The McGill Tribune Vol. 42 Issue 15

The super family behind Super Sandwich

The story behind one of McGill’s most popular student lunch spots

Charlotte Bawol Contributor

If you are a McGill student, odds are you have heard of Super Sandwich. Or, if you are my roommate, you have eaten

it every single day you have been on campus for the past year without fail. Wherever you fall on this spectrum, you can agree that Super Sandwich provides a necessary community service.

As a frequent Super Sandwich consumer, I was curious to find out the story behind the restaurant-slash-depanneur’s inception. Turns out, the neon Super Sandwich sign outside

Boxe Office: A hit among McGill students

Sean Neuman Contributor

Over the past several years, boxing has seen a remarkable resurgence in both viewership and participation. The sport’s popularity has skyrocketed, likely in part due to the rise of “influencer

boxing,” where organized fights amongst popular internet figures garner massive attention and millions in pay-per-view sales.

As boxing gains more and more fans, it is no surprise that young people have begun to seek out amateur boxing for their own enjoyment. Located one street south

of McGill’s downtown campus on President Kennedy Avenue, Boxe Office has quickly become a hotspot for downtown residents, particularly McGill students. The gym was founded in July 2021, after the fitness industry endured a harsh year of lockdowns and diminished revenue.

the store has been lying to us, and we have been loyal customers of Charcuterie Le Cartier, not Super Sandwich, this whole time! Jerry and Jocelyn Lo opened Charcuterie Le Cartier in 1988 as a convenience store and deli. They are originally from Mauritius and their children Mathis and Jenny Lo were born and raised in Oslo, Norway.

Social chatbots are abetting the loneliness epidemic

Eliza Wang Contributor

Isolation. Anxiety. Depression. The loneliness epidemic rages onward even as the era of lockdowns is mostly behind us. Around 33 per cent of adults worldwide report often feeling lonely, with research show -

ing that social isolation and loneliness are correlated with greater physical and mental health risks, including heart disease, weakened immune system, higher sensitivity to pain, and various psychological disorders.

Confronted with such an enigmatic, seemingly Sisyphean issue, society

responds with what it does best: Problem-solving with technology. Humanlike social chatbots, or conversational artificial intelligence (AI) applications, now function as virtual friends who are unnervingly attentive and inordinately supportive—seemingly the perfect antidotes to loneliness.

And university students might be their perfect prey

After opening in summer 2021, the unique boxing gym grows increasingly popular

Adeline Fisher Staff Writer

On Jan. 16, students and Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) executives assembled via Zoom for SSMU’s Winter General Assembly (GA). The agenda included a vote on the Motion Regarding Uyghur Rights, the Divest for Human Rights policy report, a report from the Board of Directors (BoD), as well as portfolio reports from each SSMU executive.

Seventh on the agenda was a vote on the Motion Regarding Uyghur Rights. The motion, if passed, would expand Divest McGill’s mandate to include divestment from companies

MOMENT OF THE MEETING

SSMU President Risann Wright reported that the Pilot Groceries Program—which launched in December to provide vouchers and free meals to registered students— will soon be made permanent if the program fee motion manages to pass during the Winter 2023 referendum.

SOUND BITE

“SSMU is currently working on building affordable student housing for students. The Affordable Student Housing Committee has been truly formidable and is super motivated to do research and to advocate for student priorities in terms of housing [....] Shortly, you should see more information about your housing rights, events, listers, social media posts, all of that.”

— VP External Val Masny on the Affordable Student Housing Committee

rights

considered to be complicit in the ongoing Uyghur genocide. An investigation by The McGill Tribune in March 2022 revealed over 15 million dollars of McGill’s endowment fund tied up in companies complicit in the mass detention of the Uyghur people.

With an attendance just shy of 50 students, including SSMU executives and the Speaker of the Council, the meeting failed to reach quorum—350 attendees must be present to pass any motions. Although a unanimous majority voted in favour of the Uyghur Rights motion, it could not be approved at the GA—it was later presented at a Legislative Council meeting. Before the vote, gallery member Naomi Sacks, U0 Arts, voiced her support for the motion to the Assembly.

“I think that as a university, and as members of our university, we have a responsibility to make sure that the endowment goes towards good causes, and not towards genocide,” Sacks said. “I do think it is super important that SSMU takes a stand, because SSMU is a powerful organization, and with the backing of SSMU, McGill might listen to us.”

SSMU anticipates the next General Assembly will take place in a hybrid (online and in-person) format. (Brian Schatteman/ The McGill Tribune )

The GA then proceeded with a presentation of the BoD’s Report from SSMU President Risann Wright. She had several updates to share since the Fall 2022 GA, including contract renewals and the hiring of new staff, approval of the Financial Statements for the 2022 fiscal year, and ratification of the new Consultation Policy. The BoD also authorized a budget request for an activist bootcamp, and similarly approved the Fall 2022 Referendum Questions.

From there, the GA heard summary reports from SSMU’s various executives. President Risann Wright explained SSMU’s ongoing audit of all governance and policy documents to ensure that the Society adheres to practices of equity and inclusivity

“This past semester I did quite a bit of research [...] to look at doing an audit from an EDI [Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion] perspective of all of our government documents, including our

McGill Senate debates hybrid learning amid reports of overworked staff

Jasjot Grewal Staff Writer

At the McGill Senate’s fifth meeting on Jan. 18, senators discussed low student enrollment and presented reports regarding the creation of a new teaching program and budget planning for the upcoming academic year. A large portion of the meeting was dedicated to hearing recommendations for potential blended learning programs, with senators stressing the possible implications of hybrid learning on overworked staff.

Interim Principal and ViceChancellor Christopher Manfredi summarized recent government relations meetings in his opening remarks, including a campus visit from the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change. Manfredi also commended the recipients of the 20212022 Principal’s Student-Athlete Honour Roll, whose annual gala he attended a week prior on Jan. 10.

Discussion then turned to the creation of a new teaching program in the Faculty of Engineering—a Masters of Science in Architecture with a

thesis requirement—to be established in the School of Architecture.

After some conversation around budget considerations for the upcoming school year, the meeting reviewed recent student recruitment numbers. Interim Provost Fabrice Labeau explained that this year’s lower student enrollment may have contributed to McGill’s lower revenue.

“Part of the deficiencies this year in terms of reduced revenue with respect to budget is due to the missed targets in terms of enrollment in certain student populations,” Labeau said.

Labeau also noted that staff turnover had caused significant internal upheaval at McGill. Although McGill’s current turnover rate is approximately seven per cent,similar to pre-pandemic levels, the current labour market poses a new, growing concern.

“Due to the labour market, [...] positions remain open longer, and it’s harder to recruit,” Labeau said. “So even at the same turnover rate, if you look at the number of people who leave in a given year, [...] the positions they leave stay open longer.”

that the university survey students that entered in 2019–2020, to assess the best path forward for education at McGill. (Maeve Reilly/ The McGill Tribune )

Associate Provost (Teaching and Academic Programs) Christopher Buddle presented an update from the Working Group on New Models of Academic Program Delivery. Buddle made three short-term recommendations, such as better definitions and frameworks for online and blended learning programs as the post-pandemic world introduces new challenges surrounding virtual learning and student attendance.

“We have to consider when course design needs to be rethought. What is the impact on students at a programmatic level?” Buddle said. “If all students have a lot of their courses

Constitution and Internal Regulations,” Wright said. “We have met with various firms and organizations and consultants in this space, who were able to provide insight, and hopefully we will continue to use their support moving forward to ensure that we have the cutting edge of EDI and equity considerations in our policies and governance.”

Vice-president (VP) Finance Marco Pizarro followed with an explanation of the considerable financial losses suffered by SSMU in the past year. According to Pizarro, the current economic climate, in combination with the campaign for McGill to divest from fossil fuels, has had a “huge impact” on SSMU’s finances. He added that Gerts Bar and Café, which is run by SSMU, is struggling due to current inflation rates.

“With our investment fund, we lost a lot of money, a few hundred thousand dollars,” Pizzaro told the Assembly. “The only people that were making money [this year] were the ones that were invested in oil and gas, and thanks to our Divestment and Human Rights Policy, we were not.”

MOMENT OF THE MEETING

Kirk voiced his concern about the Working Group on New Models of Academic Program Delivery creating an additional workload for faculties, as he believes that staff already take on additional responsibilities without any extra resources. Kirk said that if the university takes on too many additional initiatives, the number of “precarious” instructors could increase as well.

SOUND BITE

“I teach music classes where I need to be able to play music, [...] and the basic sound and video equipment is in very bad shape. [It is] on its last legs.”

—Professor Julie Cumming on the need for staff consultation when deciding on new technologies for the classroom

with a lot of online components, they might question ‘Well, why am I here in person?’”

Buddle also cited the need for refining processes around new program creation and dedicating workgroups to support a unified vision for the university’s summer programs and activities.

Long-term recommendations Buddle highlighted included developing a consistent approach to hands-on learning to increase student opportunities, while being more responsive to emerging societal needs to fulfill the university’s vision.

Some senators were concerned

about the ambitious recommendations Buddle presented. Many pointed out that implementing new blended learning programs would require the university to consider other aspects that were needed to support this shift, such as additional staff.

“I think it requires a real commitment to it, more than just technology,” Professor Andrew Kirk said. “I think it requires a commitment to a teaching philosophy and learning philosophy. You know, it’s not just a Zoom license and a webcam, it’s thinking about, what platforms do we need? What human support do we need? [It’s] not just technology support.”

Meeting fails to meet quorum, becomes purely consultative

SSMU General Assembly discusses EDI policy audits, financial losses, and motion regarding Uyghur

Senators discuss McGill’s financial challenges due to low student enrollment

Baron recommended

Luke Stark discusses how digital media exploits emotions in feminist-tech lecture

Misogynistic and

Genevieve Downing Contributor

Luke Stark, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University, delivered a virtual talk on Jan. 18 about the history of affective computing and emotions in cybernetics, the science of communications and control in humans and machines.

The lecture was part of an annual speaker series titled “Disrupting Disruptions: Feminist and Accessible Publishing, Communications, and Technology,” organized by Alexandra Ketchum, a faculty lecturer at McGill’s Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (IGSF). Stark’s research focuses on the ethical, historical, and social impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, which are also the topics of his current book project, Ordering Emotion: Histories of Computing and Human Feelings.

Ketchum launched the speaker series in 2019. In an email to the The McGill Tribune, she noted that Stark’s talk was the 71st of the series.

“When I started the series, I never imagined how big it would become,” Ketchum wrote. “I wanted to showcase the work of scholars, artists, and people in industry whose voices are less often showcased when it comes to questions of technology. This means that every speaker in the series is a person of colour, queer, a woman, non-binary, or disabled (and many of the speakers in the series share multiple of these identities).”

The talk was given in ‘scenes.’ Scene one centred around Facebook’s reaction icons, titled “Where Did These Faces Come From, and Why Do They Matter?” In this scene, Stark discussed how the like button, a 2009 design choice, is an example of a method used by social media platforms to extract data on user expression.

“That’s what these reactions are, they are structured data about emotional expression,” Stark said. “In some cases, this data is structured by the user, is developed by the user; in some cases, it is collected without the user knowing or realizing.”

Scene two of the talk outlined how technology companies became interested in developing emotional AI and how AI

understands emotions. Stark argues that computing technologies reinforce definitions of emotions that prioritize the body’s physiological reactions to emotions.

“Computing technologies are taking up much older ideas, and in some ways taking up ideas that have been largely discredited [...] in biology, physiology,” Stark said. “These kinds of quantifiable, biophysical definitions of emotions have tended to either directly or indirectly justify emotion and emotional control as both a proxy and mechanism for maintaining social norms [...] of colonialism [and] misogyny.”

In scene three, Stark discussed the misrepresentation of emotional AI by technology companies. He debunked Apple’s introduction of Memoji, animated emojis that follow the user’s facial expressions, as a camouflaged cover for the company’s extraction data to improve its facial recognition technology. Stark also noted that digital features often run rampant with biases, pointing to research by Lauren Rhue that discovered how facial recognition systems fail to accurately interpret the emotions of Black people.

In his concluding remarks, Stark quoted Michal Kosinski, a computational psychology and psychometry expert at Stanford University, that equated a smartphone to a “psychological questionnaire that we are constantly filling out, both consciously and unconsciously.”

