McGill Tribune Vol. 34 Issue 23

EDITORIAL

Tuesday, March 24, 2015 Volume No. 34 Issue No. 23

Changes at faculty level needed to make SSMU more representative pg. 5

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austerity protest p. 4

Montreal amongst cities hosting brain awareness week lydia kaprelian Staff Writer

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Six thousand march against provincial austerity measures Kareem Ibrahim wins SSMU presidency

(Hayley Mortin / McGill Tribune)

Contentious presidential race comes to a close, Ibrahim wins by 5 per cent of the vote JULIA DICK & SHRINKHALA DAWADI Contributor and News Editor

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areem Ibrahim was elected president of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) last week with 52.5 per cent of the vote. The results were released

by Elections SSMU last Friday.

Alexei Simakov, the opposing candidate, gained 47.5 per cent of the vote.

The rest of the SSMU executive will be comprised of Vice-

President (VP) Clubs & Services Kimber Bialik, VP University Affairs Chloe Rourke, VP Finance & Operations Zacheriah Houston, and VP Internal Lola Baraldi.

With no nominated candidates for the VP External position in the initial campaign period, a nomination period for the by-election to fill the VP External position also concluded at 5:00 p.m. on Friday, with Emily

Boytinck and Joanna Schacter as the two announced candidates.

Campaigning for the position will conclude Saturday, March 27 at 5:00 p.m.

After a particularly heated campaign period, 25.9 per cent of students in SSMU voted in the election.

Ibrahim stated that he was excited to assume the position of president next year.

“I’ve been dedicated to stu-

dent life [...] at McGill from the beginning and I’m really thrilled that the majority of students have once again [shown] their confidence in me to continue [taking] that kind of role,” he said. “I can’t wait for next year to be able to put student ideas into effect.”

Ibrahim continued to underscore the importance of student engagement.

Continued on pg. 2

ontreal’s Brain Awareness Week began in 1996 with the help of a group of neuroscience students at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute in Verdun in response to the formation of the U.S.-based Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives.

Today, the organization is operated by McGill, Concordia, l’Université de Montréal, and UQAM and will take place on April 8. With 300 presentations in over 150 schools, both anglo- and francophone, Montreal’s Brain Awareness Week has become a well-established presence in elementary and high schools throughout the island.

Brain Awareness Week’s mission is to increase public awareness about the brain and to inspire interest in brain research.

“Our mandate is […] to tell people of all ages and social structures about why brain research is important for health, and to get people excited about it,” explained Carelton University psychology professor Alfonso Abizaid.

Montreal’s Brain Awareness Week focuses its resources on elementary and high school students.

Brain Awareness Week aims to debunk myths about boring science careers and offers kids a chance to see older students who are passionate about the brain.

Continued on pg. 15

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News Kareem Ibrahim wins SSMU presidency

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Contentious presidential race comes to a close, Ibrahim wins by 5 per cent of the vote JULIA DICK AND SHRINKHALA DAWADI Contributor and News Editor

(Continued from page 1) “[Both] races were very close for the contested elections, so I definitely think that we’re going to have to do some work in terms of reaching out to students [who] may not have had as much confidence in us as candidates and making sure that their voices are heard as well,” he said.

Simakov expressed sadness at the loss, but also highlighted that he was proud of his campaign team.

“We’re disappointed obviously,” Simakov said. “We thought we had it in the last few days. We came here not having been really prepared to run. We didn’t really know what we were doing and I think given the conditions, given our experience […] I take a lot of pride in what we did.”

Simakov also emphasized that he would continue to advocate for students who feel that they are not represented by the current executives.

“I guess the vote is that the current status quo is [working] for people and they’re going to support that,” Simakov said. “Whatever happens to me, I’m going to keep fighting for the student body of McGill. I’m hoping that I became a voice for some of the student demographic that does feel alienated or don’t feel represented by the current administration.”

Simakov also raised his concerns with student participation in the election.

“If you look at [...] my event page [...] public sentiment really was behind

it,” Simakov said. “But [...] we definitely had to do a better job of making sure people came out to vote and we didn’t, so that’s something we have to consider.”

Uncontested candidates Bialik, Rourke, and Houston received strong support in the election, with both Bialik and Rourke receiving 89.4 per cent of the vote, and Houston receiving 86.2 per cent. Baraldi was elected to the VP Internal position by 13 votes over opponent Johanna Nikoletos.

Rourke underscored that she was pleased with the election results.

“I’m really excited to work with the new incoming executives, I think we’ll be a great team,” Rourke said. “We all have extensive experience with SSMU and [...] we have a good understanding of the issues themselves. [Ibrahim and I] have worked together [in the] past on Senate, and I definitely think that that’ll be a good advantage [...] when working with the admin going forward.”

Rourke also commented on the challenges that she believed SSMU faced moving forward.

“I think that people have [...] had an image of SSMU [where] it’s not relevant to students [and] doesn’t communicate well with students,” she said. “I think that seeing an executive team all [comprised of] people [who] have been previously involved with SSMU might suggest that nothing will change, and I really hope that that’s not the case. I think that we all came in with the idea that using our experience at SSMU, we do want to make changes, and I hope that we’re able to do that.”

SSMU ELECTION Results

Infographic by Cassie Lee

Floor fellow contract negotiations to ask for minimum wage

Remuneration proposed to comply with Quebec labour law, negotiations ongoing

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PHILIPPE DUMAIS Staff Writer

egotiations between the floor fellow bargaining unit of the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE) and McGill continued on March 20, following an offer presented by the administration on March 13.

One of the issues is a change in floor fellow remuneration so that it complies with the Quebec Labour Standards Act (QLSA), which outlines working conditions for all employees in Quebec. According to the QLSA, the general minimum wage for employees who do not receive tips is $10.35 per hour.

Evan McIlroy, bargaining representative for the floor fellows, explained that the QLSA mandates that floor fellows are paid a minimum wage. McIlroy indicated that the problem of wage was discovered during the course of negotiations and that the administration was open to amending the current situation.

“Remuneration is not our focus right now,” he said. “We expect this issue to be

solved rapidly as we are not asking for a raise, but rather that [our agreement] complies with Quebec labour laws. It was [not] a concern when we unionized in the first place; we have simply discovered that the remuneration system in place right now was not standard.”

According to McIlroy, the issue will be addressed at the end of the bargaining discussions.

The contract negotiations have been marked with setbacks. The inclusion of core values, such as anti-oppression and harm reduction, into the floor fellows’ collective agreement led to the boycott of a training session on Jan. 24 and 25.

“Normally, a collective agreement only defines the working conditions of the union members, so the attempt to include the ‘values associated with the role of floor fellows’ in the collective agreement is a significant departure from the norm,” explained McGill Director of Labour and Employee Relations Robert Comeau to the Tribune in January.

According to Vice President floor fellow for AMUSE Christina Clemente, the updated proposal from McGill includes

mention of the core values.

“The proposed collective agreement presented on March 13 includes a clause related to another document which defines the core values,” she said.

The negotiations are likely to contin-

ue over the next couple of weeks. Several points remain to be discussed according to Clemente.

“We have decided to break it down by issues, so further negotiations on different topics are expected later,” she said.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

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News

Proposal for women-only gym hours halted by McGill

Admin cites university’s secular principles as reason for dismissal of potential compromise SHRINKHALA DAWADI News Editor

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eputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens released a statement on Friday expressing that McGill will no longer be considering the implementation of women-only gym hours at the McGill Fitness Centre.

“McGill is a community where every form of diversity (cultural, linguistic, gender, religion, etc.) is celebrated and encouraged,” Dyens’ statement reads. “We do not believe in the segregation of our services [....] We encourage and will continue to encourage all our patrons to engage respectfully with one another, just as we expect all members of our community to treat each other equitably and respectfully in whatever context. Accordingly, we have determined that separate hours for women will not be established at the fitness centre.”

The proposal was spearheaded by two McGill Law students, Soumia Allalou and Raymond Grafton.

Allalou expressed disappointment with Dyens’ statement.

“I’m shocked that the McGill administration [and] the deputy provost would decide to shut down negotiations when some other actors in the university were already willing to accommodate [the proposal],” Allalou said. “We had come up to [...] a possible solution that could have been implemented and that I’m sure would be accepted by most of the campus.”

According to Allalou, a compromise was being discussed with Jill Barker, manager of marketing and communications for McGill Athletics and Recreation. “[Barker’s] idea was [to have] a separate varsity room,” Allalou said.

“She was saying that we could open it tentatively for a few hours a week [...] and do a trial run.”

Allalou added that the additional varsity workout space would not affect the hours or access of the fitness centre.

Claire Stewart-Kanigan, Students’ Society of McGill University

(SSMU) Vice-President University Affairs, expressed that she believed that the McGill administration only approached the proposal on religious terms, leaving out the other benefits that having the hours might confer.

“In my reading of the situation, the university is anxious to distance themselves from [...] what they’re reading as a question of religious accommodation to Muslim women, which is a hot topic right now,” she said.

Stewart-Kanigan also highlighted examples of similar gym policies in place at other Canadian universities.

“From the start, the students pushing for this have been clear that this is not exclusively an issue of religious accommodation,” she said. “[The University of Toronto and] other schools have adopted womenonly hours. Their adoption was not separate to religion, acknowledging many reasons [for] why there are demands for women-only hours.”

According to Stewart-Kanigan, the administration had not consulted

with the student body before deciding to terminate the proposal.

“The statement states that [the] administration met with students and myself on Thursday to gain a better perspective [...] before making their decision,” she said. “This is false [....] The decision to halt negotiations on the subject of women-only hours towards finding a compromise solution was already made on Monday.”

Allalou agreed with StewartKanigan on the lack of consultation.

“On Tuesday, [Stewart-Kanigan] messaged me and she informed me that the deputy provost was going to shut down negotiations,” Allalou explained. “This is even before he ever spoke with me.”

Attention from both the media and individuals on campus has increased since the discussion was introduced by Allalou and Grafton, with many divided on the issue.

U2 Arts student Frances Lash, who opposes women-only hours, expressed disappointment at the administration’s actions on the issue.

“I do think that the administra-

tion’s decision to not continue negotiations was correct,” Lash said. “Although it is laudable that the women who proposed it strongly advocated for their cause, the gym is not covered fully by [student] tuition: It is an optional service which [individuals] pay extra for [....] Beginning to make exemptions in a service that is optional impedes others from benefiting from the service they have paid to receive.”

However, Lash added that she did not agree with how McGill administration had phrased their statement.

“The words the university used were inflammatory and condescending, and more tact should’ve been used by the administration on such a hot topic of debate,” Lash said.

“Gender discrimination and diversity are important discussions to be had and to be taken seriously—and it seemed like the university was too [flippant] in its response. Words like ‘segregation’ and ‘modesty’ are problematic because they have a long history of misuse.”

Medicine students vote to strike against Bill 20 on March 30 Students’ Society cites concerns regarding patient quotas imposed on physicians

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ASHLEY KONG Contributor

n Tuesday, the Medical Students’ Society (MSS) voted at its General Assembly (GA) to strike on March 30 as a form of protest against Bill 20. If passed, the bill would restructure family care in Quebec.

“Every general practitioner [...] must, to the extent provided for by government regulation, provide medical care to a minimum caseload of patients, and perform a minimum number of hours of medical activities,” the bill reads.

The strike motion passed with 89 votes for, 19 votes against, and eight abstentions.

As a result of the vote, the MSS will participate in a demonstration against Bill 20 on March 30 led by the Fédération Médicale Étudiante du Québec (FMEQ), a union for medical students in Quebec. “[The] MSS [will] organize a class strike (levée de cours) from mandatory teaching (and clinical) activities for all students (Med 1-4), in order for our students to participate in this strike on March 30,” the motion reads.

According to David Eidelman, McGill University Dean of Medicine, some family physicians are already cancelling their

plans to teach because of Bill 20, which will negatively affect training provided at McGill and other medical schools in Quebec.

“The family physicians [...] are so unhappy with the bill altogether, they’ve already starting to propose to withdraw from teaching,” Eidelman said. “They are worried that by next year, when this bill passes, there’ll suddenly be an increase in the number of patients they’ll have to see in clinic, and they don’t want to be caught in a cut in pay just because they’ve agreed to do some teaching.”

Nebras Warsi, MSS president, expressed concerns that prospective medical graduates might be less inclined to join family care.

“By getting in the way of allowing a family physician to teach medical students and to conduct independent research

late.

Infographic by Cassie Lee [...] I think you’re really taking away a lot from what makes that specialty so attractive,” Warsi said. “Especially [at] McGill, we’re particularly research-focused [... so] taking that away is really detrimental in our eyes.”

Physicians who are currently practicing find that Bill 20 falls short in addressing individual complexities, according to Joshua Chin, the Students’ Society of

McGill University (SSMU) MSS representative.

“What if the physician happens to be pregnant or has young children?” he said. “[They’ll] have to keep up with this patient quota [....] There’re still a lot of unknowns. The bill needs to be properly studied.”

Warsi explained that he felt that consultation of the medical schools in Quebec came in too

“One of the first times there was really proper consultation was two weeks ago, [when] the deans [of all four medical schools in Quebec] actually had a chance to speak at the National Assembly,” Warsi said. “This discussion should have been taking place a year, or two years, or three years before the bill was even put into motion.”

Chin added that the Quebec government is rushing the legislation process.

“The message we’ve been getting from the government is that it will be rushed through,” he said. “The minister wants this bill to be implemented by early this summer.”

