable McGill’s Sustainable Project Fund.

The motion follows ECOLE’s recently acquired Independent Student Group (ISG) status, which allows the organization to charge student fee levies. Three ECOLE representatives came to Council to address the progress of the project and answer ques-

Councillors debate the ECOLE referendum question (Lauren Benson-Armer / McGill Tribune) tions about the fee levy.

“The idea behind this motion is that ECOLE will be able to continue for many years to come,” ECOLE co-coordinator Brooke Nancekivell explained. “We also have, for context, looked into many other funding options at McGill [besides a student fee], many of which we’re not eligible for. We’ve also looked into funding options outside of McGill, and a lot of those grants come from sources that don’t align with our mandate.”

Senate Caucus representative Kareem Ibrahim, who also sits on the Board of Directors of ECOLE, proposed an amendment to increase the fee in the question from $2 to $2.50.

It did not pass, and VP Finance and Operations Kathleen Bradley, who is a fellow board member with Ibra-

him, expressed that she supported the original motion but couldn’t endorse the fee increase.

“I made the $2 recommendation based upon my professional opinion and I would still agree with that opinion,” Bradley said. “This amendment is not a responsible use of student funds.”

Anti-austerity progress report

In her report to Council, VicePresident External Amina MoustaqimBarrette discussed the anti-austerity actions that SSMU is currently undertaking. Last Wednesday, Moustaqim-Barrette met for the first time with the Mobilization Committee, a group that was formed under Moustaqim-Barrette’s portfolio after SSMU resolved to take

an official stance against austerity at the Fall GA and is open to all students to join. It has arranged to hang antiausterity banners around the SSMU building, and will be rallying students to participate in an anti-austerity strike organized by the anti-austerity group Comité Printemps 2015, that will be taking place in Montreal on Mar. 21.

Moustaqim-Barrette also encouraged councillors to contact her if they would like to bring a strike motion to their constituents.

“What I’d really like to see is us empower departments and faculties having strike votes [at that level],” Moustaqim-Barrette said. “Within my position as VP External, I see myself [...] really just [….trying to] get the information out there to our students about austerity and alternatives to it.”

Students create initiative for women-only hours at McGill fitness centre Argue that exclusive hours will give women better access to gym facilities CATHERINE-LAURE JUSTE Contributor

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amia Allalou and Raymond Grafton, two McGill Law students, are in discussions with the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) to seek endorsement for the implementation of women-only hours at the McGill Fitness Centre.

Allalou started the initiative after realizing that the school did not offer women-only gym hours, unlike the University of Toronto, where she previously studied.

“Recently, I wanted to get back into shape and inquired at the McGill Athletics facility when their women’s hours were,” Allalou said. “Due to religious reasons, I can only work out in a women-only environment [....]

This was upsetting to me because

ultimately, I am subsidizing a service that I cannot use.”

According to Allalou, women-only gym hours encourage women who aren’t as likely to use the gym facilities to go to the fitness centre.

“Women who do not feel comfortable using the gym because they are watched or harassed in a mixed setting can also feel more comfortable and exercise more freely [in a woman-only setting],” Allalou explained. “Women who are restricted due to religious reasons would be able to be included and use the gym.”

According to SSMU VicePresident University Affairs Claire Stewart-Kanigan, the implementation of women-only gym hours would follow the steps of other facilities in the centre who have recognized a need for more

inclusion.

“Other services in [McGill Athletics] have acknowledged the need for accommodation of particular needs to facilitate service access—such as women’s swim hours at the pool—and it is fair to extend this accommodation to other services, namely access to a fitness centre,” she said.

Allalou says she has received support for the initiative from male and female students alike.

She is also conducting a survey to gather students’ opinions about offering women-only gym hours and gathering data on other Canadian universities that currently offer women-only gym hours, including the University of Toronto, University of Ottawa, Ryerson University, York University, and Queen’s University.

“Based on my surveys, I hope

that the SSMU will pass a mandate endorsing this campaign,” she explained. “I then hope to schedule a meeting with McGill’s Athletics Facility to discuss how we could go about implementing our suggestion.”

Stewart-Kanigan said she is also considering bringing the idea of women-only gym hours to the undergraduate student body.

“I have also offered the [students] the option of working with them to bring a motion of endorsement of this initiative to SSMU Council, allowing councillors to consult their constituents prior to voting,” she said.

Victoria Greco, secondyear Education student and staff member at the McGill gym also claimed that intimidation and discomfort are two factors that influence women’s aversion in joining

the fitness centre.

“I know more women would use more of the equipment,” Greco stated. “For example, the weight section is almost always occupied by males. So [females] might be less intimidated to go to the weight section and lift [if a women-only setting existed].”

Jared Ferguson, a first year master’s student in Exercise Physiology and McGill gym staff member, expressed similar sentiments.

“I think it would be pretty popular,” Ferguson stated. “I think it would be a good idea to get more girls involved who might not come regularly just for that reason. If there was a way that they could have a block of time where there was women only [... maybe] you would see a more even spread during regular hours.”

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Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Fire breaks out in Royal Victoria College residence Firefighters called to scene, no known injuries

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JENNY SHEN Editor-in-Chief

fire broke out on Feb. 10 in an upper floor of the Royal Victoria College (RVC) residence and firefighters were called to the scene just after 11:00 a.m. The fire was contained and extinguished shortly after arrival, according to Montreal fire department Chief Gordon Routley.

“There was a fire at the very highest part of the attic of Royal Victoria College,” Routley said at the scene. “[It] seems to be confined to a very small area there. We don’t really know what started it, but we got into the void space and found the fire. It seems to be under control now.”

McGill Food and Dining Services Director Mathieu Laperle explained that the fire mostly affected the West Wing of RVC. “There was extensive damage to the West Wing roof, a section of which has been dismantled,” Laperle said. “There remains no information about the cause of the fire.” “[The fire was] not very big,” Routley said. “They were able to extinguish it when they found where the fire was—only took a couple minutes once they got water on it. There weren’t

a lot of people [...] inside the building when we arrived, and they were coming out. [The students] were evacuated when we got here. McGill’s taking care of them.”

Laperle added students would be relocated for the night to evo, a privately-run student residence on Sherbrooke.

“Many of them will be allowed into the West Wing to recover their belongings,” he said

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the day of the fire. “The 81 students who live in the West Wing will be relocated at evo tonight.

We don’t know how long students will be out of RVC. Mehar Gujral, U1 Arts and resident of RVC’s West Wing, explained that most RVC residents will be staying at evo Sherbrooke until this Friday.

“We’ve been living in evo since Tuesday,” Gujral said.

“After this Friday, floors one,

Firefighters examine the Royal Victoria College Residence. (Jenny Shen / McGill Tribune) two, [and] three will be allowed in terms of holes in the ceiling to move back. Floors four and [...The construction workers] five will be permanently relocat- completely sealed off the fifth floor and part of the fourth floor ed to other McGill residences.”

Gujral continued to explain for renovation.”

According to Laperle, costs that the extent of damage varied for repairing the damages inthroughout the residence. “[For] my room, it was curred from the fire are still unmostly water damage that was known.

“It’s too early to come up sustained, because the fire didn’t actually reach our rooms,” she with a figure,” he said. said. “But some of the other rooms sustained greater damage

editorial

THE Mcgill

Editor-in-Chief Jenny Shen editor@mcgilltribune.com Managing Editors Mayaz Alam malam@mcgilltribune.com Jessica Fu jfu@mcgilltribune.com Remi Lu rlu@mcgilltribune.com Production Manager Sam Pinto spinto@mcgilltribune.com Creative Director Hayley Lim hlim@mcgilltribune.com News Editors Shrinkhala Dawadi and Cece Zhang news@mcgilltribune.com Opinion Editor Julie Vanderperre opinion@mcgilltribune.com Science & Technology Editor Chloe Nevitt scitech@mcgilltribune.com Student Living Editor Natalie Wong studentliving@mcgilltribune.com Features Editor Caity Hui features@mcgilltribune.com Arts & Entertainment Editors Max Berger and Morgan Alexander arts@mcgilltribune.com Sports Editors Elie Waitzer and Wyatt Fine-Gagné sports@mcgilltribune.com Design Editors Domitille Biehlmann and Cassie Lee design@mcgilltribune.com Photo Editors Jack Neal and L-A Benoit photo@mcgilltribune.com Copy Editor Adrien Hu copy@mcgilltribune.com Online Editor Matt Smith online@mcgilltribune.com Web Developer William Burgess webdev@mcgilltribune.com Advertising Executives Eliott Demelier, Daniel Kang, and Mingye Chen ads@mcgilltribune.com Publisher Chad Ronalds

TPS Board of Directors

Yael Chapman, Jacqui Galbraith, Adrien Hu, Alycia Noe, Sam Pinto, Jenny Shen, Maryse Thomas, Nicolas Tuech

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Contributors

Abdulaziz Atta, Lauren Benson-Armer, Uliana Bilash, Alexander Bullis, Julia Dick, Cory Goldstein, Emma Hameau, Justin Hatherly, Natalie Jennings, Sophie Jewett, Catherine-Laure Juste, Lydia Kaprelian, Ashley Kong, Aviva Leshaw, Sijia Li, May Lim, Hayley Mortin, Clare Murphy, Eric Noble-Marks, Albert Park, Jer Lin Poh, Joshua Shapiro, Carolina Shenoda, Jenna Stanwood, Sofia Rautionmaa, Cecile Richetta, Yufei Wang, Leslie Yao

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7

Opinion

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Divestment a necessary starting point for combatting climate change Divest McGill, a student group that attempts to lobby the university to divest its financial holdings in fossil fuel companies, recently submitted a proposal to the McGill Board of Governors (BoG) Committee to Advise on Matters of Social Responsibility (CAMSR). This proposal specifically targets the estimated five per cent of McGill’s nearly $1 billion endowment that is invested in fossil fuel companies.

In an issue as highly politicized as divestment, McGill has an opportunity to send an institutional message that it values and prioritizes sustainability. Divestment as a singular act is a symbolic starting point contributing to a communitywide effort to mitigate and counteract the harms of climate change.

Consequently, if CAMSR decides to move forward with divestment, McGill’s progress on climate change should not be measured solely by whether or not it accepts the proposal in question.

It would be naive to think that the companies that McGill currently has holdings in will suddenly

change their behaviour because of the divestment—they will undoubtedly be able to find investors who place less importance on negative externalities. Furthermore, in a financial sense it is unclear whether McGill stands to benefit from retaining its holdings in fossil fuel companies. While it is true that stocks tied to fossil fuel companies tend to outperform non-fossil fuel related stocks on average by as much as 0.7 per cent, they are by no means the only sectorspecific stocks that perform well.

Additionally, the finite nature of fossil fuels as a commodity hint at the long-term unsustainability that these sources of potential revenue hold.

Many would argue that if McGill was to remain a shareholder of fossil fuel companies, the university would wield decision-making capabilities as well. While true in theory, in practice McGill likely does not have the financial might as a single shareholder to significantly influence the behaviour of multi-billion dollar companies like Shell and Enbridge who are in the

business first and foremost not to harm the environment, but to maximize profits within their industry.

Trying to convince these companies to forgo profitable ventures in favour of emphasizing renewable energy research would be futile— heavy reliance on fossil fuels is a reality in Canadian society. McGill is not a for-profit institution, and is not bound by the same short-term and monetary limitations as a corporation. Indeed, the university’s greatest strength in the climate change arena is not its financial capabilities but rather its position as a world-renowned leader in academic research and higher learning.

Divestment is another opportunity for McGill to show to its peer institutions and the community at large that it is a leader committed to environmental sustainability. McGill has the ability to create an organizational culture that is actively interested in finding solutions that will move our society past its short-term reliance on fossil fuels. McGill, as part of a consortium with other universi-

ties, has the lobbying capability to stress an increased need to invest in research targeted at cleaner technology.

Calls to action that implore McGill to divest its stakes in fossil fuel companies should not rest solely on a moral groundwork—all members of this editorial board understand the negative impact of human-created climate change. Calls to action that ignore McGill’s relationship with these companies, yet push for greater action to combat climate change, are hypocritical; indeed, CAMSR’s terms of reference when considering potential stock options require it to consider the company’s potential to “cause social injury to include grave, injurious impact [...] of a company [on the] natural environment.” Divestment, while symbolic in many senses, is a necessary first step in what will undoubtedly be an arduous process to creating a more sustainable future. McGill has an opportunity to be at the forefront of this transition and lead a widespread movement toward fighting climate change.

DISSENT: Divestment inefficient for universities fighting climate change Pressure for McGill University to divest its endowments from fossil fuel companies has gained traction and publicity recently, with over 1,300 students, faculty, alumni, and staff in support of Divest McGill’s petition to the Board of Governors (BoG).

As part of its petition, Divest McGill is calling on the university to divest its endowment fund from companies within the top 200 in rankings based on estimated carbon reserves, on the grounds that these companies are not environmentally conscious. This heightened interest in divestment at McGill goes along with a movement throughout many universities in North America advocating for divestment from fossil fuels. Despite the grave consequences that climate change presents, divestment does not serve environmental activism or McGill in the most productive or efficient manner.

Supporters of fossil fuel divestment view McGill’s decision of whether or not to divest as a political statement about McGill’s stance on climate change.

This logic does not give enough weight to the considerations of practicality that the university must take into account. While divesting from fossil fuels would be nothing more than a symbolic gesture, the decision not to divest

should not be interpreted as a sign of apathy towards the problem of climate change. The BoG is comprised of trustees who are concerned with the long-term performance and financial viability of McGill, and must take into consideration these factors when considering divestment. Although they may certainly care about the future of the environment, the members of the BoG have other priorities to consider. A university’s endowment is primarily a financial tool to be used to increase revenue for the university, and administrators should avoid using it as a political instrument to promote a university-wide stance that may not be shared by all students.

While the financial effect that McGill’s divestment would have on fossil fuel companies— many of which are already worth hundreds of billions of dollars— is practically nonexistent, the financial impact that divestment could have on McGill’s resources is sizeable. Investments in fossil fuels are notably profitable; according to a recent study cited in The New York Times, university funds with energy sector stocks outperform those without them by as much as 0.7 per cent. Though this margin may not seem significant, the impact of this potential

loss should be considered with regards to the size of McGill’s investment—Divest McGill is calling for the divestment of the estimated five per cent of the university’s $1 billion endowment that is currently invested in fossil fuel companies—a sizeable sum that could certainly impact McGill’s already strained financial situation.

Proponents of divestment are also oversimplifying the many financial and ethical considerations involved in university investments. For instance, it is easy to point to large energy companies as the clear targets for divestment, but many of these companies are also leaders in the production of clean energy and the development of green technology. Enbridge, for example, is engaged in several renewable energy projects involving wind, solar, and geothermal energy.

