The McGill Tribune Vol. 42 Issue 22

The McGill Tribune

TUESDAY, MARCH 21 2023 | VOL. 42 | ISSUE 22

EDITORIAL SPORTS

It’s time Quebec funds trans futures, not transphobia

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Making a new world as we go

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McGill figure skating celebrates comeback year

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(Jasmine Jing / The McGill Tribune)

Students, faculty frustrated by administrative changes within Faculty of Science

Recent changes merge three administrative departments into one

Shani Laskin Staff Writer

Recent changes within the Faculty of Science concluded with the merging of administrative staff from the Geography, Earth and

Planetary Sciences (EPS), and Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) departments into one administrative pod as of March 13. This decision has brought on significant frustration and stress for staff and students, who cite a lack of effective communication from the faculty and sudden changes to advising and research proce-

Advancing scientific frontiers through undergraduate research

Inquisitive McGill students present the highlights of their curiosity

Russel Ismael Science & Technology

Editor

On March 15, the third Undergraduate Poster Showcase took place in the Students’ Society of McGill University Ballroom, bringing in a new cohort of student scientists. Nearly

400 attendees congregated that evening to learn from the 117 students presenting their projects, ranging from earthquakes melting rocks to building a safer community through harm reduction. The McGill Tribune brings you some of the highlights:

Screening cystic fibrosis amongst newborns

Grace Parish, U2 Science, is researching the impact of blood spot tests on infants to screen for rare diseases—mainly cystic fibrosis (CF), which causes severe respiratory difficulties.

dures.

Bruce Lennox, Dean of the Faculty of Science, and Maria Babiak, Director of Administration and Operation for the Faculty of Science, announced the merger at an EPS department meeting on Nov. 11, 2022.

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‘What Rough Beast’ explores the power and pitfalls of political discourse

Sofia Gobin Contributor

Universities often reflect our broader society in terms of both shared values and differences, creating a privileged microcosm of the world. By setting her

newest play, What Rough Beast, on a college campus, playwright Alice Abracen condenses complex political dynamics into a conversation between seven characters. Her script examines the contrast between encouraging open discourse versus censorship when ad -

dressing dangerous extremist rhetoric.

The play, which debuted at Centaur Theatre on March 2, follows the conflict between university students after a controversial right-wing speaker is invited to speak at their campus.

Alice Abracen’s thought-provoking play challenges empathetic dialogue on campus

Students vote to increase Midnight Kitchen fee, usher in 2023-24

SSMU executive

16.7 per cent of undergraduate students cast ballots compared to 12.9 per cent last year

Shani Laskin Staff Writer

The results of the Students’ Society of McGill University’s (SSMU) Winter referendum and executive elections were finalized on March 17. Alexandre Ashkir clinched the SSMU presidency and all but two referendum questions passed.

Student Support—which offers Grammarly, Calm, and Udemy to students—was up for a fee renewal and increase following its pilot program this year. The question passed with 68 per cent voting “yes”, meaning that the service will remain available until it is up for renewal in 2024. Fee increases for the Muslim Students’ Association (MSA), the Referral Services fee, the Mental Health fee, and Safety Services, which encompasses MSERT, WALKSAFE, and DriveSafe, all also passed.

The Midnight Kitchen Collective successfully passed two questions in the referendum, asking first for a fee renewal— meaning they will continue to receive their fee until 2028—as well as a fee increase from $3.35 to $8.00.

The Daily Publications Society (DPS), which provides funding for The McGill Daily and Le Délit , failed to pass

a fee increase with 57.6 per cent of people voting “no”. The Société de Publication de la Tribune (SPT), which runs The McGill Tribune , also ran two questions in the referendum: Students voted yes to a fee renewal and no to a fee increase of $1.50.

Other questions that passed include the creation of fees for the Legal Essentials Plan Fee, the SSMU Grocery program, and the International Relations Students’ Association of McGill (IRSAM). Students also voted to renew the fees for the Arab Student Network (ASN), Plate Club, Student Space Fund, Black Students’ Network (BSN), Environment Fee, and ECOLE.

Aside from questions about club fees, the referendum results determined the new SSMU executive team for the 20232024 academic year. Newly-elected SSMU President, Alexandre Ashkir, who is currently Speaker of SSMU’s Legislative Council and Chair of the SSMU Board of Directors, told the Tribune that he is excited to step into his new role but acknowledged that his unopposed campaign reflects underlying issues.

“I’m happy that the students trusted in me and voted for me. I promise to do all I can to accomplish the platform I presented and to support the SSMU in providing the best possible services and representation to the student body,” Ashkir said. “I must

also recognize that [...] while they could’ve voted no, the lack of other presidential candidates made my election less than ideal in terms of democratic values, and I hope to rectify the situation that caused this by the time of the next elections.”

Lalia Katchelewa, vice-president (VP)-elect University Affairs, is also excited about her new responsibilities and hopes to build on the work done this year by her predecessor, Kerry Yang, especially on pressing issues such as food accessibility and menstrual health equity.

“My head is buzzing with a million ideas and plans for next year,” Katchelewa told the Tribune in a post-election interview. “I can’t wait to sit down with this year’s VP University Affairs and discuss, evaluate, and strategize for next year [....] I want students to feel safe on campus regardless of who they are and I want them to have access to basic necessities.”The other executives elected are Alice Fang for VP Finance, Nadia Dakdouki for VP Student Life, Jon Barlas for VP Internal, Liam Gaither for VP External, and Hassanatou Koulibaly, who currently serves as VP Student Life, for VP Operations and Sustainability.

Each elected executive ran unopposed except for Barlas, who won his two-way race with 55.2 per cent of the vote. Barlas told the Tribune that while he looks forward

to his tenure, the lack of candidates for all executive positions was disappointing.

“Winning feels good, but this year’s executive elections season was definitely a huge letdown,” Barlas said. “The lack of interest in running for a SSMU executive position might be due to a number of things, but whatever the reasons may be, the fact that six of the seven positions ran uncontested, including the president, marks a real dent in student democracy. I don’t think many students saw any reason to vote at all, given their lack of options.”

Post-referendum debate erupts among LSA members over lack of clarity

surrounding constitutional

amendment

Motion to institute supermajority for strike vote denied by students

Madison Edward-Wright Managing Editor

After a brief campaign and voting period, the McGill Law Students Association (LSA) announced on March 14 that a change requiring a supermajority—two-thirds of voters—to pass a strike was rejected. Despite the referendum question’s failure to pass, many students are still confused about the implications of the constitutional amendment and are calling for increased transparency from the LSA.

The question that sparked the most debate among students asked whether voters “agreed to amend the LSA Constitution and Bylaws,” but provided no other details about the amendment and instead directed students to an edited version of the LSA constitution included in a past email. The proposed change to the constitution was that a vote to strike would require a two-thirds majority to pass—ultimately making it harder for students to strike.

Chloe Rourke, a 3L student, found the lack of reference documents linked in the referendum ballot to be particularly odd, considering the referendum questions were extremely brief.

“I’ve never seen a referendum question that referenced a document in an email,” Rourke told The McGill Tribune. “As much as possible, you try and indicate what the substantive changes are in the question [....] I think it’s really important that those are

properly contextualized and that that decision be made transparently, that everyone would know what they’re voting for.”

According to an email obtained by the Tribune sent by the LSA Chief Reporting Officer and Deputy Returning Officer to all LSA members, the platform used for voting, SimplyVoting, did not allow the LSA to link to more information on the ballot itself. Emma Linzmayer, the Arts Undergraduate Society Chief Electoral Officer, explained that linking in a referendum question is an uncommon practice, if even possible, that she has not had to deal with.