Zoe Leousis, U1 Arts, attended the talk with the hopes of learning more about the technology she interacts with on a daily basis.

“It’s something you don’t really think about, how personal the targeting of certain platforms really is and how easily we can be swayed by it,” Leousis told the Tribune. “I would have never thought of the robot maid from The Jetsons as a mirror to the stereotypes being pushed by these companies.”

Legislative Council passes motions on Uyghur rights, support for trans students

Council convened in person for the first time since onset of COVID-19 pandemic

Nicholas Hayek Contributor

The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Legislative Council convened on Jan. 19 for its first meeting of the winter semester to vote on two motions: One regarding the state repression of Uyghur people in China and another one which serves to bolster SSMU’s support for trans students in the wake of Robert Wintemute’s scheduled talk at McGill’s Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism (CHRLP).

Vice-president (VP) External Val Masny presented the first motion, which seeks to pressure the McGill administration into divesting from companies involved in the Uyghur genocide. The motion was originally presented at SSMU’s Winter General

MOMENT OF THE MEETING

Masny expressed frustration with the motion supporting trans rights over the fact that, without clear mandates, decisions on how, if, and when to enforce guidelines are made at the discretion of SSMU executives alone.

SOUND BITE

“We’re monitoring sidewalks at McGill because it’s one of our mandates—so if you see snow unshoveled or sidewalks unsalted, you can email me [....] We’re trying to pressure the city to do better shovelling snow.”

—VP External Val Masny, delivering an open invitation for students to email external@ssmu.ca should they spot unkept sidewalks

Assembly but did not pass because the meeting did not reach quorum. The Speaker of the Council then sent the motion to the Legislative Council, in accordance with SSMU’s Internal Regulations of Governance.

Demands outlined in SSMU’s Divest for Human Rights Policy—which already calls on the university to divest from roughly $1,000,000 of holdings in companies deemed complicit in the genocide—would now apply to the full range of McGill investments outlined by the motion.

“The way in which the [Uyghur genocide] operates is knowably through mass surveillance of the Uyghur population, built in China and abroad, and those companies that we’ve researched have been found to engage in [...] surveillance,” Masny said. “[McGill’s] investments total 115 million dollars. It is quite an impressive number.”

SSMU, borrowing from a study by the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, outlined their qualifications for companies considered to be complicit in the Uyghur genocide in the motion. The standards earmark any company known to use forced Uyghur labour, any company manufacturing in or partnered with East Turkestan, and any Chinese surveillance company or biotech company engaging in genomic identification—a tool China has broadly used to track its citizens.

The motion passed with 17 votes in favour and one vote in opposition.

Masny then brought forth a motion regarding Robert Wintemute’s foiled seminar, which reiterated SSMU’s support of trans people.

“There have been people in the student body who have named what has happened as hate speech,” Masny said. “[Our] firm position against hate speech is a prolongation of SSMU’s firm position against discrimination.”

Beyond officially condemning Wintemute, the motion requires that an action plan be created to equip SSMU in future efforts supporting the transgender community. This action plan, will be drafted before the end of this academic year in collaboration with SSMU’s Gender and Sexuality Committee and executives in University and External Affairs.

The motion passed unanimously, with a single member abstaining.

Before either motion was voted on, representatives from undergraduate faculties—as well as SSMU executives—each presented reports from their respective branches of responsibility. Arts representative Matthew O’Boyle gave an update on the upcoming Fiat Lux project, which will shut down the McLennanRedpath complex from Winter 2024 until 2026.

“There were a lot of concerns about study space, and [the university] has secured a contract with a place to secure study space,” O’Boyle said. “They’re also trying to find some other work-study programs for students.”

O’Boyle’s colleague, Arts representative Angelica Voutsinas, also had some news to share.

“If anyone has classes in Leacock, [AUS] Snax will be up and running soon—we’re just finishing up some construction,” she said, referring to the beloved snack bar

and

racist notions of emotion are perpetuated by Silicon Valley companies, Stark says

whose reopening has been hampered in recent years by renovations

hiring struggles.

VP External Masny emphasized SSMU’s support of the Coalition to Defund the Police, which will mobilize in opposition to a recently-passed budget increase for the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM). (Kowin Chen/ The McGill Tribune )

Scientist Paul Ekman identified five primary emotions: sadness, happiness, anger, dismay, and surprise, which are still used to this day, as seen in the film Inside Out or in Facebook’s reaction emoticons. (starkcontrast.co)

Tribune Explains: Emergency and safety services at McGill

Student-led programs train volunteers to help during safety emergencies

Esmeralda Chibane Contributor

Various university and student-run safety services exist on campus, from the Campus Public Safety department to McGill’s Student Emergency Response Team (MSERT), WalkSafe, and DriveSafe. The McGill Tribune looked into these services and how McGill students can use or join them.

In addition to university-run services, there are also student-run emergency services on-campus, including MSERT, DriveSafe, and WalkSafe.

MSERT is a service offered by a team of more than 75 student volunteer first responders certified by the Canadian Red Cross with the mission of providing free access to first aid to both students and Montrealers.

How can McGill students access these services?

McGill’s Facilities Management and Ancillary Services (FMAS) offers 24/7 security services for students, faculty, staff, and visitors through its Campus Public Safety department. Students and staff members can also benefit from safety escorts at both the downtown and Macdonald campuses.

“Agents patrol the campuses, manage access, transport students and staff with disabilities[,] as well as respond to incidents and emergencies,” McGill media relations officer Frédérique Mazerolle wrote in an email to the Tribune . “In addition, we develop and implement standards and programs for emergency management at McGill, including the University Emergency Response Plan. We operate the Emergency Alert System and the University Security Operations Centre, and work with units across campus for a coordinated response to incidents.”

The team offers first aid services from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. to all McGill residences except for Solin Hall, while also helping ensure student safety during various events such as Frosh. They partner with the Canadian Red Cross to educate the public on first aid through courses and certifications.

DriveSafe is also run by student volunteers and the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) and offers a safe means of transportation on the island for McGill students between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. from Thursday to Saturday. In Fall 2022, Drivesafe managed to drive over 636 people home safely with 100 cars on shift.

Walksafe, also run by SSMU, is a similar service that, instead of a car, offers McGill students and Montrealers the opportunity to have a trustworthy volunteer walk them home. Volunteers wear red jackets and accompany the callers to their destination from 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. from Sunday to Thursday and 9 p.m. to 3 p.m. from Friday to Saturday.

For medical emergencies requiring ambulances—which are often the fastest and safest way to get to the hospital—one must call 911. Although there is a fee for ambulance services, some may qualify for free service or insurance reimbursement. After calling 911, one should call McGill’s Security Services, who will coordinate with emergency responders. For internal issues such as water leaks or strange odours, contact Security Services. The Security Services’ downtown phone number is (514) 398-3000. The Macdonald Campus Security Services’ phone number is (514) 398-7777.

The McGill Student Emergency Response Team can be reached at (514) 398-5216.

To access WalkSafe, students can call (514) 398-2498 or make a request on WalkSafe’s website. Reservations are not allowed; services are offered on a firstcome, first-serve basis.

DriveSafe can be reached at (514) 3988040 or by filling out an online form. Like WalkSafe, they do not accept reservations.

How can students volunteer with these services?

Those interested in volunteering with

MSERT can apply at the beginning of every fall semester. Students do not need to have a first aid certification to apply, as MSERT trains its new members.

Those interested in volunteering with WalkSafe can contribute to the service by becoming walkers or dispatchers, who are responsible for assigning volunteers where needed.

DriveSafe volunteers can either become drivers, “shotguns,” who ride next to the driver and contribute by giving directions, taking care of passengers, and corresponding with dispatchers; or dispatchers, who take calls and assign users to available cars.

THE

McGill: Friday’s Lunar New Year Night Market draws a crowd

On Jan. 20, a group of McGill and Concordia Asian clubs—the McGill Taiwanese Students Association, the McGill Koreans Educational and Cultural Association, the McGill Chinese Students’ Society, the McGill Association of North American Born Asians, the Hong Kong Student Network, the Japanese Student Association, and the Concordia Canadian Asian Society—hosted a Lunar New Year Night Market at the University Centre on McTavish. The market was to celebrate the Lunar New Year, which took place this year on Jan. 22. The free event featured several Montreal vendors selling food, drink, and art, along with performances. This was the first time the Lunar New Year Market took place in two years, due to the pandemic. The evening event drew a large crowd, with some in line reporting over a hour’s wait to get in.

Local: STM, Quebec government invest $565 million in metro improvements

Montreal mayor Valérie Plante and Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault announced on Jan. 23 that the metro will be getting an upgrade to help “modernize” the system. Due to be completed by 2029, the project is funded by a joint $565 million investment from the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) and the Quebec government. A new communications-based train control system—which uses the frequency between cars to locate trains—will be installed on the Blue line. This system should better facilitate correspondence between trains and the STM employees who manage traffic, monitor the spacing between trains, and generally make the metro run more efficiently. Although this project begins with the Blue line, it is expected to eventually expand to the Green, Orange, and Yellow lines. A 5.5-kilometre extension to the Blue line, which will add five stops, is also in the works.

National: New program rolls out harm reduction supplies in machines across Atlantic Canada

Four 24/7 self-service, vending machines providing low-barrier access to harm reduction and sexual health supplies opened on Jan. 23 in New Brunswick. In addition to free supplies like HIV tests, clean needles, Naloxone, condoms, and COVID-19 tests, these machines can provide users with important, stigma-free information— for example, how to administer Naloxone, which can reduce or reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. Supplies vary from location to location, and local managers can add materials as they see fit. Our Healthbox, the federally-funded program behind these machines, will roll out 100 more over the next three years. According to the program’s website, there is an emphasis on installing these machines in communities with greater barriers to health care due to systemic factors like “racism, homophobia, stigma, and discrimination.”

International: Major layoffs in the tech sector leave many facing job insecurity

Global tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, Twitter, and Spotify have announced massive layoffs amidst a global economic downturn. On Jan. 20, Google’s parent company announced that it would be laying off roughly 12,000 workers. On Jan. 23, Spotify announced that it would be laying off roughly 600 workers—six per cent of its 9,800-person workforce. According to the CBC , a total of over 200,000 jobs in the tech sector have been cut since the summer. This trend has hit young workers particularly hard, as they make up much of the tech workforce. Experts are urging those impacted by layoffs to speak to employment lawyers if they can, and to negotiate their severance packages. In Canada, the Labour Code regulates the rights that employees have when fired.

What emergency and safety services does McGill offer?

What independent emergency and safety services do student organizations offer?

A volunteer for WalkSafe told the Tribune that on a double shift, they walked 29,038 steps during Frosh. (Julia Buckle/ The McGill Tribune)

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TPS BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Privatizing health care won’t fix a failing system

The McGill Tribune Editorial Board

The Quebec health-care system is in a state of crisis. ER wait times are dangerously high, and there is a chronic lack of staff—including nurses who are exceptionally underpaid and overworked. Amidst a similar crisis in Ontario, Premier Doug Ford unveiled plans to increase the role of private clinics in the health-care system—a lead Quebec Premier François Legault seems to be following. However, privatization is a step towards undermining Canadians’ right to life by creating a system that prioritizes only those who can afford care. In order for universal health care to live up to its name, Canadian politicians must work to transform the single-payer system so that health care is truly accessible to everyone.

Apart from overall poor infrastructure leading to long wait times for all, systemic racism remains rampant in the Quebec health-care system. Forced sterilization of Black and Indigenous women continues without large-scale inquests, and in 2020, Joyce Echaquan, an Atikamekw woman, died after

racist negligence at the hospital where she sought care. Minute forms of racism also permeate medical care, including the underestimation of pain for Black and Indigenous people, which leads to lower pain-medication prescriptions and poorer outcomes.

Meanwhile, Quebec’s healthcare crisis is creating a workers’ rights catastrophe as nurses and orderlies are subjected to inhumane working conditions and the lowest median pay in the country. The largest union of Quebec nurses filed a complaint with the United Nations due to their forced overtime—which they describe as forced labour. The McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), which runs the Montreal General Hospital, also plays a role in the oppression of workers, alongside the institutional racism it perpetuates against its staff andpatients. The crises of overwork and poor health care reinforce each other: When staff are too exhausted to properly do their jobs, then patients suffer as a result, creating a larger strain on the single-payer system. Government funds must be more efficiently allocated to ensure that staff are treated with respect and not exploited for their labour.