Members of the MSS will head to Quebec City on March 30 along with the representation from other three medical schools in Quebec: Université Laval, Université de Montréal, and Université de Sherbrooke. A joint press conference will be held by the four delegations that day.

Medicine Senator David Benrimoh expressed that he was happy with the GA strike vote.

“I’m very proud that [the MSS] decided to take this stand,” he said. “I’m very proud that we decided to stand up against something that we believe is socially unjust and contributes to negative changes that will hurt the patients we care for.”

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Tuesday, March 24, 2015 News Senate discusses funding for Office for Students with Disabilities

Effect of high faculty advisor to student ratio examined JACK NEAL Photo Editor

Allocation of government funding for students with disabilities Arts & Science Senator Chloe Rourke expressed concerns regarding funding for services for students with disabilities, including the Office of Students with Disabilities (OSD), in conjunction with the uncertainty behind McGill’s budget cuts.

In response, Provost Anthony Masi stated that although it is difficult to balance the needs of each aspect of McGill, every effort is being made to ensure a fair allocation is attained.

“We are not cutting full support because it is an important part of education,” Masi said.

“For example, we had a $1.4 million grant marked for internships [from the government], which has

completely disappeared [....] We cannot increase funding just because it’s an important service, a whole educational system has to be considered here.”

Engineering Senator Morgan Grobin stated that there had been OSD workshops cut in favour of giving money to internship funding. However, numerous people, including Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens stated that they were unaware of such transactions.

“I wasn’t made aware of the fact that the [OSD] wasn’t able to function,” Dyens said. “I take issue with this and I will go back and discuss this with Student Services.”

Principal Suzanne Fortier added that McGill has the largest funding for students with disabilities in the province.

“When I look at the figures, [the fact that] 40 per cent of students recieve [services] is not

because we have more people in need, but because we offer more [services],” she said.

Arts Senator Jacob Greenspon requested increased transparency in all of McGill’s funding.

“How are we going to ensure that this office is going to be supported at the same level it is now with future emerging needs?” he questioned. “Would it be possible to have all the different breakdowns of where the money is going?”

Masi denied this request on the grounds that it would be impossible to accomplish.

“We can guarantee only what we can afford to guarantee,” he said. “I cannot guarantee to put more money into [the OSD] because of budget cuts. There are aspects of it that may need to be ‘redimensioned,’ but it is impossible to be [completely transparent].”

Faculty advisors to student ratios Greenspon also asked a question regarding the disparities in the ratio of faculty advisors to students, as well as how McGill planned to address them.

In their written response, Masi and Dyens pointed to a number of initiatives McGill has undertaken in previous years to address a shortage of advisors to students, including the online resource ‘Ask an Advisor,’ an interactive database of frequently asked questions; ‘AskMcGill,’ and the Staff-Student mentoring program.

Dyens stated that were many factors contributing to student dissatifaction.

“There are many things that [students] are not satisfied with,” he said. “It can be an [administrative] thing or the fact that some-

times the wait on the phone is a bit too long [....] That’s why we have a number of initiatives to address these things.”

Presentation of Royal Victoria Hospital plans Fortier also discussed plans for the nearby Royal Victoria Hospital, which will become vacant next month. She announced that McGill has paired with the Quebec government in order to conduct a feasibility study on McGill ‘s expansion to the grounds to ensure that there is a clear sense of the problems that may be faced and the costs that would be incurred.

“It would be a splendid addition to the campus, but we will only do it if we believe we can support it and we will progress with great care,” Fortier said.

Six thousand march against provincial austerity measures Protest to be first of regularly scheduled anti-austerity efforts

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CECE ZHANG News Editor

demonstration of approximately 6,000 people took to the streets on March 21 against Quebec provincial government austerity cuts.

The protest was organized by a group called Printemps 2015, and is scheduled to be the first of a series of weekly protests planned for the next few months, according to Brice Dansereau-Olivier, an organizer of the Printemps 2015.

“The series of demonstrations will take place every Saturday at 2 p.m., so that workers and families can attend as well,” Dansereau-Olivier said.

The protest was deemed illegal by the Montreal police from the onset, as organizers did not provide an itinerary for the march, although the demonstration was generally peaceful and was allowed to continue by the police. Protesters walked in cold, snowy conditions around the downtown area, starting from Square Emile-Gamelin near the Berri-UQÀM metro station.

According to DansereauOlivier, the provincial austerity measures would impact many people, including workers, students, and the unemployed. He pointed to the cuts in education and health care reforms of Bill 20, which propose to enforce an annual quota for patients all family practitioners must meet, as well as merge administrative

Protesters gather against provincial austerity measures. (Hayley Mortin / McGill Tribune) structures for healthcare institutions.

“Experts agree that this is going to drastically reduce the number of services offered to the public,” he said. “On the education side, [we’ve seen] $300 million in cuts up to now, and we don’t expect following budgets to be any different. This has manifested itself on many campuses [in the form of] classes that are being cancelled completely, some programs are being reevaluated, the number of students per class has gone up, and teaching conditions are drastically affected.”

Agostino Minter, a Liberal

Arts Concordia student who was present at the protest, explained that his faculty, as well as several other faculties at Concordia, had voted to go on a two-day strike.

He elaborated on his opposition to austerity measures.

“The whole theoretical basis on austerity has very shaky footing,” he said. “These kind of measures actually [end] up being very negative to growth and ends up amounting to a public subsidy for private ventures. They’re financing Plan Nord while they’re cutting health care and education, which I think is just a bizarre gesture for our representatives to do.”

An anonymous protester holding a Printemps 2015 banner said that while he was uncertain of what the protests might be able to accomplish, he believed in their importance.

“I believe if you can get people together and talking about the problems, we’ll get closer to the solutions,” he said. “We’re as much talking to each other as we are talking to the general public, we’re reminding each other that we care; there are people who care [enough] to hit the streets on a cold, snowy day. We’re going out and giving our narrative to the public, who unfortunately only gets their narrative

from sources that generally have the same interests as the government, the elite.”

Dansereau-Olivier expanded upon the importance of having the demonstrations be familyoriented, stating that this was to remove the public’s perception of the Printemps 2015 protests as similar to the 2012 student protests.

“2012 was specifically student-oriented, and that grew into a bigger movement because of repercussions the government brought down on the student movement,” he said. “But what we want this time is a social strike, getting all sectors of society to strike at the same time, to really have a pull on the government. We want families to be there to show [...] it’s working families, it’s ordinary people that are struggling with the cuts the government is putting forward, that they won’t sit by idly while the government destroys all that makes Quebec different.”

According to Dansereau-Olivier, the goal of Printemps 2015 is to be a platform for communication and solidarity, in order to help groups achieve their goals.

“The committee focuses on fostering communication between student groups and local unions,” he said. “We’re going to keep doing that work, building bridges between institutions and other groups in hopes that we can get all the major groups on board for the [Printemps] movement.”

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Changes at faculty level needed to make SSMU more representative In the wake of the recent Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) elections, many students have renewed their complaints of dissatisfaction with what they feel is an insular and inaccessible SSMU. While these feelings are certainly valid, the overemphasized focus on SSMU executives and the concurrent lack of student engagement with faculty representatives show that there is room for a shift in expectations. Students often look directly to SSMU for representation and consultation, despite SSMU’s position within our structure of student governance as an overarching body that encompasses many smaller units in which students are represented. Students seeking more accountability and transparency in student government should first look towards their faculty representatives.

During elections, SSMU candidates have been known to make promises to improve communication and engagement with the student body.

Despite these yearly ‘commitments’ and efforts by SSMU executives to enhance relations with students, the average student is still left feeling alienated and disconnected from student government. This is not to say that SSMU executives should not seek to

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Students seeking

more accountability and transparency in student government should first look towards their faculty representatives.

most effective way of doing so is not by dedicating themselves to connecting directly with all students and their varied interests, but by working more

A shift in expectations of what should happen at different levels of representation also necessitates changes in the behaviour of elected student representatives. Increased accessibility and transparency between faculty representatives and their constituents can be achieved by communicating to students the details of Council meetings through reports—a proposition cited in the new SSMU President, Kareem Ibrahim’s platform—or involving constituents in the decision-making process by instituting polls and surveys, for eample, in order to make the events of Council meetings available to all students.

Without such changes to the current system of faculty representation, SSMU executive promises of greater ‘transparency’ are empty.

Improved coordination between students, faculty representatives, and SSMU executives, with an increased emphasis on the role of representatives in communicating the needs and demands of their constituents, is a realistic change that can be implemented. Shifting the focus to faculty representatives is a necessary step towards increasing student satisfaction with SSMU and beginning to break down SSMU’s reputation of isolation and inaccessibility.

Gentrification, urban-ecoism, and cultural perspectives

Publisher Chad Ronalds

Contributors

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closely with faculty representatives to best serve students.

Faculty representatives have smaller bases of constituents than SSMU executives, making it far more realistic for faculty representatives to engage students within their faculties.

Students often feel inherently more connected to their faculties, and their interests will likely be better understood and communicable to their specific representatives who have a more direct connection to them and are able to represent their individual demands within SSMU. Within a student government structure as large as McGill’s, it is important to capitalize students’ associations of identity within smaller bodies.

Groups such as the McGill School of Environment (MSE) have expressed dissatisfaction with their current level of representation on the SSMU Legislative Council, and have taken action to improve their representation to SSMU. The MSE put forth a referendum question to acquire their own seat on Council that would be more representative of their specific interests. Improving such weaknesses in representation is a necessary step towards reforming student government at McGill to adequately represent all students.

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improve levels of student engagement in campus politics, but rather that the

Shrinkhala Dawadi News Editor The houses in Kathmandu, Nepal, where my grandparents live are very tall and narrow— there’s not a lot of buildable space in the actual city. My grandparents’ house doesn’t have central heating. It’s wired up to the electrical grid, but the electricity isn’t always there. For several hours a day, electricity is cut-off to certain neighbourhoods on a rotating basis around the city. This is known as load-shedding, and it’s done because there is simply not enough electricity produced to power all the homes all the time.

The details of how my grandparents live have often surprised people when I tell them. People often comment, saying that life must be very hard in Nepal, or that my grandparents are very strong to be able to live the way they do.

When hearing this, I always feel defensive. My grandparents don’t

need sympathy, and their life isn’t hard. It’s just how things are done in Nepal. I know that living with six people in a six-room house would be considered crowded in Canada, and most families who do live like that here are often lower-income; but in Nepal, it’s the norm. Most middle-class and even upper-middle class families live this way.

It’s also funny for me to think that the way my grandparents live is very eco-friendly. They don’t own any cars, or a fridge. They buy their food fresh daily at a local market. They don’t use a lot of electricity, and they don’t even heat their homes (and it can get pretty cold in Kathmandu—the highs in January are a balmy seven degrees Celsius).

The way my grandparents live actually reminds me of the growing urban-ecoism movement here in Canada. People buy local and organic, take public transportation, and try to grow produce in shared urban gardens, or in window-sill boxes.

My grandparents’ lifestyle is often received with pity, when urban dwellers who aim to do the same in Canada are lauded. Perhaps it’s because my grandparents have no choice—they’re just liv-

ing the way that most middle-class people in Nepal do. In Canada, however, choosing to take a bus instead of driving is making a conscious

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My grandparents’ lifestyle is often

received with pity, when urban dwellers who aim to do the same in Canada are lauded.

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Editor-in-Chief Jenny Shen editor@mcgilltribune.com

editorial

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THE Mcgill

5

Opinion

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

choice to save the environment.

In fact, the efforts of the urbaneco movement have caused a lot of problems for other people living in cities in Canada and the United States. I’m talking about gentrification, and although gentrification is caused by a variety of things—not just urban-ecoism—many of hall-

marks of gentrification go hand in hand with eco-friendly living. More organic food stores, more local businesses and less global retailchains, more people riding bikes everywhere often lead to increased costs of living. Food becomes more expensive, and the poorer families—who are typically people of colour—get priced out of their historic neighbourhoods as rent prices increase as the area becomes more trendy.

I’m not absolving myself from all this. I’m a student in Montreal— I like the artistic, creative culture here, I like shopping at smaller, local boutiques, and I try to buy organic when I can. Still, it’s interesting the way certain lifestyles are framed, depending on what part of the world is living that way. My grandparents in Nepal are very ecofriendly, and I don’t think the way they live contributes to gentrification. Yet when other people hear how they live, I’m often met with veiled pity. Being eco-friendly in Canada, on the other hand, is celebrated, despite perhaps the ways in which it can contribute to gentrification, which does have a tangible negative effect on the other, poor, often people of colour, living in the same cities.

6

Opinion

COMMENTARY

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

The dangers of empathic giving

“

In considering where to

donate, people are swayed more by empathy than by rational

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thinking.

“

A few weeks ago in February, James Robertson, a 56-yearold factory worker from Detroit, told police he no longer felt safe in his home. Ever since his car broke down in 2005, Robertson has walked 34 kilometres to work, five days a week. But after a touching news story about him went viral, a local college student started an online crowdfunding campaign that raised over $350,000 on his behalf.

The online response to his struggle followed a dangerous trend in society. In considering where to donate, people are swayed more by empathy than by rational thinking.

Despite the good intentions

empathize with his struggle, and online campaigns allow us to feel

making is blind. What about people who don’t get time on the tube?

Surely they deserve help as well.

By letting emotion control our judgment, we end up giving too much to too few people.

For example, after the Sandy Hook shootings, Newtown, Connecticut witnessed a huge stream of toys that were offered to the students of Sandy Hook Elementary. But there is such a thing as too many teddy bears; the school eventually ran out of room, and had to ask people to direct their gifts down another path.