“With the pen sketches, each candidate gets 100 words [...] it’s about keeping the attention of the voters,” Linzmayer wrote. “So [with] referendum questions [...] we just input the question and ask voters yes/no [....] With links, it’s not very explicit in [some] electoral bylaws, but since the word count is so strict, it would be unfair to give some [questions] more persuasion power while others wouldn’t even consider it.”

The move to increase the number of students needed to pass a strike vote stemmed from the LSA strike in early 2022 in protest of the lack of accommodations for students during the Omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some students were unhappy that a strike was initiated with only a small majority of students—56.6 per cent—supporting the action.

“Over the course of the strike [...] and

in its aftermath, the LSA conducted substantial consultations [in 2022]— not only among the general student body, but also specifically with students in classes affected by the targeted strike,” LSA President Charlotte Sullivan wrote in an email to the Tribune. “We received a significant number of messages from students advising us that they were upset and defeated by the small margin by which the strike vote had passed.”

Law students were not the only ones to go on strike in Winter 2022: Education and social work students also protested the lack of hybrid accommodations during the pandemic. (Autmun Chu / The McGill Tribune )

Sullivan also disclosed that many students in the classes affected by the strike decided to cross the picket line because they felt that there was not enough support from law students personally affected by the strike to warrant one.

Law students were also taken aback by the short timeframe of this semester’s referendum. On the evening of March 1, students received an email stating that the campaign period would open on March 6 and close on March 9. Anyone wishing to form an official “No” committee—an official group campaigning for a no vote—had to notify the LSA CRO by March 5.

The LSA was supposed to run this referendum question about the supermajority

amendment in 2022, but scheduling issues led to it being postponed. Sullivan noted that because consultations occurred last year, the LSA did not explicitly publish about the changes because nothing was altered from what was to be presented in 2022.

“I don’t think the process was deliberately non-transparent at all, and we remained available between the publication of the constitutional amendments package and the beginning of voting to answer any questions about it,” Sullivan wrote. “With that being said, if I could change things now, I would have publicized the content of these amendments prior to the beginning of the campaign period.”

Over 40 per cent of voters abstained from the VP Internal vote. (Sofia Stankovic / The McGill Tribune)

Former student goes to court over alleged toxic culture and discrimination within Faculty of Dentistry

Court dismisses case against McGill, three professors over plaintiff’s COVID-19-related absence

Lily Cason News Editor

Aformer McGill dentistry student has sued McGill and three professors who were part of the Faculty of Dentistry while he was at the university over alleged discrimination. Adam*, the complainant, says his experiences at McGill were marked by targeted threats, a toxic atmosphere, and efforts to limit his ability to continue his studies.

Adam, who is Muslim and of North African heritage, is now 42 years old. He came to McGill as a mature student in 2012, entrance scholarship in hand, having graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) at the top of his class. Entering McGill, Adam hoped to ultimately become an oral and maxillofacial surgeon.

“At UCLA, I felt it wasn’t based on how you look [...], [your] origins,” Adam told The McGill Tribune. “It was just based on merit, you know, if you’re serious about your work, if you are professional, if you are interacting with others in a polite and nice way [...] that’s how it should be, not based on how you look. But at McGill, it was different [....] I felt like I was entering politics. It was who you knew [...] how much you [are] willing to give up.”

During conversations with the Tribune, Adam alleged that he was subject to verbal abuse, had grades manipulated maliciously, and had negative feedback added to his Dean’s letter—a reference letter required to apply for a specialization in oral and maxillofacial surgery— without due cause. He believes that both his race and willingness to voice his opinions about unjust structures and practices within the institution precipitated this treatment.

Ashraf Azar has been an advocate for students for over a decade and has his own experience going to court against Concordia University. He has helped Adam navigate his experiences with McGill and advocate for himself.

In an interview with the Tribune, Azar explained that listening to students and giving them the tools to challenge large institutions is crucial for holding power to account and helping students recognize their worth.

“A lot of the students, whenever they get involved in these things, they kind of feel isolated and secluded,” Azar said. “Some of these targeted events and some of these situations almost make

you feel like you’re undeserving of continuing this program, or you’re not worthy, or, you know, ‘why is this happening to you?’ You’ll see a lot of these [instances], they’re almost psychological, [they’re] extremely dramatic events for people.”

Azar noted that Adam was not the only student in the Faculty of Dentistry concerned about the culture and practices ingrained at the school.

“Just in his graduate cohort alone, I had spoken to at least five to 10 people who told me that it was complete abuse in that faculty,” Azar said.

Adam explained that pre-clinic, which some faculty members referred to as “boot camp,” is meant to help students prepare for a mandatory summer clinic between their third and fourth years. This, however, was when his experience at McGill took a turn for the worse. According to Adam, the director of pre-clinic at the time would curse at students and put them on his socalled “shit list,” creating a hostile environment. The director also allegedly told Adam—who was on this “shit list”—to “get used to it” and that he would encounter patients in his clinic that were hard to work on.

Another professor allegedly made inappropriate and derogatory comments about Muslims, referring to them as “fucking Muslims,” and asking Adam what was “wrong with [his] kind.”

In 2016, Adam was told he was being held back from entering his fourth year of Dentistry because he failed a summer clinic course led by former assistant professor Nareg Apélian. After appealing the failing grade, the decision was rendered null, and Adam was reinstated with the rest of his cohort in the fourth year.

Though he ultimately graduated on time, Adam felt that his experience in the program was hindered by the extreme stress of the barriers and discrimination he faced, along with the time and practice he lost. When he began his fourth year, Adam was behind and excluded from the listserv and Facebook group where important information was disseminated to Dentistry students in his year.

Another student from Adam’s year, Gregory Gareau, was also held back but not reinstated. In 2016, Gareau, who is Indigenous, recounted his story of alleged discrimination and ableism within the Faculty of Dentistry to The McGill Daily, explaining that he was denied necessary accommodations and felt unwelcome and

unvalued in the Faculty.

When Adam requested a Dean’s reference letter in 2016 to apply to get an MDCM (Medicinæ Doctorem et Chirurgiæ Magistrum) at McGill, the then-Dean, Paul Allison, provided him with a document that stated Adam was “below expectations” in three categories. Adam vehemently argued that this was an inaccurate reflection of his performance and pointed out that the letter was based on the overturned summer clinic evaluation.

Apélian, who taught the summer class, was one of the subjects of Adam’s complaints and was deemed to have carried out “psychological harassment” against him by a McGill assessor. The dean’s letter also stated that Adam repeated a year in 2012-2013, when in fact he took a leave of absence, after which he resumed his studies. The Dean’s letter was later amended to say that Adam “met expectations” and the error regarding his leave of absence was corrected.

Documents shared with the Tribune show that two other instructors believed that Adam “exceeded expectations” across the board in their evaluations.

Azar helped Adam reach out to the administration and eventually file an official grievance over his experiences.

“All the channels were accessed, the Dean of Students was contacted, the Associate Dean was contacted, the Provost was contacted throughout this process,” Azar said. “And everybody just kept giving [Adam] the runaround, like nobody addressed anything, all the way up to when the grievance was reached. After the grievance was reached [...] nobody did anything. I think the only thing that they did, which says a lot for what was going on internally, was that they found Nareg Apélian guilty of psychological harassment.”