But instead of taking measures to address the staffing crisis, there are still unreasonably high barriers to entry across medical degrees. Medical school acceptance rates such as McGill’s are unrealistically low, and the process favours wealthy applicants. Such obstacles also extend to the recognition of foreign medical degrees. Highlyqualified health-care workers, with degrees mainly from the Middle East and Asia, are not recognized, and many must entirely restart their degree or clinical requirements— which is often a pricey, tedious process that keeps skilled workers from doing their jobs.

Although the public healthcare system is in crisis, privatization is not the way to solve it. Just look south of the border: In the U.S. in 2022, 31.6 million people did not have any health insurance, while 43 per cent of working-age adults were inadequately insured. In a privatized system, where there is no incentive to serve poor, working people, health-care facilities will mainly emerge in the wealthy downtown core, where they can service rich clientele. Privatization efforts and paid clinics will eliminate the concept of health care as a human right.

Despite what politicians like

Ford have espoused, even partial privatization will undermine the entire single-payer system. With more private clinics, many people will stop using public services, and highly qualified doctors and nurses will leave to the higher-paying, private facilities. This will lead to a vicious cycle where there is further underfunding and staff shortages in the public system, decreasing access to and quality of health care for people who can’t pay.

Instead of calling for privatization, we need to invest in the current system to make sure that health care is truly a human right. McGill, especially, must use its institutional power to make medical school entrance requirements more equitable. McGill also has a responsibility to ensure that workers’ rights are protected at the MUHC. In parallel, Quebec government funds must be properly distributed tofix the health-care crisis—not through privatization— but by improving resources for hospitals and ensuring that healthcare professionals, especially nurses, are properly compensated and treated with dignity. Quebec’s hospitals need solutions that can equitably care for the needs of all people—not just those who can afford it.

OFF THE BOARD

Arian Kamel Arts & Entertainment Editor

Blindsided by rational irrationality

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

I’ve always found a sense of comfort in routines. Even if they are sometimes dull, the structures that construct my daily life add an extra layer of padding to my occasionally rocky university experience. This extends from my regular breakfast of two years—fried egg on top of avocado toast, slathered with a sweet sriracha smile—to my lecture times neatly laid out on Minerva. Don’t get me wrong, my 8:30 a.m. biology

lectures make me rethink the Geneva Convention, and the hangovers surprisingly never seem to help. Still, as much as I despise that freezing morning hike to McMed, I appreciate the straightforwardness of knowing what to do and when to do it. Predictability provides an illusion of control, reassuring me along the way.

This is why I find the unpredictable moments—the ones that stray from the mental map I’ve meticulously crafted for myself—so paralyzing.

This lack of control became especially apparent to me a few summers ago. It was after my first week volunteering at a local hospital to compensate for my oh-so-vibrant social life, with my dad driving me every morning, like clockwork. However, starting the second week, my so-called progenitor of life informed me that I needed to take the bus. I, of course, tried to plead my case. “But I’m only 17,” I bemoaned. It was of no use. So I crossed the street, only to be told by the bus driver that the bus I was looking for stopped on the other side of

the street. Then, in a spurt of pure genius, I ran in front of the parked bus to go to the other side and didn’t see the SUV that promptly gave me a rough-andtumble cuddle.

The next moments were a bit of a haze. I heard yells from bystanders, but I just felt mostly confused. An old man waiting for his bus ran to me and started patting me on the back to calm me down, but he was using such force that I almost felt like he was trying to finish the job, putting me out of my misery. The SUV driver, surprisingly enough, was a nurse from a different hospital, which is why, to this day, I maintain that it was a hit job from a jealous competitor.

It was at this moment, when I was at my lowest, that everything became clear to me… that this incident would become a stellar college essay. Still, I put that thought to the back of my mind as I waited for the ambulance, which quicly arrived and rushed me to the hospital. They asked if I needed anything, so I immediately responded with, “MORPHINE,”

and I regret to inform my scrumptious readers that I did not, in fact, receive morphine that day.

Now you may be asking: What is the point of this story? Did I come out of this experience more resilient than ever? Did I learn a valuable lesson? These are the same questions I’ve been asking myself over the past few years, hoping for some sort of conclusion that wraps the entire experience in a pretty pink bow and neatly settles the feeling of discomfort in the pit of my stomach. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I found it. Although I’m now much more careful when I cross the street and probably a little more grateful for my early lectures, that sense of confusion has never really left me. No one ever expects that they will be hit by a car, lose their dream job, or get a divorce after 20 years. Sure, it happens to other people, but definitely not me, right? All I think anyone can hope for is to adjust their perception of the world, to make it slightly more accurate for better or for worse, so that next time, their routines are a bit more attuned to reality.

Joseph Abounohra, Kareem Abuali, Yasmine El Dukar, Ella Gomes, Sequoia Kim, Shani Laskin, Kennedy McKeeBraide, Madison McLauchlan, Michelle Siegal, Sophie Charlotte Bawol, Julia Buckle, Gillian Cameron, Esmeralda Chibane, Genevieve Downing, Nicholas Hayek, Yana Lazkani, Harper Ladd, Elena Lee, Eliza Lee, Atticus O’Rourke Rusin, Annika Pavlin, Dashiell Rich, Millie Roberts, Maia Salhofer, Olivia Shan, Osman Warsi, Ibrahim Younas

Margo Berthier, Ella Buckingham, Melissa Carter, Adeline Fisher, Suzanna Graham, Jasjot Grewal, Charlotte Hayes, Monique Kasonga, Shani Laskin, Zoé Mineret, Harry North, Ella Paulin, Dana Prather, Maeve Reilly, Sofia Stankovic, Yash Zodgekar

CONTRIBUTORS

Over the rainbow and back again: Queer stories beyond tokenism

Madison Edward-Wright Managing Editor

With the winter months leaving me feeling cold and alone, I find myself looking to movies, TV shows, music, and books for company. As a queer woman, I find myself searching for media that reflects my identity—something much easier said than done. Scrolling through Netflix or perusing bookshelves reveals a disturbing lack of women-loving-women content. After an unsuccessful search, either

because I’ve seen or read something before or I’m not in the mood for a predictable romance, I can’t help but wonder: Where is the queer representation?

Without in-depth, nuanced representation, queer women and their experiences are erased from public consciousness—invalidating their existences and inflicting emotional harm. Coming out and taking pride in your identity is hard enough, especially depending on where you live. Many queer people have been forced to leave home by unsupportive parents, while others quite literally risk their lives if they

live openly in a country that criminalizes same-sex relationships. Having to constantly remind people that you are here, alive, and living your truth adds another layer of difficulty. Many are left wondering whether coming out is worth the risk at all.

For those of us free to be ourselves, a common challenge we face is erasure. The 2SLGBTQIA+ community is not unfamiliar with this practice of denying a part of or all of a person’s identity, whether it be (nonexhaustively) race, gender, sexuality, or ethnicity. Notably, Black, Indigenous, and other queer women of colour have to further contend with the erasure of their racial identities.

While queer stories have finally made it into the media, representation remains surface-level. In 2019, 92 per cent of the top 300 TV shows watched in the United States featured queer characters. But characters that are queer women of colour remain elusive or trivialized and relegated to the background. Though shows like The L Word: Generation Q and Euphoria have characters like Sophie Suarez, a Dominican LGBTQ character, and Rue Bennett, other big names in queer media like Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Call Me by Your Name, and Will & Grace exclusively feature white queer women and men .

When queer women are represented in popular culture, many creators do so in a harmful way. Some of Hollywood’s favourite tropes about queer women actually leave me feeling more alienated than connected to the community.

A few of the most common tropes include “bury your gays,” where queer

women are killed instead of living a happy ending, as seen in Killing Eve and The 100; the “psycho lesbian,” where gay women are obsessive, sometimes delusional, most recognized in characters like Crazy Eyes from Orange is the New Black and more recently, Valentina in season two of The White Lotus; and “girl-on-girl is hot,” a trope that sees women together only through the male gaze and for the pleasure of men— think of any movie where a frat bro has asked women to make out (for his own pleasure of course) or if he could join in on the action.

These tropes are undeniably harmful to queer women. Not only do they demean queer characters, but they create stereotypes that reduce their experiences to be palatable for straight audiences. If they are viewed as “psychos,” desperate, entertainment for men, or simply not worthy of a happy ending—as the “bury your gays” trope makes painfully clear—queer women will continue to struggle to find art they can lose, and find themselves in.

Popular culture contributes to the erasure of queer women through the perpetuation of damaging tropes or their exclusion altogether. Hollywood producers, book publishers, and showrunners, among others, need to actively make space for non-straight, non-cisgender, non-white people and their stories in our collective consciousness. This recognition is long overdue and we must treat the stories of 2SLGBTQIA+ people of colour as the sites of resistance, joy, love, tragedy, and normalcy that they are. Their voices must be heard if we hope to make popular culture representative of the people it serves.

The T on campus

“The only adequately-funded and functioning student service is ServicePoint because that’s where McGill makes its money”

– Zeinab Elgammal, U4 Arts

“They ought to take the science out of ‘political science’.” –Theo Shouse, U0 Arts

“The Concordia library is way better than any McGill library.”

– Natalia Stone, U1 Science

“People who go to clubs every weekend are objectively worse than people who go to house parties” – Victor Novakov, U1 Engineering

– Avery Seeley, U0 Engineering

“Education students dress homely” – Georgia Mackenzie, U2 Education

“Everyone shits on McGill for no reason” – Logan Hamele, U1 Arts

“French people are not annoying and are actually sociable, and can make friends on campus” – Rose Chedid, U2 Management

ERRATA

An article published in the January 17, 2023 issue (“‘No TERFs on our turf’: Students rally against talk platforming anti-trans organization”) stated that Queer McGill organized the protest. In fact, RadLaw McGill and the Trans Patient Union organized the protest, and Queer McGill only helped advertise it.

An article published in the January 17, 2023 issue (“‘McGill introduces optional sustainability module on MyCourses”) stated over a 100 members of the McGill community participated in reviewing the MyCourses module. In fact, approximately 100 members of the McGill community had participated. The Tribune regrets this error.

‘A League of Their Own’ was a breakthrough TV show about queer women from different backgrounds, all playing on the same baseball team in the 1940s. (Gracia Lam / The New Yorker)

The McGill Tribune Opinion Section

“I swear they try to hide the scholarships on the McGill website.”

‘Lasting Impressions’ showcases classic paintings in a new dimension

Impressionist artwork in immersive 3D at Espace St. Denis

Harper Ladd Contributor

At Espace St. Denis, Lasting Impressions unfolds in an atmospheric movie theatre, complete with a menu of drinks and snacks that contribute to the show’s Parisian atmosphere, as if you are sitting in one of the quaint cafés depicted in the impressionist paintings. Multiple movie screens wrap around the sides of the theatre, creating a truly immersive experience.

Lasting Impressions offers a dazzling highlight reel of famous impressionists, including Van Gogh, Monet, and Pissarro. This exhibition stands apart from the slew of other impressionist showcases that are popular today by showing 3D renderings of the artworks. While the use of 3D may sound gimmicky, it counteracts the flatness that often plagues digitally rendered and projected art pieces. Using this technique is a clever response to the impressionist style, which relies on dynamic movement and depth to convey emotion.

The show is divided into two parts. The first, in 2D, explores Paris as the epicentre of the impressionist movement beginning in the late 19th century. As jaunty music and a restaurant ambiance permeate the background, vintage footage of bustling Parisian streets is projected, interspersed with artist introductions detailing their upbringing and involvement in the Parisian art scene. The showcase also highlights some lesser-known women impressionists, such as Marie Bracquemond, Eva Gonzales, and Berthe Morisot.

After a brief intermission, the second section begins with an audio introduction by the great-granddaughter of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Sophie Renoir. Guests are then prompted to put on their glasses, and the 3D show begins.

The massive wraparound screens combined with the expertly crafted 3D makes for a mesmerizing experience. The size of the screens allows for an unprecedented view of the immense detail that went into these works. The slideshow lasts 50 minutes, with each painting on display for about half a minute. There are a total of over 100 paintings

shown, ranging from famous masterworks to relatively unknown paintings.