The goodwill of such benefactors is heartwarming, but the results of their actions, although not entirely their fault, can be ineffective and wasteful. In light of this, donors have a choice: They can be guided by empathy, and donate to help a few people with very sad stories, or they can spread out their donations in a way that will help larger groups in society whose struggles may not have received the same degree of publicity.

{

django ellenhorn Contributor

behind the donations, the money that Robertson received caused him problems. Robertson was now more wealthy than most of his neighbourhood. He constantly feared robbery, as neighbours— some friendly, some not—swarmed his front door asking for money. Robertson had lived in Detroit for 15 years, but when a nearby man was stabbed to death for his relatively measly $20,000 lottery winnings, he decided it was time to leave.

A simple question, such as “Who needs the money most?” could have elicited a more pragmatic response. While Robertson pocketed a small fortune and a brand new car, many others in his community were also suffering.

Herein lies the problem with crowdfunding campaigns. They give misery a human face, and then manipulate people’s empathy for money. This creates wildly popular tales, such as Robertson’s, which are picked up by social media and prime-time TV to be gobbled by the public. We can see Robertson and

like we’re helping.

But empathy-driven decision-

Unveiling the fight against religious extremism

Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently vowed to appeal the Federal Court’s decision to lift a ban preventing women from wearing the niqab during the Canadian Oath of Citizenship ceremony. In light of the recent terrorist attack at Parliament Hill, Harper has taken an iron pillar stance in the fight against religious extremism in Canada, highlighted by his proposal of Bill C-51. Setting aside the discussion of exactly how and to what degree the banning of the niqab would benefit this cause, it is worth discussing the prime minister’s recent statements in context.

It seems quite clear that Harper’s

and “Jihad terror.”

Harper also criticized the niqab, calling it an offensive symbol of oppression which is “rooted in a culture which is anti-woman.”

This is a sentiment which the majority of Canadians seem to agree with, according to a poll by the Toronto Star. However, it is difficult to miss the intolerant and regressive nature of this kind of close-minded thinking. This belief readily assumes that all women who wear a veil are either brainwashed or oppressed, and are forced to do so by a male patriarch, whereas in reality many women wear it because they consciously choose to, whether it is to express their faith or their character.

Furthermore, the logic behind banning an object which women wear to feel comfortable, both physically and spiritually, in order to promote freedom and equality, is flawed.

Holding the niqab up as a symbol of oppression and inequality is a shortsighted action which promotes intolerance.

With regards to intolerance, it is important to discuss the societal

effect of these secular government policies. This is especially relevant

“

Harper’s latest move in his battle against extremism is a regressive and

dangerous step for Canada.

“

Albert Park Columnist

latest move in his battle against extremism is a regressive and dangerous step for Canada.

Understandably, many Canadians want to see the promotion of secularism and agree with Harper that a religious garment has no place in a governmental ceremony. However, in cases such as this, there is a dangerously thin line between secularism and oppression. To quote the National Secular Society, “[The first principle of secularism..] ensures that religious groups don’t interfere in affairs of state, and makes sure the state doesn’t interfere in religious affairs.” Clearly, Harper is failing to abide by the second part of that principle. Essentially, he is interfering with a religious practice which poses no real threat to the political process of the ceremony.

In fact, Harper previously claimed repeatedly that the niqab was more of a cultural issue rather than a religious one. This claim might be convincing if not for the fact that his main points of argument regarding the issue were ridden with phrases like, “Muslim extremists,”

to Quebec, which has a long history of trying to balance secularism with the diversity of religions and cul-

Of course, the former will continue to thrive. When people fund one man, they can watch his evolution on national news, proud to play a small part in a much larger story.

But imagine what $350,000 could have done if spread among the people at Robertson’s door, or if used to improve public transportation for everyone in the neighbourhood.

The goal of charity is to alleviate suffering and maximize wellbeing. If those on the giving side take this seriously, they should help organizations aiming for broad change, even if thinly spread. In such, empathy—and emotion overall—can still be used to galvanize.

But it ought not be used as a tunnel vision so heavily focused on a single person, ignoring the widespread struggles faced by others. Sadly, a shift from this practice is unlikely to occur, as donations guided by empathy and self-congratulation remain just a click and a credit card number away.

tures present within the province.

Perhaps the most notable example was in 2013, when the Parti Québécois proposed a Quebec charter of values, which would restrict public employees from donning religious articles, such as niqabs. What followed was a storm of public racist attacks on Muslim women in the province. It seems to be a trend that the government’s implementation of secularism is often taken by radicals as a green light to spew their blatantly racist, bigoted ideals. Coincidentally, it is often this kind of intolerance and sense of superiority against other cultures that serves as both the foundation and fuel for religious extremism. Therefore, a policy banning religious symbols inevitably does nothing but reinforce the self-righteous anger on both sides of the argument.

Canada should learn from the failures of Quebec and tread carefully. Harper’s strategy for fighting religious extremism is paving a dangerous future for Canada and threatening its identity as a progressive and multicultural nation.

The Tribune is hiring design editors!

Send CV, cover letter, and 3 design samples to editor@mcgilltribune.com

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Student of the Week

O

David McCusty U3 Pharmacology (L-A Benoit / McGill Tribune)

7

Student Living

riginally from Richmond, Virginia, U3 Pharmacology student David McCusty chose McGill to pursue his academic interests in pharmacology with a minor in linguistics.

However, academics was not his only concern coming to McGill; McCusty has also worked at pub nights and participated in changing credit policies at McGill.

McCusty is exceptionally passionate about Bar des Arts (BDA), the weekly pub night hosted by the Arts Undergraduate Society, where he has volunteered almost every Thursday since his first semester.

“I think [BDA] has actually been the best thing about McGill for me,” McCusty said. “It’s how I’ve met probably most of the people I know outside of [residence]. We get free beer for staff too; but honestly, even if I had to pay for it, I would still go because I love the people who work there so much.”

Despite being in the Faculty of Science, McCusty worked as an Arts Frosh staff member in 2014.

According to McCusty, he was able to connect with the Arts Frosh coordinators as a result of the relationships he has developed while working at BDA. “I thought [Frosh] was better the second time around than as a froshie,” he explained. “It was nice to have people you know and also to meet new people [….] O-staff was a really good way to meet people from other faculties.”

McCusty is also one of the four moderators of the McGill Facebook page, Free & For Sale. The page is used by students to post classifieds. He became involved with Free & For Sale when Phoebe Yap, another moderator, posted in the page searching for help managing the group. Considering the Facebook page currently has upwards of 13,000 members, McCusty said he is often recognized around campus simply for his involvement and activity online.

“Apparently Free & For Sale made me a celebrity,” he said. “I’m the one who wrote the pinned

By Jordan Sinder

post, so I think most people think I’m the only [moderator….] I actually have a friend who introduces me as the ‘Deity of Free & For Sale.’”

He also elaborated on the relevance of Free & For Sale for many students who might not have access to their own vehicle or are on a strict budget.

“I think it actually does serve a useful purpose,” McCusty said. “I’d much rather buy something from another student than IKEA. There is a massive volume of furniture [among other items] sold on Free & For Sale, so it is a good way to find things like that.”

McCusty was also instrumental in provoking a recent McGill policy change. As a result of a dual-enrolment program in high school, he entered McGill with 47 transfer credits. Consequently, the university’s old policy, which stipulated a maximum of 120 credits, prevented him from receiving credit for the courses necessary to complete his studies.

However, his communications with McGill Advising proved worthwhile—he was able to instigate a change in the policy restricting the number of credits from outside of McGill..

“It’s now 120 credits completed at McGill, not 120 credits completed ever,” McCusty explained.

“That’s by far the biggest thing I’ve actually changed here or have been influential in changing.”

McCusty also shared a personal story about a memorable evening he had in Venice while on a high school trip that metaphorically encapsulates his experience at McGill.

“Our teachers took our maps and they were like, ‘Find your way back to the hotel,’” he said.

“Venice is all these criss-crossing streets that appear to go nowhere. You think you know where you’re going, then you run into a canal.”

In a sense, McCusty’s anecdote summarizes his McGill experience—no single-minded focus, no particular direction, but simply a general goal and plenty of fun along the way.

McGill Tribune: Harvey Specter or Frank Underwood?

David McCusty: Frank Underwood.

MT: What is your favourite thing about Montreal?

DM: When the snow melts.

MT: Toronto Maple Leafs or cold soup?

DM: Oh, cold soup.

MT: What’s your favourite exercise?

DM: Does leaving the gym count?

MT: If you could have one super power, what would it be?

DM: I really wish I could fly. It would be really cool.

MT: What’s the most played song on your iPod? DM: Since Carnival, it’s definitely been Uptown Funk.

MT: If you were one celebrity, which one would you be?

DM: Lorde. I saw her at Osheaga and she was awesome.

MT: What’s your biggest petpeeve?

DM: People who still haven’t figured out how to walk on icy sidewalks.

Campus Spotlight: MyVision McGill’s MV chapter aims to incubate social entrepreneurship through community engagement Meghan Collie Staff Writer yVision (MV) is a global enterprise of young people with a mission to find a solution to the world’s social issues through social business. MV McGill came to fruition in 2012 thanks to business partners and McGill undergraduate students Yashvi Shah and Joanna Klimczak. It has since evolved into a global network and is one of the largest networks in the world of young leaders building social business.

“Social business” is a novel business model, developed by Professor Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. It is characterized by a non-dividend, non-loss structure with a goal of resolving a social problem.

“Social business is something that falls between a business and a charity,” said Clément Ponsonnet, Vice President of University

M

Affairs at MV McGill. “It has the same goal as a charity […] but it works exactly like a business. It generates profit and it’s sustainable, but it also works to solve a social problem.”

Yashvi Shah, president of MV McGill, believes there is a lot of potential with regards to the social business model on campus.

“At McGill, we’re increasingly realizing that there are a lot of social entrepreneurs on campus [who] don’t necessarily follow this [social business] model […] but are still doing social good in the community,” Shah said. “So what we stand for is social business as a whole.”

MV’s platform rests on three central pillars: Education, creation, and connection. With 17 chapters across the world, MV aims to educate students about social business, to create their own enterprise, and to connect talented youth with mentors in the social business space around the world.

All of these pillars come together in one of MV McGill’s social enterprise, Learning Is For Everyone (LIFE). Aiming to reduce the high school dropout rate in Montreal, LIFE is a yearlong project that connects university mentors with high school students.

“By paying [the mentors], it’s sustainable and it has a social impact, [thus] making it a social enterprise,” Shah explained.

Mehreen Perwaiz, a member of the communications sector, explained the different sections of MV McGill: Youth engagement, communications, university affairs, and social business and consulting.

According to Perwaiz, the education aspect works to inform students on campus and beyond about the growing field of social business through youth engagement, which works with high school and CEGEP students through workshops and mentorship.

“We’ve reached around 200 students, and what’s impressive is

now Dawson [College] even has [its] own [MV] chapter,” Perwaiz said.

MV McGill is hosting their second Social Business Summit on Tuesday, March 24 at the Notman House. According to Ponsonnet, there is a speaker series, a networking period, and a dinner. The speakers include Anita Nowak, Director of Operations for McGill’s Social Learning for Social Impact massive open online course (MOOC); Henry Mintzberg, internationally renowned academic and author on business management; Richard St-Pierre, the president of the C2 Montreal conference; and Bernard d’Arche, a McGill student and a social entrepreneur, who created an enterprise to assist the rebuilding of Lac Mégnatic.

This idea won the Dobson cup, and d’Arche plans on raising approximately $1 million by the end of this year. “[After the tragedy that left this Quebec community de-

stroyed,] d’Arche created a business incubator, which is a business centre for all those business owners who had their offices destroyed, as well as for new entrepreneurs, providing a place where they can all work and create a network of businesses,” Ponsonnet said.

Yunus has guided Shah, Klimczak, and hundreds of young people from around the world towards a better future. With the help of Yunus, Shah said she hopes MV McGill will expand across the whole campus.

“We are almost exclusively a management club at McGill, so in five years, we’d like to [...] expand away from Bronfman to a base that is more central and more easily accessible for everyone on campus,” Shah said. “We know the value that interdisciplinary crosscollaboration can bring to social entrepreneurship. That way, if anyone has an idea, [MV] McGill can make it happen for them.”

8

Student Living

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Nega Sake opens in Lower Plateau Korean-Japanese restaurant offers simple, traditional dishes Keah Hansen Staff Writer Nega Sake, a Korean-Japanese restaurant, brings a fusion of flavours to the between Prince Arthur and Coloniale Avenue. With its grand opening this past weekend, the restaurant aims to cater to the large student population of the Lower Plateau, and add to the multicultural atmosphere of the neighbourhood.

Nega Sake’s venue offers a cozy and minimalistic atmosphere for its customers. The ground floor dining space has panelled cedar tables and chairs, as well as a booth for large parties. The decor consists of large clear

windows, as well as exposed brick walls, which add to its stylish ambiance. A large, overarching cherry blossom tree also lends a serene and vibrant colour to the tranquil ambiance, while the woodsy scent flooding through the restaurant adds to the naturallyinspired decor.