In his written statement to the Senate Committee on Student Grievances, which compiles a systematic list of his complaints against the school, Adam quotes an assessor at the university as having determined that “the situation in the Faculty of Dentistry is clearly troubling” and that “there is sufficient evidence to indicate management and governance issues.” The assessor also wrote, “the charge of psychological harassment [against Nareg Apélian] is deemed founded [....] Given the nature of the transgression, I believe discipline is warranted in this case.”

Apélian was later at the centre of a sexual assault scandal and removed from his position in 2019.

Unsatisfied with the university’s handling of his case, Adam decided to sue for damages in March 2018. In September 2022, he was unable to attend a hearing because he had contracted COVID-19. As a result, his case was dismissed and Adam was mandated to pay McGill’s legal fees. He is in the midst of fighting this decision

by requesting a revocation of judgment.

When the Tribune reached out to the Faculty of Dental Medicine and Oral Health Sciences for comment, the university’s Media Relations Office replied that the university “does not comment on cases involving former students.”

A representative from the Dental Students’ Society of McGill University (DSS) wrote to the Tribune on behalf of the Society. They noted that the makeup of the senior faculty has changed significantly since 2017.

“Since 2020, there has been an [Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI)] committee established and implemented to the 2021-2026 strategic plan; [and] in 2021, as part of our accreditation visit by the [Commission on Dental Accreditation of Canada (CDAC)], the student body was surveyed,” the representative wrote.

They went on to quote some of the internal survey’s findings about Dentistry students’ feelings toward the Faculty as of 2021:

“Most students felt that faculty members exhibit professionalism and/or ethical behaviour (85 per cent) [....] A great number of students felt respected by their faculty (75 per cent) and themselves respect the faculty (85 per cent). Half the students felt that their time and needs are valued by the faculty (53 per cent) and that the faculty has adequate policies in place to deal with harassment or abuse (physical and mental) (43 per cent).”

The report also states: “Students’ comments voiced concerns over the faculty not taking student feedback and making changes regarding timing and coordination of the different aspects of the curriculum and elements of the curriculum itself [....] Some students share the view of ‘us vs. them’ in regards to the faculty and commented on the lack of [a] formal process to hold professors and faculty accountable.”

Adam, who is now a practicing dentist in the U.S. but never got to specialize in oral and maxillofacial surgery, hopes to create a nonprofit where he can platform and advocate for students. Although plans have not yet been solidified, he believes in the need for a “ contre pouvoir to make a difference.”

*Adam’s name has been changed to preserve their confidentiality.

The Faculty of Dentistry was renamed the Faculty of Dental Medicine and Oral Health Sciences in 2022. (Maeve Reilly / The McGill Tribune)

Paul J. Allison, who was Dean of Dentistry for a decade, was replaced by the current Dean, Elham Emami, in July 2018. (mcgill.ca)

Students, faculty frustrated by administrative changes within Faculty of Science

Recent changes merge three administrative departments into one

Shani Laskin Staff Writer

Continued from page 1.

The change required the administrative staff of all three programs to move to a shared office in Burnside Hall and reconfigure their workloads to cover all programs rather than just one.

The administration told students and staff that the changes were implemented to “create redundancy,” meaning that if one or more administrators were away on vacation or leave, the other administrators would be able to cover their work.

The physical move was initially supposed to take place on Jan. 5, but was subsequently postponed to March 13 because the shared office was not yet ready for occupation. While the administrative staff for Geography and AOS were already housed in Burnside Hall, the administrators for EPS moved there from the nearby Frank Dawson Adams Building.

When contacted about the changes within the Faculty of Science, media relations officer Frédérique Mazerolle confirmed that the restructuring was taking place but did not provide further detail.

Julia Baumgarte, president of the EPS graduate student society, The Adams Club,

told The McGill Tribune that the physical displacement of the administrative staff has changed day-to-day operations and put a strain on certain research procedures.

“I know that a bunch of other students in the department [...] need frozen samples for their research,” Baumgarte said. “As soon as that stuff [is] delivered, it has to go into a freezer. And if that were to be taken out of our building, those students’ research would be really compromised.”

Many students and faculty members of the affected programs have communicated that this change does not only reflect a difference in workloads or office space, but also disrupts the community and culture within these programs.

According to William Minarik, an EPS faculty lecturer, the current administrators’ deep knowledge of their respective departments makes for an efficient workplace environment. To Minarik, altering these relationships affects the workplace’s ability to run smoothly.

“As a teacher and researcher, I interact daily with our department staff in order to work in these roles,” Minarik told the Tribune . “Our departmental office is the nerve centre of all departmental activities, the hub [....] Students with questions, concerns or other issues currently can visit and immediately talk to a knowledgeable, empathetic, and helpful person.”

EPS associate professor and Wares Faculty Scholar Christie Rowe told the Tribune that many students and staff feel that the delayed timeline of the merger reflects a broader trend of administrative disorganization at McGill. Rowe believes that there was insufficient consultation with the faculty about the essential function of the administrative staff.

“[B]ecause we’re getting information very piecemeal, it’s not possible for us to prepare in any way,” Rowe said. “It would have been nice to consult with the department about what are the key functions that these admins are providing and what support we really need to ensure

that the new system would also address the same issues. But so far, that consultation has been pretty thin.”

Rowe, Minarik, and Baumgarte all pointed out that because these programs are small and tight-knit, the changes have affected their sense of community.

“One of the key elements of my 10 years at McGill has been that we tend to appreciate one another as colleagues through all levels of the university,” Rowe said. “It’s that kind of social network of relying on one another that has made this a really rewarding place to work. And so I’m upset with anyone feeling undermined or feeling not valued in our community.”

Secretary-General Kristi Kouchakji believes restructuring is necessary for PGSS survival PGSS executives debate restructuring responsibilities to ease workload

Arian Kamel Arts & Entertainment Editor

The Post-Graduate Students’ Society

(PGSS) held its 2022-2023 Winter General Assembly at Thomson House on March 15. Although there were no binding votes or motions passed, attendees discussed the status of the Library Improvement Fund, the potential installation of air-filtration devices across campus, and a restructuring of the PGSS itself.

To start the meeting, Hossein Poorhemati, the current PGSS University Affairs Officer, gave updates on the Library Improvement Fund and addressed concerns about the potentially dwindling library space due to planned construction on the McLennanRedpath complex as part of the Fiat Lux project. The fund is a recent PGSS project that offers gift cards to students with the best library improvement ideas—PGSS then attempts to implement those suggestions by bringing them to the McGill Library and investing in projects.

“This construction is taking a lot of resources from the library, so we’re not getting timely responses from the library,” Poorhemati said. “As for the many concerns members have of library space, the library says actual construction will be in two to three years, so there won’t be any issues anytime soon.”

According to the McGill Reporter, construction is set to begin in early 2024.

Following the update, Hannah Derue, a

master’s student in neuroscience, brought up the possibility of implementing a small air-filtration Corsi-Rosenthal Box in every Post-Graduate Student Association (PGSA) office, which would cost $5,000 in total.

“Up to 10-12 per cent of COVID cases become long COVID, so this is something relevant to everybody,” Derue said. “But it is especially significant to make a point that this is also an inclusivity and accessibility problem because COVID impacts certain groups more than others, including our immunocompromised and high-risk demographics, who are members of the PGSS community just like everybody else.”

The discussion then shifted to Kristi Kouchakji, the PGSS Secretary-General, who wanted to discuss potential changes to PGSS executive titles, such as changing “SecretaryGeneral” to “Internal Governance Officer,” and restructuring committee responsibilities within the next year or two. These changes would hopefully create titles that better represent executives’ responsibilities and curtail executives’ heavy and unmanageable workloads.

