THEMCGILLTRIBUNE Published by the Students' Society of M cGill University
Keeping up the pressure...McGLU rookie left winger Martin Haetu steers the puck into Ottawa’s zone during last Friday’s game.
Volume 8 Issue 12
P h o to b y P a u l S tan ley
McGill won the game 7-3. See story page 13.
Plumbers’ Pot flushed down the drain by Paul Michell The P lu m b e rs’ P o t, the semi official humour magazine of McGill’s Engineers for 43 years, has printed its last issue. Dean Belanger of the Faculty of Engi neering has decided to ban the P o t from being printed or distributed on the Faculty premises. The decision came in response to a number of complaints about the most recent issue of the P o t, an issue which even Editor Peter Bissegger deemed “particularly raunchy.” “It’s really unfortunate that this issue had to come out at a time when there was so much concern about this type of thing,” said Bis segger, “But I was surprised that people were even offended by it It wasn ’ t nearly as bad as some of the other issues [in recent years] have been.” The ‘offending’ issue had a sort of ‘battle of the sexes’ theme, and some complainants were clearly
disturbed by what they perceived to be as sexist jargon therein. “Sure, it was sexist - but on both sides, against both men a n d women. If you’re a comedian, you’ve got to pick on somebody, but we made sure that whenever we poked fun at women in one article, we had another article which poked fun at men - we really tried to have a good balance be tween the two,” said Bissegger. Dean Belanger noted that com plaints about the issue had been received from students and faculty members. “There was a general consensus amongst the complaints that this issue was in very bad taste,” said Belanger, “Students may forget that I’ve been here for twenty-one years, so I’ve seen just about everything there is to see in an Engineering paper.” “Last year’s P o t was fairly in nocuous, but this seemed to be a return to two years ago,” said Be
langer, referring to a rather notori ous issue of the P o t which almost resulted in it being banned two years ago. One of the articles in that issue featured the head of a female student superimposed upon a nude female body. “That’ s exactly what we were trying to avoid with this issue,” said Bissegger, “There was a con scious move on our part towards making the P o t a humour maga zine rather than just making it re ally raunchy. I mean, it was still raunchy, but only when it served some purpose.” After the incident with the fe male student two years ago, Dean Belanger issued some guidelines to the editors of the P o t in an effort to prevent similar events from occuring in the future. “But who can find stuff sent to editors two years ago? I guess they [the guidelines] just kind of got lost in the shuffle,” said Bissegger. “I’ m sick and tired of the roller
coaster ride,” said Dean Belanger, “They have been prohibited from printing and distributing the P o t on campus.” So where does the P o t go from here? “We haven’t really met yet to discuss it...but I can tell you that we don’treally have much choice,” Bissegger said. Even though the
P o t is financed with EUS (Engi neering Undergraduate Society) money, the Dean still has the power to prohibit publication and distri bution on campus. There is noth ing to prohibit off-campus produc tion of a publication, however. “But we don’t want to do that the Dean is our friend, and we will just have to live with it, I guess,” said Bissegger.
In sid e :
1969 reviewed on page 12 Election predictions by dumb prople on pg 4