Divestment is also not enough to constitute any practical progress towards solving the issue of climate change. Simply divesting what is a relatively negligible amount of money for the fossil fuel companies will not have any positive impact on the environment, and is an inherently passive move. There are a host of different activities that student activists can engage in, besides

lobbying for divestment, that would have a more active role in reducing the real negative effects of climate change. Advocating for more government funding for research and innovation aimed at creating alternative, clean energy sources, lobbying the government for concrete policy changes, (such as abolishing the current government subsidization that gives fossil fuel companies reduced tax deduction rates), or advancing initiatives to make our campus more green, are just some examples of concrete actions that students could undertake that would directly impact climate change.

The divest movement places too much weight on the importance of having the university take a moral stance on the issue of climate change—a passive action whose potential ‘snowball effects’ of rallying support for ending climate change are overemphasized. In addition, the divest movement puts undue pressure on McGill—an institution that is struggling financially—to promote a political stance over prioritizing revenue. Instead of divesting, McGill should focus on using its current resources and student advocacy to contribute to positive environmental change in more concrete ways.

Morgan Alexander, William Burgess, Adrien Hu, Wyatt Fine-Gagné, Cassie Lee, Hayley Lim, Sam Pinto, Jenny Shen, Julie Vanderperre, and Natalie Wong agree with the views presented in this dissent.

Opinion

8

COMMENTARY

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Why Canada should reinstate the mandatory long-form census

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The low response rate and non-ran-

domized nature of the voluntary census means that the data [people] are accessing will become increasingly innacur-

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rate and biased.

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The first week of February saw the defeat of a bill to reinstate Canada’s mandatory long-form census, prompting a sigh of discontent and discouragement from many Canadians.

While every opposition Member of Parliament (MP) voted in favour, all but one Conservative MP voted against it, preventing the bill from passing 147 to 126.

While this issue does not seem extremely alarming at first, it is imperative, not only for economic reasons, but also for the sake of academic research and historical accuracy that the long-form census is made mandatory again.

Since 1971, Statistics Canada has undertaken a mandatory long-form census every five years to produce meaningful data, which has been an integral

in the resulting data, health units have a hard time targeting their

one of the many ways policy has been hindered by the change.

However, the problem goes further, as the change also has large negative impacts on academia. For the past few decades, researchers have relied heavily on data provided by Statistics Canada, mainly through longform censuses. Their fundamental position in academic research is reflected by the Research Data Centres Program, an initiative to provide research centres in universities around Canada with access to microdata from population and household surveys, which includes results gathered from the long-form census.

Among other users, these centres are employed frequently by university students, mainly for postgraduate research. However, the low response rate and non-randomized nature of the voluntary census means that the data they are accessing will become increasingly inaccurate and biased. This essentially means that the next generation of post-graduate students will have access to lower quality information than the generation before them, making their research less effective, and therefore, less applicable to

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Albert Park Contributor

factor affecting the country’s public and corporate decisions.

This system, which garnered much praise from statisticians and economists for its ability to produce reliable and unbiased information, was replaced in 2010 by the Harper government with a voluntary National Household survey that is far less extensive and significantly more costly to implement. The decision was made primarily with the dubious goal of “protecting privacy,” which remains as virtually the sole reason the change is still being supported by the Conservatives to this day.

One does not need to be an expert in statistics to understand that the voluntary survey does an objectively poorer job of returning valuable information, with fewer questions and an average response rate of around 68 per cent compared to the mandatory census’ 93 per cent.

An example of an area suffering heavy difficulties due to this loss of information is public health units. Marginalized populations, such as families with low income, are less likely to complete the voluntary survey. Since they are not represented properly

health care programs to the areas that need them the most. This is

society.

The problem is even more serious when viewed from a long-term perspective. The data provided by the census is a way for historians to understand the growth and development of various periods in Canadian history. Not only does it present the necessary numbers for calculations, but it provides a context and voice to the numbers. For example, the long-form census can effectively trace not only the rate of immigration, but also provide vital information about how newcomers are being integrated into the nation through information about income, jobs, and education. Without this kind of information, it would be significantly more difficult for experts to have a coherent and complete understanding of different trends and changes that occurred in Canada.

Simply put, bringing back the mandatory long-form census is the only way to guarantee that Canada’s identity as a country is correctly portrayed, economic decisions are based in accurate data, and researchers have access to adequate and unbiased information.

Towards a new system of social security

The Canadian government has a wide array of programs in place to alleviate poverty. At the federal level alone, the government spends 10 per cent of GDP on a multitude of cash transfer programs. Despite this, around nine per cent of Canadians still live in poverty. The solution could be to guarantee an income to all Canadians who fall below a certain threshold through a Negative Income Tax (NIT).

An NIT is a variant of a basic income, which is a payment granted unconditionally to all citizens regardless of financial need. Currently, individuals are allowed to earn a certain amount of income tax-free. Under a NIT, if an individual earned no income at all, they would get a cash payment from the government of half the tax-free allowance. For

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Justin hatherly Contributor

In an age of increasing ecoeach additional dollar earned, the incentives on low-income people transfer would be reduced by 50 seeking to work. Under many of nomic uncertainty, the NIT could cents. As such, the supplemental the current welfare programs, for also help Canadians adjust to income received as a result of a each dollar of income a recipient economic shocks. Technological transfer will be half the remain- earns, the individuals can often innovation, while bringing bening amount that the person needs have benefits scaled back by two efits to the population at large, to reach the upper limit of no dollars. In contrast, as demon- is likely to destroy many jobs in income taxation. Once individu- strated in the example above, the its wake. Given that many people who lose als reach the their jobs threshold, are likely to they would have diffineither pay culty finding income tax new ones in nor receive a similar ina cash transdustry or at a fer. similar skill Though The NIT would allow many who level, the seemingly NIT could radical, there currently suffer from poverty to live as provide a are many broader sense advantages responsible, independent citizens. of economic to an NIT. security.

P r e s e n t l y, Perhaps the current most impormyriad of tantly, the welfare proNIT would grams fails also allow to provide many who adequate income security to those in need. NIT would always leave a recipi- currently suffer from poverty to By replacing them with an NIT, ent better off in work than on as- live as responsible, independent a floor could be created below sistance. If set at an appropriate citizens. The present set of welthe living standard of every Ca- level, the NIT could provide a fare programs often treat benefinadian citizen that is above the more generous level of income ciaries in a paternalistic manner. poverty line. In addition, the support than most of our existing They often stipulate what recipients can spend their money and NIT does not impose heavy dis- cash transfer payments.

can be sources of shame as well.

Under the NIT, the poor would be given cash and regarded as responsible adults, capable of spending the money they receive on what they need most.

The NIT is also superior to a flat basic income that is given to all citizens regardless of initial income. While this would reduce poverty, it would do nothing to improve income inequality and would cost far more than a targeted program.

To be politically viable and affordable, the NIT should replace all existing cash transfers.

This would mean that all existing programs that provide cash assistance to Canadians, ranging from Employment Insurance to provincial social assistance, would be abolished. Instead, an NIT would create a more adequate safety net and do away with large proportions of Canada’s vast welfare bureaucracy.

Although Canada is a very developed nation, it is still an unfortunate reality that many citizens still struggle to meet basic necessities. The NIT, if designed correctly, could create the means for Canada to attempt to eradicate much of the poverty that remains.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

COMMENTARY

9

Opinion

Low rates of sexual assault in university records highlight problems with reporting

The unfortunate truth about sexual violence is that it is something that many women face in their lifetimes, with an especially worrisome frequency at universities. Over the past couple of years, the media has been flooded with stories about the problem of sexual assault on university campuses.

However, across Canada, there is a disconnect between sexual violence occurrences on university campuses and the number actually recorded by schools.

A recent CBC article revealed that sexual assault reporting at Canadian universities is much lower than in the surrounding cities. In a survey conducted at the University of Ottawa, 44 per cent of female students encountered some sort of sexual violence on campus, and yet, the school only has 10 official reports. Sexual violence on campuses is a very prominent issue, yet university reports of sexual assault

viewed about sexual assault reporting on their campus. The number they have on record from the past five years is about a quarter of the

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Without any law

forcing records to be publicized, it is easy for the truth about the prevalence of sexual assault on university campuses to be misconstrued.

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sofia rautionmaa Contributor

remain suspiciously low.

In the United States, there is a law requiring universities to make sexual assault records public, unlike in Canada, where no such law exists. McGill University currently has no records available for sexual violence from the past five years, according to the data collected by the CBC. Without any law forcing records to be publicized, it is easy for the truth about the prevalence of sexual assault on university campuses to be misconstrued.

Many Canadian universities shy away from discussing sexual assault to protect their image. This can be extremely discouraging to students, who may think they should not report sexual violence to their university if the school may be hesitant to take disciplinary actions. It can take a very long time for a sexual assault case to be investigated, processed, and handled by the police—even then the case may be dismissed for lack of evidence. Students may therefore want to be able to report injustices to their universities, so that they don’t have to go to the police. Going through the university can be a lot quicker and less painful for survivors than having to be dragged through the criminal justice system.

The University of British Columbia (UBC) was recently inter-

size of that the RCMP has on record, which has a branch located on the UBC campus. With one in four women on average experiencing sexual assault in their lifetimes, it is nearly impossible for university numbers to be that low. “It makes me wonder who students have

been trusting in telling and who is collecting the numbers,” said one concerned student and survivor of sexual assault from UBC in an interview with the CBC. Universities need to improve how they are handling and processing these reports given to them.

There also seems to be a lack of support on campus when it comes to helping survivors of sexual assault. Something as simple as where exactly one should report an act of sexual violence is unclear at many universities.

From there, students can feel uncomfortable expressing what has happened to them, and it is the job of the schools to give as much non-judgmental support as possible. Students should not have to go searching for help; when an incident like sexual violence occurs, the school should be right there, ready to assist.

Recently, there has been a proposal drafted on how to expand McGill University’s policy on sexual violence on campus. It addresses how to treat the survivor in the case, and is careful to use the word ‘survivor’ as opposed to ‘victim’ to empower the student affected. The drafted sexual assault policy also discusses how to prevent these acts of sexual violence from occurring in the future.

Implementing more awareness on

campus and creating an organization whose sole purpose is to deal first-hand with all issues concerning sexual violence on campus are included as important steps for the university to undertake to encourage students to report sexual assaults. Information and resources —such as discussions on topics like consent, prevention of sexual assault, and reporting—will be made easily accessible. The sexual assault policy also advocates for the training of members of the McGill community to carry out peer and professional support services.

This proposal is a definite step in the right direction, as it addresses many of the key components that universities need to have on their campuses in order to better handle sexual violence incidents.

To begin tackling the issue of sexual assault on campuses, universities need be more supportive and open to their students to make them feel safe and secure if they ever need help. Students who are survivors of sexual violence have already encountered enough pain; schools should not be adding to the difficulty of the situation. It is the job of universities to work as hard as they can to encourage students to report these incidences and make them feel they are not alone.

Fears of extremism limiting freedoms in Canada

Since Stephen Harper proposed Bill C-15 against terrorism, several events have taken place that call into question the establishment of laws and rulings to combat extremism that some fear may be growing in Canada. Officially, Bill C-15 gives Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agents greater power to address “security threats” both at home and abroad. On its website, the Canadian government explains that the bill will “criminalize the advocacy or promotion of terrorism offences,” make it “easier for law enforcement agencies to detain suspected terrorists” before

link.

The combination of Bill C-15 with the recent events in

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Lumping together policies to promote secularism

with laws to fight terrorism further encourages people to see a threat in the Muslim com-

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cecile richetta Contributor

they can harm the population, “enable the effective and responsible sharing of relevant national security information,” and make better use of classified information in order to identify potential threats. This bill has been described as the most far-reaching security law since the aftermath of 9/11. What is most alarming is that Harper has argued that the world is a “dangerous place” and refused to add sunset clauses to the bill, which means that it could remain in place indefinitely.

The day after the proposal of Bill C-15, Montreal mayor Denis Coderre blocked an imam from establishing a community centre in the city, arguing that its establishment could disrupt “public safety and order.” According to Coderre, the imam in question was an “agent of radicalization.”

His refusal looked even more dubious in the light of Harper’s recent proposal. No matter how hard Coderre, claimed that “it [had] nothing to do with freedom of speech,” it had been increasingly hard not to see a disturbing

munity at large.

Montreal gave rise to controversial and heated debates. As McGill Law professor, Victor

Muniz-Fraticelli, pointed out, having a debate about the establishment of the community centre on political and philosophical grounds is completely acceptable, but the creation of this institution is not a crime— although considering the federal government’s recent policy, it could become one soon. But, as for now, the local politicians unlawfully put a restriction on freedom of religion, speech, and assembly, in the name of ‘greater security.’

Lumping together policies to promote secularism with laws to fight terrorism further encourages people to see a threat in the Muslim community at large. It will become harder to contain fear and anger when citizens are no longer able to differentiate between a real threat and mere paranoia.

Both of these events are inherently flawed and reactive. None of these decisions address the fundamental questions that people should be asking themselves: Why do people join terrorist movements? Why

are social conditions in Western countries pushing some citizens to fill in the ranks of extremist groups?

Bill C-15 is also imposing greater surveillance on all citizens by claiming to protect them.

The accumulation of private information is just one issue when considering the restrictions in citizens’ ability to express themselves, religiously or not. Now, more than ever, Canadians need to be careful of such marginalizing political speech and pick the right fights. In the face of a common peril, showing a united front is both good and necessary. However, depriving certain citizens of their rights because of their religious beliefs is unjust. Scapegoating all Muslims by associating them with terrorism will never be the appropriate reaction. One can be extremist without being religious, and religious without being extremist.

But it seems that for the federal government and CSIS, Canadians are now under scrutiny and are being forced to keep quiet.

10

Student Living Redpath Museum night tours

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Flashlight Tours create an interactive experience for students Uliana Bilash Contributor On Friday, Feb. 7, McGill’s Redpath Museum came to life Night-at-theMuseum-style during the annual Redpath Flashlight Tour opened exclusively to McGill students.

The Flashlight Tour originated in 2009 as a part of Nuit Blanche, an allnight festival hosted in Montreal. In 2014, the Redpath Museum Club took over running the event, holding an additional Night at the Museum Flashlight Tour for McGill students only. Due to lack of funding around Halloween— which is when the event usually takes place—the tour was instead scheduled for the Winter semester, and was funded

by Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU).

The night began with an audiovisual presentation about the historical context of the building by Ingrid Birker, science outreach coordinator of the Redpath Museum. Following the presentation, students could freely roam the museum with flashlights in hand, listening in on the tour guides’ explanations of the various exhibits.

“It’s definitely the highlight of the club’s year,” Birker said. “[The tour

guides] love showing guests what they know about this place, and sharing the stories of the broken bone on the dinosaur […] and the fluorescent minerals.

You know, [the] secret spots. They love the chance to get to interact with students.”