Dylan Pierce, who made the 3D effects for the show, is the key to Lasting Impressions’ success. Masterworks, such

as Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère and Degas’ The Rehearsal , float serenely across the screen with amazing depth and movement. Monet’s Water Lilies was especially entrancing; the water in the painting was digitally manipulated to make rippling waves. The 3D elements lend themselves especially well in this scenario, making the water seem transparent and the bottom of the lake far, far away.

Only an experienced producer could match this show’s ambition. Rubin Fogel, a producer responsible for a host of Montreal concerts and shows, helped organize Lasting Impressions . In the introduction to the show, he called it “one of the most exciting projects that I’ve been involved with in the 45 years I’ve been in this business.”

Accompanying musical pieces were carefully chosen to fit perfectly with the art. Selections varied from lively instrumentals to sombre classical pieces to moving vocal performances. For example, the gentle melodies in Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” worked harmoniously with the soft, glimmering view of Van Gogh’s Starry Night to create a transcendent experience at multiple sensory levels. Additionally, Adam Fisher’s tribute to Van Gogh, “Vincent,” was especially impactful when overlaid with some of the visual artist’s other works, such as The Bedroom and The Church at Auvers

This display does a much better service to its impressionist paintings than other non-physical showcases have. It still, however, possesses some of the unavoidable limitations of digital art. The texture and visibility of the brushstrokes, visual elements that are considered a cornerstone of the impressionist movement, are completely lost. Additionally, the viewer cannot see the light interact with the canvas as it would if they were walking around the real-life painting.

Viewing the paintings in this exhibition is no substitute for viewing them in real life. With that being said, visitors are still bound for a completely unique, ambient, and compelling experience at Lasting Impressions

Lasting Impressions is on display at Espace St. Denis until March 12.

Hayes Staff Writer

After premiering at the Telluride Film Festival in the fall of 2022, Women Talking made its way to theatrical audiences on Jan. 13. Adapted from Miriam Toews’s 2018 novel of the same name, the film was co-written and adapted by Toews and Canadian director Sarah Polley. Women Talking follows eight women in a remote Mennonite community who grapple with their faith in God and their community following a series of violent sexual assaults. The film tracks these women for 48 hours as they decide, through a series of conversations, to fight, forgive, or flee. Despite its grim subject matter, Women Talking doesn’t feel like taking your medicine. With piercing dialogue, a captivating sea of performances, and striking visual composition, Women Talking is as compelling cinematically as it is thematically.

The film creatively departs from the novel by placing a young girl from the colony (Kate Hallett) as the narrator—in stark contrast to the novel’s male narrator, August. Although August (Ben Whishaw) still appears in the film, Polley and Toews use this minute yet monumental change to centre women’s voices and presences in their story. The central conversation between the eight women is sharp, cutting, and at times, witty. The script pays careful attention to never demonize or look down upon these women for their religious beliefs. It never once passes judgment for their fears of staying or leaving the place they call home, even though it may be a dangerous place. With such powerful dialogue, their words resonate well into the film’s quiet moments.

The film’s three leads—Ona (Rooney Mara), Salome (Claire Foy), and Mariche (Jessie Buckley)—intently articulate the emo-

tional, physical, and spiritual pains of the women. Each of them symbolizes the three core solutions proposed by the women in the colony—to forgive, fight, or flee—but none ever feel like a caricature or too on the nose. Foy, who comes to represent the desire to fight, delivers an intensely captivating performance, unwavering in vigour and sorrow from start to finish. She says every line of dialogue with the same fierceness as the last—serving as the driving force of division, you simply can’t take your eyes off her. Alongside the rest of the cast, Buckley and Mara’s performances expertly support Foy’s. Mara, in particular, acts as the emotional core of the film as an audience stand-in, incorporating lighter moments of a blossoming romance with the bleak backdrop of the film’s overarching themes. Buckley plays in direct contrast to Foy, acting as a sounding board for her ever-changing perspectives throughout the film.

The matriarchs of the colony, Greta (Sheila McCarthy) and Agata (Judith Ivey), masterfully bring a sense of structure and order to the sprawling cast. Despite the individual merits of each performance, the cast’s chemistry and support of one another is what makes the entire film something extraordinary. Their authentic chemistry brings life to the script, brilliantly portraying countless aspects of this community’s collective experience.

Director Sarah Polley made a striking and bold choice with the film’s visual language by working with a drab, grey colour palette. This could have compromised the cinematography, but Polley elevates the emotional tension with colour to emphasize the desperation the women in this colony feel. Something has drained these women’s lifeblood, metaphorically and visually. With sweeping shots of country fields and sunsets from barn doors tinted with the film’s ominous colour palette, Polley creates a sense of familiarity,

discomfort, and hope, all before the first words are spoken.

Women Talking combines a masterfully written script, astonishing performances, and phenomenal visuals, making the film one of the year’s most important and compelling works. To some, a story of women having conversations in one setting may seem exceptionally suited to a novel. Polley, however, expertly demonstrates how film can not only accommodate, but even elevate the text beyond its original form.

Talking is currently playing in theatres across the country.

Charlotte

Women

Sarah Polley’s adaptation delivers insight and nuance to Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel

‘Women Talking’ is as vibrant as it is harrowing

Vincent Van Gogh only started painting at 27 years old, impressively without any formal training. (Shireen Aamir / The McGilll Tribune)

Sarah Polley returns for her first directorial effort since 2012’s ‘Stories We Tell.’ (Sofia Stankovic / The McGill Tribune)

The first time I learned about the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) was during a Zoom meeting for The McGill Tribune’s news section in January 2021, nearly five months into my first year. As an intimidated newcomer, I joined the meeting thinking I would just test out the vibe and refrain from picking up a piece. Yet, upon hearing that somebody needed to look into the new investigation that SSMU had just published about its collection of student fees—a number totalling upwards of $2,600,000—I was immediately intrigued.

My lack of awareness about SSMU prior to joining the Tribune might have stemmed from the fact that we were in the throes of the pandemic, with virtually no campus activity. Although, in talking to students today, it seems like the lack of awareness about what SSMU is, or even does, persists.

“Literally, I found out what it was the other day. I’d never been into the building [....] We saw a building and everybody was like ‘Oh S.S.M.U’. I’m like, oh, I didn’t even know. I went to the Brown Building the other day, for the first time,” Maria Eugenia Areizaga-Garcia, U0 Science, said.

But students interact with SSMU all the time. If you’ve ever been to Open Mic Night at Gerts, visited clubs at Activities Night, or even used a free charging station at McLennan Library, you’re engaging with an aspect of McGill that SSMU administers, paid for by your student fees. Even matters like the new Fall reading break or 24-hour library access at the start of midterm season are the results of advocacy efforts from SSMU.

SSMU was established in 1908 and is the accredited student association for the approx-

Make your student union work for you

Reflecting on the debates, internal tensions, and potential of the SSMU

personal opportunities.” They work full-time alongside permanent staff to run services, organize clubs, and advocate for students, often directly to the McGill administration. Along with the student executives, SSMU also has a political decision-making body, the Legislative Council, and a dispute resolution body, the Judicial Board.

Juliet Morrison, News Editor

government. As he explained, student associations began incorporating as not-for-profits in the 1960s and 70s to skirt the university’s control.

dent life events,” Yang elaborated via email. “This is because the University says it does not have the funding or capacity to support these services [....] McGill has provided nothing. McGill often says it has budgetary constraints and thus passes on a lot of workload and costs to other organizations, such as SSMU.”

Compared to other Canadian student unions, SSMU is burdened with a higher workload in providing services. Yang pointed to the SSMU Menstrual Health Project as an example of this imbalance. The University of Toronto offers free menstrual products themselves, while Western University is providing $800,000 to their undergraduate student association so it can expand its menstrual hygiene program.

Despite SSMU’s pervasive presence in student life, only 12.9 per cent of eligible undergraduate students voted in the elections that ushered in this year’s executives. This reflects a broader trend across Canada of low engagement in student associations, but also students’ disillusionment with SSMU.

Particularly after the events of last year, which saw the overturn of a democratically elected policy and a lack of transparency regarding internal turmoil that gutted the executive team with one impeachment and two resignations, SSMU’s reputation of being an environment that attracts students wishing to pad their resumes and debate trivial matters seems to have become stickier.

What is SSMU?

“Before they were incorporated [as notfor-profits], the student unions were controlled directly by the university administrations,” Patrick said. “This meant that if the students wanted to pass something in their constitution, the university could veto it [....] So in the mid-20th century, there was a big push toward making the unions independent.”

After corporatization, Patrick explained that student unions began expanding to meet their reporting obligations—the accounting needed to comply with provincial laws around not-for-profits. Unions started to hire permanent non-student staff, and their annual operating budgets increased exponentially as a result.

In 1992, SSMU brought in $857,174 from student fees. In 2021-2022, it brought in $2,685,111, according to current vice-president (VP) Finance Marco Pizarro.

Current VP University Affairs Kerry Yang told me that, in addition to just being formally corporatized, SSMU must also function as a cor

Running services like the University Centre and Gerts Bar and Café requires staff and a human-resources department. The six SSMU executives are salaried employees, earning approximately $32,000 for their work, which is supposed to average 40 hours a week, but can easily become 60 to 90 hours instead.

SSMU’s corporate architecture undergirds healthy student life on campus, but can sometimes become a barrier to the union’s political advocacy role. The SSMU constitution notes that the Quebec Companies Act takes precedence over both its Letters Patent, and the constitution itself in “the event of a contradiction” between them.

SSMU’s corporatization is also why its highest governing body is the Board of Directors (BoD)—an entity whose job is to ensure SSMU acts in the best interest of its business and legal affairs.

Last year’s events highlighted the precedence of SSMU’s corporate responsibilities when it overturned the Palestine Solidarity Policy that

SSMU hold off to weigh the legal repercussions it would face if McGill carried out its threat, which included the potential loss of student spaces, such as the University Centre? They opted for the latter.

For the members and supporters of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights McGill (SPHR) who created the policy, it seemed like even when they did everything right, including initially getting approval from the Judicial Board, it still wasn’t enough to bypass the BoD’s ultimate power.

“The BoD, in this particular case, had an objective which was defending the interests of the McGill administration—not the democratic will of the student body,” a representative of SPHR told me. “The Palestine Solidarity Policy last year essentially showed that no matter what students want, and despite the democratic nature of the referendum and the SSMU constitution, which presents democracy as a priority in our student life, the Board of Directors has powers to overturn the desires of students, even though they might conform to constitutional norms.”

From everyday actions to large-scale change, the balancing of not-for-profit interests and advocacy interests often clash dramatically. Former VP Internal (2021–2022) Sarah Paulin believes that SSMU faces a fundamental tension whereby its corporate responsibilities hinder its potential to advocate for students freely.

“SSMU plays a very interesting part where it has like two faces, it has the company part, but it also has the advocacy part,” Paulin said. “And those two don’t really align sometimes [because] every decision SSMU makes, it has to think about the laws that it abides by, the people that it’s [employing], as well as advocating for students.”

Palestine Solidarity Policy and could have gone further to defend SSMU’s democratic processes.

“I’ve seen [SSMU’s] so-called corporate responsibilities used as an excuse to push aside student activism and advocacy,” Buraga said. “[T] here’s a really big leeway in which fiduciary duty can be applied and how far you can push the boundaries before you’re getting into the point where you’re not acting in the best legal interests of the Students’ Society.”

Debating what SSMU should be Many of the people I spoke to, including students and former SSMU executives, had conflicting ideas about what changes SSMU should or shouldn’t make so that it can best address students’ needs.

Paulin believes that SSMU should move away from advocacy, get rid of the political VP External position, and focus instead on supporting clubs and services. She told me that SSMU’s practice of trying to be a “porte-parole” (spokesperson) for students often alienated the wider student body and contributed to “tension” between the student union and McGill.

“You can [engage in activism] on your own, you can find political parties within Montreal, but that should not be the student organization’s job, because it takes away from what I think is the true purpose of SSMU, which is having space for students and being able to support clubs and services,” Paulin added. “Who cares about what six students have to say? SSMU will not represent every single student. So it should not try to.”

U3 Science student and former Legislative Councillor Lucas Nelson thinks that SSMU is best for collecting and distributing student fees to important services, such as DriveSafe. Al-

to abolish its current structure and institute direct democracy at all decision-making levels to improve student engagement. These ideas were built into a political campaign he co-created, which spurned the ‘McGill Student Union Democratization Initiative Policy.’