Poorhemati, however, was doubtful of the proposed restructuring’s timeline.

“Making these many changes in one or even two years would make it almost certain that PGSS would almost collapse [....] my concern is how quick and fast, and maybe some things that work should be left alone,”

Poorhemati said. “Focus should be more on students and student problems, and not necessarily about PGSS and PGSS problems.

There is a delicate balance between these two and an unclear line here.”

Kouchakji responded that the divide between student and PGSS problems is precisely what needs to be better defined in the roles of different executive positions.

“PGSS is going to collapse a heck of a lot faster if we don’t start addressing some of these issues. Like it’s becoming an access issue. It’s becoming an equity issue. It’s becoming [an] inclusivity issue,” Kouchakji said. “To continue to say, we’re going to expect [...] five [executives] to work more hours than they’re being paid for and two of them to work double if not triple the hours they’re being paid for, I don’t think that that’s necessarily a healthy and productive way for us to continue doing things.”

MOMENT OF THE MEETING

Although there seemed to be general support for Kouchakji’s revamping proposal, a non-binding straw poll revealed that only eight per cent of attendees wanted to be a part of the committee working on the proposal if the motion passes—50 per cent of attendees voted no, and the other 38 per cent said maybe.

SOUNDBITE

“I love unions. I think everyone should belong to a union. I think that’s extremely difficult to implement here because half of us are elected and the other half are appointed.”

— Kristi Kouchakji on the difficulties of unionizing PGSS employees.

Earth and Planetary Sciences Department Chair Yiajing Liu stepped down on March 10. (Jasmine Jing / The McGill Tribune)

Kouchakji’s hypothetical restructuring would leave the yearly $172,227.52 council salary budget unaltered, not inflicting any new costs on the student body. (Jasmine Jing / The McGill Tribune )

TUESDAY, MARCH 21 2023

T EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief Madison McLauchlan editor@mcgilltribune.com

Creative Director Anoushka Oke aoke@mcgilltribune.com

Managing Editors Sepideh Afshar safshar@mcgilltribune.com

Matthew Molinaro mmolinaro@mcgilltribune.com Madison Edward-Wright medwardwright@mcgilltribune.com

News Editors

Lily Cason, Juliet Morrison & Ghazal Azizi news@mcgilltribune.com

Opinion Editors Kareem Abuali & Chloé Kichenane opinion@mcgilltribune.com

Science & Technology Editors Ella Paulin & Russel Ismael scitech@mcgilltribune.com

Student Life Editors Abby McCormick & Mahnoor Chaudhry studentlife@mcgilltribune.com

Features Editor Wendy Zhao features@mcgilltribune.com

Arts & Entertainment Editors

Arian Kamel & Michelle Siegel arts@mcgilltribune.com

Sports Editors Tillie Burlock & Sarah Farnand sports@mcgilltribune.com

Design Editors Drea Garcia & Shireen Aamir design@mcgilltribune.com

Multimedia Editors

Noor Saeed & Alyssa Razavi Mastali multimedia@mcgilltribune.com

Web Developers Jiajia Li & Oliver Warne webdev@mcgilltribune.com

Copy Editor Sarina Macleod copy@mcgilltribune.com

Social Media Editor Taneeshaa Pradhan socialmedia@mcgilltribune.com

Business Manager Joseph Abounohra business@mcgilltribune.com

It’s time Quebec funds trans futures, not transphobia

The McGill Tribune Editorial Board

Just two months ago, McGill students raised their voices against the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism hosting a transphobic talk by Robert Wintemute, whose work at the LGB Alliance denies the fundamental rights of trans people under the guise of protection for cisgender gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. The Quebec government has decided to follow McGill’s lead in letting down trans people and economically supporting the erasure of the community.

Quebec’s Ministry of Labour, Social Solidarity and the Family confirmed the province’s funding of Pour les Droits des Femmes du Québec (PDF Québec)—a trans-exclusionary socalled feminist organization.

It is in Quebec’s best interest to immediately stop supporting PDF Québec. As the organization uses its social media platforms to publicly target and misgender trans activists such as Fae Johnston, their actions discredit the province as a body legislating in good faith.

Despite the province’s claims that they do not support the entirety of PDF Québec’s views, financial support amounting to $143,000 for

OFF THE BOARD

Madison Edward-Wright Managing Editor

the 2022-2023 fiscal year makes the statement that, in fact, they do. Among the province’s several competent and inclusive feminist organizations, Quebec chose the only one in support of Bill 21––which prevents civil servants from wearing religious symbols—that also excludes trans people from its bigoted platform.

In 2015, PDF Québec presented a brief to the federal government asking that only trans people who had medically transitioned could change their official gender identification on government IDs. Two years later, in 2017, it campaigned to modify Bill C-16—which aims to protect genderdiverse people from discrimination— to exclude some trans people, arguing that offering them protection would impede on women’s rights. Quebec’s support of the organization has been ongoing since 2019, with $120,000 to $140,000 of tax-payer dollars going to PDF Québec every year. In the context of increasing hate crimes against 2SLGBTQIA+ people across Canada, Quebec is not protecting its own residents. Instead, the government has explicitly endangered the trans community by not providing them a safe and welcome space to exist, while funding an organization that stands

in opposition to their very identity.

Quebec’s support for PDF directly challenges the idea of Canadian exceptionalism, which elevates Canada as a uniquely socially just country in the international order. But Quebec’s political decisions prove that the country is—step by step—following the repressive path of our neighbour south of the border. American lawmakers are passing transphobic bills at an exponential rate, like bans on gender-affirming care or restrictions on name changes. As they become normalized, these laws provide legitimacy for Canadian provinces to implement their own anti-trans agenda. Rather than offer meaningful solutions to the strained health-care system for trans people in Quebec, the province adds to its deadly inaccessibility. By funding a group that only recognizes trans people who have medically transitioned, Quebec ignores the medical discrimination faced by the trans community and propagates biological essentialism. For Indigenous communities under the imposition of settler colonial constructions of gender, the money the province funnels to PDF Québec would be better spent decolonizing Quebec health care.

Quebec must collaborate with

and listen to young trans activists like Celeste Trianon, who runs a legal aid clinic helping trans women in Montreal and is a direct target of PDF Québec’s vitriol. Futures for trans people flourishing in the province must recognize the role played by trans women of colour in the history of the North American queer rights movement. Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy led the 1969 Stonewall Riots and played a key role in the emancipation of gay people in the United States and across the world. The ‘T’ carried the ‘LGB’, and excluding trans people, especially of colour, from today’s feminist movements would be a grave denial of history.

The outcry against Quebec’s trans-exclusionary funding must be infinitely louder. The Montreal student community already rebelled once against McGill’s transphobic talks, and must keep denouncing the powerful institutions that impede upon trans people’s basic rights— human rights. Let’s not forget the individual power that each one of us holds in reaching out to their National Assembly representatives, for a single voice speaking out can go a long way in the collective fight for justice.

Stop the swap—I want an apartment, too

three bathroom, with a balcony the size of the interior, rare gem with lots of brick and natural light apartment that I’m looking for.