Nega Sake’s menu includes traditional Korean dishes, including ramen, bibimbap, and dolsot bibimbap. Japanese dishes include ragout, a hearty protein, vegetable, and rice stew. All main dishes have either meat options of beef, chicken, and pork, or a vegetarian option of tofu. The menu makes it easy for customers to decide on a meal, with three basic dishes and four protein choices. All mains ring up at $13 before taxes. There is also a variety of Ko-

rean and Japanese appetizers, including bulgogi, tempura, edamame, and tteokbokki. The dessert menu is also simple, with delicious options including hotteok, a Korean pancake, and accompanying ice cream flavours.

Among the various dishes offered, the Tofu Dolsot Bibimbap stood out in its comforting and satisfying taste. Dolsot means “stone pot” in Korean, and the meal was served in a sizzling stone pot resting on its wooden lid. Dolsot bibimbap is a variation of traditional bibimbap, which is a signature Korean dish. Cubed tofu, a fried egg, kimchi, bean sprouts, lettuce, shredded carrots, and cabbage were arranged on top of a bed of white steamed rice. Soy sauce was poured over, adding a salty

Making the Simple

finish to otherwise simple but fresh flavours. The large portion of the rice made the meal very filling, and the rice crisped on the bottom of the pot, which added texture. The meal was opened by a small appetizer of soup. Service throughout the meal was friendly and prompt, and a bottle of water was provided to the table.

Sangho Byeon, chef and comanager of Nega Sake, said he wanted to expand his restaurant business to Prince Arthur. He owns another Korean-Japanese restaurant, Petit-Tokebi, on Saint-Catherine.

This second location of Nega Sake has slight variations to the original venture to address the different clientele.

“The menu is a little bit different,”

Byeon said. “[The Plateau] has a lot of students, so it’s a simpler menu than our other location.”

Nega Sake has exciting seasonal plans for the summer months, when Prince Arthur’s pedestrian walkway awakens with tourists and everyday pedestrian commuters.

“We are going to have a terrace and start serving traditional ice soup over the summer,” Byeon added.

Overall, Nega Sake has a serene atmosphere and a simple menu with comforting meals. Its cozy ambiance is excellent for the winter months, but a terrace will help this eatery transition easily to summer. The restaurant is a welcomed addition to Prince Arthur and Coloniale Avenue, and is promising in its simplistic and delicious menu.

Crossword Corner

Exquisite Tips to make a classic broth

By Alycia Noë Knowing how to make a good and flavourful broth is a helpful tool to have in one’s repertoire. Broths have so many uses in the kitchen, ranging from making a delicious homemade chicken noodle soup to adding flavour to sauces. The key to an amazing broth is patience—let the broth reduce after straining to concentrate the flavours. Also, don’t hesitate to make a large batch, as broth freezes well and can spice up a dish in minutes. Broths can be either vegetarian or meat based.

In this recipe for chicken broth, simply replace the chicken with about 5 cups of mushrooms if you want to make the broth vegetarian.

Essential Ingredients:

Instructions: Step 1 Add all ingredients and

2 kg of chicken (whole chickens, legs, thighs, drums—not only breasts)

spices to a large pot.

Step 2

Put pot over medium heat.

By Cory Goldstein

Step 3

6 large celery ribs (roughly chopped)

Bring to a boil and then turn heat to low and allow broth to simmer for at least three hours.

4 large carrots (roughly chopped)

Step 4

Skim any fat from the top of the broth as necessary.

Step 5

2 large onions (roughly chopped)

Pour the broth through a strainer and allow broth to cool.

2 leeks (roughly chopped, optional) 10 garlic cloves (crushed) 4 litres cold water

2 bay leaves 2 sprigs of rosemary 4 sprigs of parsley 4 sprigs of thyme 6 black peppercorns

(Illustrations by Cordelia Cho)

Essential spices:

Step 6

Transfer broth to containers and refrigerate.

Step 7

Broth will last approximately four days in the fridge and up to six months in the freezer.

Find the answer key at: www.mcgilltribune.com

Across 1. Grocery tote 4. Online address 5. “Cut it out!”

7. Gravy holder 11. Hockey shot 14. Blow a gasket 15. Style of wrestling 16. French philosopher Georges 17. Highway entrance 19. “Good Will Hunting” school 20. “All in the Family” character 22. Not stale 23. Long, fluffy scarf 26. Loot or plunder 28. Manipulated person 29. Type of garlic mayonnaise 30. Circular

31. Mousse kin 32. Solemn wonder 33. University in Burnaby, BC 36. Marvel supervillain 40. “Is that _____?”

41. Of sound mind 42. Adventure 45. Take a ________ to (like) 46. Type of mart 48. Character from Adventure Time 49. They’re for kids, not a “silly rabbit” 50. Mightier than a sword

Down 1. Urban transporter 2. Monet’s “Water Lilies,” e.g.

3. Shiny or sheen 6. Mantra of the rave culture, abbr.

7. Used as a basis for soups and sauces 8. Paddle of a sort 9. It comes before beauty 10. _____ Aviv 12. Physicians’ org.

13. Fruit juice brand 16. Villainous “Star Wars” group 18. Grave danger 19. Be off target 21. Where to nosh on a knish 22. Devoid of good sense or judgment 23. “24” hero Jack 24. Possess 25. Conjunction, e.g.

26. Sink or droop

27. Filled pastries 28. McGill group for promoting women engineers 30. Cat’s prey 33. Quebec alcohol store 34. Infectious virus 35. Suffix meaning “little” 37. Something to file 38. Small hotels 39. Flow gradually 43. Internet standard for e-mail transmission, abbr.

44. Grow weary 45. That which was afraid of seven for eating nine 47. “Hurt,” “Terrible Lie,” and “Head Like a Hole” band, abbr.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Back to Bukowski’s future

Latest TNC production brings lofty dose of reality to alternate universe

This stage is a post-apocalyptic mindfield. (Yufei Wang / McGill Tribune)

I

luka ciklovan Staff Writer

n an age dominated by tweets and texts, it is quite easy to forget—or at least be distanced from—the chaos and warfare that ravages the world today. Kim Kardashian ‘breaks’ the internet while Russia breaks international laws. Dresses change from white to blue on Facebook while the situation in Syria stagnates.

‘Tinderites’ incessantly strike out while U.S. drone strikes still affect countless families.

Luckily, Tuesday Night Café’s (TNC) latest production offers a great reality check.

Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame— the lovechild of 1984 and Brave New World— explores the moral, social, and physical complications that plague four war veterans in the year 2045, and is inspired by the work of author Charles Bukowski. By tracing the personal struggles of veterans prior to their military-induced reliance on “ephembrium,” a drug that erases the users’ memories and places them in a state of perpetual present, the play raises much needed awareness for the oftenneglected struggles of war veterans, questioning the nature of a contemporary society that can ultimately lead people to surrender choice.

Due to an immersive, multi-media set, fantastic acting, and unique writing, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame ultimately shines and succeeds in generating much needed human empathy in a world that risks losing it.

The play breaks down the gap between audience and actor, something the audience notices immediately upon entering. A lone actor was onstage to inhabit the veteran care facility while seats were still filling up, the house lights were on, and audience members were free to converse. This allowed director Ali Vanderkuyk to create a sense of inclusiveness with the audience that permeated the entire play. It felt like walking into a real care facility that operates independently of any audience.

Nicole Coon’s set arrangement also ensured that actors primarily entered and exited through the audience, thus creating a link between the characters—fictional war veterans of the future—and the viewers. Most notably, this immersion was cemented by the incorporation of a large projector screen into the set that often simulated the world beyond the confines of the care facility and even visualized text messages between characters. The set’s

immersion, however, is so powerful that it slightly hindered the play by creating moments of awkward uncertainty on whether the acting was actually over. Regardless, the set design forced the audience into having an emotional stake in the play, and by extension, the human problems it tackles.

The set also houses a group of impressive actors. The fact that Vanderkuyk wrote the script in conjunction with the cast is evident in how natural each line delivery felt. Ruthie PytkaJones’ (Lane) fidgety movements and masterful stuttering are downright hilarious, and, in particular, her close interactions with Jedidah Nabwangu (Haydee)—who rarely raises her voice and speaks in closed body language—are impressive acting moments. Nicholas LePage (Marty) and Thoby King (Tate), with their eerie, hollow-eyed addresses to the audience and palpably deteriorating friendship brilliantly conveyed the alienation that permeates the human condition with or without warfare. Ruby Iacobelli (Lola), alongside the more temperate Claire Morse (Chloe), dominated the second act of the play with her assertive line delivery and booming voice.

The highlight of the play lies within the writing. Drawing directly from the works of Bukowski, Vanderkuyk weaves the author’s pervading themes of human isolation, alcoholism, and the frailty of human relationships seamlessly throughout the play.

She then makes these themes more accessible to a modern audience through various pop culture references—Rock Band being my personal favorite—and a diverse set of characters that encompass core human archetypes.

A rare downside was the perhaps intentional gloom and doom of the first act, which dragged on far too long and created a stressful test of mental endurance before the second act. This aside, if you’re looking for an introduction into the lonely world of Bukowski, but with a modern and war-stricken setting that mirrors and addresses many aspects of today’s world, definitely check out Burning In Water, Drowning In Flame.

Burning In Water, Drowning In Flame runs from Wednesday, March 18 to Saturday, March 21 and from Wednesday, March 25 to Saturday, March 28. Performances start at 8 p.m. at Tuesday Night Café Theatre (3485 McTavish). Student/senior tickets are $6 and adult tickets are $10.

Jake, left, rides on a tank stolen from the Syrian regime by the FSA. (Photo courtesy of Lindsey Snell)

In war-torn Middle East, freelance journalists hunt for stories and sales

By Daniel Lombroso

S

ince the Arab Spring began five years ago, much of what the Western world knows about the Middle East has been produced by a new band of freelance journalists on the front lines of the world’s most dangerous conflicts.

Travelling to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Libya without the backing of major media outlets, these young journalists have little formal training or resources required to safely cover stories in the region. On a good day, they earn $70 USD for a report from the front lines of the Syrian Civil War. For young journalists reporting from the Middle East, they weigh a hazardous lifestyle with the opportunity to write and witness history as it’s being made.

Jake Simkin, 34, was a commercial photographer in Australia before deciding to become a freelance war photographer a decade ago. Although he was earning a steady income shooting music videos and commercials, Simkin was uninspired by his comfortable life in Melbourne. After a brief stint photographing victims of the tsunami in Banda Aceh, Indonesia in 2004, Simkin reassessed his career.

“I came back home and told my friends about the horrible things I had seen [after the tsunami],” Simkin explained. “I found that people in Australia were so consumed by material needs, [but] I became obsessed with the idea of wanting to know what it meant to live and experience all emotions in life.”

In 2006, Simkin booked a one-way ticket to Kabul, Afghanistan, and began his career as a freelance photojournalist in the midst of the U.S.-led war against the Taliban and AlQaeda. Speaking only a few words of the Persian language Dari, Simkin worked with fixers—translators knowledgeable of the local terrain—to help him find and cover stories.

While many of the Western journalists were fearful of leaving the American compound at that time, Simkin rode his motorcycle all through Kabul and even into the tribal regions of the country in search of better stories. In a decade of work, Simkin has sold his photographs to the Associated Press, the Guardian, and The New York Times.

“As a journalist, you are exposed to horrible things, but you try your best to create change,” Simkin said. “I look for hope in very difficult places. There are people who haven’t given up on life, even in Afghanistan. Their stories need to be told.”

Throughout this experience, Simkin formed invaluable relationships that continue to resonate with him. One of Simkin’s earliest friends in Afghanistan was Nowab, a street kid he taught to skateboard.

“Nowab was [the journalists’] favourite,” Simkin recalled. “He was such a smart kid. He taught himself English.”

One day, Nowab spotted a suicide bomber near the American compound in Kabul. As Nowab tried to report the incident to the Afghan security forces, the bomber panicked and pulled the mechanism in his suicide vest. When Simkin

received a phone call notifying him of the news, he realized just how integrated his life had become with his career.

“I felt a real sense of loss for a younger brother,” Simkin said.

“Nowab, like Afghanistan, had become a part of me.”

In the years since Nowab’s death, Simkin has lost many other close friends and faced life-threatening situations himself. The ubiquity of death is perhaps the only predictable part of his job.

In Somalia last year, Simkin was riding in an ambulance when teenage Al-Shabab militants attacked the car and fired a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), killing the driver and the medic in the front passenger’s seat.

“I was knocked out cold and covered in blood,” Simkin recalled. “I only survived because the Al-Shabab fighters assumed I was dead.”

He paused for a moment.

“This job certainly isn’t for everyone.”

The foreign correspondent has always had a reputation for being a daredevil. In the earlier days of print media however, the risk of conflict-zone reporting came with a daily byline, a stable staff-writer position, and a steadily accumulating 401 K. Today, the equation has fundamentally changed. With media outlets downsizing every year, the biggest newspapers are increasingly relying on freelancers who are cheaper to pay and require none of the traditional benefits promised to contract workers. Many argue that this hands-off relationship allows newspapers to receive the best reporting from the Middle East without covering any of the risk.

For freelancers trying to make a living, the competition is fierce. Since only a finite number of outlets are buying articles to begin with—most digital media organizations now simply aggregate existing reports—journalists are incentivized to take more dangerous risks in pursuit of stories that sell.

Over the past few years, Iraq and Syria have become perhaps the single most popular area for young freelance journalists to launch their careers. In this region, there are sometimes as many journalists as local militia fighters.

Two months ago, Simkin crossed the Turkish border into Kobani, Syria, to cover the battle between the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the Kurdish YPG, and Islamic State (IS). He had recently been expelled from a group supporting freelance journalists in the Middle East for his repeated entry into Syria, but had since established an amicable relationship with a Turkish intelligence official and was granted permission to re-enter the country.