According to Vice-President Communications of the Redpath Museum Club Sarah Popov, the event puts the Redpath museum in a new light.

“The funniest part is that people don’t even think about going to the museum during the daytime, but as soon as you turn the lights off and it’s at night, people get really excited about it,” Popov said.

Students were stunned by how flashlights enhanced their visual and learning experience while exploring the exhibits.

“When the lights are off, all your other senses actually get more and more attuned to what’s around you,” Birker said. “It’s actually really quiet here.

There’s no sound. People actually start whispering to each other. It’s like they don’t want to break the spell. You also can’t run in the dark. You […] walk and move slower, so people do become way more respectful way more attentive. It’s

a magical evening.”

E v e n first-time tour guide and member of the Redpath Museum Club Lauren McAusland was astonished by the experience of conducting a tour in the dark.

“It’s a completely different atmosphere,” McAusland said. “It’s kind Students explore Redpath museum at night with flashlights. (Photo courtesy of Anthony Zerafa) of spooky, fun, scheduled for Feb. 28 a as part of Nuit and more exciting because […] every- reflection on the ceiling.”

Around 480 people attended the Blanche. The museum is expecting an thing is cast in cool shadows. Even when I was shining my light around some of event. According to McAusland, the even larger turnout, as this event will be the mummies, you can see things differ- club was delighted by students’ enthusi- open to the public.

“It’s going to be about the same ently. I didn’t realize that you could see asm for the event.

“I think it’s just cool to see that it’s structure, but there are going to be a lot clear through the mummy’s naval cavity into his head in the light until I actually the oldest museum specifically built to more people there, lined up at the Y-intried to shine my flashlight into his nose. be a museum in Canada,” said Megha tersection, all the way to the [Roddick] gates,” McAusland said.

We were putting our flashlights under Patel, U0 Science student.

The next Flashlight Tour is the big dinosaur and you could see its

The Yellow Door aims to prevent urban isolation Canada’s oldest coffeehouse encourages creative artistry Natalie Wong Student Living Editor Montreal is a city coloured with many longstanding unique organizations. One such organization is the nonfor-profit Yellow Door, located at 3625 Rue Aylmer, which aims to promote creative artistic expression and encourage service for the community.

“The purpose of the Yellow Door is to give young people an opportunity to initiate and participate in projects of various kinds—social and creative— that combat urban isolation, work across multiple generations, and that hopefully lead to positive social change,” said Marc Nerenberg, Yellow Door Coffeehouse Coordinator.

The Yellow Door has a history that has close ties with McGill University, dating back to the early 1900s. McGill students created the YMCA of McGill University in 1887, which the Student Christian Movement of Canada took over in Canadian universities in 1928.

During the 1960s, the Yellow Door Coffeehouse grew from an initiative of the Student Christian Movement, where it served to create a spot for creative expression for local artists.

“The Yellow Door Coffeehouse became fairly well-known over time— it was named Canada’s oldest coffeehouse,” said Nerenberg. “Where other coffeehouses were more of a business venture, the [Yellow Door] was a soulful venture.”

From 1967 to 1971, the coffee-

house acted as a setting to help individuals with financial aid and connect them through lunch programs and music. “[The coffeehouse] has a very special history,” said Matthew Bouchard, executive director of the Yellow Door.

“In the [1960s], there were a lot of draft-dodgers coming from the United States and settling in Montreal. A lot of them settled in this area because it was low-income housing for the most part; they also came along with their music culture [….] Many of them had to live off of very low wages, so we had a soup kitchen, as well as a coffeehouse. The coffeehouse allowed for like-minded individuals to come together to connect and build relationships around music.”

With the growth of the drug scene in Montreal in the early ’70s, the Yellow Door set up a drop-in psychiatric clinic where doctors provided counselling for youth with drug addictions. In 1972, the organization started the Yellow Door Elderly Project, which began when a group of McGill students used the Local Initiatives Projects grant from the Quebec government to conduct doorto-door surveys of the elderly living in the community and recognized a need to provide services to isolated elderly citizens.

Currently, the Yellow Door is still running with donations from the Quebec government, various private corporations and individuals, as well as with grants from Centraide. The Yellow Door currently runs four key projects: The Yellow Door Coffeehouse, the

Basement of the Yellow Door during Rabbit Hole Cafe hours. (Yufei Wang / McGill Tribune) Generations Project, the Rabbit Hole Café, and Branch Out. The Generations Project has evolved from the Yellow Door Elderly Project, and is now run by two coordinators with over 250 volunteers, serving around 300 elderly members within the downtown Montreal community.

“The mission of it is to try to connect generations through service,” said Bouchard. “The idea is that we get young students to volunteer and they are matched with isolated elderly people in the Montreal area [….] It’s very much for both individuals to benefit from it as much as possible.”

The Rabbit Hole Café is a vegan lunch kitchen—funded by the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life (MORSL) at McGill—that operates every Friday

during the school term, from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. For a donation of $2, students are provided with a vegan lunch. The Yellow Door also includes a small food bank filled with non-perishable items that students can access during the Rabbit Hole Café hours.

Branch Out is the newest initiative started at the Yellow Door. It currently has two projects—the Youth Engagement Project, which fosters creative mentorship between high school students and university students, and Spontaneous Space, which offers activities such as painting, wood carving, chess, and musical improv, to students for free.

The Yellow Door Coffeehouse, which has run for almost 50 years, still continues every Friday and Saturday night. Various famous singer-song-

writers performed at the Coffeehouse, including renowned artists such as Gordon Lightfoot, Rufus Wainwright, and Stan Rogers. It currently runs open mics, and hosts a featured performer every Friday. The Singer-Songwriter Second Saturday Series runs every second Saturday of each month, and includes a featured act.

Gareth Dicker, member of the Yellow Door Board of Directors, highlighted the strong sense of community cultivated by the Coffeehouse.

“The community of the coffeehouse has been going on for over 40 years as well, so it’s a good way to connect with several decades of musicianship, dating back to when folk music was actually popular,” Dicker said.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

11

Student Living

Student of theBy: Aviva Week LeShaw Although U1 Environment student Ben Ger is primarily studying the economic side of sustainability—he is an Environmental Economics major and a Marketing minor—he emphasized that he always keeps the global picture in mind.

Ger explained that sustainability can be broken down into three major categories: Economic, social, and environmental.

Ger said that it is often difficult for people to wrap their heads around what exactly sustainability is.

“There’s this idea that it’s some crazy thing in the sky that’s going to come kill us,” he said. “But sustainability at its base level just means making the world work. In terms of social sustainability, it means not discriminating, not judging, not generalizing. Let people do what they want to make themselves happy, as long as it’s not oppressive to anyone else.”

Ger said that at McGill, he is always trying to help spread happiness. In his first year at McGill, Ger was the president of his residence, Molson Hall, which turned out to be his personal commitment to social sustainability.

“I wanted to make sure people had an awesome year,” Ger said.

Through the Inter-Residence Council (IRC), he helped to promote Fight The Power, a week-long initiative encouraging energy reduction in residences. That same year, he was involved with the McGill chapter of a global organization called Right To Play, which works to promote sports activities for children in underdeveloped areas in order to teach leadership and life skills.

Ger’s first year laid the groundwork for a strong future at McGill, preparing him for a path of more specific interests. In his pursuits this year,

Ben Ger U1 ENVIRONMENT (L-A Benoit / McGill Tribune)

Ger has focused more on the things that are important to him, like environment, sustainability, economics, and ethics. As a result, Ger was recently hired as Coordinator of the Students’ Society of McGill University’s (SSMU) Financial Ethics Research Committee, where he is currently responsible for overseeing SSMU’s financial decisions and assessing the ethical level of their actions.

Ger is also using fashion to promote sustainability and is involved in producing ECOuture, McGill’s environment-friendly fashion show, coming up on March 19. All the clothing in the show is created by local designers and produced from sustainable materials. Last semester, Ger was also sustainability ambassador for the SSMU Environment Council.

Ger spoke highly of McGill as a whole and of the school’s efforts to become and remain sustainable.

“It’s a growing school with a lot of cool initiatives coming up,” Ger said. “I think they’re starting to narrow in on what forward-thinking is.”

Ger also keeps the environment in mind outside of McGill. This past summer, he worked for sustainable energy company Summit Energy in Toronto, doing marketing work for its sustainability sector. This coming summer, Ger is planning on working at JCM Capital, a private equity firm in Toronto that invests solely in solar initiatives.

Despite all that he has done, Ger said that he is still striving for more.

“I’m proud of what I’ve done so far,” he said. “But I have not done nearly that much.

There’s a lot more to do.”

McGill Tribune: What’s the one thing you would change about McGill, if you could?

Ben Ger: I would totally make the school colour green. Kidding.

MT: If you could be any food what woulf you be?

BG: There’s this Chinese restaurant in Toronto called Kom Jug—it’s weirdly intertwined with a lot of things and people in my family—and its barbeque pork is amazing. I’d be Kom Jug barbeque pork.

MT: What do you think is your worst quality?

BG: I need to be able to focus on one thing. Now, I think about all the things I could be doing rather than staying grounded in the present.

MT: Where do you see yourself in two years?

BG: Running for SSMU president.

MT: What do you miss most about home?

BG: Family [...] and my best friends—I consider them family [too].

How to entertain visiting parents in the dead of winter Morgan Alexander Arts & Entertainment Editor It’s not often parents come to visit, with temperatures constantly dropping, and plane ticket prices always on the rise. Without summer festivals, it may seem like there is nothing to do. So if parents do eventually decide to come visit in the middle of the school year, make sure to give them an experience worth remembering.

MILE END NEIGHBOURHOOD

Students who live in the Mile End neighbourhood area can take their parents to a hip part of town without going far. The first suggested stop of the day is brunch.

The Mile End is filled with delicious brunch places, from rival bagel companies to vegan coffee shops. However, for the brunch place with the most flavour and the fairest price, check out Le Sparrow (5322 Boul. Saint-Laurent). A delicious meal of a full Turkish Breakfast with a pot of

tea (or a fresh mimosa) is the perfect start to a lazy afternoon. Follow that by walking down SaintLaurent and across Mont Royal, checking out all the local shops.

Despite the bitter cold, there are enough stores to step into to stave off any frozen toes.

GOLDEN SQUARE MILE

Take a trip to the west side of campus and spend an afternoon in the Golden Square Mile, which essentially includes the entire McGill campus and the area between McGill and Concordia. Start the day with a tour around campus; parents can see the building that you passed that one really hard exam in, maybe point out your favourite library to spend all-nighters in, then head down to the Ritz Carlton (1228 Sherbrooke Ouest) for high tea.

Although that may be too pricey for a regular drop-in, your parents deserve to be pampered, and who can turn down four different types of finger sandwiches, assorted scones, and a tray of pastries? After tea, head just a few blocks down to

the Montreal Musée des Beaux Arts (1380 Sherbrooke Ouest). There are always great exhibits, and on a snowy day, there’s nothing nicer than walking around a warm building as the storm rages on outside.

OLD MONTREAL

If your parents are only coming for a day, Old Montreal is the place to go. A heavy layer of beauty, history, and restaurants makes this the go-to place for anyone visiting. There is enough to do at Old Montreal that you can go more than once and still be entertained.

While Old Montreal is littered with pricey, high-end restaurants, sometimes sticking to traditional French-Canadian cuisine is just what you need. Marche de la Villette (324 Saint-Paul Ouest) is a full boucherie charcuterie, and its French onion soup is incredible.

Afterwards, spend the afternoon walking around the neighbourhood and make sure to schedule a stop at the Notre-Dame Cathedral. It’s always covered in lights when there’s snow on the ground,

Enjoy a scenic day out in the city of Montreal. (Hayley Mortin / McGill Tribune) and serves as a great background for a family photo.

CHINATOWN + QUARTIER LATIN

For a more culturally eclectic experience, Chinatown and the Quartier Latin lend themselves to an afternoon full of beautiful architecture and a taste of Montreal’s diverse population. Similar to that of the Mile End, the focus of both of these neighborhoods is the various boutiques littered throughout the streets. If shopping really isn’t your

parents’ thing, take them to a show at Le Maison Théâtre (245 Ontario), or if no one in your family speaks French, go talk a walk in the Grande Bibliotheque (475 Maisonneuve Est), it’s indoors, warm, and provides a beautiful view of the city. Without a doubt, your day won’t be complete without at least one meal in Chinatown, so if the line isn’t too long, feast on what the Montreal Gazette calls “the best dim sum in Montreal” at La Maison Kam Fung (1111 Saint-Urbain).

Busking for Thought B

usking—the art of performing in public areas for gratuities—is not an uncommon sight in Montreal. While commuters often take for granted that musicians are seen and heard around the city, there was a time when many musicians had to risk fines and arrests in order to play their music for the public.

With the development of Montreal’s metro system throughout the 1970s, musicians had a new outlet to unleash their creativity. However, they had to fight for their right to be heard, starting with a musician by the name of Grégoire Dunlevy, who decided to create the first ‘metro musicians’ association’ along with three other musicians. At that time, TV personality Guy Sanche assisted in Dunlevy’s efforts by speaking in favour of having musicians at the Place-des-Arts station, arguing that musicians were part of Montreal’s culture. Placedes-Arts became the first station where musicians could play freely without getting stopped by security agents and police officials.

However, the hard work did not stop there.

It took three more years of continuous effort with a petition of over 10,000 names until musicians could play in the metro regularly in 1983. In 1986, Dunlevy’s organized work continued to improve the system as blue plaques with white lyres designated to reserve spaces for musicians were placed on the walls of metro stations. Dunlevy remained president of the association until 2006, when situa-

BY NATALIE WONG

tions for musicians began deteriorating. As a result, a new organization was built in 2009 for metro musicians.

The Montreal Metro Musician’s Association (MMMA)—a nonprofit organization—created the current code of conduct, seeking to provide equal opportunities and defend the interests of all musicians in the Montreal metro. MMMA provides an organizational structure that maintains a considerate environment by respecting the code of conduct, which is aligned with the regulations of the Societé de transport de Montreal (STM). Although the current code of conduct was adopted by MMMA, it is largely based off of the street rules that have been in place since Dunlevy’s work in the 1980s.

Josh Spencer, McGill graduate and student busker, highlighted on the unique nature of Montreal’s metro’s busking system and its unconventional way of organizing such an eclectic group of musicians. “[For] every metro station where you are allowed to busk without a permit, there’s a [lyre] symbol on a blue plaque,” Spencer said. “[The first busker] takes a piece of paper [with time slots] and slips it into [the] crack between the [lyre sign] and the wall. It’s a very democratic [system with a] first come, first serve basis, which is really cool because any day you want to play, you [just] check the list.”

For more popular subway stations like BerriUQAM, a draw is held every night at 11 p.m. to de-

cide the order of musicians for time slots the next day. Other rules regarding the code of ethics and space regulations can be found on the MMMA’s website.