Although it passed in SSMU’s Fall 2021 referendum, the policy was controversial for many at SSMU and seen as simply unfeasible considering its calls to completely reform the operations of independent faculty associations and abolish the Board of Directors. As of yet, none of its structural recommendations have been taken up.

“If people see that they get more tangible results in their time and effort through external activism, or getting involved in a service that provides direct services to students, they might put their time in that versus having to deal with admin BS or Legislative Councils that lasts for hours and hours for no good reason,” Buraga told me. “Unless there’s some sort of massive foundational change to the way that SSMU runs itself, you’re just gonna keep this getting the same issue year after year.”

The plight of student engagement

But there are other voices that are largely absent from the conversation—those of students who don’t vote or participate in the SSMU’s affairs.

The decline in voter turnout is more severe at larger campuses where the student body is more dispersed, Patrick told me. The voter turnout for the University of Toronto Students’ Union most recent executive elections was a mere 6.6 per cent.

This trend of low turnout requires student unions to “show [students] that it’s worth getting

three hours long.

On the other hand, the lack of student engagement makes it difficult for representatives to understand what the student body wants from them and how to best address their needs.

Drawing on her VP Internal experience, Paulin explained that “execs will come in with a mission and try to do everything we can to fulfill that mission. But when trying to reach out to students, there’s no response [....] We can say ‘SSMU doesn’t do a good job of reaching out to students,’ but when there’s a lack of interest, there’s nothing you can really do.”

Corporatization, lack of student engagement, McGill’s ceilings to advocacy, and general disconnect between the student body and its union seem to mutually reinforce each other.

In the face of these overlapping issues, it can be easy for students and those involved in student associations to choose apathy and think of themselves as temporary community members. Students whose issues are deemed “controversial”––women, students of colour, disabled students, neurodivergent students, 2SLGBTQIA+ students––are in turn most disempowered if SSMU and community members just give up. As one SPHR representative puts it, SSMU’s actions last year were “very harmful to student activism because it leads to many students thinking ‘oh, why even bother?.”

At a setting like McGill university decision-making is concentrated in the hands of a few senior administrative officials who repeatedly dismiss students as stakeholders. However, there is tremendous value in an association tasked with representing roughly 25,000 students.

“At the end of the day, student associations are supposed to be beneficial to students,” current VP External Val Masny told me. “And if

Design by Drea Garcia, Design Editor

David Paquet’s ‘Wildfire’ is a blazing success

English translation of acclaimed play appeals to anglophones and francophones alike

Dana Prather Staff Writer

Although January in Montreal is synonymous with grey skies and plummeting temperatures, the city’s vibrant theatre community is still blazing—and nowhere is this more evident than in Talisman Theatre’s bold production of Wildfire by David Paquet. A triptych of intergenerational trauma, the play depicts the lives of a set of deeply unhappy triplets living in a triplex as they navigate twisted familial connections. Set against a backdrop of glittering, floor-to-ceiling gold streamers (courtesy of set designer Odile Gamache), Wildfire expertly weaves elements of classical Greek tragedy with a dark, often grotesque comedic sensibility.

The production’s cast comprises Julie Tamiko Manning, Kathleen Stavert, and Davide Chiazzese, all of whom portray two distinct characters at different points of the play in an impressive display of range. At the show’s outset, the three appear as triplets Claudie, Claudine, and Claudette, who hurry on and offstage as they recount complicated familial relationships and their searches for connection with their inner child, their life, and their mailman, respectively. This first section comes to a dramatic close when they are subjected to a chilling curse from a psychopathic baby. What follows is a litany of over-the-top moments—the death of a pet tarantula, a young woman’s perverse interaction with a serial killer, and a prolonged sequence of feet-licking are just a few examples that come to mind—that left the audience to split their time between bursting with laughter and squirming in their seats.

First produced by the Centre du Thêâtre d’Aujourd’hui in 2016, Wildfire is the English-language translation of playwright David Paquet’s smash-hit tragicomedy Le brasier. This Governor General Award-winning artist is no stranger to the city’s Frenchlanguage theatre scene. A proud graduate of the National Theatre School’s playwriting program, Paquet has lived in Montreal for

many years and even received the Prix Michel-Tremblay for his play Porc-épic, which was produced by local theatre company Théâtre PÀP in 2010. However, Wildfire is his first English-language production in Montreal and serves as his introduction to the city’s anglophone audiences. While this novel attempt to connect with the city’s English-speaking theatregoers may seem daunting to some, Paquet feels much more excitement than trepidation.

“This play seems to me to be a perfect fit for an encounter with this new audience, both neighbouring and yet unknown, since it intertwines the notions of otherness and home,” Paquet noted in the show’s press release.

To make this leap between the Two Solitudes, Wildfire is being presented by Talisman Theatre in partnership with La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines, a contemporary performance venue and creation space where the show is being staged. Founded by Lyne Paquette and Emma Tibaldo in 2006, Talisman aims to present English-language premieres of Quebec plays in translation. Wildfire is also part of Centaur Theatre’s Wildside Festival, which runs from Jan. 16 to Feb. 11 and features five distinct plays curated by theatre artist Rose Plotek. A powerhouse of anglophone theatre in Montreal, Centaur Theatre has made it a priority to make deeper connections with the francophone theatre community and promote cross-cultural connection this season, and their support will undoubtedly draw more anglophone spectators to this delightfully twisted play.

For fans of the original French text, rest assured that this translation by Leanna Brodie maintains its tongue-in-cheek humour. The direction by Jon Lachlan Stewart is based on

Diving into the ‘Love Island’ fishbowl

Addressing the British reality show’s misogyny and racism

Millie Roberts Contributor

This past summer, I binge-watched season eight of Love Island UK in its entirety—an embarrassing total of more than 50 hours. Each day for eight weeks, I would occupy my well-worn seat on my family’s couch at the given hour and embrace the experience of watching a reality show taking place in a large, luxurious villa. The pool of contestants, usually half women and half men, are isolated from the outside world. With no connection to the internet or anything else beyond the villa walls, the generally ludicrously-attractive contestants have one goal: To find love.

One evening, my mother walked into the room, watched approximately 10 seconds of it and sighed, “Why are you watching this crap?”

It’s a valid question.

Since the show’s onset, the women islanders have been subjected to double standards, slut-shaming, and objectification from their male counterparts, not to mention an overall lack of emotional intelligence. In season three, contestant Jonny Mitchell openly stated that he did not believe in feminism and that women “almost already have more opportunities” than men. Adam Collard, a contestant on season four of Love Island, was the subject of a complaint lodged by Women’s Aid for “clear warning signs” of “gaslighting and emotional abuse” against

the women contestants. Regardless, the Love Island casting crew decided to re-hire him for season eight8.

The male contestants encourage each other to flirt with every bombshell that walks in, despite their loyalties lying elsewhere. But the moment a woman expresses the slightest interest in another man, the men make their contempt very clear. An example of this was season eight’s Ekin-Su: The male islanders latched on to one moment of infidelity as grounds to slut-shame her for the entire eight weeks. Meanwhile, four out of the five non-single men wasted no time cheating on their partners within the first 48 hours of Casa Amor during the same season, yet none of them were taunted or harassed.

Contestants of colour are also continuously disregarded by their white counterparts on Love Island. Traditionally, in the first episode, islanders must choose who they want to couple up with solely based on appearance, picking from a line-up without so much as an introduction, . And six seasons in a row, a Black contestant was picked last, deeming them the not-said-but-heavilyimplied title of ‘Least Desirable’ among the islanders. White male islanders will also claim that their preferred “type” of woman are those with blue eyes and blonde hair. Due to Eurocentric standards, the beauty standard for Black women is an absurdly high-bar, especially dark-skin Black women, whereas, for white women, the bar is only at toe-stubbing height. The fantasy of love

the original production by Phillipe Cyr, honouring the show’s vaudevillian nature. The production also doesn’t leave its francophone spectators out in the cold. Subtitles are projected throughout the show to a small screen visible only by the back three rows of the audience members, keeping the spectacle linguistically accessible without distracting from the action onstage.

Six years after its original French premiere, Wildfire is a bold new English-language translation whose sardonic humour and twisting, cyclical storyline will offer audience members on both sides of the aisle plenty to talk about.

‘Wildfire’ runs from Jan.16 to 28 at Théâtre La Chapelle as part of the Wildside Festival. Tickets can be purchased online at https://lachapelle.org/en/schedule/wildfire-1-1 (Regular: $30; Students: $25)

that invades our homes via the TV is one exclusive to conventionally attractive white people who, in most cases, enter the show for financial gain or clout. And throughout all eight seasons and 16 winners, all have been white except one.

“They choose the worst people to go on this show,” my mother said, tutting at the screen.

But I disagree.

Love Island doesn’t act as a catalyst to worsen social injustices, but rather as a microcosm through which the inequalities of everyday society can be magnified. The events of each season are not unique to the confines of its villa; Love Island shows us a subculture entrapped within a fishbowl, and

as we stare at its contents, our reflection in the glass stares back.

So why do I watch Love Island? Aside from the entertainment value, which I cannot pretend I don’t enjoy, I suppose my eyes stay glued to the screen out of morbid fascination. I enjoy watching exaggerated social dynamics play out within a controlled setting. Complete strangers are thrown into novel surroundings with no external influences and the same familiar social injustices are reproduced, highlighting just how deeply scarred we all are by our limiting subconscious biases. As the ninth season airs this winter, it will be interesting to see whether anything will change.

Actors (from left to right) Davide Chiazzese, Kathleen Stavert, and Julie Tamiko Manning perform a scene from Wildfire by David Paquet. (atuvu.ca)

Three couples from season eight’s cast are still together. (goss.ie)

The advent of ChatGPT in academia

How the new AI chatbot is changing the lives of McGillians and academics

Ibrahim Younas Contributor

From composing an email to plagiarizing an assignment, ChatGPT can do it all— and with impressive quality, surpassing the average AI bot. The caveat is that it’s very difficult to detect its use. ChatGPT’s impressive generative skills pose a novel problem for the world of academia and are bound to change the nature of academic work at McGill and other universities, as early as today.

Launched by OpenAI in November 2022, ChatGPT is a chatbot that provides intellectually complex answers to every conceivable question you throw at it. Its ability to instantly generate creative writing, historical information, and scientific data is revolutionary; experts believe it is only a matter of time before it replaces oldfashioned search engines, which only provide a list of relevant hyperlinks. Such advantages make its appeal to students perfectly clear.

Bettina Kemme, a computer science professor and researcher at McGill, expressed her concerns about this new software in an interview with The McGill Tribune

“The tricky thing is that the chatbot can provide different results when asked the same question. This would create a significant problem,” Kemme said.

McGill students like Jesse Sutherland, U1 Science, are already encounteringChatGPT’s

influence in the classroom.

“My bio professor makes questions that you can’t find the answers to online. Now he was joking about how he has to check all the questions on ChatGPT before setting an assignment,” Sutherland said.

For the moment, Kemme––and the McGill administration––have left the onus on students to not abuse the platform.

“[There has] always been a minority [of students] that [have] plagiarized. As long as the proportion does not increase, it won’t be a problem, otherwise, the university has to have a discussion,” Kemme said.

The Dean of Students reinforced this stance in a Jan. 15 email to students, saying that this software is a great tool for “preparing a summary of information for yourself,” but that it should not be used for assessments. Still, the question remains: How will the university keep track of all this?

Such concerns also surfaced in conversations with students, some of whom, like Mohamed Elsamadouny, U2 Software Engineering, offered potential solutions.

“While it may not be possible to check for plagiarism, there are several AI applications that can detect whether certain text[s] [have] been generated by other AI,” Elsamadouny said.

These apps, including GPTZero, recently developed by a Princeton University student,

and Content at Scale and are showing promise at identifying works potentially produced by ChatGPT.

Another consolation is the technology’s occasional susceptibility to errors. ChatGPT can generate incorrect information or reproduce content laden with biases. For a student in a rush or desperate for answers, these responses could be taken as truth or as fact. Students should be wary and use the software for inspiration rather than plagiarism.

All of this is not to say that ChatGPT has solely caused alarm. Shifting from coursework to real-life implications has had many positive impacts. One example is its usefulness in the job and internship market, where the platform seems to have garnered great popularity amongst students in need of cover letters, resumes, and professional emails.