Joseph Abounohra, Kareem Abuali, Ella Gomes, Shani Laskin, Kennedy McKee-Braide, Madison McLauchlan, Michelle Siegel, Sophie Smith

STAFF

Ali Baghirov, Margo Berthier, Ella Buckingham, Melissa Carter, Roberto Concepcion, Ella Deacon, Julie Ferreyra, Adeline Fisher, Suzanna Graham, Jasjot Grewal, Charlotte Hayes, Jasmine Jing, Monique Kasonga, Shani Laskin, Eliza Lee, Oscar Macquet, Zoé Mineret, Harry North, Simi Ogunsola, Atticus O’Rourke Rusin, Ella Paulin, Dana Prather, Maeve Reilly, Maia Salhofer, Sofia Stankovic, Caroline Sun, Harrison Yamada, Yash Zodgekar

CONTRIBUTORS

Jack Armstrong, Owen Barnert, Lillian Borger, Kellie Elrick, Sofia Gobin, Eliza Wang, Coco Zhang

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CALLING ALL BROKE STUDENTS: Spacious twoand-a-half with a combined living room-bedroom literally two steps from the kitchen, bathroom, and front door! I’ve loved living in this cozy place, paying only $1,775 a month, with no utilities included. Anyone would be lucky to snatch this place up. But I’m only looking to swap. So, any of you first apartment searchers, fuck off, because I know you can’t offer the five-and-a-half,

Anyone who has recently spent some time on Marketplace looking for a new apartment will know that this is all too common. Any listing with reasonable rent is only available to “swap,” meaning people won’t have to search for an apartment—it’s in the deal. If you want theirs, you’ll have to sell them on your own current living space. While this might be one clever way to avoid rent increases, some of us are being dealt a bad hand from the get-go.

Setting aside the gut-wrenching odds of having a place that meets all of the swapper’s expectations, those of us looking for our first apartments have been virtually locked out of the affordable apartment market. Current tenants leave many of us no choice but to settle for over-priced apartments with exploitative landlords, which can lead to problems like food insecurity and too many roommates if the majority of our paychecks are dedicated to rent.

Between July 2021 to July 2022, rent in the province of Quebec is about 49 per cent higher than the Canadian

average and has been trending upward for the past three years. A place to live is not the only expense university students incur—yes, there is tuition, but volatile food prices have hit wallets pretty hard over the last two years. In 2022, Canadians saw their food bills increase by about 9.8 per cent due to inflation, and we can expect another five to seven per cent in 2023.

On the other hand, Canadian salaries—base salaries at least, corporate executives who benefit from the precarity of the working class’ living situations are exempt from this analysis—grew by four per cent on average, the highest increase in the last 20 years. But this growth does not even begin to match the inflated cost of living.

Where does this leave us lowly students? Some soon-to-be fresh out of university like myself—I was lucky to live at home during my studies— are looking for a job that will pay well enough to afford our own space without working 80 hours a week. I am desperate, and finding a decently priced apartment that isn’t a shit hole would be a huge relief.

I reached a point in my search where I offered to hunt for apartments for swappers. I kid you not when I

say that I messaged a man who had a beautiful three-and-a-half with brick walls, lots of natural light, and a big kitchen. I told him that I was sorry for messaging without having an apartment to swap, but I would be willing to find him one if he let me have his. He politely declined my offer, emphasizing that he just wasn’t desperate enough to enlist my househunting skills.

That’s when I hit rock bottom. What had I done? Had I really just messaged a random stranger offering to find him the apartment of his dreams just so that I could pay rent under $1,250? Yes, yes I did. But I am not ashamed or embarrassed. Instead, I choose to believe that I am a product of the “swapping” system we live in.

So, here I am, announcing to the readers of The McGill Tribune that I am looking for a two-bedroom apartment in the Plateau, cat-friendly, and preferably with brick walls and lots of natural light because I will be pursuing my passion for horticulture when I am no longer inundated with school work. And to all you swappers out there, give it up. Nobody is going to trade their five-and-a-half with a balcony for your studio with no windows.

Don’t bet on Montreal’s new casino

Owen Barnert Contributor

Loto-Québec recently announced its plan to install a mini-casino in the old 1909 Taverne Moderne, a three-storey building adjacent to the Bell Centre in downtown Montreal. The casino would include hundreds of slot machines, sports gambling terminals, and several poker tables.

Jean-François Bergeron, the CEO of Loto-Québec, has stated that the casino’s main clientele would be sports fans visiting the Bell Centre, without being exclusive to this

demographic. Several problems arise with such easy access to gambling, with the psychological and socioeconomic impacts being the most troubling. With such ease of accessibility, vulnerable people in Montreal as a whole are more likely to be lured in at the expense of their finances and health.

Slot machines are some of the most dangerous gambling devices to get hooked on. Specifically designed to addict the user, the bright array of contrasting lights and noises grab one’s attention—and their pocketbooks. Like other forms of gambling, slot machines produce a “variable reinforcement schedule,” whereby the unpredictability of a win causes a person to

keep gambling, driven by the hope that the next attempt might be the winning one. And for the over 300,000 Canadians at severe or moderate risk of a gambling addiction, this proposition has a predictable conclusion––disastrous mental and financial repercussions.

Health officials and government officials have not bought into Loto’s stance and are aware of the risk that gambling poses to lower-income and racialized populations—in Canada, the practice disproportionately affects Indigenous people who partake in particular. While there may be incentives for a new casino to increase the government’s tax revenue, the mental and financial health of the city’s residents must come first, Finance Minister Eric Girard, stated. He also noted that while a casino would help bring in revenue, public health officials should approve it first and ensure that the new casino’s benefits aren’t overtaken by its harmful effects.

Some Indigenous belief systems stem from gambling’s original purpose to form community and redistribute wealth, contributing to an increase in Indigenous peoples’ vulnerability to gambling addiction. When white European settlers colonized the Americas, gambling became an integral part of culture in North America as they commercialized it. The establishment of a mini-casino exploiting vulnerable populations for their revenue stream would only perpetuate colonialism, especially when considering how the housing crisis disproportionately targets Indigenous peoples in Montreal.

Companies are aware of these structural

COMMENTARY

Harry North Staff Writer

factors and weaponize it to target the bottom line, through predatory gambling—the use of gambling to prey on psychological human weaknesses. Often, companies will exploit lowincome communities with selective advertising. While the Quebec government promises to reinvest their earnings from gambling into education or other public necessities, history shows that this claim cannot be taken at face value. In the case of the lottery, winnings often do not come from the communities in which they are bought, while their funds are used to supplement a bigger budget.

While a mini-casino would have an outsized harm on those vulnerable to its predation, the provincial government has a high incentive to approve such projects to benefit from a massive growth in their tax collection. The Montreal Casino paid $1.3 billion in taxes to the Quebec government in the 2017-2018 fiscal year. Yet, political parties such as Québec solidaire have opposed the project, stating that slot machines and instruments of gambling are not needed in such an area where there is already a wealth of economic activity.

While initially, a casino might become an economic boon, it could easily hurt specific populations and the overall financial and mental health of Montreal if left unchecked. A casino would foster widespread gambling addiction and further hurt vulnerable people. In the interest of preventing harm and promoting welfare, Montreal shouldn’t bet on casinos to serve its citizens.

SSMU must tackle its low election turnouts head-on

and nothing, lacking teeth and intent, like a frat boy’s desire to learn basic hygiene.

The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) executive elections and Winter referendum took place last week, and I think it’s time we address the elephant in the room: No one gives a toss.

Voter turnout came to a meagre 16.7 per cent, a slight rise from 12.9 per cent the year before. Students have also appeared disinterested in the elections on social media, with SSMU’s Instagram posts receiving botlike engagement.