“You can actually sign up [for a specific time] and know that you have that slot [simply] because you have written down your name,” Spencer said. “I bet there are a lot of people right now in Montreal who are musicians and don’t know about the busking policy and would love to do it.”

For many students, this easy and intuitive busking system in Montreal is a good outlet for creative expression.

“What I always like is the spontaneity,” Spencer said. “I’ll go in the metro and sometimes there will be good music and sometimes there won’t. I love that service, [and] that you can experience that in Montreal.”

However, there is a lack of a strong sense of community between musicians in the busking

syst e m , which can be difficult for students interested in the activity. Gareth Dicker, Master’s of Engineering student at McGill, often attends The Yellow Door Coffehouse, a longstanding Montreal acoustic music venue located right by McGill’s downtown campus.

“The Yellow Door Coffeehouse is like a home for many student buskers,” Dicker said.

“It’s a great place to meet other talented musicians, form bands or just to make friendships based around music,” Dicker said.

While McGill’s student buskers fell into busking through different channels, they all spoke to the opportunities for creative expression and the lasting impact that it etched in their lives.

Noah Margo-Dermer

U3 Honours Environment & Development Noah Margo-Dermer worked in a summer camp as a music programming director for the past two summers. After the summer of 2013, Margo-Dermer decided to take a step into the world of busking.

“After playing music so much over the summer, I missed it,” he said.

“So out of the blue, I decided to go busking at the Sherbrooke metro to see what it was like and to see if I could actually make any money doing it [….]

I did pretty well. [It was] definitely better than minimum wage.”

According to Margo-Dermer, he found a lot of similarities between working his summer job and busking in the metro.

“There were a lot of parallels […] in terms of engaging kids in the summer camp and trying to engage random people walking by,” he said. “[The latter] is actually a lot harder and scarier.”

While Margo-Dermer acknowledges that the spontaneity of busking makes it difficult to commit to the activity, this spontaneity has also brought Margo-Dermer memories of simple, engaging experiences.

“There was this one guy who just showed up and he wasn’t a busker,” Margo-Dermer said. “We just jammed to a few songs. I always enjoy those moments when someone’s walking by [and] you make eye contact with them and you smile at each other.”

Margo-Dermer said that his short experience in the summer helped him better understand buskers.

“I also felt a little uncomfortable as a student playing music [...] coming from a socioeconomically privileged [background]. I was worried that by busking for fun or a little bit of money, I would be taking the spot of someone who really relied on the income from busking to help them make ends meet.” he said. “I was a lot more conscious when walking by buskers [….] I would always try to make eye contact [with buskers] and pay attention to what they were doing rather than just walking by, primarily in the metro because that’s where I [busked].”

“I think people need to stop more and listen,” Margo-Dermer continued. “[Personally], if I’m really enjoying the music, I find myself stopping for a bit just to listen. [Buskers] like to be acknowledged in some form, whether it’s people stopping to listen, or for me personally, even just simply eye contact or a smile.”

Josh Spencer McGill graduate

Josh Spencer first came to Montreal in August 2010, moving into the Solin Hall residence. Spencer has been playing music since he was 13 years old, when he played guitar and later took up singing more seriously. He used his Opus card to explore the city and discovered buskers all over the place. After talking to some buskers, Spencer started playing at Peel, Saint-Laurent, and Lucien L’Allier metro stations, usually solo and occasionally with a friend.

“I had never busked before,” Spencer said. “I came to Montreal and […] there was a free busking system. That was cool. I play music every day, so [I thought] why not spend [the time that] I play music every day and potentially make a return?”

While busking is means of income for some, the money is just a perk for Spencer. “[Busking] was just fun,” Spencer said.

“The reward you get out of someone just coming out of the metro minding their own business [...] and then putting a smile on their face because you are playing something that’s enjoyable to them—I think that is worth as much as someone throwing you 75 cents.”

Spencer—who had a band in high school and was used to playing in front of an audience—was less focused on the vulnerability of playing in front of strangers and more focused on experimenting with the reception of different songs with a vast audience.

“Busking is very different from playing a show,” Spencer said. “[When you’re] playing a show, you worry about dynamics; you look at it as a story [that’s] following a natural progression. When you’re busking, you get people’s attention for 30 seconds [….] people aren’t there to listen to you as a show, [so] I just play whatever I want.”

Spencer acknowledged that, for him, busking has shed light on the dismissive attitudes of today’s society.

“A lot of buskers get treated like a homeless person on a corner […] but that’s where the people-watching aspect is interesting.

You’ve seen viral videos of one of the world’s best violinists playing in the New York metro and no one [was] noticing. So that’s a really powerful message,” he said. “As a busker, I feel like [you become more conscious]. It makes me think a lot about the way I live my life. When I’m in the metro and doing my thing, am I plugging into my smart phone and ignoring what is going on around [me]?”

Gareth Dicker, Master’s in Engineering

Gareth Dicker started busking as a freshman on the streets of Montreal without a license. Dicker was classically trained on the violin since he was five, but busking created an opportunity to perform without the pressures of large orchestral shows.

“Busking was a creative outlet,” Dicker said.

“Obviously the money was fun, but I wanted to try performing without much pressure. When I busk, I mostly improvise [….] I started creating [my own stuff] on the spot.”

Dicker credited his musical upbringing and desire to break out of the first-year bubble at McGill for his love of busking.

“When I was younger, I kind of wanted to stop [playing the violin] because it was stressful […] but I’m glad I kept going [because] I moved into improv [playing] in high school with a group of friends,” he said. “[Busking…] is outside your comfort zone and bubble, which I guess I wanted for first year,” Dicker continued.

According to Dicker, busking is an opportunity to develop his improvisation skills and be free in what he wants to perform.

While engaging strangers is a large part of the job for many buskers, Dicker said that he often finds himself completely absorbed in his music.

Jordan Pollock U2 Arts & Science

Jordan Pollock developed an interest in music when he was forced to join his school band in grade seven, where he picked up the clarinet and found himself enjoying it. While he was initially going to play the clarinet at band camp in grade nine, he developed an interest in guitar and decided to pick that up instead. This experience propelled him towards busking; however, the push that truly initiated his decision to busk was a lack of job opportunities in Toronto during the summer.

“I walked around the city [handing] out resumes,” Pollock said. “I didn’t get any call-backs after a week or two […] I wanted to at least make a little bit of money over the summer and do something I enjoyed, and so I thought, ‘Why not take to the streets?’”

While busking may not provide a much higher wage in comparison to a minimum wage job, Pollock said

“I usually close my eyes,” he admitted. “I didn’t even know what was happening with money, and I wasn’t trying to get anyone to listen to me,” he admitted. “I would make [around] $20 an hour, sometimes even $50, and I was like, ‘Woah how did [that money] come in?’”

For Dicker, busking does not just stop at Montreal metros. When he went on exchange, he also engaged in busking across the world.

“My girlfriend plays the ukulele and sings, and we have a little band now.” Pollock said. “I went on exchange to Brisbon, Australia and she went to China for a semester. We met up in New Zealand before for a month and we went to China for a month afterwards [and busked at both locations].”

Dicker noted the different aspects of busking solo compared to busking in a group.

“Since I play the violin, I usually improvise on top of someone,” he said. “I also sing with [my girlfriend.]

When I’m playing violin solo […] it [requires] more intensity to play by yourself. When you have a little band you feed off of each other.”

While Dicker does not expect to pursue busking as a career in the future, he said that his experiences and love for music still impacts his life in many ways.

Along with a busy master’s program, he is on the executive board team of The Yellowdoor Coffeehouse, where he invests much of his time to encourage creative expression from artists within Montreal.

that the genuine support from strangers made the experience more meaningful.

“The difference between busking and most jobs is that whenever somebody drops change […] they’re generally saying ‘I’m supporting you for what you’re doing’,” Pollock continued. “That’s just a really great feeling compared to a minimum wage job where the attitude is, ‘If I could pay you any less, I would. ‘” For Pollock, his decision to busk was extremely spontaneous. He did not do much research into the rules and regulation of the city, and witnessed firsthand the unwritten rules of busking.

“What I [eventually] found out was people have their own spaces when busking,” Pollock said. “I had one woman come up to me, during one of the first times I was out [busking], because it was her neighbourhood […] and she was very intimidating. There was probably a veiled threat thrown out. So I moved from that spot forever.”

Pollock discovered that these ter-

ritorial claims existed throughout the city and by other members besides buskers. Pollock recounted another experience where he was driven from a busking spot.

“A homeless man, whose spot I had infringed [upon], came up and stared at me midway through [a song],” he said. “You [just] have to get a feel for the location and start to […] get to know the laws.”

According to Pollock, while the income from busking exceeded that of minimum wage, it was the experiences that stuck with him the most.

“There was a girl [from Mexico on exchange] who would walk by every day or two,” he said. “She walked by and dropped in a dollar one day, a toonie the next day, five dollars the next day, and we started to chat [….] It grew, she gave me [$10], [then] she gave me a [$20 bill]. I felt like I had to do something in return] so I got her to take a video of me doing a song for her and a special dedication.”

Student Living

14

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Campus Spotlight: MASS McGill African Students Society aims for integration of African culture within McGill Laura Plamondon Staff Writer

McGill is an acclaimed institution that attracts students from all over the globe, as evidenced by the number of cultural associations present at the university. However, the international identity of the university has not always been present. Anne-Sophie Tzeuton, U3 Political Science student and VP External for the McGill African Students Society (MASS), explained the incremental growth of MASS throughout the years.

“MASS was started in the 1960s,” Tzeuton said. “It started very small since the population of African students at McGill was limited. It’s been growing steadily since and found its peak in the early 2000s.”

MASS hosts various social and informational events in hopes of promoting African culture to educate students across campus. Recently, it hosted a three-day conference and brought in speakers from Africa and the U.S. to talk about topics ranging from female empowerment to the legitimacy of Africa’s growth. Past social events include ‘The Anioula: A Black and White Charity Banquet,’ one of its annual events that brought together African and nonAfrican cultures alike, with various cultural dishes and performances. Mass’ ultimate goal is to create a community

On a personal note, Tzeuton explained how coming to Montreal from France and engaging with such a strong community has helped her reconnect with her African heritage and grow as a person.

“I’ve learned so much about my culture being in contact with [the] African youth who actually want to improve things and change the negative perceptions linked with the African culture,” she said. “I feel that growA close-up of MASS members. (Photo courtesy of McGill African Students Society) ing up, I was deprived of across McGill where all individuals feel essary to promote our culture,” she said. all this knowledge about my African “Today, I believe that not having such heritage and this has changed incredibly welcome, regardless of their culture.

“We have ties and contacts with associations would demonstrate a com- since coming to Montreal.”

Tzeuton stressed the desire to see a lot of African and black associations plete ignorance of the diverse cultural Africans as well as non-Africans bethroughout McGill and Montreal, as backgrounds our student body has.”

However, Tzeuton said she still come members and join MASS’ events, well as having active alumni,” Tzeuton said. “We are definitely not in compe- feels that perceptions of Africa stray believing that the underlying role of the tition, and mostly try to promote each from the truth, and that she wants to help association is to promote diversity.

“People have to be constantly reothers events, and make sure we are not fight these stigmas with MASS. “There are still much too many minded that the club is not exclusively hosting [the] same [events].”

Tzeuton explained how MASS stigmas around African culture,” she for Africans,” Tzeuton said. “We underwas initiated, and why she believes the said. “I’m constantly aware of how ig- stand that it is difficult to be a minority, association is important and should be norant people are when it comes to their but non-Africans usually love our events image of Africa. Too many people still once they diverge from their comfort present in all universities.

“In the past, I think the African see the continent as only synonymous zone. We want people to come and appreciate a culture that we are so proud population was so small that it was nec- with war, poverty, and sickness.”

Red Velvet Cheesecake Hearts

I N G R ED I E N TS

Recipe and photos by Jer Lin Poh

R ed velvet bas e :

Ch e e s ec a k e l ay e r :

1 stick unsalted butter, melted 7/8 cup sugar 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 tbsp cocoa powder ¼ tsp salt 1 tbsp red food colouring 1 tsp white vinegar 2 large eggs 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

8oz cream cheese, softened 3/8 cup sugar 1 large egg 1 tsp vanilla extract ¼ cup milk

DIRECTIONS Ch e e s ec a k e l ay e r : R ed velvet bas e : 1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line an 8x8 inch pan with baking paper.

2. Sift flour and salt together.

3. In a large bowl, combine melted butter, vinegar, vanilla, cocoa powder, and food colouring. Whisk in the eggs, then mix in the flour until just combined.

4. Set aside 1/3 cup of batter. Pour remaining batter into the baking pan.

5. In a medium bowl, beat together the sugar, egg, and vanilla with an electric mixer for 1 minute. Then, beat in the cream cheese until smooth and well-combined.

6. Pour the cheesecake mixture on top of the red velvet batter in the baking pan.

7. Combine the remaining red velvet batter with the milk. Drop dollops of the mixture on top of the cheesecake layer, then swirl the batters together using the tip of a knife.

8. Bake the cheesecake for 30 minutes. After cooling, allow the cheesecake to chill thoroughly before slicing with a heart-shaped cookie cutter.

Wo rdSe arch Cory Goldstein Contributor

of. At least if they do have questions they should come to us instead of keeping them to themselves.”

Saul Muskin, U3 International Management major, applauded the creation of a club to facilitate inter-cultural dialogue.

“I think it’s cool that a club like [MASS] exists and it’s great that Africans and non-Africans can celebrate African culture together through their events,” he said.

Ines Blondet, U3 double concentration in International Business and Marketing, also commented on the positive nature of the club.

“I really loved [MASS]—they have amazing events. I’ve been to their African party and I loved the dancing,” she said. “I’m thinking of going to the Gala since they have a ton of performances, dancing, theatre, and singing.”

For the future, Tzeuton said that she wants to see MASS organise events that target a broader audience.

“I’d like to see more cultural events at MASS, more chill events like having an African movie night, or dance classes that would help non-Africans feel less self-conscious about coming to our events,” Tzeuton said. “Overall, I’d like for the association to host events that target a broader audience.”

Corner

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Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Animated

Oscar Shorts

ME AND MY MOULTON

Set in Norway in the mid-1960s, Me and My Moulton is a charming short about the innocence of early childhood. It describes the lives of a seven-year-old narrator and her sisters as they slowly begin to understand the world. The film’s minimalistic animation style gives it a quaint and cozy feel, perfectly complementing its nostalgic narrative.

Unfortunately, that narrative is also quite sparse at times, making the film seem much longer than its 14-minute runtime.

FEAST

Feast is the big studio contribution to this year’s nominees and it shows. It features the cutesy, lighthearted narrative and sophisticated animation that have become staples in Disney/Pixar shorts.

The film chronicles the trials and tribulations of a relationship through the eyes of a very hungry dog.