Following a small unit from the FSA in Kobani, Simkin came under fire from IS militants and took refuge in one of the town’s bombed-out buildings. IS fighters emerged from a smoke plume moments later and shot the lead FSA commander metres from where Simkin was hiding. When the fighting ceased, Simkin emerged from the rubble and

helped carry the wounded commander to the Turkish-Syrian border. After receiving medical attention in Turkey, he survived his wounds.

Allan Kaval, a 25-year-old journalist, was one of the many other people reporting on Kobani in those days of fighting between the FSA, the YPG, and IS. His story is typical of this new crop of freelancers covering the region.

Originally from Paris, Kaval long studied the Kurdish issue, but only saw an opportunity to report on it professionally after the unrest began in Iraq and Syria. Today, he reports from Erbil, Iraq and sells the majority of his work to La Monde in France. He has reported on some of the year’s biggest stories, including the humanitarian disaster of the Yazidis trapped on Mt. Sinjar and the Kurdish front against IS, where he blends macro-level geopolitics in his coverage with personal stories of those affected on the ground.

My path crossed with Kaval’s one year ago at a government building in Southeastern Turkey just as his journalism career was taking off. I was shooting a documentary film on the dwindling Assyrian Christian community in Turkish Kurdistan and was waiting to interview the province’s Christian governor, Februniye Akyol: Kaval had just learned about the IS takeover of Mosul, and was hoping that a local Kurdish official would know where he could find a hole in the fence to cross into Iraq and cover the story.

Kaval and I spent a few restless hours together waiting for our respective interviews, and we quickly bonded over the dangers of Middle East reporting.

As a student journalist and filmmaker graduating this spring, I held abstract fantasies about travelling to war-torn regions and reporting on the defining conflicts of our day. Still, Turkish Kurdistan, a comparatively safe part of the region, was the furthest I was willing to go in pursuit of a story. Surely, my nervous mother would not be too fond of me

Allan, right, interviews a Sunni refugee at a camp near Khanaqin, Iraq. (Photo courtesy of Matt Cetti-Roberts) spending my evenings in bombed-out sections of Syria and Iraq.

I ultimately split from Kaval to go talk to Akyol, but found his take on the craft incredibly insightful for aspiring journalists like myself. Kaval rebels against the characterization of the freelancer as an adventurer. Humble and introspective, he sees himself as a vital chronicler of history.

“People don’t choose war,” Kaval said. “They are only suffering the consequences of a war that has been decided by other people. The most important thing is to record these terrible stories, and through them, try to make sense of this bloodshed.”

Some of the most harrowing stories Kaval has covered have been on the border between Iraq and Iran, where Iranian-backed Shiite militias have ravJake discusses his work in Melbourne, Australia for an upcoming documentary aged Sunni villages. In one village, all (Photo courtesy of Cassie de Colling) of the residents fled an impending invasion by Shiite militia, but were unable In a recent piece for The Atlantic, their work.” to bring one of the town’s mentally ill Jeffrey Goldberg argued that journalists Simkin agrees with Kaval that IS citizens along with them. When the mi- in the Middle East can no longer be as- controlled areas are a no-go zone for litia arrived to find a ghost town, they sured of their safety. journalists. beheaded the lone handicapped man “[Reporting in] their territory is ab“Extremists don’t need a middleand kicked his head around as if it were man anymore,” Goldberg commented, solutely a death sentence,” Simkin says a soccer ball. with reference to the Jihadi groups’ of the region controlled by the Islamic “He was a mentally ill person,” use of social media to disseminate their State in Iraq and Syria. “I am willing to Kaval lamented. “He couldn’t hurt any- messages. “Journalists have been re- go anywhere except for there, where the body. He couldn’t even wash his body placed by YouTube.” In the past, “the rate of failure is so high.” or eat for himself. It’s always the same transaction worked for both parties,” he Many of Simkin and Kaval’s conhorrible stories, every single day.” explained. But now, journalists serve lit- temporaries have been far less cautious.

For Kaval, the hardest part of tle purpose for extremists other than to Earlier this year, Simkin was in a hotel being a freelancer is not the lack of a be kidnapped for ransom or killed. in Turkey with Japanese journalist Kenji steady income or the daily dangers, but His cynical assessment is unfortu- Goto the day before he left for IS-conthe difficulty of balancing a personal life nately proving to be correct. Last year, trolled Syria. with his professional duties.

“I was one of the last people to see 61 journalists were killed in the field, “In the morning, I go meet peo- among the highest numbers in history. Kenji before he got captured,” Simkin ple who have been kidnapped, abused, Nearly half of those reporters are free- said. “He never told anyone where he raped, and then return to my hotel and lancers, according to the Committee to was going.” talk to my parents about the tiny prob- Protect Journalists. For reporters all over On Jan. 30, 2015, Goto was belems they have at work, with family, or the region, this has been a soul-search- headed by IS. with the coffee machine,” Kaval said. ing moment.

“If I knew he was going there, I “It’s surreal to, on the same day, inhabit “Every journalist has thought to would have convinced him that it was a two such different worlds.” himself: If I take the wrong road, I could bad, bad idea,” Simkin explained. “Still, get kidnapped by [IS],” Kaval acknowl- I know it would have been hard to talk edged. “It’s something that everyone him out of it: He felt he had a duty to tell keeps in mind every day when doing this story to the world.”

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Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Inside the Echo Chamber Chris Lutes Staff Writer We are in the midst of a culture war where the personal and the political are becoming increasingly intertwined. A new discourse of social consciousness is emerging as the generation that was born in a world with ostensible equity across racial, sexual, and gender lines comes of age and realizes that things aren’t as equally represented as the people at the top claim they are be. This has manifested itself in a million different ways across the McGill campus, from women-only gym hours to ‘Farnan-gate.’

Beyond McGill, issues of proper representation abound; we can see that these issues are endemic of the culture at large.

This problem extends to popular media in that representation of women and minorities in media is nowhere near what it should be. To wit: Recent data shows that 90 per cent of major motion picture leads in a given year are white, and 75 per cent are male. Close to 90 per cent of television writers are white. Seven of the nine major television network heads and seven of the eight major film studio heads are white males. This is, of course, grossly out of line with how demographics are distributed in terms of population, so why has this been happening?

Civil rights have made decidedly huge leaps in the last several decades, but it seems like television and film have been changing at a much slower rate than the rest of the world. The problem begins at the top. “[Lack of diversity] is typical of North American power in general,” says Dr. Morton Weinfeld, professor in the McGill Sociology Department. “This would be true of Fortune 500 companies. This would be true of leaders of the major Ivy league universities, et cetera.”

A lot of this comes from the fact that demographic difference is split along socioeconomic lines. White males are more likely to earn more and be placed in positions of power than any other demographic. This creates a sort of echo chamber in which the perspectives of the majority are constantly reaffirmed while non-majority perspectives are

it only makes it more difficult for consumers to discern who is truly committed to diversity.

However, it’s important to note that things may be getting better.

The same principle applies not given an equitable footing to “[I remember] exactly when to how the society is influenced showcase their stories. the number of leading visible The race and class hegemony by content, which is what leads to minority characters on television also has secondary effects in such intense and vitriolic backlash was zero—an easy number to terms of the type of media that against any changes in the status remember,” recalls Dr. Weinfeld. gets produced and how people quo. While the actual number “The number of such characters of people protesting increased react to it. as leading roles in film was zero.

“An image is not just an diversity is small, it accounts The number of [minority] newscasters was zero.”

It’s easy to forget this fact when there’s so much that needs correcting, but things are changing quickly and noticeably.

In television, we seem to be exiting an era where prestige dramas are defined by white men doing terrible things, and entering one where there’s a lot more balance in representation. Content creators like Tina Fey, Shonda Rhimes, Mindy Kaling, and Justin Simien (to name just a few) are engaging with their ideologies and struggles while dispelling the myth that feminist and racial perspectives come in one monolithic form.

For example, shows like Black-ish and Fresh off the Boat succeed not because of their representation of minority culture, but in their portrayal of a very specific and singular family dynamic.

Real change is coming from the bottomup, as well. Empirical data reveals that shows with an accurate amount of minority representation are watched more than shows that have less than the average, and television is slowly changing to meet those demands. Campbell extolls the virtues of social media as a place where everybody is on an even playing field. Mediums like Twitter offer an opportunity for broad social movements to organize with relative ease and influence the people at A new crowd is taking over Hollywood. (imgkid.com/ fanpop.com/ vanityfair.com/ sasheer.com) the top. While there’s the image,” remarked professor for some of the most fervent and reflects the demographic makeup irony that most of the worst, least Margaret Campbell, at the regular dissent—be it against of North America, it can be progressive speech also comes Concordia Department of women’s gym hours or what Lena unclear whether the increase is from these platforms, social Sociology. “It’s really close to Dunham’s antics on Girls. This due to valid positive change or a media is ultimately doing more people—the way they perceive problem stems from two things. desire to appease the public. For good than harm. Hate increasingly themselves, their sense of One is that the majority has been instance, take the case of Sasheer falls on deaf ears, getting lost identity, their personhood, the used to having a monopoly on Zamata, who was hired as a in the white noise of the sheer way they perceive others.” Thus, what airs for so long that any Saturday Night Live (SNL) cast volume of social commentary. when a young black male watches alterations to it are perceived as member amid a public controversy What gets left over and recycled television and sees that a huge a threat. The other is that people that the show was not diverse and reblogged and retweeted is proportion of black actors are of the overrepresented majority enough. Now she is rarely used a critical analysis of the present being typecast as criminals, part misread the messages of content at all. SNL has, it seems, filled and a hope that we may live in a of that gets internalized and the as labelling them as tacitly or its quota. This sort of lip service world that is as equal as we dream overtly racist or misogynist. It clearly doesn’t benefit anybody— it to be. boy’s world gets a little smaller. puts people on the defensive— since nobody wants to be called prejudiced—and sparks backlash and aggression towards the media that they think is criticizing them.

There’s also an uneasy clashing of genuine improvement and institutionalized discrimination at the executive level of entertainment. While some studios seem to be legitimately trying to produce content that more accurately

13

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Peer Review

Bring Your Own Juice in peak form. (Photo courtesy of Katey Wattam) written collectively by all the actors performing in the show.

The sketch follows a nonlinear plot jumping from theme to theme, headquarters and festival, the comedy while juxtaposing comedic elements that are completely unrelated. Apart scene is underrepresented at McGill?

Despite this fact, 15 talented from a single skit that is repeated, McGill students brought the third the audience is exposed to a range annual Bring Your Own Juice of sketches, musical numbers, and (BYOJ) production to life at the even amusing dances. It is this SNLPlayers’ Theatre this past Thursday, inspired cohesive chaos that keeps the Friday, and Saturday. The live sketch packed theatre laughing and riveted comedy, the sole group of its kind for the entire two hours. “[There are] a lot of people from a on campus, is entirely original and is

Bring Your Own Juice Janine Refai Contributor It is no surprise that McGill, a school of academia and research, is reputable for its political groups, newspapers, and environmental activism. Yet, comedy often fades into the background almost unnoticed.

How ironic is it that in Montreal, a city that’s home to the Just for Laughs

lot of different comedic backgrounds: Improv, stand up, writing, or proper theatre,” said Andrej Gomizelj, stage manager. “Because everything is written by a different perso, you have two things coming next to each other that have no reason to be next to each other in any way—they shouldn’t be, but it works.”

Swearing, sexual content, and societal stereotypes are prevalent throughout the sketch; however, for the most part, the jokes remain light and politically correct. In particular, an entire sketch is devoted to a Canadian spin, in which the actors attack every Canadian stereotype imaginable from an apologetic love of hockey to Canadian pride in free health care, finally concluding with a humorous chorus of “O’Canada.”

“It may not be your sense of humour, but you begin to appreciate it,” remarks director Dan Moczula.

“It broadens your perspective on what is humor, what is funny, and what belongs on stage.”

Despite the fact that the entire show is written, refined, produced, and performed in a month’s time, chemistry between the cast manifests itself through almost every joke. Even during rehearsal, tension between the cast is minimal and dissipates quickly.

“Conflicts are monetary, taking a step back it’s always about the bigger picture,” commented Courtney Kassel, marketing director. “I don’t think we’ve ever had any creative conflicts, which is really interesting because we have such a diverse style.

We’ve always just ended up with something without it being a source of tension.”

This year, BYOJ underwent a drastic transition from an autocracy to democracy, which revolutionized its creative production process. Now any member of the McGill community, whether undergraduate, graduate, or professor—theoretically—can submit a script. Individuals from last year’s production review the entries and then blindly vote on which scripts should be selected. The group is also gaining momentum in numbers, expanding from eight members last year to the current 15, as well as in performance time, as this is the first year the production will run for three shows instead of one.

This holistic, bottom-up approach unites a group all working towards the same goal: Putting on a great show that will draw attention to comedy at McGill.

“We always call it our ‘sketch baby,’ because it’s something we hold near and dear to us and also stay up way too late taking care of, devoting ridiculous amounts of effort and time towards,” Kassel explained.

As McGill does not officially recognize the BYOJ group as an organization, it faces several challenges. They are heavily reliant on other associations for funding and room reserving. The group is currently in the process of applying for SSMU club status, but this is a timely process, Moczula claimed.

“We want to make comedy a reputable thing at McGill,” he said.

“What we want to be is an independent place for intelligent, critically-minded people [who] are able to make fart jokes, and can book our own rooms.”