But it’s not just student voters showing little interest: SSMU’s interest in driving election engagement has also been neither

This year, every executive position, bar one, ran unopposed. After a couple of hours, the election then restarted because of a “confusing question”—how’s that for effective election preparation? And despite candidates having the ability to spend up to $300 on campaign materials, among other resources, the communication and in-person campaigning in the run-up to the election was scarce.

Low turnout in student government elections is not a new trend across Canadian universities. Is it the students not caring that causes SSMU to be uninspired, or does SSMU’s lack of election leadership lead to student apathy? I’d argue it’s the latter.

Of course you should want to vote. SSMU collects $2,600,000 from students, after all, and if you’re involved with a club or a regular at Gerts, SSMU is relevant to your student experience. But it’s not your responsibility to care: That responsibility rests with SSMU.

And the problem with SSMU’s approach is it’s surface level; it lacks both incentives and effectiveness. The incentive for students to vote is “the election has opened, check your inbox,” and then an expectation that students vote. It’s a “you come to me” approach, and it doesn’t work.

Student politics is dull at the best of times; it demands an injection of energy if anyone is to take it seriously. The organizers need to take the campaign to the students. This means better organization, head-turning incentives, and a cohesive drive to persuade students to care.

For starters, let’s do away with unopposed elections. In this year’s election, all the races were unopposed apart from the vice-president (VP) Internal—and this isn’t a new trend; the VP Finance’s race also ran unopposed in 2022. Having just one candidate run calls into question why voters need to vote in the first place. It reduces the incentive for both voters and election candidates to engage, as the outcome is predetermined. Ensuring choice also gives students different ideas to think about and mull over. And this is the gravy of any election, whether in SSMU or elsewhere: Giving voters something to vote for.

Currently, a candidate needs 100 signatures to get onto the ballot, which is fine, especially relative to the number of Instagram followers everyone has. But mark my words, getting someone to sign your SSMU campaign is a timbit harder than getting them to like a recent picture of you dancing down a Punta Cana beach.

Let the 100 signatures be the marker to be guaranteed, but take the top two candidates no matter what in order to ensure there’s competition. And if just a single candidate is running, regardless of the 100 signatures, there must be additional time mandated to entice more candidates and ensure that students are given a choice.

Now that we have some choice on the table, let’s get some incentives in place— both during the campaign period and the voting. Simply, let’s make a thing of this and put on a show for voters.

It starts with more general campaigning around campus, but to make this more effective, SSMU must go beyond tabling: Social events, debates, and, crucially, incorporating an incentive to vote. As the expression goes, provide pizza to the polls.

Aside from putting in more meaningful drive and creative ideas, this is also when the student media comes in. This could include interviews, hosting election debates, and even general meet and greets for the candidates.

But these efforts will fall short without ignition from SSMU. And if they don’t provide it, I’m afraid the outcome will be inevitable. Ne’er a student casting a vote.

The Montreal Casino has over 3,200 slot machines and over 115 gambling tables. (Neil Webb).

Over the last five years, the average turnout in SSMU executive elections has been 15.9 per cent. (Anna Goodson Illustration Agency)

‘You’ delivers trashy thrills upon British relocation

Season four of hit Netflix series lacks subtlety but delivers gripping entertainment

Yash Zodgekar Staff Writer

“Hello, you” begins the internal monologues of You protagonist Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley), accompanying the moment the stalkermurderer fixates on yet another love interest. On its fourth outing, the show inverts this setup: Having fled the U.S. following season three’s calamitous climax—in which he murdered his wife Love (Victoria Pedretti) and abandoned his son—Joe finds himself in London, in the hunt for his obsession, librarian Marienne (Tati Gabrielle). He’s landed himself a new identity as “Jonathan Moore,” a cushy job as an English literature professor, and ingratiation within a group of urban elites. However, the arrival of a mysterious “eatthe-rich” killer, who begins picking off the group’s members, threatens Joe’s serene old-world excursions.

When the killer starts stalking and framing Joe, they assume the mantle of “you,” becoming the subject of his monologues as a gripping game of cat and mouse ensues.

The hallmarks that made You such an enticing show are still present this time ‘round, but they feel

diluted. Once again, Joe only partially obfuscates the sinister and predatory nature of his pursuit of a new romantic interest, socialite and art gallery manager Kate Galvin (Charlotte Ritchie), encouraging the audience to indulge in the knotty moral ambiguity of his viewpoint. Badgley’s performance continues to successfully mine the discomfort induced by Joe’s combination of superficial charm and monstrous actions. However, the chemistry between the two leads often feels

forced. This is compounded by the scattergun writing of Ritchie’s character, whose cold exterior gives way to infatuation in sporadic moments largely brought on only when the plot demands it.

You continues its penchant for satirizing the privileged, using their ridiculousness to provide levity from the more murderous moments. Joe’s faux-intellectualist narrative voice has taken great pleasure in ridiculing New York literary elites, L.A. influencers, and wealthy sub-

urban picket-fence dwellers in past seasons. Season four aims squarely at Britain’s class hierarchy, with the killer embodying this anti-elitism. The new characters, from aristocratic toffs with family crests and country estates to foreign royalty and trust-fund babies, each behave as caricatures of greed whom Joe takes quiet pleasure in deriding.

You’s class messaging shies away from the overtly political, and has always remained secondary to its plot—no one would mistake its earlier seasons for a Bong Joon-Ho film. That said, its targets in England are stereotypes of such cartoonishly exaggerated proportions that it becomes hard for the satire to land. No character better exemplifies this than aristocrat Roald Walker-Burton (Ben Wiggins) who, during a country retreat, proclaims, rifle-in-hand and without a trace of irony, “I’m going peasant hunting.”

What the show lacks in nuance, You still delivers in leaps and bounds of unencumbered thrills. As the season progresses, a series of bolder plot twists ensue—murders, kidnappings, and blackmail pile up while Joe faces the threat, or promise, of justice. These develop-

TNC Theatre’s ‘The Suicide’ goes out with a bang

ments are irresistibly compelling, fixating the audience on guessing Joe’s next manoeuvre as various mysteries unravel. Admittedly, the high stakes in these moments ask the audience to suspend reasonable disbelief, and more often than not, depend on events that toe the line between being merely outlandish and outright plot holes. This is not to mention the horrendous writer’sroom-psychology underpinning the presentation of Joe as a sufferer of mental illness, drawing more from popular film tropes than any real medical information.

Nevertheless, amidst the adrenaline of the chase, these weaknesses don’t detract an awful lot from the viewing experience. In its trashiness, You was never built upon a precise or profound depiction of obsession, mental illness, or criminality. Rather, much like Joe’s own literary rhetoric, these themes cloak what was always a more simplistic show built on raw entertainment, unashamedly stimulating audiences’ fascination with the grim and gory. By this more modest metric, You ’s fourth season delivers emphatically upon its mission.

Soviet-era play interrogates the meaning of life through avarice, suicide, vodka, and a tuba

Kellie Elrick Contributor

Content Warning: Depictions and mentions of suicide

It’s 1928 in Soviet Russia. Semyon Semyonovitch Podsekalnikov is poor, unemployed, and about to commit suicide. As he puts the gun to his head, the audience erupts with laughter.

Tuesday Night Café Theatre’s production of Nikolai Erdman’s Russian Farce: The Suicide , directed by Carmen Mancuso (U2 Arts), begins with a domestic scene: Semyon (Henry Kemeny-Wodlinger, U0 Arts) and his wife Masha (Tessa Lupkowski) live with Masha’s overbearing mother Serafima (Molly McKenzie, U3 Arts). Masha is trying desperately to sleep, but Semyon lies awake, unable to think of anything but sausage.