What’s not to like? Feast is in many ways the perfect children’s short, boasting an adorable protagonist, simple but effective humour, and a tone that’s just sentimental enough. Though perhaps not the most unique or revolutionary of the shorts, Feast is definitely the most heartwarming.

A SINGLE LIFE

Clocking in at a breakneck two minutes, A Single Life is by far the shortest film nominated.

However, it makes good use of an inventive and excellently executed premise: The film’s only character uses a magical record to fast forward and rewind her life, blending animation and music perfectly. Despite it’s brevity, this is a thoroughly enjoyable short. It makes one wonder how this exciting premise could be further explored with a longer runtime.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

The Bigger Picture is easily the most daring film nominated in this category. It tells the heartbreaking story of two brothers tasked with caring for their old and infirm mother. The film’s interesting mixture of 2D and 3D stop motion and austere colour palette perfectly reflect its themes of death and degradation. Unfortunately, it seems slightly rushed at a relatively short runtime of eight minutes.

THE DAM KEEPER

Of the films nominated for best animated short, The Dam Keeper is the most puzzling. Telling the tale of an insecure pig forced to protect a city from a sinister smoke cloud, this short manages to waste a decent premise. Instead, it offers the viewer nothing more than a barrage of cliches and a poorly fleshed-out narrative. It’s too long, yet somehow fails to produce any meaningful characters. This one won’t—or shouldn’t—win.

LIVE ACTION BOOGALOO AND GRAHAM

Irish director Michael Lennox’s Boogaloo and Graham, set in conflict-torn 1970s Belfast, is a quirky yet socially conscious story of two boys and their pet chickens. The true strength of the piece is its impressive ability to act as an endearing and lighthearted tale of family while addressing the heaviness of an issue such as The Troubles (the name of this turbulent period) in the same breath. The children are undeniably likable, and their energy and exuberance truly makes the film.

At times, it feels overly sentimental and almost tacky, but it easily stands out as the comedic highlight of the nominees.

THE PHONE CALL

Matt Kirkby’s The Phone Call is an emotionally intense drama following Heather, an employee at a suicide help-line, as she answers the most difficult call she has ever faced—from a man who has already intentionally overdosed and simply wants company in his last moments. The harrowing, extended closeup shots of Heather’s growing distress and emotional struggle are as cinematographically tasteful as they are powerful. Kirkby’s poignant exploration of the themes of death, fear, and compassion through the eyes of a man on his deathbed form an unforgettable statement on the fragility of life and love.

PAVANEH

Parvaneh, by Talkhon Hamzavi, tells the story of teenage Afghani migrant worker Parvaneh and her unlikely friendship with an affluent and rebellious local young woman in Switzerland. Parvaneh, while attempting to send her earnings back to aid her sick father in Afghanistan, experiences the vastly different world in which her companion resides. While earnest and heartwarming, the relationship between the women feels forced and the emotional experiences the two bond over seem eclipsed by the far more interesting backstory of the titular character.

AYA

Oded Binnun’s Aya follows an Israeli legal clerk as she is mistaken for a chauffeur, who opts to drive the passenger instead of correcting him. It has the classic feel of an eccentric indie short, but as the film progresses, it becomes a more nuanced analysis of our perceptions of strangers and the desire to connect with others. The film, though often comedic, is full of discomfort as the relationship between the woman and her passenger develops. The depth of each character slowly becomes apparent, and the awkward interactions between the two lend insight into their contrasting social natures.

b u tter lamp

Butter Lamp, from director Hu Wei, is a subtle commentary on the influence of modernization on traditional Tibetan ways of life. It revolves around a young Chinese photographer and his efforts to photograph groups of villagers in rural Tibet. The entire short is filmed through the perspective of the photographer’s stationary camera, facing cloth backdrops that change at each scene. Each subject photographed further expands the portrayal of life in the village, and clarifies the contrast between the worlds of the photographers and the subjects. In terms of sociopolitical commentary, it is easily the most effective of the nominees.

Animated Short Winner: Feast

Live Action Short Winner: The Phone Call

Though it lacks the daring of The Bigger Picture or the inventiveness of A Single Life , Feast deserves the prize. It didn’t overreach the confines of the medium but still managed to tell its story in a creative and entertaining way. It’s the safe choice, but the right one.

— Eric Noble-Marks

The stand-out nominee is definitively The Phone Call. Between its carefully crafted dialogue and the exceptional performance from lead actress Sally Hawkins, the work is as believable as it is profound. Heather’s teary-eyed and distraught face as she speaks on the phone is nothing short of chilling and is easily the most memorable image from any of the nominees. Already a resounding success in the international film circuit, it is a strong contender for the Oscar.

— Alex Bullis

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Tuesday, February 17, 2015

The write stuff

TNC chronicles correspondence between poets in Dear Elizabeth Chris lutes Staff Writer Hemmingway once wrote, “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.”

The lives of poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, as portrayed in Tuesday Night Café’s production of Dear Elizabeth, put that idea into practice.

With a couple of brief exceptions, the sole pair of actors in the play are never actually together, talking to each other through the letters they write through their lifelong friendship.

Dear Elizabeth, written by Sarah Ruhl and directed by Marina Miller, tracks Bishop and Lowell’s relationship, spanning from the late 1940s to the ’70s. Told entirely through letters cut up and pieced back together by Ruhl, the actors spend their time sharing anecdotes about their lives, critiquing each other’s poems, and name-dropping every notable writer from the 20th century. While there’s no conventional narrative in the play, the content of the letters are meant to show the progression of their relationship—from almost-strangers to almost-lovers.

Ostensibly, the play is about weighty topics such as love, creativity, mental illness, and loneliness.

However, it never really offers any form of insight into these issues—we sporadically see how these things affect each character, but there’s never a sense that it’s trying to reach further than the realm of cliché. For instance, Lowell (Max Katz) and Bishop’s (Julia

Borsellino) mutual alcoholism gets distilled into him drinking and dancing too much and then passing out, and her taking a swig from a bottle of rubbing alcohol and throwing up. Other than that, it seems to have no effect on either of their lives. This lack of engagement may come from the limits of the source material—the Robert and Elizabeth of the letters are probably not very close to who they actually were, but instead, the version of themselves that they tried to show to the other person.

Playing Bishop, Borsellino makes the entire production worthwhile. A talented actor can run the gamut of emotions from happy to depressed to longing to energetic to wistful, but a truly gifted performer can express them all at once. She manages to give meaningful insight into Bishop’s inner life with every sidelong glance and weary stare. Every gesture has a hidden meaning that is simultaneously obfuscated by Bishop’s uneasy personality and illuminated by Borsellino’s performance. Every mannerism is a pixel in the picture of a fully realized person. When she breaks into tears over the death of a lover, it doesn’t seemed forced or actorly, but a genuine reaction to loss. It would have been very easy to go too far in either direction with the moment, but she plays it with such a perfect and precise level of disquiet that truly elevates the material.

Unfortunately, Katz’s portrayal of Lowell falls short of his epistolarian counterpart. In a play with so

Max Katz and Julia Borsellino reflect as star-crossed poets and lovers. (Emma Hameau / McGill Tribune) few characters, the success of the production is greatly influenced by the success of any individual performance, and Katz struggles through the part at times. Part of this certainly comes from the fact that Robert never gets the chance to reveal his true self through the letters in the same way Elizabeth does, and it should be noted that the performance comes alive at the moment when Lowell reads from one of his poems. But for the rest of the performance, I couldn’t get over the impression that his performance was mainly inspired by cigarette commercials from the 1950s, both in

cadence and mannerisms.

The technical aspects of the production were uniformly fantastic.

The set has a great sense of symmetry to it, with each half of the stage devoted to each character, and a desk with two typewriters in the middle that blurs the barrier between the two worlds. Bishop and Lowell’s relationship spanned three decades and two continents, and this production uses a number of stagecraft tricks to bridge that gap.

Projections onto the back curtain of the stage show handy intertitles of the date, a night sky, and a beach where Bishop and Lowell grew closer together

throughout the course of the play. The stage lights cut in and out to represent the passage of time. Costumes change to reflect the evolution of style over the years. With all of this, it’s still fairly easy to be confused on the time or the place, but the lack of firm grounding allows the audience to focus more on the content of the characters’ communication than the context.

Dear Elizabeth runs from Wednesday, Feb. 18 to Saturday, Feb. 21 at the TNC theatre (Morrice Hall).

Tickets are $6 for students and $10 for non-students.

All aboard the H.M.S. Pinafore

Love, lust, and British idealism make waves in Savoy Society production clare murphy Contributor

Founded in 1964, the McGill Savoy Society was created in memory of Arthur Sullivan and William Gilbert, a lazy social climber and a failed lawyer who built the Savoy Theatre to serve as their stage. This year, the troupe vividly brings to life the witty Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, a sea voyage of the power of love and the possibility of equality in the British class system.

The operetta—a combination of a British opera and musical— brilliantly satirizes the English identity, exaggerated by the setting on the Pinafore, one of the Queen’s navy ships. The story focuses on the captain’s (Jonah Spungen) daughter, Josephine (Anna Bond and Allegra Johnston), who falls in love with a lowly sailor, Ralph Rackstraw (Sam Strickland), though she is intended to wed Sir Joseph (Stephen Reimer), the First Lord of the Admiralty. The hierarchy of class is emphasized in dress, language, and treatment of the characters. The power of love and the ideal of equality is brought into conflict with the strict hierarchy of the British class as the

operetta unfolds.

Gilbert and Sullivan’s witty speech and lively music makes even the more serious scenes ridiculously humorous. For instance, while waiting to catch Josephine and Ralph eloping, the sounds of the Captain’s dismay are passed off to be “just be the cat.”

The orchestra, led by Thomas Burton, brilliantly brings the operetta to life, while Jean-Claude Olivier’s set is wonderfully detailed and dynamic.

The set replicates a ship, allowing performers to appear in higher and lower positions, and features a door to below decks, allowing the villain, Dick Deadeye (Victor Hsu) to dramatically and creepily come out of the darkness on to the stage.

Further adding to the realism of the production is the appropriately gaudy costuming of crisp white navy uniforms and women’s parasols. The chorus of the sailors and sisters act as an united group in perfect unison, but still establish their individuality, creating a visually elaborate scene with a balance of variation and similarity in their actions.

The talent of the whole crew is on display as all the performances are

a true joy to listen to and see. Many members of the cast are students in the Faculty of Music, and the depth of their talent and training is evident. Bond shines as the empowered young heroine, well-balanced by Strickland’s boyish charm in play with Reimer’s vapid idealism. Yet it is the antics of the bodacious, aging gypsy beauty, Little Buttercup— referenced as ‘Sluttercup’ The Savoy Society constructs an impressive stage for H.M.S. Pinafore. (L-A Benoit / McGill Tribune) by actress Erika Davis—which for the numerous strong female characters romantically pulling their consistently steal the show. In one performers. This is furthered when beloved ones into an embrace and a stand-out musical number, Davis gender boundaries are pushed with tender kiss., but who will be kissing hypnotizes Spungen, forcing him to act Sophia Metcalf cast as the male sailor, who is the twist you won’t want to miss like a cat and purr out the seductively Billie Bobstay. These actions align with you.

H.M.S. Pinafore runs from Friday, ominous number, “Things are Seldom the McGill Savoy Society’s belief of being inclusive, allowing for greater Feb. 20 to Saturday, Feb. 21 at Moyse What They Seem.”

The Savoy Society made the opportunity for all and not being limited Hall. Tickets are $10 for students, $20 for adults and $15 for seniors. decision to double cast the roles by gender norms.

As with all Gilbert and Sullivan of Josephine and Little Buttercup, allowing a greater number of roles productions, the show ends with all

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Tuesday, February 17, 2015

California dreamin’: Kevin Costner discusses new sports flick McFarland, USA tells inspirational story of small-town cross-country team Sophie Jewett Contributor In the farming town of McFarland, California, Jim White decided to start a cross-country team with boys who seemed to be able to run forever. These teenagers were not your typical, promising athletes; they were the sons of poor immigrant farmers—some even lacked the means to buy running shoes—helping their parents on the farm before school and returning to work again after school.

They were faced with challenges such as the prevalence of drugs and gangs, and somehow, with the help of Coach White, they became state champions— nine times. This inspirational true story is being told in Disney’s upcoming McFarland, USA, starring Kevin Costner as Coach White. Both Costner and White spoke to the Tribune about the film and the remarkable circumstances it’s based on.

Costner first heard the story when he read it in a Sports Illustrated article 10 years ago, and was thoroughly impressed. Speaking as a veteran lead in the inspirational sports movie genre, Costner holds that McFarland, USA is

decidedly different from his previous sports films, such as Bull Durham and Field of Dreams. “[McFarland, USA] is not a movie about running, it’s not about cross-country,” he asserted.

To illustrate his point, Costner described his visit to the McFarland farming community as an eye-opening experience to harsh realities of their living conditions, but also to a sense of undying hope for a better life.

“They’re simply working there, these incredible hours through very difficult weather conditions, every day of their life for one reason and one reason only: To advance their children and to give their children a better opportunity,” he said. “There’s nothing more American than a parent trying to make [....] life better for their children.”

Costner spoke passionately about the McFarland story, and he

praised Coach White for his belief in the McFarland kids’ potential. “[White was] very level with these kids, and he’s so

level to the point that he’s also able to tell them when

they’re off course [because] coaching is about the big picture, which is how they’re gonna be as men,” Costner explained.

On the phone, the real Coach White was more humble about his role in the building of the team.

“I needed a job […] so I wouldn’t get fired again,” the coach chuckled.

White noticed that the McFarland boys had a fire within them that he had not seen before.

“These boys didn’t slack off and jog and walk like everybody else was doing.

They actually loved to run, and so you try to look for things like this in young people.”

The coach was able to motivate the boys to run for hours with simple techniques.

“They’ll run for anything, you know. They will. It doesn’t have to be anything but an ice cream cone,” White said.

Some may feel that the inspirational sports film is an exhausted genre. However, McFarland, USA has more to offer than winning racing competitions. The film brings to light social and political issues and

their effect on hardworking immigrant communities. To reduce this film to its Hollywood framing is to strip it of its significance to the communities it is depicting. “[The film] means an awful lot to the community of McFarland,” White explained. “It is really, really true to [the] life hardships that the kids have to go though working in the fields. It’s so important to understand what they’re really going through.”

This is not to say that the staple themes of teamwork and perseverance in sports films are not also important.

McFarland, USA is an inspirational tale of the creation of champions from a seemingly hopeless situation.

Costner himself is a seasoned athlete, having played football, baseball, and basketball in his youth, which might be what drew him to the genre. For Costner, good films are a lot like quality sporting competitions. “[They] are emotional experiences,” he said. “When movies are working at their very best, they become about moments that you’ll never forget, and we carry [those] moments throughout our whole life.”