A fresh perspective? It’s a boat time Cece zhang News Editor The airing of the show Fresh Off The Boat (FOTB) on ABC was met with much fanfare and hype.

The show—based off the life of chef Eddie Huang, as numerous blog sites were quick to note—was the first TV show in American mainstream media starring Asian Americans since All-American Girl (1994) starring Margaret Cho. Though Cho’s show was cut from the network after one season, FOTB currently has strong ratings and is being applauded for its ability to make racial jokes without being racist.

I had always been slightly dismissive of the numerous studies connecting media representation and self-validation. Growing up as an Asian Canadian, I had known no shows starring people who “looked like me,” but I didn’t feel deprived.

I prided myself on being race-blind, focusing on the universal themes of shows instead of jibes about the race of my protagonist. But I surprised myself with the fervour with which

I approached this show. When I read about its inception on media sites, I scrambled to watch the first episode, and then the next. I had not realized my craving for a protagonist who looks like me until I had access to one.

I didn’t realize how good it felt to see Jessica Huang, portrayed by Constance Wu, eat sliced apple straight off the blade of a knife while home tutoring her children. All the “Asian mom” moments I had joked about with my friends—the shared moments of, “Your mom does that too?”—were finally on the screen for thousands of people to see. I had not realized how much I needed that validation, of what constituted ‘normal’ behaviour for ‘normal’ families.

There has been plenty of discourse regarding how FOTB should not be the messiah of representation of Asian North Americans. Both the creators of the show and the actors have come towards the media denying their intention to be representative of all Asian American family experiences.

Instead, they urge critics to promote a more diverse range of Asian talent and diffuse the need for FOTB to be a beacon of representation.

In many respects, I should not be able to relate to this show at all. I

could add my two cents to the babble of complaints of the show’s fake Taiwanese accents or the forced frugality jokes. A “stereotypical Asian” child like myself would have still been hard pressed to understand the hardships of young Eddie, who deals with being an Asian minority in suburban Orlando—I grew up in a racially diverse neighbourhood of Toronto. But universal themes of childhood isolation, and even the first brush with racism (Eddie is called a “chink” by a classmate in the third episode of the show—I was the target of bullying as “that Chinese kid” in third grade), not to mention the show’s absurd twists of humour, make FOTB generally excellent in its own right.

Although I support the arguments against putting pressure on FOTB to be the “model show” for the “model ethnicity,” I can also empathize with the clamour of voices urging the show to depict their families in such-andsuch scenarios. The voices are urgent and impatient, vibrant with the sense of possibility that this one show has conferred, as if trying to make up for 20 years of lost time. However, what they are asking of FOTB would be called, in my mother’s words, “trying to reach the sky in one step.” It’s important to

A Huang family portrait. (Susanne Wang / McGill Tribune) take a breath and channel those newly realized energies into other channels— supporting new media initiatives with minority majority casts, becoming patrons of upcoming talent, and continuing the dialogue around racial

issues. Here’s to hoping that in the near future, shows and movies starring minorities will become so common that casting choices won’t be the primary label they are known for.

14

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Songs for my future wedding

ALBUM REVIEWS SUFJAN STEVENS - CARRIE AND LOWELL ASTHMATIC KITTY

Sophie Jewett Contributor

God Only Knows

Artist: Beach Boys Album: Pet Sounds Released: May 16, 1966 This wonderful, harmonically complex, feel-good track is not always rightfully recognized as one of the greatest tracks of the 1960s. According to the songwriters, it is a story told from the point of view of a man contemplating life after death and professing his eternal love for his paramour. The Beach Boys are the perfect addition to any wedding soundtrack due to their affinity for songs about all-consuming love. This track would be the perfect end to the big day with a couple professing a larger-than-life love for each other, for “as long as there are stars above [them].”

I Think of You

Artist: Rodriguez Album: Coming From Reality Released: November 1971 Released in 2012, the documentary Searching for Sugar Man detailed the story of Cape Town fans trying to find their favorite musician, Sixto Rodriguez, who was rumoured to be dead. In reality, they found the legendary musician working construction in Detroit. Rodriguez’s music never took off in the U.S., but became the soundtrack to the lives of many young South Africans with the anti-Apartheid movement as a backdrop. This track, with its soulful guitar and haunting lyrics, might be one of the greatest love songs ever. Its slow pace and smooth guitar makes it perfect for a walk down the aisle on that special day.

Asthmatic Kitty Records recently gave us an initial glimpse of Sufjan Stevens’ seventh studio album, Carrie and Lowell, by releasing YouTube videos for his new tracks “Should Have Known Better” and “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross.” The former is a montage of extended still camera shots that depict a rocky beach shore, a long bridge

Welsh singer Marina Diamandis (stagename Marina & the Diamonds) has previously been somewhat unsuccessful in cultivating her own identity within the muchcrowded pop music scene. Her debut, The Family Jewels (2010), was a rather garish, cock-a-hoop record, and 2012’s Electra

- Max Berger

Heart suffered from over-collaboration due to Marina’s route-one scramble for a ‘pop’ sound. Thankfully, on her third album, Froot, she’s finally gotten it right.

Leaving the shrill vocals and halffleshed-out characters behind, Marina has progressed by taking a step back in every sense of the albums’ creation, re-focusing on the things she does best. The lyricism is introverted and tackles more nuanced themes of loneliness, feminism, and self-worth. The production is immaculate, taking on a noticeably ’70s/’80s sound which does a superb job of showcasing Marina’s much-improved and streamlined vocals.

“Blue,” an irresistible 1980s track, describes a vulnerable dependency: “Give me love, give me dreams, give me a good self-esteem,” while the upbeat music tries to veil the sadness hidden within the lyrics. On “Forget,” she sadly admits that, “I have lived my life in debt, I’ve spent my days in deep

regret.” During the standout track, “Solitaire,” she compares her career to more successful artists: “All the other jewels around me astounded me at first [….] but I’m not cursed/ I was just covered in dirt.”

Froot showcases Marina’s acceptance of her rather off-kilter place within not just the music industry, but society as well. It’s an incredibly introspective and self-aware record: One that has enabled her to face the fears she’s seemingly avoided on her previous work, and with that, wash off the dirt and progress onward triumphantly. She confidently states on the eponymous track, “Finally I have found a way to be,” and that, “Life couldn’t get much sweeter,” and with the release of Froot , it’s clear that she means it.

— - Jack Neal

KENDRICK LAMAR - TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY INTERSCOPE

Ritual Union

Artist: Little Dragon Album: Ritual Union Released: July 25, 2011 Little Dragon is a small electronic band that earned its name due to lead vocalist Yukimi Nagano’s tendency to throw “fuming tantrums” in the recording studio.

The band’s unique sound earned them a feature on Gorillaz’s excellent album Plastic Beach (2010). This track has a wonderfully sexy, alluring style, making you want to dance close to that special someone. Its title alone makes it the perfect song to include in a wedding, but its balance of energetic and mellow makes it an ideal song for fun dancing while dressed in classy attire.

Continuity is the norm, but on the rare occasions where Stevens does shake things up, it’s to the album’s benefit. Carrie and Lowell is largely about the complicated relationship Stevens had with his now deceased mother (Carrie), and—to a lesser extent—his stepfather (Lowell), and he directly addresses these themes on “Carrie and Lowell” and “Should Have Known Better.” Both tracks start of with downcast melodies that eventually give way to beautiful, uplifting finales, which we can only hope is an indication of healing on their songwriter’s part.

Depending on how you feel about Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, Carrie and Lowell is the frontrunner for best album of 2015. Regardless, Sufjan Stevens is back, and we’re lucky to have him.

MARINA & THE DIAMONDS - FROOT ATLANTIC

Modern Love

Artist: David Bowie Album: Let’s Dance Released: April 14, 1978 There is no better way to get the party started than an old-school ’80s dance track. David Bowie created a true masterpiece with this iconic track. The song is youthful and rebellious, and can easily relate to any couple’s love story. It brings us back to the comedic torture of teenage years portrayed in films like The Breakfast Club. Although more mainstream, this track has a significant alien edge, which makes both a surprise and a favourite track on the dance floor.

with minimal traffic, a pier, and a car driving through a prairie; the latter spends its entire 2:39 runtime fixated on a heavy tide rolling in under a lush mountain. The minimalist, steady approach in both videos speaks perfectly to one of Stevens’ greatest artistic strengths: Crafting deceptively simple music and emphasizing repetition in a way that is anything but tedious.

That was the case with vintage Stevens hits like “Chicago” and “Casimir Pulaski Day,” where he forgoes choruses and bridges in favour of homostrophic brilliance, and it still stands on Carrie and Lowell. It’s his most stripped-down album in years, and tracks like “Death With Dignity” and “Eugene” consist almost entirely of Stevens singing in a hushed voice over a soft, continuous chord progression. When he adds new layers of instrumentation, they’re precisely measured and don’t detract from the hymn-like quality of his music.

Kendrick Lamar is at his best when he embraces the contradictions that define his life. He is one of the most famous rappers alive, but feels stifled by

his culture and his past. He’s outwardly full of bravado and bluster, yet unable to get past his crippling self-doubt. Fame has let him escape from the hell of the inner city, but he “keeps runnin’ back for a visit.”

All of this is on display in his new, game-changing album, To Pimp A Butterfly , making it more impressive that the album feels of a complete piece rather than just a collection of songs. Songs like “u” and “i” showcase the fluctuations in his psyche, cycling from selfhate to self-love. “Hood Politics” succinctly zooms from micro to macro on the issue of racial politics, starting with his friends in the hood and ending with the President of the United States.

Musically, he has forged an iconoclastic sound inspired by Flying Lotus and jazz and funk standards of the ’70s, leaving behind the sound that typifies a lot of modern hip hop. He has also largely done away with guest verses, which gives him more room to show off the remarkable amount of control and range he has over his voice, moving between gruff, rasping, and high-pitched yelps of victory. This is a work of supreme confidence and insight, and deserves a spot in the hip-hop hall of fame, right next to Illmatic (1994) and Fear of a Black Planet (1990).

- Chris Lutes

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

15

Science & Technology

Montreal amongst cities hosting brain awareness week

Presentations looks to debunk myths surrounding the human brain lydia kaprelian Staff Writer

(Continued from page 1) “We target kids—though not exclusively—so that from an early age they start understanding how the brain works,” said Abizaid. “[We’re] getting them excited for that particular topic so that when they get older they have neuroscience [in their heads] as an option for their studies.”

The success of Montreal’s Brain Awareness Week is based on its core of student volunteers.

At elementary schools, student volunteers explain the basics of the brain’s processing of the five senses. At the high school level, volunteers present a PowerPoint called “Drugs and the Brain.”

“I like that it’s not preachy,” explained Brain Awareness Montreal President Clara BolsterFoucault.

The presentation covers everything from marijuana to cocaine to ecstasy. It offers a physiological explanation for behaviour and long-term effects based on drug-affected neurotransmission in the brain. At the end of the presentation, the volunteers bring out a preserved cow brain that the students in the classroom can touch and hold with gloved hands. The demonstration offers

a hands-on approach to neuroscience.

“Students who I meet now that are volunteering say that they wish they had it around when they were [high school] students,” explained Kelly Hennegan, vice-president of the anglophone volunteering branch for Brain Awareness Week.

Hennegan and her co-vicepresident are in charge of organizing student volunteers to visit anglophone high schools in the area. Throughout this year’s Brain Awareness Week, they have organized 65 presentations in high schools on and off the island.

“There’s a lot to coordinate,” Hennegan admitted. “It was definitely a lot more than I anticipated. You have to relinquish some control and delegate to others.

But it’s nice to be a part of something that big.”

Brain Awareness Week is a part of the larger organization called Brain Awareness Montreal. Brain Awareness Montreal sponsors other activities including Brain-B, a neuroscience trivia competition for kids, an open house at the Montreal Neurological Institute, and Sci-Cafés.

“We started an outreach campaign for adults called Sci-Café,” explained Bolster-Foucault. “We have three of them every year and they are basically panel discussions on neuroscience topics.”

(Eleanor Milman / McGill Tribune) Past topics have included schizophrenia, sex and attachment, addiction, and concussions.

With brain research as the main tenet of Brain Awareness Week, Carleton professor Abi-

zaid offers some advice on how to get started.

“Some people may be more interested in human research, others may be more interested in animal research or cellular or

molecular lab work,” explained Abizaid. “It’s nice to gain some experience in both so that you can decide what it is you’re more passionate about. And when you find that passion, don’t let it go.”

The mammoth cometh chloe nevitt Science & Technology Editor In February 2012, Harvard college professor and genetic engineer George Church hosted a symposium at the Harvard Medical School titled: “Bringing Back the Passenger Pigeon.” The talk centred on the use of new genome-editing technology that could change the concept of reversing extinction from being a dream to a reality. The technique, known as CRISPR—described as “jaw dropping” by Nobel scientist Craig Mello to the Independent —allows scientists to make precise changes to DNA with ease. Church, who was one of the first scientists able to successfully employ the process in both human and mouse cells, has successfully used this technique today to create functioning elephant cells coding for mammoth DNA.

This achievement marks the beginning of easy, accessible, and precise genetic modification—a possibility feared by many. While the fear of the unknown is normal—if not expected—acting on these fears will come at a cost.

When considering genomic editing, it’s easy to slip into the trap of cinematic exaggeration.