They begin to argue, and during the ensuing kerfuffle, Semyon casually mentions that he ought to kill himself, an idea with which Masha casually agrees.

Semyon struggles to justify his life in the ensuing scenes until he finally finds something worth living for: The tuba. He believes that becoming a professional tubist will solve his marital woes, lift him out of poverty, and give his life purpose. But after realizing he can’t actually play the tuba, Semyon spirals back into thoughts of ending it all. His smarmy “comrade,” Alexander Petrovich (Matthew Erskine, BA‘22), rushes to profit from the imminent suicide,

selling the rights to Semyon’s suicide note to a host of deliciously mercenary characters, all of whom want to use the suicide for their own personal and political gain.

Pompous Aristarkh (Max Grosskopf, U3 Arts) wants to claim he died for the Intelligentsia. Vodka-loving Mother Yelpidy (Ava Picquart, U1 Arts) wants to use his death for religious legitimacy and influence.

Although the play is very funny (at one point, Semyon wakes up at home and, thinking he has died, assumes he must be in hell because his mother-in-law is there), it does not trivialize suicide. Rather, the show’s comedic nature makes the moments where the laughter falls silent all the more chilling.

“The play’s never making fun of suicide, it’s never thinking that suicide is this light and easy thing,” Mancuso said in an interview with The McGill Tribune . “It becomes so much heavier, you just become so much more invested.”

From the endearing Semyon’s dopey expressions, the libidinous Alexander having to zip up his fly every time he walked on stage, and the shrillness of Masha’s outbursts, you could tell that everyone involved cared deeply about bringing the story to life. The host of characters trying to exploit Semyon nail the art of acting genuinely ungenuine.

The live band was a definite highlight, performing on stage inches away from the audience. The ensemble’s ability to move in and out of the story itself blurred the lines between performance and production. In one scene, the characters throw a party and

the band plays for and interacts with the characters (including a hysterical interaction between Semyon and the play’s actual tubist).

“I think what’s so brilliant about the play is that it’s very clever in the way it uses comedy, it uses farce, it uses all the jokes and comic moments,” Mancuso said. “[I]t brings the audience to empathize, and connect with, and feel with these characters in a way that you wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to.”

In contrast to the lighthearted approach to the play’s contents, the backstory of the play is not as funny. Erdman was arrested in 1933 for his inflammatory work, then exiled to Siberia. Vsevolod Meyerhold, the play’s original director, was eventually tortured

and executed during the Great Terror, along with his wife. The play was never even performed until after Erdman’s death.

During the ongoing war in Ukraine, performing Russian plays has become a subject of controversy. But the decision to perform The Suicide is very intentional.

“It gives the opportunity to give a voice to people, and to make you empathize with them, and laugh with them, and have fun with them and have two hours of your evening with people, with characters, in a world that you would never otherwise experience,” Mancuso said.

Nikolai Erdman’s Russian Farce: The Suicide ran from March 8-17 in Morrice Hall.

New entries to You’s cast include Charlotte Ritchie, Tilly Keeper, Amy-Leigh Hickman, Ed Speleers, and Lukas Gage. . (Chetna Misra / The McGill Tribune )

Stalinist authorities shut down the original production of the play on its opening night before the first line was even spoken. . (TNC)

In 1960, the Queen of Jazz made a mistake. Performing the song “Mack the Knife” in West Berlin, Ella Fitzgerald forgot the lines. The weight of global expectations stood on her shoulders as one of the first Black women to sing this piece—and in front of a white, international audience, no less. The lyrics failed her––no matter. Error did not create an obstacle, but an opportunity. Mid-tune, she sings, “Oh what’s the next chorus to this song, now?” and carries on with her performance, scatting, putting new words together, and constructing syncopated possibilities from the traces of the song. The show must go on.

She improvised the rest of the lyrics, belting out her own version with her signature wit, creativity, and self-assurance. At the third-ever Grammy awards ceremony, Fitzgerald would receive two Grammys for Best Vocal Performance Album and Single Record. Interestingly, despite her talent and brilliance in technique, the ceremony categorized her performance as pop, not jazz.

At the end of 2022, the frantic fall semester disappearing from my horizon, I listened to this performance again on Spotify. I wondered how Ella did it and what I could glean from this work. I wanted to dream and improvise my way out of the institutional and individual racism I had faced that semester. The notes and chords of this piece assembled themselves in my hasty composition: Cutting up the constant microaggressions and racist gestures and assumptions, adapting with other people of colour faster than our institutions could erase and exhaust us, and living in unpredictability and inscrutability, beyond our patterns, to evade white supremacy. I asserted this world-making ability of jazz with the Black thinkers I look up to: Toni Morrison, Langston Hughes, and Angela Davis, among many other radicals and jazz artists who move them in tandem.

responsibility for the complete sound structure created,” Lewis said. “I think when I walk off the stage, I am responsible for every sound that was produced, not just my own contribution. I’m not gonna say ‘the oboes: they were off today, right?’ We each are responsible for every sound that was produced. And so there’s a pedagogy of collectivity and trust when it works.”

But I didn’t have the tools––of improvised musical invention. I’m demanding too much on praxis that isn’t actually musical practice, imposing my social imperatives onto a form I not only can’t play but should be approaching with an ethical eye, not an extractive one. I remember my many years playing classical piano, the choice I made for classical over jazz even when jazz aligned more with my interests. I think of the mistakes I made on the small platforms I received, in the competitions I took part in, in Royal Conservatory exams, or when just trying out new pieces. To do what Ella did in 1960 seems, still, impossible.

The ethos of jazz could apply to other forms, too: Writing, politics, and resistance. Just as artists can subvert a song that contains white supremacist lyrics (Lewis points me to Nina Simone’s active mash-ups of “My Sweet Lord” and a radical poem by the Last Poets), we could listen, improvise better, and embody resistance in the texts and performances that structure our everyday lives.

Growing up playing classical piano and performing as an improv comedian, these two worlds orbited each other, desperate for contact until my mom, who keeps jazz in my life, told me about Ella’s Berlin performance. This story—that I now frequently think of, repeat, and rework for guidance—reminds me that jazz may serve as a network beyond the limits of our expectations for music and as an insight into what the history of Black (musical) adaptation and improvisation would offer me for the rest of my life.

Making a new as we Notes on the fluid

Matthew Molinaro,

And many vanguard Black women theorists and musicians have done much to critique both of these possibilities, right, and make us aware that it’s not liberatory per se, as much as it has a strong liberatory potential.”

When I spoke with Eric Lewis, a professor of philosophy at McGill and the site lead for the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI), he explained that collective jazz improvisation can be thought of as a “listening trust”––a strain of thinking shared by Black feminist theorists like bell hooks.

“When I have trust in my fellow improvisers, that’s the precondition for taking risks. That’s the precondition for making mistakes [....] And for me, what distinguishes an improvising jazz ensemble from being a member of a symphony orchestra is that in the improvising ensemble, I take ethical and moral

If I couldn’t play jazz, then I’d have to actively learn from it. I’d need to model the close listening performed by Black artists in order to foreshadow new political formations, especially across lines of race, gender, class, and sexuality. Discussing Nina Simone’s lyrics and performativity, Bessie Smith’s willingness and vulnerability to talk about Black queer identity, and Jeanne Lee’s experimental efforts to undermine both externally imposed identities and jazz lyrics, Lewis outlined to me how jazz can be a potent site for critical and philosophical work beyond canonical pages.