(Ellie Slavitch / McGill Tribune)

Time for an Album-of-the-Year alternative Jack neal Photo Editor When Prince announced “Morning Phase, Beck,” as the recipient of the 57th Album of the Year award at the Grammys on Sunday, Feb. 8, the reactions ranged from stumped (the general public) to outrageously excited (Beck’s wife) to frustrated (Kanye West), to total and utter shock from Beck himself. As he awkwardly ran up the stairs to receive the show’s most prestigious award, it was difficult not to draw comparisons to Arcade Fire’s ‘surprise win’ back in 2011 when it took home the award for its 2010 album, The Suburbs, leaving many asking who this group even was. Despite the fact that these types of winners come as a shock to much of the general public, it’s time for the Grammy committee to recognize them more frequently in its evaluation of the year’s best music.

The Grammys are hugely hypocritical and blind, celebrating the ‘best in music’—with commercial success being the key behind the word masked as ‘best.’ At least, that’s how they have become, and thus that is what we expect from them. For example, take a look at the nominees for this years’ Album of the Year: Beyonce, Sam Smith, Pharrell Williams, Ed Sheeran, and last but not least, Beck. Aside from Beck, this year’s candidates are all

commercially successful artists with highly grossing albums—with Beck the clear odd-one-out in an extremely pop-driven category.

Of all the nominees, Beck’s album is, critically, the second best rated album. With a Metacritic weighted average of 81 out of 100, it is only slightly lower than Beyonce’s score of 85. Yet, it would not be a stretch to claim that none of these Albums-of-the-Year nominees actually were the best albums of the year. Critically, musically, and thematically, there were numerous other albums that bettered these.

St. Vincent’s St. Vincent and FKA Twigs’ LP1 were two hugely wellreceived, intricate, and incredibly produced and thought-out albums.

St. Vincent, which had a whopping 89/100 on Metacritic, was nominated in the Best Alternative Album award—a category synonymous with hugely critically successful albums that nonetheless failed to garner the commercial success of their Best Album counterparts, such as Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires Of the City (2013) and Bon Iver’s Bon Iver, Bon Iver (2011). Interestingly— if not horribly irritating—in the past five years the albums from the Best Alternative category have all received higher Metacritic scores than any of the Album of the Year winners. Worse yet, this category isn’t even awarded at the main show, instead announced at a pre-Grammy

Live Telecast hours before the Grammys even begin.

This begs the question, what really makes the Album of the Year?

Looking over past winners: Beck, Daft Punk, Mumford & Sons, Adele, and Arcade Fire, it becomes apparent that the Album of the Year is more of a nod to the artist as opposed to the piece of work nominated.

Daft Punk was rewarded for both a well-received and commercially successful album, in addition to its hugely popular track, “Get Lucky”; Mumford & Sons and Adele won because of their massive crossover success into mainstream territory; and Beck was rewarded this year for the same reason that Arcade Fire won in 2011: Because he makes damn good music, and he’s been doing so for some time now.

As for this years nominees, it would be ludicrous to argue that In the Lonely Hour, GIRL, and X really were the best albums that came out during the eligible period. However, the artists behind these tracks all had 100,000 or more sales in their first week, toured internationally, and drew huge crowds.

Thus, Album of the Year isn’t really ‘album of the year’: It’s an acknowledgement of all the things an artist has done within the year they released their album. Essentially, society dictates what constitutes Album-of-the-Year-worthy material.

While it could be argued that the Best Alternative Album category does in

Kanye’s beautiful dark twisted reality. (nbcnews.com) fact contain the actual best albums of the year, not nearly as many people would tune in to watch the Grammys each February if they were the ones up for the ‘most prestigious award’ of the evening. But that’s just the way

it is, the way the music industry is, and the way society functions. What is popular is so because we make it, and thus it becomes a perpetual feedback loop. The Grammys are just a reflection of that.

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The 10-minute club Wyatt fine-gagné Sports Editor

ALBUM REVIEWS Janet devlin - DUVET DAZE insomnia

“Street Hassle”

Length: 11:00 Artist: Lou Reed Album: Street Hassle Released: February, 1978 “Street Hassle” is without a doubt the standout track on the album that bears its name, and perhaps one of Lou Reed’s best, period. It is split into three distinct parts that tell three different stories. The first is about a woman picking up a male prostitute, the second a drug dealer recounting the death of a woman who overdosed in his apartment, and the third a verse from Reed about love and loss. The song feels more like spoken word with strings and guitars reverberating in the background than a conventional song. As a bonus, Bruce Springsteen delivers a short, un-credited verse around the nine-minute mark.

“Impossible Soul”

Length: 25:34 Artist: Sufjan Stevens Album: The Age of Adz Released: October 12, 2010 At over 25 minutes in length, “Impossible Soul” could practically be an album by itself—or at least an EP. It closes out an album that marked a big change in Stevens’ career—a shift away from a more traditional folk sound towards music grounded in synths and electronics. The track has five distinct parts that cover a wide range of styles and emotions, including quiet guitar picking, a calland-response sing-along, and even a dance breakdown.

Its runtime is fairly daunting, but if you have the time, “Impossible Soul” offers a rewarding way to spend a half hour.

After rising to the spotlight in the 2011 X Factor series with her awkward, charming rendition of Elton John’s “Love Song,” 16-year-old Irish singer Janet Devlin won the audience over with her quirky image, shy personality, and fascinatingly whimsical voice.

Despite leaving the show after a series of ner-

Over the last decade, fans of musician-producer Dan Deacon have come to expect a certain degree of vibrancy and idiosyncrasy from his work. From the ob-

-Jack Neal

scure and atonal sine wave explorations of Goose on the Loose (2003) to the infamous spoken word “Drinking Out of Cups,” Deacon has established a career based upon his quirky and unpredictable deconstructions of electronic music and pop culture. On the heels of accompanying Arcade Fire for its latest tour, Deacon has released yet another highly experimental and adventurous album that may be his best to date.

Gliss Riffer expands upon the manic tone established in Bromst (2009) and America (2012), with a dizzying upbeat vibe. Each song is carried forward at a blazing pace by racing drum pads and arpeggiated synth hooks. It is a spastic and energetic album that rarely takes breaks or pulls punches from its barrage of reverb-

drenched sawtooth synths and sustained basslines.

Deacon’s use of vocals has been sparse in past albums, yet in Gliss Riffer, they frequently jump to the foreground.

From the undeniably catchy chorus of the opening track, “Feel the Lightning,” he incorporates heavily processed vocal harmonies seamlessly into the album’s rich landscape of electronic instrumentation.

In Gliss Riffer , Deacon invigorates his avant-garde compositional style with a new pop sensibility. It is an accessible yet off-the-walls acid trip of an album, and promises to give Deacon an even more ubiquitous name in the electro-indie world than he has already achieved.

-Alex Bullis

Drake - stuff Cash money

“Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst”

Length: 12:41 Artist: Kendrick Lamar Album: Good Kid M.A.A.D. City Released: October 22, 2012 Most rappers would likely have trouble finding enough to say to make a solid 12-minute song, but as is clear from the album as a whole, Kendrick Lamar is not short on inspiration or ideas. “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst” is a beautiful, empathetic song that tells the story of two peripheral characters in the world Kendrick describes in GKMC. The first two verses are told from the perspective of these two characters, before Kendrick offers his own view in the third, rapping about death, vengeance, sin, and salvation. My only complaint is that it is a track that demands multiple listens—a somewhat tall order for a song with a double-digit run-time.

strums.

Opening with Ed Sheeran’s “I See Fire”—Devlin incorporates an Irish flute in the background that somehow works—she pays homage to her roots. “I’m Not In Love” is an extremely stripped-back track consisting of not much more than a picked guitar and her voice.

Surprisingly, Devlin pulls off a mature cover of Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball,” and while it serves as a nice listen, it fails to fully grasp the emotional aspect of the song that Cyrus’ does.

Devlin is good, but Duvet Daze doesn’t allow her to explore the vocal abilities that she possesses. It’s just four songs to half listen to in the background while falling asleep in some sort of lodge in the middle of the woods. Duvet Daze is much more of a summary of her persona as opposed to a further development of it.

Dan Deacon - Gliss riffer Domino

“The Battle of Hampton Roads”

Length: 14:10 Artist: Titus Andronicus Album: The Monitor Released: March 9, 2010 A Civil War concept album seems like a ludicrous idea when you first hear it, but Titus Andronicus managed to execute it to near perfection. “The Battle of Hampton Roads” is a perfect microcosm of The Monitor—which gets its name from the Union warship used at Hampton Roads—as a whole. It features manic lyricism that deals with anxiety, suicidal thoughts, fantasies of revenge, and more. All of this gets laid overtop of punk-inspired Irish jigs, bagpipes, and buzzing guitars. Suffice it to say there is a lot going on in this song, but it adds up into something cathartic, and is a perfect way to end the album.

vous breakdowns and clashes with the producers’ visions for her performances, Devlin has been extremely busy releasing a debut album and touring all throughout the UK, and more recently, dropping her second EP, Duvet Daze.

The short album consists of four covers, stripped back, and hugely representative of Devlin’s ethereal vocals. It reverts to the much more acoustic-based sound she proved she was more than capable of during her X Factor days, and sees her thankfully take a step away from the often over-produced sound of her previous full-length release, Running With Scissors (2014).

However, while this allows Devlin to fully develop and focus on the element of her artistry that makes her stand apart from the rest—her voice—the result is one of the most uninteresting albums to be released this year.

Instead of burdening her voice with the weight of multiple instruments, it is allowed to shine through the almost elementary guitar and harp

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Last Thursday, Drake dropped his latest opus Beyoncé-style, sending his fans, his peers, and the media alike into a frenzy. In the days since, Billboard has noted that his release is expected to sell upwards of half of a million copies within its first week. Referenced as a

mixtape by Drake, the work is really an album in the sense that it is being sold commercially, and in that it fulfills his contractual obligations with his label, Cash Money Records.

Speaking of which, Drake not-so-subtly hints that he will soon be severing ties with Cash Money. In “Now and Forever” he repeats, “It’s over, yeah it’s over yeah, I’m leaving, I’m gone.” The tone here is really the tone of most of the album—confident, in control.

The intro, "Legend," is sonically softer than "Tuscan Leather," and Drake croons about his dominance rather than rapping it.

Nonetheless, it’s a highlight, easing us into the rest of the rap-heavy collection of tracks, reminding us that he’s “got this shit mapped out strong.”

Drake's best friend/right-hand man/producer, Noah "40" Shebib, is reliably good and unsurprisingly versatile. From his sensual beat on "Madonna" to his textured, synth-heavy

work "6 Man," he does his usual intricate work mixing shadowy sounds with ambience.

And, of course, no Drake effort would be complete without a little help from his mentor. In "Used To," Weezy and Drizzy spit over razor-sharp synths, featuring the intertwining vocals and synergy we loved in “HYFR” or “She Will.” Nonetheless, Lil Wayne’s lyrical contribution leaves something to be desired.

When all that’s said and done, the album feels like it’s lacking a peak—something that provides us with a snapshot of who Drake unconditionally is in this moment. The album is consistently dark and brooding, Drake is unapologetic to everyone he addresses, and even without a few standout tracks, the album itself is a musical success.

-Jessica Fu

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Science & Technology Healthy McGill hosts the #SelfCareChallenge 2015

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

The importance of minimizing stress

Clare Lyle Staff Writer There’s no avoiding the fact that university students today are stressed.

According to a 2013 study conducted by the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services (CACUSS), 85 per cent of students reported feeling overwhelmed by their work Of the study’s 30,000 respondents, 91.5 per cent admitted to feeling tired or drained in the past week.

“I have eight hours a day when I sleep, and then the rest [of my time] is for school and work,” said Haejoo Oh, a U0 Management student. “Especially with midterms.”

Stress is the body’s reaction to threats. Under stress, the hormones cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline are released and cause a cascade of physi-

McGill students take selfies to promote stress-free living. (Photos courtesy of Emily Boytinck, Farah Noun, Phoebe Zamanuel, and Ebby Crowe) ological effects—heart rate increases, the liver produces more glucose, and blood is directed towards the muscles in the arms and legs. This allows the body to deal with the perceived threat, generating the fight or flight response. Today, however, the stress encountered by students is generally looming term paper deadlines, final exams, and the myriad of pressures caused by student life. As a result, stress shifts from being an acute physiological adaptation to a chronic state.

Chronic stress can cause insomnia and depression, increase vulnerability to infection, and increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease. This is especially concerning given that over 57 per cent of students in the CACUSS study reported experiencing above average to tremendous levels of stress.

The effects of stress will also undoubtedly impact students’ academic lives. In the CACUSS study, more students’ academic performances were negatively affected by stress than by physical illness, relationship problems, or learning disabilities.

Reducing stress levels can provide several benefits, such as improving attentiveness, sleep quality, and immune function.

To promote stress reduction, Healthy McGill’s Self Care Challenge is starting conversations about mental health and stress. The challenge encourages students to look after themselves by engaging in activities like exercising, eating healthily, and drinking plenty of water.

“Self care can be anything from making sure that you know your lim-

its with partying and drinking, to getting help when you need it, to just on a day-to-day basis trying to live a healthier lifestyle,” said Healthy McGill coordinator Amanda Unruh.

This concept of taking time to look after themselves can be hard for undergrads, but is immensely valuable.

“I think that, especially as students, we often feel like we don’t have time to take care of ourselves,” said Alice Gauntley, a U2 student and sexual health peer educator with Healthy McGill. “[Engaging in self-care] is a really great thing to do, especially this time of year when school can get really intense.”

The challenge is a way to inspire students to think more about mental health and dealing with stress, and

professor Ronald Rensink, then-student Aylm Amlani, and Olson—published their work, “Influencing choice without awareness” last week in Consciousness and Cognition. The whole project started with change blindness.

“In change blindness, you show a participant a picture on the screen, you make it go away for a second, and then you bring it back,” Amlani said. “And what [Rensink] found is that if you introduce a blink in between the picture and the changed picture, it takes them a while to notice the change.”

Rensink had also been exploring why people need to be actually paying attention to see things. This is what magicians exploit during their tricks— influencing their audience without the audience even realizing it. To prove this, the team began performing tricks, both inside and outside the lab. But first, they had to pick the type of trick they were going to do.

“We chose card magic because it’s a common thing magicians use, and at the time, no one had really published anything on [it],” Olson said.

The trick involved taking a deck of cards, flipping through it while having the participant look at the deck and then pick a card. Olson would then

return the deck of cards to its box and hand it to the participant and ask them to name the card they had picked. The card they chose would then be written on the barcode of the card box. He was extremely successful—98 per cent of the time, the person picked the card he wanted them to pick. “[After,] there were three questions that we would ask them,” Olson said. “First, which card did you choose? […] Did you have a free choice, or not? And why did you choose that card?”