Alberto Garcia, U2 Arts, praised the chatbot for its ability “to provide a working skeleton and structure upon which you can build.”

The chatbot produces decent working models for cover letters that are personalized to one’s CV and the particular requirements of a position. This eliminates the daunting aspect of simply getting started on an application.

Students have also found the bot helpful in running a business. Ahmad Darraj, U2 Management, told the Tribune how his friend found ChatGPT useful in helping to “develop

Local Stories: The Montreal book man

Adrian King-Edwards’ story behind The Word bookstore

Harry North Staff Writer

When Adrian King-Edwards, the owner of The Word Bookstore, started selling second-hand books from his living room in 1973, carefree hippies would occasionally arrive barefoot. The scores of thronging students also caught the attention of local police.

Adrian, who had recently graduated from McGill as an English literature major, put a picture of George Bernard Shaw in the front window, so locals knew where to go, and hosted weekly poetry readings with his thenpartner, Lucille. Their apartment became known as ‘The Underground Bookstore.’

The police, though, were concerned that Adrian was selling something more sordid than literature. Two police officers raided his home and even searched through his kitchen spices but found nothing.

In 1975, Adrian noticed a for-rent sign for the laundrette next door, which a Chinese family had run for 70 years. He learned over the phone that it would be $175 per month for the modest, two-storey building, originally built as a horse stable. Adrian seized the opportunity. He moved the trunks of books from his living room, gathered more McGill textbooks, and opened The Word with Lucille.

Forty-eight years on, many of the original quirks remain. They only accept cash, make phone calls on an analogue phone, the books by the window-sill rotate regularly, and local poets still come for readings.

“Poets are very needy people,” Adrian says, chuckling. Adrian, now 73, no longer lives in the apartment next door. He moved to a stately family house around the corner on Aylmer Street and lives with his partner, Donna JeanLouis, and dog Bjarni, an eight-year-old black Labrador. Adrian also has two sons from his first marriage, Brendan and Nick.

Donna, 73, is originally from Nova Scotia and enjoys collecting limitededition children’s books. She also loves to cook and often entertains bookstore owners at their house after book fairs, sometimes cooking for 35 people at a time.

Adrian met Donna when he opened the store, and the two became good friends. Once they parted ways with their previous partners, they became closer and married 10 years ago.

Now, they run the store together, selling the majority of books from the shop and the rarer items from their home. They also love to read, and every week make time to read aloud to each other.

They’re very selective about sourcing books, mostly acquiring titles on scholarly literature and philosophy. The process takes the pair around the

the webpage for his cat litter business.”

Others have used it to navigate delicate social situations. U0 Software Engineering student Nicolas Saade told the Tribune that he used ChatGPT “to write a thoughtful letter [to a McGill club] explaining his reasons for leaving in a way that would not hurt [his] team members.”

The advent of ChatGPT simultaneously calls for a reimagining of evaluation methods while nourishing several different aspects of student life. McGill’s policy at the moment seems to advocate for self-policing of the software’s use and the imperfections in the technology might just guarantee that…for now.

Alberto, U2 Arts, pointed out how you could ask the bot to write a Shakespearean sonnet about tomatoes. (cnetfrance.fr)

world, but typically involves two or three weekly house calls in Montreal.

Along with selling books, they rent boxes of books to film companies, and have featured in box office hits such as Life of Pi

“Later tonight, we are going to a storage unit which has 50 boxes for us to see,” Adrian said, his eyes lighting up.

It’s no secret that online book retailers have made life harder for independent bookstores. Adrian believes that low rates of homeownership among young people have hindered demand for second-hand books as well. But nothing could have braced them for the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I had prepared for the store to burn down or to be robbed, but McGill closing? No way.”

His son Brendan, 42, struck up the idea to deliver mystery boxes of books across the island, with Adrian and the family handpicking books for each box and selling them online.

“It turned out pretty well,” Adrian said. “The roads were quiet, we could go to parts of the island we have never seen before, and we sold a few too.”

With the loosening of pandemic restrictions, Adrian is upbeat about the future, though he laughs when business students do their class projects about his store and ask about his ambitions. To throw them off, he tells them he would like to downsize.

In response to whether he can tell if somebody is not a book enthusiast, he replied, “Oh yes. They will stand too far away from the books […] and probably get their phone out.”

For the 40th anniversary of the store, they invited customers to their home for drinks and cake, serving a metre-wide cake to over 400 people. The 50th is two years away and will certainly be a community event as well.

“That’s something we will have to plan,” Adrian said, smiling with his eyes, “but it will have to be bigger.”

Stories is a new series on the stories of Montrealers

Local

Adrian once cycled from the top of Scotland to Nigeria, only stopping once he realized he ran out of money. (Maeve Reilly / The McGill Tribune)

The super family behind Super Sandwich

The story behind one of the most popular student lunch spots

Charlotte Bawol Contributor

Continued from page 1.

Mathis and Jenny started out by helping their parents with the family business on weekends. After they graduated, their father was no longer able to run the business, so they took over in 2005. It has become a staple of McGill culture ever since. Mathis takes the orders and processes the payments, while Jenny makes the sandwiches.

As a prospective McGill student, I was sent a list of places to check out in Montreal by a family friend who had graduated from McGill in the mid-2000s, and Super Sandwich was at the very top of that list. The unassuming location of the deli coupled with its lack of advertising anywhere on campus made me curious as to how so many people knew about it, especially considering the disconnect between pre and post-COVID students. While Mathis concedes that COVID-19 lockdowns were very difficult for the business, due to the lack of students on campus, this semester has been one of their most

Since its opening in 1988, Super Sandwich has become a go-to for many McGill students. (Maia Salhofer / The McGill Tribune)

successful ever.

The passion that Mathis and Jenny share for their business is apparent when they discuss it.

“I think there’s not one day in my life, that I woke up and said that I don’t want to go to work [....] I guess it’s because most of my customers are students. Students are busy with their studies and

don’t have time to give a person like me a hard time,” Mathis said in an interview with The McGill Tribune

Mathis amusingly points out that he used to make friends with customers in his younger days but doesn’t anymore, now that he’s older. However, he has become quite close to some customers and

has even attended a couple of their weddings.

On the topic of weddings, Mathis himself met his late wife working at Super Sandwich. She was a management student at McGill who came into the store regularly to buy sandwiches.

Mathis credits the business’s success to the fair pricing of their

Escape the digital world and touch some grass

What it means to live in ‘The Age of Social Media’

Yana Lazkani Contributor

It’s 2009: The early internet days.

Poptropica and Club Penguin are booming, Microsoft released Windows 7, and Disney XD hit cable services. But then came social media, along with a lasting novelty that prompted an ineffable sense of enthusiasm to the extent that it is now an inextricable component of human life.

In the present era of increasing digitalism and exponential technological advancement, it comes as no surprise that social media platforms have revolutionized the way people communicate and connect with each other. This was particularly apparent throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, as many were deprived ofsocial interaction to curb the spread. Perhaps we can all agree upon the benefits of social media, from sharing information with ease to remaining in touch with loved ones in previously unfathomable ways, or staying up-to-date on relevant information in times of havoc and uncertainty.

With the strict lockdowns and social distancing rules, we were forced to live in ways that completely defied our social natures. In response to these challenges, many people predominantly relied on forms of communication that did not entail meeting face-to-face, such as social media, phone calls, and Zoom calls.

For students like Alice Moyne, a U3 Agricultural and Environmental Sciences student, social media’s navigational ease

allowed her to reconnect with friends she had previously lost touch with.

“Due to ample free time and the simplicity of getting in touch with others, I was now in contact with friends I haven’t spoken to in years,” Moyne said.

Whether it be Houseparty hangouts, Zoom birthday parties, or virtual pubs, we certainly did not fall short of demonstrating our inherently creative faculties.

“I actually partook in all those activities with friends and family and felt closer to some than I have in previous years, despite the lack of physical interactions,” Victoire Brocart, U3 Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, said.

However, with approximately 4.7 billion individuals using social media today, not only are we staying digitally connected to each other, but over half of Earth’s population can now access an endless repository of information in mere seconds. Although this has undoubtedly resulted in great leaps in knowledge, it has also created a state of information overload— a state that leads many of us to end up more confused and overwhelmed than well-informed.

With COVID-19 being the first pandemic during the internet age, the public was constantly showered with misinformation and contradictory evidence from a maelstrom of sources. While public health officials worked to combat this ‘infodemic,’ many friend and family group chats became uncomfortable and hostile, with science seemingly up for debate. The ‘mute chat’ button had never looked so appealing.

Instant access to information and connection changes our personal relationships

and communication skills in the real world. For example, anyone who generally abstained from dating throughout the pandemic can attest to the difficulty of holding a real-life conversation and eye contact after relying on social media for so long. The art of conversation is slowly dwindling, while people’s compulsion to check their Instagram stories and TikTok for-you page is intensifying. Though social media might be a place of comfort, we should be cautious of the way reality doesn’t always follow an algorithm.

With social media constantly bombarding us with sensory input and becoming the central organ of modern society, it is more imperative than ever to be conscious of our screen time and evaluate the repercussions it may have on

sandwiches, as well as the speed with which their customers are served. That speed is in part thanks to his memorization of around 75 customers’ orders.

“If I already know the order, it saves time. It’s funny, sometimes the customer and [I] just have to look or nod at each other without speaking and we know,” Mathis said.

If you are an avid Super Sandwich customer, you have probably heard the chatter about it possibly closing down or moving. Mathis explained that they are currently in talks with their landlords about their lease and are uncertain about how long they will be able to stay at their current location. If staying entails raising their prices to an unsustainable level, they will have to move.

With its close link to the McGill community, some have wondered if the business will ever make its way to campus. However, Mathis is wary of the McGill administration’s lengthy wait times for adding new food vendors on campus.

“We also inquired about a location on McGill campus, but unlike Super Sandwich, it takes a bit more time to get an answer.”

our social skills and personal relationships. For example, despite the extraordinary ways we can now connect with people around the globe, meaningful, deep connections are at an all-time low.

If one finds themselves mindlessly scrolling through their feed for hours, Lalin Ersu, a U2 Arts student, recommends “setting a limit for your screen time, tracking it, and using social media with intention.”

Remind yourself why you decided to make this change. In doing so, you can resist the persistent urge to scroll and create some free time for other activities, such as hanging out with a friend, trying out a new recipe, or picking up the book you’ve been putting off for so long.

Could invasive species biologists bring their expertise to NASA?

McGill professor describes how to handle invasive species to develop planetary biosecurity

Ella Paulin Staff Writer

In February of 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars. Perseverance was the fifth rover that the space agency sent to the planet, but it had a unique purpose. The rover conducted the first mission to Mars designed to collect samples to be brought back to Earth, where they would be analyzed for signs of current or past life. With the return mission scheduled to arrive in 2033, questions about potential biological contamination are becoming increasingly urgent.

Anthony Ricciardi, professor of invasion ecology and aquatic ecosystems at McGill, along with an international team of biologists, published an article last year in BioScience outlining a new approach to the issue, which they term “planetary biosecurity.”

Ricciardi is not an astrobiologist or an engineer, but rather a biologist who has studied invasive species and their effects on Earth for the last 30 years. He helped develop a new field called invasion science, which combines several disciplines in order to study, predict, and prevent the impacts of human-carried invasive spe-

cies.

“The science of invasion biology has guided biosecurity at regional, national, and international scales,” Ricciardi said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “So my colleagues and I believe that it could similarly guide biosecurity at the planetary or interplanetary scale.”

Invasion biologists are trained to observe organisms taken out of their natural habitats and the destructive impacts this can have on a host ecosystem. Familiar examples of invasive species in Canada include zebra mussels, which remove plankton, an important foundation for aquatic food chains, and buckthorn trees, which are notorious for changing soil conditions to inhibit other plant growth.

Having studied species invasions on Earth, biologists like Ricciardi have learned a number of important lessons and developed principles that Ricciardi believes could be extended to the issue of possible interplanetary contamination.

One of the patterns that invasive species biologists have observed is that isolated ecosystems are especially vulnerable to ecosystem breakdown because the ecosystem has no experience with the invasive species.

“Ecosystems that have evolved in isolation, like Hawaii, or Australia, or Antarctica, are quite sensitive to the effects of introduced non-indigenous species, because they’ve evolved in the absence of similar organisms,” Ricciardi explained. “My colleagues and I would argue that planets and moons should be treated as if they’re insular systems.”