We imagine the results given in Splice, the 2009 science-fiction horror film featuring a terrifyingly beautiful humanoid creature that is the product of the work of two genetic engineers that went amuck. Or in Gattaca, where doctors quantify inferior and superior people based purely on their genetic code. In both, we are meant to perceive the notion of genetic modification to improve the human genome—a concept known as eugenics—to be bad.

This concept, almost two decades later, somehow still lingers.

In light of Church’s recent success in combining the extinct

mammoth’s DNA with that of the very alive elephant, it is easy, if not natural, to immediately consider the ramifications of genetic modification on humans and as such, put a stop to it.

On March 19, 18 scientists, including David Baltimore and Jennifer Doudna, CRISPR/ Cas9 co-discovers, published an editorial in Science outlining their fears for the future of gene modification. The editorial, titled “A prudent path forward for genomic engineering and germline gene modification,” urged for the transparency and caution of scientists.

“The possibility of human germline engineering has long been a source of excitement and unease among the general public, especially in light of concerns about initiating a ‘slippery slope’ from disease-curing applications toward uses with less compelling or even troubling implications,” the authors explained.

How are we meant to move forward then?

The implications of genomic modifications for humans is riddled with countless debates in law and bioethics, slowing the progress of scientists—akin to the controversy facing the use of embryonic stem cells. When considering the potential to alleviate human suffering through the understanding of genetic diseases via controlled and intelligent genetic modifications in animal subjects, there is no consideration: Genetic modification must continue, unequivocally.

However, when considering changes to the human genome, the lines become increasingly blurry. An editorial published in Nature echoed the sentiments of those presented in Science by suggesting a ban on all edits to the human germ line. But these types of sentiments place those in the scientific community on the edge of a very steep cliff in which

we are allowed to look over, but never jump.

It’s easy to imagine that the use of genetic modification tools will lead into an age of super-humans where we modify our embryos to create children that are smarter, faster, and stronger. Instead, we must imagine that these tools will enable the understanding, and eventual curing, of horrible diseases and aliments afflicting people everywhere. But, like with all new technologies targeted for human use, we must tread carefully. Checks and balances must be implemented to limit— but never halt—the forward progress of tools like CRISPR. Today, if we possess the skills, the knowledge, and the tools to bring back an animal that was last seen on earth 4,500 years ago, then how can we so nascently predict what will come tomorrow? By stopping, we are failing to meet the very basis of scientific inquiry.

16

Science & Technology

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

A guide to the galaxy Meeting our planetary neighbours

This month in

STudent research (L-A Benoit / McGill Tribune) clare lyle Staff Writer When Valérie Losier, a U3 Physics major, holds up the project she’s been working on for the past academic year, it doesn’t look like the next generation of breast cancer detection technology. Nonetheless, the device—a labyrinth of wires connecting computers and sensors to a bra—may soon become common sight in hospitals and doctors’ offices.

The Popovich lab where Losier has spent the past seven months working is exploring a method of breast cancer detection that moves away from traditional x-ray mammography, which uses the densities of different types of tissues to make a diagnosis. Instead, this new technology uses microwaves to look at tissues’ dielectric properties—a measure of a substance’s ability to reflect and refract radiation.

“The whole basis of this research is that tissues of the breast have different dielectric properties,” Losier said. “You basically shine light [at the tissues], and depending on what is scattered off, you can construct a map [using] the dielectric properties.”

Since the tumours have different dielectric properties, it makes detecting them easy. The detection instrument’s safety presents a major advantage over traditional mammograms.

“X-ray mammography uses X-rays, which ionizes the tissues, and that limits the scans to one time per year, and that’s obviously not optimal,” Losier explained.

“This method would be doable once a month because it [uses] microwaves, and they operate at low power [like] wifi and cellphones.”

Because no research has shown any problems associated with extended expo-

sure to these types of waves, the procedure itself is essentially harmless. Losier’s work focuses specifically on the physics of sending out these microwave signals. Essentially, the machine generates signals in the form of wave pulses, which are then read by antennas. Differences in wave readings can then be interpreted to create a map.

“You get 240 antenna-pair readings, [which involve] a lot of algorithms to construct the map,” Losier said. “What I’m involved with is making sure that the signal is sent properly, and that you can read the signal properly in each antenna pair.”

Thus far, the instrument has been tested only in the lab. Losier has been preparing it for clinical trials and anticipates being able to test its accuracy on real tissues awaiting the Glen Hospital relocation project to finish.

Prior to working on breast cancer detection methods, Losier held positions in two other labs.

“I’d done research in physics in my first year,” Losier said. “It was experimental physics working on a satellite instruments [….] Then I did research in atmospheric science after; it was theoretical, numerical work, and then I decided that I wanted to do an engineering master’s and I thought ‘I don’t have experience in engineering’ so I thought I would get involved with a group […] in the engineering department.”

Losier got involved with the lab through a physic’s project course, and strongly recommends using lab courses such as a 396 course—known also as an independent research project—as an introduction to research.

“I just sent [my supervisor] an email,” Losier said. “I’d say [my] advice for anyone is to just get involved in September.

Do a 396 course […] and if you do a good job, [the professor] will offer to pay you the next term.”

Dr. Richard Léveillé gave a tour of the solar system last Thursday. (Photo courtesy of Sebastien Guillot) clare lyle Staff Writer On March 19, McGill students and the general Montreal public were taken on a tour of the solar system—while never leaving 103 Rutherford. Dr. Richard Léveillé, a planetary scientist who has worked on NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, presented to a packed room on what scientists have learned about our planet’s neighbours.

Léveillé started the night by addressing the number one question plaguing space scientists: Why explore space?

“Space is a very dangerous venture,” Léveillé stated. “Sometimes there are risks involved; sometimes there is loss of life.”

But ultimately, as Léveillé explained, it is innate human curiosity that drives space exploration forward. By answering questions about space, people can answer questions about mankind’s very own origins.

“What are the origins and evolution of the solar system?” asked Léveillé.

“Why are there all of these different bodies in the solar system? Why are they different in some ways, and why are they similar in others, and how did they get that way?”

It turns out that the search for life, though exciting, is not the driving motivator for space exploration.

“The only mission to go to another planet and search for life […] was the Viking mission in the 1970s,” said Léveillé.

“The missions now are not designed to go looking for life. They’re exploring and doing all kinds of wonderful things.”

Today’s missions typically have the much more achievable goal of improving our understanding of the solar system.

After its success with the moon landings, NASA has since branched out to send

probes to the farthest reaches of our planetary neighbourhood, and even in the case of Voyager I, beyond the edges of the solar system.

Léveillé’s journey through the solar system started off with the closest planet to the sun—Mercury—and continued outwards to explore Venus, Mars, and Jupiter.

Each planet is incredibly unique and as technology evolves, scientists are learning new things about their surfaces. In the depths of Mercury’s craters, scientists believe there may be ice. Spaceships have allowed scientists to observe lightning in Venus’ atmosphere, and recent evidence indicates that the planet may have been more volcanically active than previously thought.

Mars is the target for a startling number of missions, including a number of orbiters and rovers such as Opportunity— whose 11-year mission was originally intended to last only a few months—and Curiosity, a project that Léveillé helped work on. Although there haven’t been any signs of life on Mars, its similarity and proximity to Earth, along with the presence of ice on its surface, make it an attractive target for missions.

Some of the more ethereal and interesting parts of the solar system lay in the moons of planets. One of Saturn’s moons, Titan, is host to both an unusually thick atmosphere and, as observed by the Cassini spacecraft, hydrocarbon seas.

“It’s so cold on Titan that you can actually condense hydrocarbons—things like methane, ethane, propane,” explained Léveillé. “On Earth we have the hydrologic [water] cycle. We think we get something similar on Titan, only with methane.”

As evidenced by Léveillé’s talk, the Earth, albeit unique, is but one wonderful planet in a wonderful solar system.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

17

Sports

Over 40 per cent of college hoops fans penciled in Kentucky to win it all in their brackets this year. The experts say it would be foolish to do otherwise, but this is March Madness, and there are still 15 other teams left in the field. Nobody doubts that the Wildcats have the potential and talent to go undefeated, but they’ll have to get past some tough competition to pull it off.

nbcsports.com

POINT/COUNTERPOINT

E

T

ach year, March Madness features a few favourites. Filling out a bracket usually means picking a champion from a group of three or four powerhouse schools that are more or less equals. In ESPN’s 2014 Bracket Challenge, Florida was the most popular choice, with 27.1 per cent of participants picking the Gators to win. Michigan State was next best with 14.6 per cent of brackets picking the Spartans to win the title.

This year, roughly half of all brackets have Kentucky winning. No other team reached a double-digit percentage.

Kentucky has been so good this season that picking any other team is seen as going against the tide. While Kentucky has impressed this season, its perfect record has led people to believe that the gap between it and the rest of the teams in the tournament is larger than it is. No one should argue against Kentucky being the favourite, but to say that its odds are better than the field’s is an overstatement.

Going undefeated is a rarity for a reason–it’s incredibly difficult and extremely unlikely. The tournament’s format lends itself to unlikely outcomes because of its single-game knockout format.

Over a seven-game series, Kentucky would undoubtedly beat any team in the tournament, but the Wildcats chances in a single game setting are lower.

As impressive as Kentucky has been this season, it is important to keep in mind that they have benefitted from a relatively weak schedule, especially down the stretch, thanks to playing in the SEC. In fact, the Wildcats have yet to face a team that finished the season ranked inside the top nine in the country. You have to beat the best to prove you’re the best, and Kentucky has yet to face a team such as Duke, which boasts elite talent that rivals that of the Wildcats.

The biggest threat to Kentucky lies in the West draw of the tournament. Both the Arizona Wildcats and the Wisconsin Badgers have the size and physicality to compete with Kentucky. Arizona is one of the best defensive teams in the country, and is almost as dominant as Kentucky. They have not lost a game since Feb. 7, and have only three losses all year. Those losses were by two, three, and four points respectively. That is to say, Arizona was five possessions away from being the nation’s other undefeated team. Would we still be having this debate if there were a second undefeated team in college basketball? Probably not.

As impressive as Arizona has been, the Badgers may be a bigger threat to Kentucky.

Kentucky beat Wisconsin in the Final Four last year 74-73 and both teams brought back nearly every player. The gap between the two is not as big as headlines would have you believe. Wisconsin is the most efficient offensive team in the country, scoring 1.246 points per possession. This high efficiency stems from Wisconsin’s willingness to play long possessions, using the whole shot clock to create the best look possible. The Badgers simply do not waste chances on offence. This slow tempo makes every mistake its opponents make more significant because its opponents get fewer possessions. Kentucky is good, but not perfect, and against the Badgers, the margin for error shrinks.

Of course, Kentucky should still be seen as the tournament favourite, but it is not the only team with a shot at the title, as some have suggested. The Wildcats may go down as one of the greatest teams of all time. Going undefeated would be a remarkable accomplishment, but doing so would still be beating the odds rather than meeting expectations.

he experience of watching this year’s Wildcat juggernaut is a lot like what it must have felt like to watch Kentucky back in the 1996 NCAA tournament. The similarities between the two teams are striking: The mercurial head coach, the trove of future NBA lottery picks, and the unmistakable swagger and hype. One could make the argument that current Kentucky Head Coach John Calipari is a better coach than Rick Pitino; and although success in the NBA is never a sure thing, even for a lottery pick (see: Bennett, Anthony), four Kentucky players are expected to be selected in the first 15 picks of this year’s draft. The main difference on paper is that the 1996 Wildcats—widely regarded as one of the greatest teams in NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball history—lost twice that season. The 2015 Wildcats are undefeated. The 1996 Kentucky Wildcats won the Championship with ease, and there’s no reason to doubt that this year’s squad will do the same.

It’s easy to hate this team if you’re an NCAA purist against ‘one-and-done’ players, but once again, Calipari’s relentless recruitment system has paid off big time. The thing that jumps out about Kentucky is its size advantage.

It’s unfair in every sense of the word, and there’s simply no other team in the tournament that can match-up against the front-court trio of 6’10” Trey Lyles, 6’11” Karl-Anthony Towns, and 7’0” Willie Cauley-Stein.

Add in 7’0” centre Dakari Johnson—who comes in off the bench— and you’ve got a recipe for mismatches all over the court on both offence and defence.

Towns—projected to be one of the first picks in the 2015 NBA Draft— has been analyzed ad nauseum, but he remains the key to the title for Kentucky. He’s drawn comparisons to Andrew Bogut with his size and rim protection, and his potential as an NBA player is unlimited. His season stats aren’t dazzling—he averaged 10 points, seven rebounds, and three blocks a game—but his feel for the game is undeniable. His field goal percentage currently sits at 57 per cent, and should improve as he unleashes his inner Blake Griffin on the poor, undersized teams slated to take on Kentucky in the first few rounds.

The size advantage continues into the backcourt and the bench. The Harrison twins are both listed at 6’6”, giving Kentucky a pair of NBA small forward-sized guards. Andrew Harrison has a solid handle and a deadly shot, and both are lockdown perimeter defenders that will squeeze opposing offences into the paint, where Towns and Cauley-Stein will be lying in wait. But maybe the scariest part of this team is its depth. Shooting guard Devin Booker, a projected top-20 lottery pick with one of the purest shots in the tournament, is coming off the bench for this team. He is hitting more than 40 per cent of his three pointers this season, including 47 per cent from the right of the key, and is finishing at a 65 per cent clip around the rim. He’s Kentucky’s Lou Williams, only more efficient.

It’s clear that the Wildcats are the best all-around team in the tournament, but every juggernaut has its kryptonite—a team that matches up perfectly with all of its weaknesses.