Despite Olson’s 98 per cent success rate in being able to influence his participants to choose his card, 91 per cent of them believed they had made the choice of their own free will.

“If you talk to the average person on the street and asked them if they think it’d be possible to make you choose the card, most of them would say, ‘Probably not,’” Amlani said.

In reality, the brain responds to certain cues and environments that allow magicians to predict and influence people’s decisions. What’s puzzling is that these effects are less pronounced in lab environments.

“When you do it in the lab, you only get 30 to 40 per cent, as opposed to the 98 per cent when I walk up to you and do the trick in person,” Amlani said. “There’s a bunch of social factors that come into it [….] There are a lot more things to pay attention to.”

Understanding how the brain reacts subconsciously to environmental cues is extremely important when it

also to create an environment where self-care and stress are talked about more openly, explains Unruh.

“We put together this challenge [because] we really wanted to create a campus culture of self care, where that’s affirmed and encouraged,” Unruh explained. “It’s been really great to be watching it on social media, especially to watch people doing a challenge with friends. It creates a culture of support.”

Whether initiatives like the self care challenge succeed in creating this culture of support is yet to be determined. In the meantime, stressed-out students have a range of support systems available, including the McGill Peer Support Network and free counselling services.

Fact or Fiction : Is magic real?

Chloe Nevitt Science & Technology Editor

Many young boys and girls wake up on their 11th birthday hoping to hear an owl rapping at their window, inviting them to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. While most remain mere Muggles to this day, there are a few who claim to have learned the art of magic.

“When I was five years old, I was at a furniture store and this dude came up to me and pulled a coin from my ear and [then] made it vanish,” explained Master’s of psychiatry student Jay Olson.

It was this interaction that inspired Olson to start doing magic. But it was while pursuing a Bachelor’s of Psychology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver that Olson really began to see the links between psychology and magic.

“I learned that [what] they teach us in psychology is similar to what magicians do [with] things about attention and memory,” Olson explained.

At that time, researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) were beginning to explore these concepts, which prompted Olson to reach out. The research team—composed of

(Eleanor Milman / McGill Tribune) comes to real-life situations like marketing, where something like a product’s packaging can make a consumer more likely to pick one over the other.

“The science of magic is not about revealing the secrets of how magic works, but about looking at how magicians are able to do the things they [can] by learning about the brain,” Amlani said.

20

Science & Technology

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

This month in

STudent research

Travis Chen Chloe Nevitt Science & Technology Editor Travis Chen calls his current lab work a serendipitous event. The U3 pharmacology major has spent the last three years working with two major ant species—Formicidae and Myrmicine.

“Like every first year, I was thinking about [medical] school [and] I was volunteering at a hospital, and [that’s when I] realized it wasn’t for me,” Chen explained. “I [had] met a friend who was doing work in the lab I’m working in now, and they were asking for [more] volunteers, so I decided to join.”

Chen is currently working in Ehab Abouheif’s lab, an evolutionary developmental biology lab with a focus on understanding the relationship between genotypes and phenotypes.

Together with Ben Fung, a U3 pharmacology major, they have worked to create a developmental stage table for the Formicidea and Myrmicina ants.

“We basically grew these ant embryos [and] created [developmental stage] tables for them by creating stereotypic stages,” said Chen.

Researchers who need to target specific stages during the ant’s embryogenesis can use staging tables, like Chen’s, as a reference tool.

“If you want to inject DNA and have transgenic effects, then you have [to know] when [the ant] is in its early stages to [use it] before the DNA cellularizes,” stated Chen.

The team managed to find 17 stages in Formicidae in their 13 days of development, and 13 stages for Myrmicina in 10 days. Currently, the team has two papers in the works that promise to be very ‘antheavy,’ Chen said.

First, though, Chen had to learn how to work with the ants, develop new protocols that were specific for his species of interest—something that he said proved to be his most difficult challenge—and deal with the ant bites. “[Fung and I] went into this as first-year students, and we didn’t [know how to do] many techniques, so we had to learn everything from lab protocols and books,” Chen said. “It took us about a year to develop the protocols.”

Chen said he finds the job itself incredibly re-

(Illustration courtesy of UNSV) (L-A Benoit / McGill Tribune)

warding, and loves working with the animals.

“Every single one of them is really different,” he said. “The more you work with them, the more you enjoy them.”

After learning more about different ant colonies, Chen explained it became more clear as to why certain species react to certain stimuli. Today, there are 13,000 species of ants catalogued, and scientists predict that the real number should be around 22,000.

Furthermore, when comparing the biomass of all the ants in the world to humans, the ratio hovers around one-to-one—a startling comparison.

“They represent 15 to 25 per cent of all land animal biomass,” Chen said.

There’s an abundance of variety amongst the species due to its size. This is what interests Chen the most. Ants display a trait known as polyphenism—in which one genotype can produce many phenotypes.

Humans see this most commonly in traits like height, but in ants, these polyphenic traits can cause a much bigger variance within the population. “[You can have] a worker that comes out of the same embryo as a queen, and the worker lives six months max, and that same queen can live 20 something years,” Chen explained.

Being able to understand these phenotypic differences due to hormonal signaling or environmental stresses can provide valuable insight into things like neurodegenerative diseases. Polyphenisms are new in the genetic field, where people traditionally believed that one genotype would result in one phenotype.

Chen largely attributes his success to his passion for his work, and from it, a love of developmental biology has grown—something he hopes to pursue further.

“I was recommended by my PI [principal investigator] to do a study with a professor at Harvard,” explained Chen. “But it’s up in the air right now.”

When getting into research Chen said that it is important to consider all aspects of the lab experience—not just the science.

“It’s super cool stuff and the people in the lab really love doing the work they’re doing,” Chen said.

“It’s not just the research—it’s the people.”

Lydia Kaprelian Contributor

#engaged

Charting into unprecedented territory, relationships are now using digital platforms to display signs of love and appreciation.

A study from Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Interactive Computing will be presented at California’s iConference in March. Entitled She Said Yes! Liminality and Engagement Announcements on Twitter, the study focused on Twitter feeds following newly engaged couples.

The study followed 923 people who used the hashtag #engaged to announce their future plans in 2011. The research team, Munmun de Choudhury and Michael Massimi, then examined tweets from nine months before the announcement and 12 months afterward.

Grammatical patterns underwent a noticeable change after the engagement announcement. Usage of words like “I” and “me” dropped by 69 per cent upon being replaced with “we” and “us.”

“People began to paint themselves as a couple, rather than as individuals,” said leading researcher de Choudhury. “They’re going through a major change in life, and it shows on social media as they adapt to society’s expectations of their marital identity.”

Additionally, as couples looked forward to their future nuptials, past tense statements were replaced and future tense occurrence rose by 62 per cent.

The researchers also noticed that women tended to use emotional terms to describe their feelings about their significant other, such as “#love, #kind, #wonderful,” while men were more likely to use physical descriptors, such as “#gorgeous, #beautiful, and #sexy.”

“Twitter can be a powerful tool that can mirror our thoughts and how we’re actually feeling,” explained de Choudhury. “This isn’t based on what they told us they did. It’s a reliable record–it’s what they actually did.”

Get on up

A meta-analysis performed by researchers from the University of Toronto has found that the longer a person is sedentary, the higher their risk for heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and death. Though this may seem obvious, the researchers say a more sedentary lifestyle carries increased risk—regardless of regular exercise.

“It’s not good enough to exercise for 30 minutes a day and be sedentary for 23 and a half hours,” researcher Dr. David Alter explained.

However, the authors found that the negative health effects are less pronounced among those who participate in higher amounts exercise than among those who perform little to no exercise.

“The findings suggest that the health risk of sitting too much is less pronounced when physical activity is increased,” said lead researcher Aviroop Biswas. “We need further research to better understand how much physical activity is needed to offset the health risks associated with long sedentary time and optimize our health.”

The average person spends more than half of his or her day in a sedentary position engaging in activities such as working at the computer or watching Netflix.

“Our study finds that despite the healthenhancing benefits of physical activity, this alone may not be enough to reduce the risk for disease,” Alter explained.

The study, published last month in the Annals of Internal Medicine, acknowledges that there is further research needed to study the link between risk of disease and sedentary behaviour. No optimum balance has been found between exercise and sedentary behaviour.

But for now, the best thing for people to do is to decrease sitting time. The researchers emphasize the importance of setting a target for reducing sedentary time by two to three hours in a 12-hour day.

“The first step is to monitor sitting times,” Alter said. “Once we start counting, we’re more likely to change our behaviour.”

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

21

Sports

Getting Your Head in the Game A look inside McGill’s sports psychology research laboratory Elie Waitzer Sports Editor In a 1987 interview with Wilt Chamberlain, Roy Firestone asked the legendary big man about the secret behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s unparalleled ability to score. What made him so fundamentally different than all the other freakishly athletic seven-footers who couldn’t cut it in the NBA? “I believe they have athletic ability, [but] they don’t use this right up here,” Chamberlain said as he leaned forward and tapped his head. “I think that basketball players today are much better athletes, but [...] their thinking process as far as the game is concerned […] pshht.”

As a sports fan, you may hear broadcasters throw around clichéd terms like ‘team chemistry’ and ‘sports IQ,’ but when it’s coming from the mouth of ‘Wilt the Stilt,’ you have to pause. Was Abdul-Jabbar’s mental makeup at the heart of his historic success? Was his 7’2”, 225-pound frame just a happy coincidence?

When Chamberlain tapped his head, he was highlighting the athlete’s brain, the central focus of the fascinating study of sports psychology. Born as an interdisciplinary mix of kinesiology, psychology, biomechanics, and physiology in the 1920s, sports psychology is a fledgling field of study as far as the sciences go. At McGill, Dr. Gordon Bloom directs the Sports Psychology Research Laboratory, and oversees the university’s graduate program in sport and exercise psychology. After being immersed in the world of Division I sports at California State University, Fresno, he wanted to come back to Canada to conduct further research and share his insights in the field of coaching.

“I came here in 2000,” Bloom said. “When [McGill] brought me in to teach, the sports psychology program had been stagnant for five to six years [….] So they were looking to hire somebody, and they gave me a lab and basically said it’s yours to do what you want.”

Since then, the lab has grown to accommodate its surging ranks of postgraduate students. It provides training services for McGill and Canadian athletes in the 7,000 square foot Seagram Sports Science Centre and in a satellite laboratory at the Olympic Stadium: Many of its graduates have gone on to apply their knowledge to startling degrees of success.

“Sports psychology […] is probably the fastest growing discipline in kinesiology—we get the most applications every year,” Bloom said. “It’s new, and it’s gotten a lot of attention with the Olympics [….] In Canada, a lot of universities have it, [but] doctoral programs

are a bit more unique.”

Bloom’s primary field of research is in coaching, and after settling in at the lab, he quickly began to build relationships with the top tier Redmen and Martlet teams.

“Our two hockey coaches at the time—Peter [Smith] and Martin [Raymond]—both had backgrounds [in sports psychology,] so they had me come speak to their teams,” Bloom said. “I use them for my research and try to help the teams here as much as I can, so it’s a good two-way street.”

If an athlete is going through an intense period— whether coming back from injury, anxious about something off the court, or getting nerves b e fore big games— Bloom is an invaluable resource.

The lab offers one-on-one sessions and works with coaches and teams around exam time to help balance studies and athletics.

On the flip side, many of the grad students in the sports psychology program complete internships with Redmen and Martlet teams, gaining valuable applied experience.

When Martlet basketball captain Françoise Charest graduated and left the team last year, she left a hole in terms of leadership. Dianna Ros, the starting point guard for the team, said she struggled with the abruptness of the change, losing her mentor and having to slide into the veteran role of all at once.

“The leadership component has been big for me this year,” Ros said. “I have had to move up this year and fill that spot with a few other girls.”

She started seeing Bloom in May, meeting a few times a month to sort out her thoughts. Though they did discuss specifics—displaying confidence on the court, embracing a leadership role, and mentoring younger players—their conversation went beyond just basketball.

“We talked about the whole environment,” Ros said. “What’s going on in my life, the bigger picture.”

It all sounded like a normal therapy session with your run of the mill

psychologist. “[Sports psychology] focuses on health and wellness,” Bloom said.

“When we’re doing research on coaching and training, we’re trying to identify ideal [...] practices that not only improve performance, but also improve quality of life.”

While much of the research that goes on at the lab involves rigorous studies on

do you improve the quality of life and make [your athletes] feel better through coaching practices?”

Within five years, Vallée and the Lancers were hoisting their first CIS Championship, setting the stage for a historic run of dominance from 2010 to 2014, during which the Lancers took home four consecutive Championships.

Luck and good recruiting surely played a part, but Bloom did not want to understate the importance of sports psychology in achieving sporting success.

“The most successful [...] coach in [North American]

sports history is Phil Jackson,” Bloom noted while point(Cordelia Cho / McGill Tribune) ing to a bookshelf lined with Jackson’s best-known titles. “He’s had talent, but before various he coached the Bulls and the Lakers, specific topics, the overarching philoso- other [coaches] couldn’t get the playphy of sports psychology is that promot- ers to buy into it [….] You need taling overall wellness in life has a power- ent to win, but that missing ingredient ful trickle-down effect into every facet is team chemistry that starts from the of an athlete’s performance. Nobody coach […] and goes through the team has grasped this knowledge and applied leaders.”

On an individual level, Bloom and it better than Chantal Vallée, head coach of the Windsor Lancers women’s bas- McGill’s lab has used this philosophy to help raise the performance of several ketball team.

After graduating from McGill with professional and Olympic athletes. Ana master’s degree in sports psychology, astasia Bucsis, an Olympic speed skater she took over the Lancers in 2005 with for Team Canada and a visiting student the goal of transforming one of the na- at McGill, said that her experience with tion’s worst basketball programs from the lab helped her reflect and recover the top down. She had never coached before Sochi. She explained that at a above the high school level, but knew certain level, it’s a mental game, and she could bring something special to learning to put things into perspective is crucial.

Windsor.

“Everyone tells you that it’s the “She interviewed the top coaches in the country [...] and found out how Olympics–anything can happen,” Bucthey built their programs, and [identi- sis said. “You just have to trust your fied] ways to be successful on the court preparation and everything you’ve done and off the court,” Bloom said. “Re- up until then because ultimately, you’re ally take this personal approach, and going to be skating in a circle.”

Sometimes, perspective can be care about [your athletes] athletically, academically, and socially [....] That’s a everything. After winning three gold common theme in our research—how medals in swimming at the Beijing

2008 Paralympic Games, Valérie Grand’Maison started to grow tired of the sport to which she had dedicated her life. When she came to McGill to pursue a degree in psychology, she decided to join the Martlet swimming team to change things up.

“I had won six medals, so I thought everybody knew me—again, cocky,” Grand’Maison said. “It was very humbling […] and it was nice being one of the gang.”