If planets are thought of as isolated systems, then maintaining biosecurity is an even more important issue, and biologists should apply other techniques to protect these ecosystems on Earth.

“For [an] example of how might we do this, a fundamental principle of invasive species management that could be applied to planetary biosecurity is the concept of early detection, rapid response,” Ricciardi said.

Locating and identifying a potentially invasive organism as soon as possible is a challenge on Earth, and an even greater challenge on another planet, where we might not immediately recognize a foreign life form.

Rapid response, on the other hand, is critical to address a possible threat before it becomes entrenched and more difficult to control.

However, any organisms on

other planets would probably resemble bacteria or fungi, and there is a very low risk of transmission to Earth.

“The aliens we’re talking about are not little green men,” Ricciardi said.

While the chances of fungal or bacterial contamination are extremely low, Ricciardi says that scientists must take them seriously and prepare for the unexpected.

“We’re talking about things, which are realistic scenarios, but highly improbable. But that’s what

low risk disasters are,” Ricciardi said, likening it to a natural disaster such as an earthquake.

For Ricciardi, while these risks are serious, they are also justified by the possibility of new discoveries.

“To any biologist, the search for life beyond Earth has got to be on a list of noble human endeavours,” Ricciardi said. “It could very likely produce an enormous discovery, and I think that could happen in the not-toodistant future. It justifies exploration, but it also justifies caution.”

Researchers expand knowledge of potential Martian life without leaving the comfort of home

Atticus O’Rourke Rusin Contributor

In 1957, the boundaries between Earth and space were first breached: The USSR launched the satellite Sputnik into space, marking the first contact between humans and our galaxy, setting off the aptly named space race between the Soviet Union and the U.S.

Even after icy international relations began to thaw with the end of the Cold War, the space race continued and extended its pool of competitors to other

countries. From the rapidly expanding economies of Japan and India to private, Musk-esque ventures, the fight to monopolize the mysteries of the heavens has become crowded. What many of these powers have in mind, though, is uniform—to reach the notoriously treacherous Martian landscape.

The Polar Microbiology Laboratory at McGill, however, has set out to deepen our understanding of the Red Planet from the comfort of home. Rather than rushing off into space like seemingly every billionaire today, researchers at the lab are looking to Earth’s most inhospitable envi -

ronments in an attempt to find lifeforms akin to what might be present on Mars. In a new paper spearheaded by Elisse Magnusson, a PhD student in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences under the supervision of professor Lyle Whyte, the lab team describes their research on microorganisms living in Lost Hammer Spring, one of the coldest springs on Earth and an analogous habitat to the life theorized to inhabit Mars.

Lost Hammer Spring, in Nunavut’s most northern area, is known for its high salinity—over 20 per cent salt concentration. High salinitykeeps the water liquid, even in below-freezing temperatures. Researchers view Lost Hammer Spring as one of the closest terrestrial environments to Mars, with its cold salt springs and large salt deposits being theorized to also exist on the Red Planet.

Mars is home to both organic carbon—which plants, animals, and most microorganisms need to survive—and environments rich in inorganic material, or matter not principally composed of carbon.

According to Magnusson, Lost Hammer Spring is indeed one of Earth’s most Martian environments. By learning how microorganisms survive in these environments and the effect they have on their surroundings, researchers can better predict what they should be looking for on Mars.

“The types of location or metabolism that we can expect to see [are] expanded [by looking to inorganic environments],” Magnusson explained. “It is also important

[...] so we know where exactly we might want to look and what exactly we might want to look for because certain types of microbes and metabolisms mean particular biosignatures.”

The team’s acquisition of a metatranscriptome, or the isolation of the total mRNA present in each microorganism, is especially remarkable; it provides information on the genes that these special microorganisms express. Using this technique, the Polar Microbiology Lab gleaned important insights into how these microorganisms can survive in such inhospitable conditions and what materials they consume and recycle.

Magnusson was enthused by this discovery, adding that it allowed researchers “to look at what genes [the microorganisms] are expressing and look with much greater detail at their metabolism, their adaptations.”

The European Space Agency has even shown special interest in the team’s research. The group turned in their results to the agency, which is planning to use the findings to calibrate life-detection technologies.

The team’s research demonstrates the fascinating connection between the extraterrestrial and terrestrial, as well as intriguing developments in the search for alien life. Although space exploration is a requirement to prove any theories posited by this research, important discoveries can be made without leaving orbit. In fact, it is curious that our home planet is often just as alien as Mars.

The nature of Earth seems as alien as Mars

NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission in 2033 would be the first mission to bring a sample back from the Red Planet. (www.cnn.com)

Scientists have long theorized the potential for life on Mars because of how it is home to both organic and inorganic matter. (rcinet.ca)

Social chatbots are abetting the loneliness epidemic

And university students might be their perfect prey

Eliza Wang Contributor

Continued from page 1.

Yet, with rising concerns about digital privacy, the murky ethics of AI, and overall detriments to wavering mental health, the proliferation of AI chatbots is much more of a danger than a tool for well-being.

Cybersecurity issues are inevitable when interacting with chatbots. Users’ names, email addresses, phone numbers, usage data, and

cookies are often stored and shared with external services by AI applications, despite superficial reassurance that user information is completely secure. This means that unidentified third parties will have access to all contact information, unbeknownst to most users. Worse yet, chat history, images, voice recordings, and calls are almost always recorded and stored semi-permanently as the chatbots’ training bases. Personal identifiable information (PII), such as speech patterns, voice and facial recognition, as well as racial and gender

profiles, may thus be stored without the users’ direct consent. Even though digital privacy regulations are in place in Canada, they simply cannot account for the fast-paced, almost parasitic encroachment of AI chatbots.

Replika, a chatbot launched in 2017, has espoused physical violence and sexual harassment time and again. Purported to be the non-judgmental, 24/7 available friend who supports the user no matter what, the chatbot rarely disagrees—even when users suggest illegal, discriminatory,

or self-sabotaging actions. Replika has encouraged people to commit murder or suicide, often within a mere few lines of message exchange.

Contrary to what companies may promise, AI chatbots do not ‘comprehend’ human language. Conversations are collected and deciphered through natural language processing (NPL) and human-like feedback generated through machine learning. All chatbots do is analyze the users’ language, syntax, opinions, and beliefs, then mirror their responses accordingly. In this sense, they could easily pick up and learn biases, discrimination, or hate speech, often reflecting neither common sense nor basic moral values. These AI chatbots thus pose critical risks by feeding into their users’ often already turbulent state of mind by depriving them of real, human interactions.

The questionable effects of chatbots do not end with violence—the perceived anthropomorphism of AI technology often creates delusions of interacting with another person. With features of styling one’s own chatbot avatar, starting from haircuts and eye colours to ethnicities and gender expressions, users are encouraged to regard their AI companions as their perfectly tailored friends, much more compatible and amenable than actual humans. Additionally, these chatbots

do not have real needs, nor do they ask for anything in return. They are merely designed to appease users, often leading to toxic emotional dependence.

Indeed, some users have become deeply attached to the point where even they are concerned about chatbots replacing their real, human connections. Worse yet, people have been developing romantic relationships, convinced that the AI application is capable of loving them back. Companies such as Replika have borne witness to severe attachment issues as petitions for restoring pre-update, intimate connections with their chatbots circulate the internet. While these social chatbots provide a space for users to be seen, heard, and supported, the one-sided interaction can only fuel delusions and worsen existing mental instability in the lives of vulnerable people.

At first glance, social chatbots might seem like an efficient, temporary replacement for actual therapy, but it was never designed as a proper psychiatry tool. From personal cases to wider user data, the detriments of AI applications far outweigh their potential support for mental health. If tech companies are to combat the epidemic of loneliness, they must start addressing the moral quagmire of conversational AI.

Get excited about endophytes

McGill researchers take microbes from plants to the production line

Gillian Cameron Contributor

In the world of industrial production, there is often one resource that goes forgotten—microbes. Microbes are everywhere and have adapted to almost every environment, from the inside of nuclear reactors to the outside of the International Space Station.

When thinking of natural interactions with microbes, we often think of disease, but microbial partnerships can be mutually beneficial. Many species of bacteria have established partnerships with larger organisms, including plants, with the microbe and the host exchanging nutrients to help each other survive. Many plants give the bacteria sugars, while the bacteria help the plant acquire nutrients. Legumes, such as peas and lentils, have root nodules full of nitrogen-fixing bacteria. And luckily, humans can use these partnerships to our advantage.

Professor Suha Jabaji is no stranger to mutualistic microbial partnerships. Her research focuses on plantpathogen and plant-endophyte interactions. Specifically, Jabaji’s lab focuses on endophytes, microorganisms that live within plants without harming them in a mutualistic relationship. The lab also works on bioprospecting—the process of identifying useful compounds from microbes like endophytes and other bacteria to find compounds that can be used in agriculture and industry.

“[Endophytes] don’t have any side effects, they have a mutual relationship with the plant. They use the plant for a little bit of food, but they help the plant with so many things,” Mamta Rami, a research assistant at the Jubaji lab, said in an interview with The McGill Tribune

The Jabaji lab works with a number of industrial partners to find endophytes and bacteria that can be put

to work. One of their goals is to identify endophytes that can act as an eco-friendly alternative to chemical pesticides and fertilizers and increase crop yields. Other bioprospecting targets include endophytes that can enhance a plant’s production of secondary metabolites. Secondary metabolites are not required by plants for growth, but help them respond to environmental stressors like ultraviolet radiation or animals that eat them. For example, caffeine is a secondary metabolite that helps trees from the Coffea species deter herbivores.

“Secondary metabolites mostly have medicinal and other kinds of biological effects that can be harvested and used in the pharmaceutical or cosmetic industry,” Rami said.

With one of their industry partners, the Jabaji lab was looking for bacteria adapted to growing in crude oil, which produce compounds that disperse or break down oil compounds that could be harnessed to clean up oil spills. The lab isolated a bacterium called Bacillus velezensis from crude oil.

“It was leftover stock, whatever was leftover after extraction [. . .] it was creating problems for the environment because when the company takes out all the oil from the oil well, they just leave it there,” Rami explained. “So the company wanted to do something organic to remove the contamination.”

Once a promising bacterium or compound is found, it’s a long, slow process to take it to market. Since you can’t just sell bacteria by themselves, scientists have to either find a way to stabilize the microorganisms or to produce their active compounds in large quantities. Despite these challenges, more and more microbial products are finding their way onto the market, providing environmentally-friendly alternatives to the more harmful chemicals of the past.

/ The McGill Tribune)

How the Habs let down their stars

Goal Caufield’s season is cut short by injury and ignorance

Sarah Farnand Sports Editor

The Montreal Canadiens are having nothing short of an absolute dumpster fire of a season this year. Currently sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic division, the Canadiens have a 0.1 per cent chance of making the playoffs, on par with their performance last season. With troubles coming from every direction imaginable, many are

claiming this year is the beginning of a much-needed rebuild.

In the latest of their series of unfortunate events, the team announced that Cole Caufield, the Habs’ leading goal scorer and prized possession, would miss the remainder of the season due to a surgery for a shoulder injury sustained earlier in the year.

Montreal has not had more than a three-game win streak all season. Despite abysmally low playoff

chances, the administration allowed Caufield to play with a serious injury, which likely aggravated it and made the recovery period lengthier and more tedious.

The loss of Caufield in a season with so few bright spots is damaging in many respects. Not only is he one of the Canadiens’ best players, but Caufield is also one of his teammates’ biggest supporters. An undeniable fan favourite, Caufield’s absence will be felt by Habs fans and players alike, both on and off the ice.

As a selfless teammate, it checks out that Caufield would want to set aside his own pain to help shine some light on an otherwise dark season. But at 22 years old, the Wisconsin native who currently ranks 11th in the National Hockey League (NHL) for goals scored has an incredibly bright future ahead of him—that is, if he stays healthy. In allowing Caufield to play while injured, the Canadiens’ medical staff were careless and placed the player in dangerous conditions for what can only be described as a throwaway season.

This isn’t the first time Montreal stars have been permitted to play despite lingering injuries. Carey Price and Shea Weber—both forced

Boxe Office: A hit among McGill students

Sean Neuman Contributor

Continued from page 1.