For Lebron’s Heat, it was the pass-happy Spurs who were able to tire out Miami’s frantic defence in the 2014 Finals. For Towns’ Wildcats, there’s simply no answer. Of course this is March Madness, and you can’t rule out Duke getting a monster game from Jahlil Okafor, or Gonzaga shooting the lights out, but this tournament is Kentucky’s for the taking.

- Wyatt Fine-Gagné

- Elie Waitzer

Y K C U T KEN

vs.

ELD I F E H T

Editors’ pick : Kentucky The Wildcats are simply too talented to bet against—hope you picked them in your bracket!

Sports

18

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Behind The Bench: Soccer’s witch doctor Raphael uribe arango Contributor Henry Winter of the Daily Telegraph once said, “When [José] Mourinho walks into a press conference, he makes Machiavelli look like an innocent schoolboy.”

It’s a hyperbole, but it’s not untrue. Over the course of his illustrious career, Mourinho—the self-proclaimed ‘Special One’— has turned every team that he has coached into champions. His psychological impact on his players and opponents is unquestionable.

He is a living legend; and looking at each of his teams, one begins to truly appreciate the aura of magnificence he has built around himself.

Mourinho’s first professional coaching job was with littleknown FC Porto in Portugal’s Primeira Liga. In the span of two years, Porto went from being unknowns to European Champions, beating heavyweights like Real Madrid and Manchester United on their way to the title. Even after shedding its underdog status, Porto continued to roll, winning six titles in two years. Mourinho’s uncanny ability to instill confidence in his players was a central factor in Porto’s early success. Though Porto had always been successful in Portugal, its success on the world

stage only came under Mourinho.

Thanks to him, Portuguese soccer was back on the map.

Shortly afterwards, Chelsea came calling with a huge contract and a promise to spend big on new transfers. Mourinho accepted the offer and moved to West London.

Chelsea hadn’t won the Premier League in 50 years and had always struggled against the likes of Arsenal, Manchester United, and Liverpool. That all changed with the arrival of Mourinho. New players from his old club, Porto, and a few

Mourinho is carving out his legend. (Photo courtesy of The Guardian) could never quite overtake top teams such as AC Milan and Juventus. Over the next two years, Inter won five titles, including Mourinho’s second Champions League title. Mourinho once again instilled discipline into his players, and Inter pulled of a historic upset against Pep Guardiola’s near-unbeatable Barcelona squad.

Barcelona’s ‘tiki-taka’ system was undone in spectacular fashion for the first time, and Inter had officially risen to the pinnacle of European soccer. According to

big signings created a strong team that would go on to win seven titles in three years. By the 20052006 season, Chelsea had become the unquestioned hegemon in the Premier League. Rival managers Arsene Wenger (Arsenal) and Alex Ferguson (Manchester United) had become mere spectators of Chelsea’s meteoric rise.

After his relationship with Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich soured, Mourinho departed for sunny Inter Milan in 2008. Inter had a good team at the time, yet

Mourinho, Inter was an average team, but it never, in his words, “ran away from pressure.”

After winning the Champions League in 2010 with Inter, Mourinho resolved to move onto what would be the greatest challenge of his career: Coaching Real Madrid.

The Galáctico superstars of Europe—Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, and Kaká—provided Mourinho with a worldclass supporting cast. Unfortunately, Mourinho ran into Messi’s Barcelona team at the height of the latter’s dominance, and not even the greatness of Mourinho could prevent the attacking prowess of Guardiola’s revamped tiki-taka system. Nonetheless, he did manage to win three titles with Real Madrid, including the league title and the Copa del Rey. Mourinho has built every team with a unique blend of discipline and unwavering confidence. In press conferences, his catchphrase is: “We cannot lose.”

He has the desire to win by any means necessary, and he ingrains it into every player he coaches. He is a strategic genius who can adapt to any opponent, on any stage.

His impact on the game of soccer today is undeniable and before all is said and done, he will go down as one of the best coaches ever.

10 THINGS:

Weirdest Sports Injuries

By Nick Jasinski Gesundheit – Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Kevin Pillar recently suffered a Grade-1 oblique strain from sneezing exceedingly violently. He’s expected to miss a week but be ready in time for opening day.

Quick on the draw – In November 2008, a season after winning Super Bowl XLII with the New York Giants, Plaxico Burress was involved in an altercation at a nightclub in New York which ended with him reaching to pull a handgun out of his pocket and shooting himself in the leg while the gun was still in his pocket. He suffered only minor injuries but was suspended from the team and eventually served two years in prison for felony weapons charges.

Guitar zero – During the 2006 American League Championship Series against the Oakland Athletics, Detroit Tigers pitcher was sidelined with a sore wrist, a common injury for an MLB pitcher.

However, the source of Zumaya’s wrist pain was rather exceptional and stemmed from an obsession with the Playstation 2 game Guitar Hero. In the previous days, Zumaya had been playing so much Guitar Hero that he tweaked his wrist and had to sit out a few games to recover. Luckily for him, Detroit still swept the A’s in just four games before losing to the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.

(Photo courtesy of Getty Images)

Couldn’t wait to find out what happened next – While in his debut season for the San Diego Padres in 2000, pitcher Adam Eaton became so frustrated with the stubborn packaging on a new DVD that he took out a paring knife to try to hack it open. Instead, he managed to slice himself in the stomach and required stitches to get patched up.

Run Frerotte Run – In a 1997 game against the New York Giants, Washington Redskins quarterback Gus Frerotte ran the ball into the endzone from one yard out.

To celebrate, Frerotte ran past the end zone, spiked the ball into the ground, and headbutted the wall while still running full speed. Frerotte needed help taking his helmet off and had to go to a nearby hospital during half time to be treated for a sprained neck.

Time for a new hobby – Toronto Maple Leafs backup goalie Glenn Healy required 40 stitches in his hand after injuring it cleaning his bagpipes. Luckily for him, it was his last season in the NHL and he was a backup goaltender.

Watch your language – In a 1975 Premier League match versus Birmingham, Manchester United goalie Alex Stepney proved himself to be a screamer when yelling at his defenders to stay in their proper positions. He managed to yell with such force that he dislocated his jaw and was forced to leave the game.

Spiderman – Another Toronto Blue Jays outfielder, Glenallen Hill, had a serious case of arachnophobia. One night, in the grip of a violent nightmare about spiders, Hill leaped out of bed and ran across his apartment only to fall into a glass table and down a flight of stairs, leaving him with cuts and bruises all over his arms and legs.

I’ll have what he’s having – In 1992, future Hall-of-Famer and Atlanta Braves pitcher Tom Glavine had particularly rough airline food. In fact, the inflight meal caused him to vomit so violently that he cracked two ribs and had to be placed on the disabled list.

Hungry Hungry Coyote – Baseball Hall-of-Famer Nolan Ryan once missed a game in 1985 after having his hand bitten by a coyote while reaching into its pen. The Houston Astros pitcher managed to return to the field after just one game.

19 Spotlight on: McGill Alpine Skiing Team Sports

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Aaron rose Staff Writer They’re McGill’s version of the Crazy Canucks–and frankly, they just don’t get enough attention around here. Quebec is home to some of the best ski hills in the country, and while you and your friends are getting drunk on the slopes with the SSMU Ski and Snowboard Club on the weekend, the McGill Alpine Ski team is putting in work in the gym and on the mountain.

The team trains twice a week at Mount St. Sauveur. After classes, the team boards the bus and head out for the hill at around 4:30 p.m. The skiiers then spend five hours doing exhausting onhill training and usually don’t get back home until 11:30 p.m.

Race day mornings are even more gruelling. Wake-up is before sunrise, and the skiers have

to be dressed and on the hill by 7:30 a.m. for warm-up runs and course inspection.

“Each racer will slide through the course and attempt to memorize the technical sections or areas that have reduced visibility,” second-year racer Robert Cohen said. “Inspection is usually about 45 minutes, and then the race starts shortly after.”

The races are either slalom–where the gates are spaced tightly together forcing racers to wiggle through the course–or giant slalom–where the gates are further apart for faster speeds.

After two races, times are tallied and the medals are given out.

Every bit of strength, technique, and speed counts in these events, as the top of the pack is usually neck and neck.

“It’s common to have 10 [racers] within a second of each other,” Cohen said.

This season has been a transition year for the squad after losing seven racers from last season.

“We weren’t as competitive this year as we were last year,” Cohen said. “We lost quite a few older skiers and we were unable to replace [...] them.”

That being said, the impressive rookies on the team have done their best to make up for the veteran losses. Freshman Cole Rosenberg has been a major addition to the squad this year, finishing as the Redmen’s top racer on most days. “[I] really try to focus on maximizing the small amounts of time we are actually on the hill,” Rosenberg said when asked about his successes.

At Mount Tremblant on Friday, Rosenberg finished second for the Redmen, just a second behind fellow freshman William

Stone. While Rosenberg struggled in Saturday’s event, senior Physics major William Laver stepped up for McGill, finishing 24th overall against tough competition. Overall, the Redmen team finished third in the competition, falling shy of Université de Montréal and Laval, a recurring narrative for this McGill team.

For the Martlets, third-year captain Allene Kennedy has been phenomenal all season.

Her season highlight was a podium finish in February, when she took home a bronze medal at the Owl’s Head ski meet. This past weekend, Kennedy finished 16th and 12th in her races for the Martlets, just barely getting edged out of the top 15 on Friday by fellow Martlet, Jacqueline Baudinet. Just like the men’s team, the Martlets finished third, just behind the same two teams

that edged out the Redmen racers.

McGill took home the 2010 Quebec University Alpine Ski Championship, but they’ve struggled since as the competition level has increased significantly over the past five years.

“In the last few years, the entire ski circuit has become a lot more competitive,” Cohen said. “Université de Montréal and Laval both have multiple former national team members racing for them.”

Fortunately, the team isn’t expected to lose many racers next year, as only captain Brandon McCool and Daniel Cohen are presumed to be leaving.

While this season was not as successful as the team would have liked, the alpine ski team has a bright future ahead of it.

Know your McGill Athlete

Katie Caldwell martlet Swimming Captain - Junior (Photo courtesy of Christine Aglot)

“When you swim for McGill, it’s all about what you do for the team,” Katie Caldwell, captain of the Martlet Swimming team, said. “I really enjoy that […] aspect of […] having that whole team behind you and scoring points for your team.”

Caldwell has experienced a lot during her McGill career. She was the RSEQ Rookie-of-the-Year in the 2012-2013 season before enduring a frustrating and injury-riddled sophomore year. She rebounded in 2014-2015 as captain of the Martlets and led them to a strong showing at the 2015 CIS Nationals. McGill placed ninth out of 23 teams, with 12 personal-best times.

Caldwell took home the Martlets’ only medal with a bronze in the 400m individual medley. Coach Peter Carpenter, per McGill Athletics, called it “one of the most courageous efforts I have ever been a part of,” given Katie’s past injuries.

Despite that adversity, Caldwell has stepped up as a captain, and has cherished the responsibility of leading this year.

“You take on more of a role in showing leadership and a positive attitude,” Caldwell said. “I have to be there for the team, […] especially for the newcomers— [to] show them that that they can be a part of this [amazing atmosphere] and that they [can] lead the team in a few years.”

It was this team atmosphere that helped her through the difficult 2013-2014 season, when Caldwell dealt with some of the worst injuries of her swimming career.

“They [would] put a smile on [my] face when it [was] a bad day or [I was] hurting,” Caldwell explained. “The team is like a second family.”

The junior’s injuries caused her to reevaluate her approach to swimming. She explained that she was putting too much pressure on herself to perform as a sopho-

By Zikomo Smith

more. Rather than placing this pressure on herself again, Caldwell sought to see what she could accomplish by trying to have fun again.

“This year, I [decided to] look at it as [I] did first year—[as] a new experience […] and [to] have fun with the team,” Caldwell said. “I ended up with a bronze medal, which was fantastic considering last year was nowhere close to where I wanted to be.”

Swimming runs like water in her family, and Caldwell began her career in the pool with Pacific Seas Wolves Swimming Club in British Columbia at the age of four.

“I was very involved because my sister was already swimming and when I was born we had a pool in our back yard,” Caldwell said.

Her older sister Hilary Caldwell, an Olympic swimmer, is someone Katie has had healthy competition with and looks up to in equal measure. “[When] we hit the age where we both did similar events […] we got a bit competitive,” the younger Caldwell said. “It’s [gotten] to a stage where she has excelled [in her swimming career] and I […] focus on my studies more [….] Now it’s [more like] looking up to her and what she has accomplished and being proud of her.”

Out of the pool, Katie is a passionate International Development Studies student with minors in Education and Education Psychology. She sponsors a child in Cameroon and sees Africa as an exciting place of development.

“I have a big drive to go to Africa and […] be a part of the development over there,” she said. “After school, I want […] to get involved in something along those lines.”

McGill Tribune (MT): What is the weirdest thing you have ever eaten?

Katie Cladwell (KC): I am a bit of a picky eater and don’t like to try weird things. I have tried conch, which some people might not consider weird […] I was in Belize and I was told it was chicken, but it wasn’t.

MT: What TV shows are you watching at the moment?

KC: Too many. Some of my favourites are Suits—that just ended—and Game of Thrones. Another one is Sherlock. I like British TV, it has good humour which they can’t do in America.

MT: What toiletry would you be if you had to choose?

KC: That is a very odd question. I have never thought about that before.

I was thinking about toothpaste because it feels so good when you brush your teeth and your mouth’s refreshed at the end of the day.