Grand’Maison got to know Bloom after taking a few courses in the sports psychology department, and soon began to see him on a semi-regular basis. Like Ros, she said that her sessions seemed to wander off course, straying from the pool and landing on broader topics.

“I would also talk about my life, not only swimming [...] to align my priorities, and work on assuming them,” Grand’Maison recalled. “Making my own decisions and going along with them.”

Though the Martlets were never particularly successful during her time on the team, the experience was invaluable for Grand’Maison. Hearing her teammates, girls who had only just met her, cheer her on at meets—win or lose—completely changed the way she viewed the sport.

“It really helped me to have fun with it and take some pressure off,” Grand’Maison. “Losing is a silver medal at the Paralympics–it was the end of the world for me [….] But being part of a team that means something, and juggling school and my dreams beyond school–putting everything in perspective–made me enjoy the sport way more.”

----------------------------------Aside from his generational talent, Wilt Chamberlain was known for being a loner. He drove across America 20 times, always by himself, and never once married or had a girlfriend. But, as he explained to Firestone in 1987, it was all by choice.

“I am really very content with myself—I enjoy people, I like to interact— but basically I like to reflect and I like to do that by myself,” Chamberlain said.

His solitude came from a deep understanding of who he really was, and gave him a sense of mental fortitude that made him unstoppable on the court and remained with him many years after he retired from the NBA. For Chamberlain, and for sports psychologists, the fundamental key to athletic success lies in the knowledge that the brain has to be well for the body to perform. As Grand’Maison put it: “It’s more important to be a better person than a better athlete,” she said. “It goes together.”

Sports

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Tuesday, February 17, 2015

10 THINGS: NBA All-Star weekend

By Abdulaziz Atta

(nba-events.com)

Michael Jordan’s freeze-out All-Star game – The All-Star game is the stage where the best players in the world get to showcase their talent, but the great Michael Jordan barely got to touch the ball in his first appearance. According to NBA lore, point guard Isiah Thomas ‘froze-out’ Jordan in the 1985 All-Star Game out of jealousy of Jordan’s skyrocketing fame.

Sticker shock – Unless you’re an A-list celeb or a Russian oligarch, getting a ticket to the All-Star game is no easy feat.Would you like to sit courtside with Kevin Hart, Rihanna, and Drake, and watch Steph Curry go bonkers from behind the three-point line? It’ll only set you back $9,000. If that’s too much, you can always sit up in the nosebleeds, where tickets go for $700 each.

Inaugural NBA fashion show – As we all know, the NBA’s athletes are known for their interesting wardrobes. This year, LeBron James used the All-Star game as an opportunity to produce the NBA’s first fashion show ever, starring James Harden, DeMarcus Cousins, Russell Westbrook, and many of the league’s notable fashion trailblazers. LeBron’s new teammate J.R. Smith strutted down the runway in a fur-trimmed three-piece suit to narrowly beat out the Mavericks’ Chandler Parsons in the judges’ eyes and was crowned winner of the show.

Virtual reality – If those courtside tickets aren’t quite in your price range, or are not immersive enough for you, fear not! The NBA is filming the All-Star weekend with virtual reality cameras, so if you happen to own a pair of virtual reality glasses, then you can experience highlights of the All-Star weekend in virtual reality for free.

Brotherly rivalry – Two of the most dominant post players in the league today—Marc and Pau Gasol—faced off in an epic battle of East vs. West on Sunday. It marked the first time in NBA history that two brothers started on opposing teams in an All-Star game. Bragging rights at the Gasol family table were on the line, and it looks like Marc will be serving up crawdad burgers for supper.

Vintage jerseys – The 2015 NBA All-Star jersey was designed to reflect New York City’s rich culture and age-old relationship with basketball. The five stars represent each of New York’s five boroughs, and each star has unique patterns meant to demonstrate the boroughs’ main characteristics, such as the vinyl record patterns on one star to pay homage to the great hip-hop scene of the Bronx.

Short guys can dunk too – The Slam Dunk competition is a non-stop aerial assault on the rim, featuring some of the NBA’s most freakishly athletic leapers. We tend to think that the taller players generally have the advantage, but it will come as a surprise to many that the shortest player in the NBA today—the 5’9” Nate Robinson—has the most Slam Dunk trophies to his name, with three titles in all.

The Riley rule – Every year, the head coach with the best record at the break is chosen to represent his respective conference in the All-Star game. Ever since the 1990s, however, the ‘Riley Rule’ has been in place, barring a coach from making consecutive all-star appearances. The rule, of course, is named after Pat Riley, whose incredible Lakers teams in the 1980s earned him eight All-Star nods in nine seasons.

What All-Star weekend? – When the All-Star game was conceptualized in 1951, NBA President Maurice Podoloff was skeptical about the idea of having an exhibition match featuring the best players in the league. He was on the verge of nixing the idea, but Walter Brown, the owner of the Boston Celtics, promised to assume all costs if the project failed. Today, in part thanks to Brown’s daring confidence, it is one of the most popular annual sporting events in North America.

Concrete jungle – The city that never sleeps was buzzing this weekend thanks to all the AllStar related activities. Some of North America’s biggest celebrities gathered under one roof; there were wild after parties, and we’re betting KD and Russ challenged LeBron and Kyrie to a friendly game of two-on-two in Rucker Park at some point.

Hockey — Best-of-three Series: Redmen 2, Stingers 1

McGill advances to OUA semifinals Redmen rally past deficit, will face Queen’s in next round Nick Jasinski Staff Writer The McGill Redmen (21-5-0) advanced to the second round of the OUA men’s hockey playoffs on Sunday night after defeating the Concordia Stingers (8-17-1) 6-3 at McConnell Arena. After dropping the first game of the best-of-three series on Wednesday, the Redmen turned the tide and won back-to-back games to eliminate rival Concordia and progress to the next roun, where they will face the Queen’s University Gaels (13-12-1) in another three-game series.

Game one on Wednesday at McConnell Arena was a wild affair.

Concordia managed to pull out a 6-4 victory after McGill uncharacteristically allowed three goals out of four opportunities for the Stingers on the power play. The offensive frenzy proved exciting for Stingers’ fans and served as a learning opportunity for Head Coach Kelly Nobes and his team.

“We learned a lot about ourselves and what we needed to do after game one,” Nobes said.

In game two on Friday at Concordia’s Ed Meagher Arena, the Redmen had found their rhythm after the shocking upset, shutting out the Stingers to the tune of 5-0. The line of

David Rose, Jonathan Brunelle, and Cedric McNicoll combined for 13 points as McNicoll played a role in all five of McGill’s goals on the night, assisting four and netting one himself in the second period. Concordia was in penalty trouble all night, spending a total of 31 out of 39 minutes in the box. The Redmen took advantage of this discrepancy, scoring twice on the power play that evening.

Fifth-year captain Benoit Levesque attributed his team’s success in the last two games of the series to a stronger defensive performance.

“We knew it was going to be a tough game; they proved that the first night against us,” Levesque explained. “They have a lot of very skilled players and we had to take that into consideration. I think we played a really solid game defensively.”

McGill came out strong in the deciding third game on Sunday, but Concordia got on the scoreboard first, finding the back of the net after only a minute and a half of play. The highlight of the tilt came soon after with a beautiful display of teamwork from McNicoll and Brunelle. In possession of the puck, Brunelle skated across the centre of the rink about 10 metres from the goal and stopped it in place, skating on and continuing to

Stingers players despair after blowing a series lead to the Redmen. (Emma Hameau / McGill Tribune) best call. The second period includ- everybody pulling on the rope this ed the only three power plays of the time of year.”

McGill will face Queen’s in the match, including two for McGill but all scoreless. The pace of the game next round, maintaining home-ice slowed down and continued into advantage as the top-seeded team in the third as a much more balanced the OUA East. Levesque, in his fifth match, but with McGill still lead- and final season, said he understands ing in possession and converting on what is necessary for the squad to more opportunities, ending the game achieve further success.

“We’re just going to keep doing 6-4. Nobes credited his team’s success in the series to a strong sense of what we’re doing,” Levesque said. “[We’ll keep on] focusing on our teamwork.

“You need everybody going in team and focusing on doing the right the playoffs,” Nobes said. “You need things at the right time.”

draw the attention of the Concordia defence. McNicoll sailed in from the wing and slammed the puck straight down the line into the back of the net, catching the entirely unprepared Concordia goaltender off guard.

The rest of the first period continued to be offence-oriented, with both goaltenders put to the test to keep their teams in the contest. Play became increasingly physical as the period wore on, but no penalties were called–in a game like this between rivals, sometimes a non-call is the

23

Sports

Tuesday, February 17, 2015 Hockey — Martlets 10, Ravens 0

McGill knock Carleton out of the RSEQ Playoffs with dominant 10-0 display Martlets firing on all cylinders with Daoust back on ice ZIKOMO SMITH Staff Writer

(Continued from page 1) Smith also highlighted the performances of star forwards Melodie Daoust and Gabrielle Davidson. Davidson is now the leading scorer in the RSEQ and sits second in the CIS. Daoust, Davidson and freshman Alexandria Serpico each contributed two goals in the rout.

The victory also marked Daoust’s first game playing for the Martlets since 2013. In the interim, she went to Sochi with the Canadian national women’s hockey team, but had to sit out most of the regular season after injuring her knee just before the season. She will undoubtedly give McGill an offensive boost in the final game of the season, as well as during the playoffs.

McGill was impressive defensively, smothering Carleton on the counter-attack and conceding only 10 shots on net all game. Serpico, along with forwards Marie-Philip Lavoie and

Leslie Oles, impressed with strong fore-checks, jamming the puck into Carleton’s portion of the rink for the majority of the game–a key component of the Martlets’ style of play.

“We work hard on that,” Smith said. “No matter who we are playing, we want to play the game down in their end and I thought generally we did a good job of that.”

Senior Kelsie Moffat controlled the tempo of the game, recording one goal and three assists. The other scorers were forwards Jordan McDonell and Olivia Sutter, who notched one each. The win also completed McGill’s regular season sweep of the Ravens.

Sophomore goalkeeper Brittany Smrke recorded her third shutout of the season, whereas Carleton pulled their starting

Daoust celebrates with her teammates in her first game back from injury. (Lauren Benson-Armer / McGill Tribune) goalie following McGill’s fourth goal. Sutter tallied McGill’s sixth shorthanded goal this year, the most by any team in the CIS this season. Smith, however, still noted some areas for improvement.

“I did not think our neutral zone was very good,” Smith said.

“We turned the puck over too

Tribune Athletes of the Week

many times in the neutral zone in the first period, [but] I thought we got better as the game went on.”

McGill will not win every game as easily as this. They have one more regular season game left before the RSEQ playoffs, but the Martlets find themselves in good stead with Daoust back

on the ice.

“I think we are on the right track,” Smith said. “We have got some healthy bodies back and we are starting to play with some really good structure [….] The team is working hard, and we’ll keep at it.”

REDMEN BASKETBALL

It was a relatively quiet week for the Redmen (9-4) basketball team, with just one game on the docket. The Redmen took on the Bishop’s Gaiters (7-7) on the road and triumphed 56-46 in front of a crowd of over 400. Senior guard and team captain Vincent Dufort led the way with a double-double, including 15 points and 11 rebounds, while going 5-11 from the field and 5-5 from the free throw line. Burgeoning sophomore centre Francois Bourque continued to dominate on the glass, pulling down 11 rebounds of his own and adding six points as well.

The Redmen managed to come out on top despite some shooting struggles. McGill shot 37.5 per cent from the field, and went just 4-20 from beyond the arc. The Redmen need just one more win in order to lock down first-place in the RSEQ, and that may come Thursday as McGill plays host to last-place UQÀM (4-9).

MARTLET BASKETBALL

Jonathan Brunelle Hockey – Forward Junior – Arts In an elimination match against the Concordia Stingers, junior forward Jonathan Brunelle shone when his team needed him the, while tallying five points for the McGill Redmen. The Boisbrand, QC native and alumnus of the QMJHL tallied eight points total during the three-game OUA East playoffs. Brunelle has scored 37 points–the second-highest total on the team–during this season on 12 goals and 25 assists. If past performance– he has five game-winning goals on the season–is a good predictor for future potential, Brunelle will come through once again.

Melodie Daoust Hockey – Centre Junior – Education It’s not very often that the No. 2 team in the CIS can add a late season addition that also happens to be the best player in the country, but former Olympian Melodie Daoust is just that. In her debut weekend, following a prolonged absence due to injury, Daoust did not miss a beat, tallying two goals and four assists in the Martlets’ two victories over the weekend. The physical and health education major from Valleyfield, QC, joins the Martlets just ahead of their playoff race, an important addition for a team that has shown that it is not invincible. With Daoust back in the lineup, it may not take long for the Martlets to return to their title-winning ways.

Alex Kiss-Rusk, last week’s Tribune Athlete of the Week, continued to shine for the Martlets (12-1), posting a double-double with 13 points and 10 rebounds to lead her team over the Bishop’s Gaiters (0-14) by a margin of 51-34 on Saturday. Despite the lopsided score, the Martlets were a mess coming out of the gates, managing a measly four points in the first quarter. Strong performances from frontcourt veterans Kiss-Rusk, Mariam Sylla, and Gabriela Hebert in the third quarter led to a 19-4 run that put the game away for McGill’s 12th victory of the season. The Martlets are now one win away from clinching a first-place finish atop the RSEQ for the fifth consecutive year, and could do so at home against UQÀM on Thursday night.

Track and field

The annual Redmen Classic brought out the best in McGill’s athletes on Saturday night in the Tomlinson Fieldhouse. The McGill Track and Field team captured five gold medals, with Hao Xu and Steven Murray qualifying for the CIS Nationals in the men’s high jump and men’s 300m events. Xu, a mechanical engineering student from Houston, matched the CIS qualifying standard with a 2.03m jump. Murray, a senior sprinter from Burlington, ON, qualified with a blazing time of 34.86 seconds in the 300m. Murray was also part of the winning men’s 4x200m relay team, along with junior Tim Kong, freshman Ryan McLelland, and junior Javier Montalvo.

Their time of 1:29.90 was 44 tenths of a second off of the CIS qualifying time. Lenny Dion, also a senior linebacker on the Redmen football squad, won the shot put event with a distance of 12.45m bringing home another gold for McGill.

24

Sports

10

Number of goals scored by the Martlet hockey team in Friday’s win over Carleton, the most in a regular season game since a 10-0 win on Jan. 28, 2012, also against Carleton.

24.6

Shooting percentage allowed by the Redmen basketball’s stingy defence in Saturday’s win on the road against Bishop’s.

.701

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Head Coach David Daveiro’s total winning percentage while at the helm of the Redmen basketball team.

5

Average number of goals scored per game by the Redmen hockey team in their three-game series against Concordia.

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