The timing, however, didn’t phase gym owner Normand Robert, a seasoned boxing coach and Taekwondo black belt who has been active in the boxing world for over four decades.

Due to the precarious timing of the Boxe Office’s opening, the gym started out with a lower volume of customers than it had hoped for. Despite the initially modest numbers, Robert recalls being optimistic about the gym’s prospects.

“I saw it as an advantage. I said to myself [that] COVID would eventually slow down,” Robert said in an interview with The McGill Tribune . “I’ll use this time to fine-tune the business, work any bugs out, and when people come back to the gym, I’ll be ready.”

Robert credits the gym’s success to his personable one-onone approach to coaching and his decision to operate out of a small space, with enough room for only six heavy bags.

Robert believes that in order to get the most out of

training, athletes must develop each technical aspect of boxing individually. As such, the gym offers six different types of onehour classes: soft, flash, core, shadow, focus, or boom. As most of the gym’s members are new to boxing, Robert takes pride in training his new clients from the very beginning and watching them develop their skills from beginner to expert.

Many students who came to the gym as beginner-level boxers in the fall were quick to praise the gym, not only for helping them develop a new skill, but also for its impact on their lives.

“Mr. Robert motivates me to push myself, teaches me the art of boxing, and, most importantly, cultivates my ever-growing passion for the sport,” said Charlie Li, U1 Science. “I’m glad I’ve stepped into this gym. It has changed my life and made boxing an integral part of my life.”

Lauren Kennedy, U1 Music, found that boxing helps her grow her self-esteem.

“When I leave Boxe Office, I leave as a stronger and more confident person [. . ..] Robert is an extremely encouraging, patient, and talented coach,” she said. “His boxing classes are the favourite

part of my day.”

Robert contends that regardless of skill or experience, his best clients are focused and eager to learn. He noted that many McGill students who come to his gym already embody these traits.

“I get a lot of McGill students,” said Robert. “They’re

into retirement by injuries (among other factors)—were permitted to play with serious ailments that they never quite recovered from. Creating an environment where star players feel safe and taken care of is imperative to the long-term success of any team.

With 11 players currently out of the Habs lineup with injuries, Caufield isn’t the only one who was encouraged to play through the pain, calling into question the competence of the Canadiens’ medical staff. In early December, Sean Monahan, who is currently fifth on the roster in terms of points, showed up to a game in an ankle boot and was still allowed to play.

At this point, many Habs fans are just hoping for the season to end as quickly and as painlessly as possible. With 35 games left in the regular season, many are calling on them to “tank for Bedard.” Actively tanking, the practice of intentionally weakening a team in the hopes of falling in the standings and gaining a better slot in the next year’s draft lottery, is becoming more and more popular with teams hoping to get their hands on World-Juniors phenom Connor Bedard with a firstround pick.

The tanking strategy, though, has already proven unsuccessful for the Habs. After a dreadful 22–49–11 season last year, the Canadiens were fortunate enough to choose first overall in the 2022 NHL Draft and selected Juraj Slafkovsky. Unfortunately, Slafkovsky continues to struggle at the NHL level, missing three months due to a lower-body injury, and is currently part of the slew of injured players.

The answer to the Habs’ woes is not as simple as another first overall pick. As we have seen from failures such as the Edmonton Oilers and the Buffalo Sabres, even multiple consecutive years of superstar draft picks do not guarantee success, because even the strongest players cannot rebuild a broken system.

With Caufield’s contract with the Canadiens coming up at the end of this season, an extension is beginning to seem more and more unlikely. Montreal must start putting the safety of its players first, and focus on the talent they do have instead of each “shiny new toy” dubbed to be the next Maurice Richard. If they are unable to do so, they run the risk of losing their stars to teams that protect their players’ health and still manage to bring home the cup.

smart; they want to understand what I teach them and ask a lot of questions. That is something that I love.”

As the Boxe Office experience continues to grow in demand, Robert is starting to consider his plans for the gym’s future. But Robert insists that small class sizes

must remain the priority so he can continue to build relationships with clients, both old and new.

“Community is important,” Robert said. “Nobody is a stranger here. One of my goals, when I opened, was to make something friendly, and [...] build up a community.”

Cole Caufield was drafted 15th overall by the Montreal Canadiens in 2019 (Eyes on the Prize).

Gym owner Normand Robert found his passion for boxing while recovering from a hamstring injury in Taekwondo (@ normandrobertphotography / Instagram).

Varsity Round Up: Jan. 19-22

McGill Tribune’ Sports Section sums up the varsity action from this past weekend

Jack Armstrong, Philippe Haddad, Eliza Lee, & Nate Northfield Contributors

Martlets out-grind Laval Rouge et Or

Final:

55-54 W Nate Northfield

On Jan. 19, an energetic and competitive atmosphere filled Love Competition Hall as the McGill women’s basketball team (2–8) took on Université Laval (7–3).

The energy was contagious, providing the spark that the Martlets needed to overcome the Rouge et Or in a narrow 55–54 victory. In the absence of one of their key players—Jessica Salanon— the Martlets knew they had their work cut out for them matching up against a Laval squad with elite mental toughness and athleticism.

The Martlets started off shaky, allowing Laval to gain an early advantage with a 10-5 lead. However, a key timeout kept the Martlets poised, helping them solidify their defensive attack and earn them a two-point lead to close out the first frame.

In the second quarter, the Martlets converted their relentless defence into an unstoppable offence, going on a crucial 11-3 run to give them a comfortable lead.

After halftime, Laval came out of the locker room with a mission. They made a 7-0 run thanks to Audrey Béland’s stellar offence and were able to cut their deficit to only eight points. The score sat at 45-37 going into the final frame.

In the fourth quarter, the Martlets went cold from the field and allowed Laval to chip away at the scoreboard. With two minutes remaining, secondyear guard Katie Rathwell drew a massive charge to prevent Laval from getting ahead. In

the next possession, third-year guard Emma-Jane Scotten hit two crucial free throws that would end up being the game-winning baskets. Laval was ultimately able to narrow the lead to only three points with 35 seconds remaining. The game reached a climax with 10 seconds left to go, when Laval’s Léa-Sophie Verret hit a layup to bring the score within one, but the Martlets held on to secure the victory.

An emotional win against a versatile offence like the Rouge et Or should be a positive step in boosting the Martlets’ defensive confidence.

“We were told to switch on everybody,” said Rathwell. “They are a really athletic team and a really strong team, we’re mostly guards out there, so we were just trying to make the right switches off screens and not get those mismatches.”

After falling 72-47 in a miserable rematch against Laval on Jan. 21, the Martlets will play their next game on Feb. 2 against the Bishop’s Gaiters (7–2).

Rouge et Or basketball bests the Redbirds in back-to-back games

Final: 81-70 L

Eliza Lee

After a tough loss against UQÀM (6–2) on Jan. 14, McGill Redbirds basketball (2–8) returned to Love Competition Hall for a match-up against Laval Rouge et Or (6–4) on Jan. 19.

McGill began the game with energy and drive, seizing rebounds and skillfully evading Laval defence with quick passes. The team gained confidence from steady handling by first-year guard Samuel Chaput and five successful three-pointers, each of which were celebrated by the lively McGill fans. By the end of the second quarter, the Redbirds were up 3521.

In the second half, Laval sharpened their defence, with the

Rouge et Or weaponizing their height advantage to grab rebounds and cover McGill’s offence. Though the Redbirds continued to fight hard, Laval shut them down, scoring 16 free throws in the final quarter and besting McGill 81-70.

In an interview with The McGill Tribune , head coach Ryan Thorne admitted that the team went into the game expecting to win.

“We beat them last [...] so we felt pretty confident in what we had as a game plan, and we executed it well in the first half, and just didn’t execute it well in the second half,” Thorne said. “We’re just trying to win one game at a time.”

Redbirds guard Sam Jenkins noted that the team plans to work on improving their stamina so they can play their best for the entire duration of the game.

“In the first half, we were [...] the better team, defensively and offensively, and in the second half [...] our intensity fell apart,” Jenkins said.

He added that the team was optimistic going forward despite the loss.

“We know we’ll be the team coming out of Quebec, we just need to find it within ourselves to play two halves of the game, instead of just playing one.”

The Redbirds fell 88-74 to the Rouge et Or on Jan. 21 and will face off against the Bishop’s Gaiters at home on Feb. 2.

Martlets hockey fall to the Ottawa Gee-Gees in a highscoring affair Final: 7-2 L Jack Armstrong

The McGill Martlets (2–15–1) faced off against the Ottawa Gee-Gees (10–6) on Jan. 20 at McConnell Arena. Having won two of their last three games, the Martlets hoped to continue on their recent path of successes.

The Martlets started strong and quickly jumped into the lead with a power play goal by first-year forward Anika Cormier. Ottawa, however, quickly outmatched McGill’s intensity and tied it up just three minutes later. The GeeGees continued to apply pressure throughout the period and scored an additional three goals, giving them a 4-1 lead heading into the first intermission. The Martlets

began the second period much like the first and netted their second goal when first-year forward Maika Lecavalier produced a brilliant pass to fourth-year forward Makenzie McCallum, who calmly slotted the puck past the Ottawa goalie. The rest of the period was the battle of the tendies, as the Martlets were

The first set began with matched fervor on both sides. Tension intensified throughout the opening stretch of play as both teams failed to score consecutive points. Phenomenal defensive efforts from libero Catherine Vercheval, middle blocker Charlene Robitaille, and outside

unable to capitalize on several scoring chances while second-year goalie Sarah Carmichael produced a myriad of saves.

The Martlets carried their momentum into the third period and just missed a couple of scoring chances within the first minutes. Both goaltenders continued to trade stunning saves until Ottawa managed to sneak one by Carmichael to restore their three-goal lead. McGill fought valiantly to get back into the game and continued to create scoring opportunities, but two late goals from Ottawa sealed the deal and handed the Martlets another defeat.

Despite the loss, head coach Alyssa Cecere remained optimistic heading into the final month of the regular season.

“We’re taking it one game at a time,” said Cecere. “We want to have a better end to our season so we are taking it each game at a time, that’s our focus.”

The Martlets fell 6-1 to the Bishop’s Gaiters (8–8) on Jan. 22 at McConnell Arena for Bell Let’s Talk Mental Health Night. They will play next on Jan. 27 against the Carleton Ravens (6–11).

hitter Clara Poiré allowed the Martlets to pull away with a lead, forcing Gee-Gee errors throughout the set. Middle blocker Meaghan Smith used her size to wall off the net, contributing two of the last four points to close out the first set 25-18.

The second set’s beginning echoed the first, with McGill capitalizing on Ottawa’s mistakes and duking it out defensively. This was the trend for most of the game, as the Gee-Gees committed 22 errors to McGill’s 10. Neither team was willing to give up easy points throughout this set, however, and hard-nosed digs from Vercheval and power hitter Victoria Iannotti along with Poiré’s heads-up awareness allowed McGill to finish it off 25-18.

The final set was a tale of two halves. McGill jumped to an early 14-6 lead with cut shots from Masha Solaja and beautiful assists by Audrey Trottier. The game seemed all but decided at 19-11 but Ottawa flipped a switch, pounding service aces down into McGill’s court and dominating through aerial combat to climb within two points of the Martlets’ 24-22 lead. It took a powerful spike from Poiré to close out the final set at 25-22.

The McGill Martlets (8–4) exacted their revenge on the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees (4–9) on Jan. 22 in a three-set game. The second-seeded Martlets wore their special-edition pink “Dig for the Cure” uniforms as part of a fundraiser for breast cancer research.

“We studied [Ottawa] a lot,” Vercheval told the Tribune, explaining McGill’s defensive strategy. “At some point you have a game plan and you know where to go, but the rest you just grind and get up and do it.”

With the Martlets bringing home a 3-1 victory over the first seed Université de Montreal Carabins on Jan. 22, McGill has officially ascended to the number one spot in the RSEQ standings.

Martlets volleyball takes revenge on the Ottawa Gee-Gees Final: 3-1 W Philippe Haddad

‘The

Second-year Sydney Foran came off the bench for the Martlets to score a career-high nine points. (Maia Salhofer / The McGill Tribune).

The Martlets bested their first-place rival, the Université de Montreal Carabins, in their last nine match-ups. (Reuben Polansky-Shapiro / McGill Athletics).