“Jazz, particularly collective jazz [and] improvised music is often seen as a crucible for experimentation in new social forms,” Lewis told me. “Because a jazz ensemble, insofar as it’s grounded in community, is a site for coming to discover the other dialogue across various silos or boundaries of difference, and experimenting in new social structures.

We’re in the city for jazz. Montreal’s internationallyrenowned jazz festival brings the best and brightest stars from around the world. But jazz history didn’t just start here with the spectacular—Black people laboured to make their art against the city’s segregation and racial surveillance. The government of Maurice Duplessis revoked the liquor license of Rockhead’s Paradise, founded in 1928 by Rufus Rockhead, a JamaicanCanadian porter (among other Black, Jewish, and Chinese establishments). This anticipated the passage of the 1937 Padlock Act that allowed the government to close down any establishment––mostly those of Black and racialized proprietors––who promoted and were suspected of communism. We might remember Rockhead’s for how it attracted Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughn, but we can’t separate it from the long history of state intervention in jazz. Jean Drapeau won an election in 1954 on a promise to clean up the city and with it, take down Black-owned nightclubs and modernize, gentrify, and destroy Little Burgundy. Can we be proud of something that could have been erased?

We went on a family trip to Montreal in 2010. I reminisce on this trip because we met up with my grandfather, who immigrated from Jamaica to study here, to see the Miles Davis exhibition at the Musée des BeauxArts. We stood in this exhibition’s riches of

Design by: Drea Garcia

Jazz could move us from the alienation of individual life to the refuge of collective solidarity.

“Music could oppress as well as it can liberate. Jazz can oppress as well as it could liberate.

new world we go

fluid grammars of jazz

Managing Editor

multimedia displays, and I felt the inkling that I’d follow my grandfather’s past in this city, a kinship that only the streams of jazz, of Davis’ quintets, of a Black expression mixing the visual, archival, written, material, and ephemeral could underwrite.

In this space between choosing classical over jazz and jazz always existing as spectre, opportunity, hope, and life-as-otherwise, there emerges a Black history of Montreal. In the early 20th century, as immigrants from Nova Scotia, the Caribbean, and the United States arrived in the city to work in the docks, industrial sector, and railroads, jazz clubs began popping up. This is a history and archive that DJ, activist, and educator Andy Williams, BEd ‘97, knows well and helps shape through his public writing and teaching. Working to fill the gaps in music’s social history, Williams has penned articles on Ajax Records, the first Black Canadian music label in Montreal, and Montreal as the “Harlem of the North.”

“[Jazz in Montreal] became really popular because of the prohibition. And, so in Montreal, we were able to drink until endless hours,” Williams told me. “A lot of the Black workers, whether they were porters or just musicians, were playing from 9 p.m. onward.”

In his more than 10 years of experience playing music across the world, Williams finds that listeners tend to be unaware of the full picture of jazz history in the city. For example, it’s one thing to know Oscar Peterson, but many people don’t know his mentor Lou Hooper or the greater influence beyond the “quiet legacies” of Daisy Peterson Sweeney, his sister.

“We realize a lot of the musicians were taught by the Black women in Burgundy because their husbands were at war,” Williams said. “And two of the women, Daisy Sweeney and Emily Clyke [Viola Desmond’s sister], in particular, were important to this. They ran this through the Union United Church in the 1940s […] what happens is it turns into a Christian-based self-empowerment group and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).”

Williams broke down the history for me. After World War II, community members who couldn’t afford music lessons could pay 25 cents for a course with Sweeney. Borrowing instruments and using donations given to the Negro Community Centre (NCC), she and Clyke in turn relied on the community to foster its next generation of musicians.

“Sweeney and Clyke would go to the thrift shop and get kids clothes,” Williams said. “It was kind of like finishing school, in a welcoming way.”

The work of Sweeney, the UNIA, and the NCC demonstrates to me that in the face of precarious living conditions for Black Montrealers, mutual aid worked as a practice of community formation. The global connections between Sweeney’s teaching and the panAfricanism espoused by the UNIA remind us that jazz is a global form. In recording their improvisations over time, artists incorporate African, Indigenous, and European music traditions. Just as Lewis pushes me to think about listening in collective improvisation, jazz as a form asks us to learn from one another, to consider and transcend difference, collectively.

As I thought through the global reach of jazz, I returned to a weekly presence in my life: Café Latino on JazzFM 91. My mom first introduced me to the show, and we would listen together in the car, on the radio at home, captivated and attuned by the music and the selections of host Laura Fernandez. Saturdays from 4 p.m. onward, we would feel transported to a place far from our suburb. When I asked Fernandez about the sense of community her show creates, she spoke to me about approaching the show with reciprocity. Often, she thinks of curation, circulation, and reception itself as a form of art and conversation.

“As a host, I have responsibility for sharing all the different permutations and giving light to new talent, but also to put the music in context of what came [...] before it,” Fernandez said. “It’s easy to look back and, and see how salsa and Boogaloo came to be for instance, in Latin music, but if I didn’t relate it to what came before salsa, which was Boogaloo, you [wouldn’t] understand how it kind of merged into salsa [...] and how salsa kind of started integrating political lyrics where it had never been done before.”

Fernandez, a producer and performer who has been immersed in the Latin jazz tradition for over 16 years,

told me that the exploratory and improvisatory nature of jazz deeply affected her own bravery as a musician.

“I sometimes cover some of the songs that I hear and that I play,” she said. “I have tried to play Bebo Valdés’s little licks and his things that he does on the piano and integrate it into my own music [....]

Avila, Design Editor

I try to translate that kind of excitement to the audience because I get excited about it.”

But Latin jazz and music overall manifest towards different directions in each country and community— from Venezuela to Colombia to Argentina to Brazil and beyond.

“[A] lot of the Spanish music was influenced by North African and African roots as well,” Fernandez said. “So it just brings everybody together into one big world community [....] So I try to bring that out to the people.”

Having been introduced to various influences and styles by her parents, Fernandez thinks of jazz as a compass, a form that works in relation and in direction with multiple genres. When Fernandez started the show, she says it was more strictly bound by her own imposition of what Latin jazz meant. As she learned more about the genre’s varied historical influences, her broadcasts completely expanded to give audiences “a little bit of a map of how to discover the music.”

“[I] realize[d] that really, it’s a fusion of many elements, that you just can’t leave the other stuff out. It wouldn’t tell the whole story. So I like to broaden it,” Fernandez said. “You can’t exclude that, because that is the [...] progression of the genre [....] I feel that by putting it in context, with the whole trajectory of the form that, it just helps people engage better with it.

When I listened to Fitzgerald’s live recording a decade after visiting the Davis exhibition, I might have regretted the years of classical piano. The rules, the orders, the grammars of the line where I’m too committed. I have to graft the privileges and the progress that allowed me as a young Black pianist in an upscale, white music academy to choose what my icons such as Nina Simone could not––and against their genre too. I’m wondering if, as I mull over this decision in this city, I can curate a life that works to collaborate with my fellow citizens, past and present, who deserve redress in a global, free world. But I refuse to approach this alone. It’s in solidarity and community with those around me, with jazz artists and thinkers, that I hear a future––where we groove, too.

I tend to present [jazz] as a person who is discovering the music. And I’m discovering it not just as a listener, but I’m discovering it as a player and as a writer [....]

Molinaro,

Garcia

‘What Rough Beast’ explores the power and pitfalls of political discourse Alice Abracen’s thought-provoking play challenges empathetic dialogue on campus

Sofia Gobin Contributor

Continued from page 1.

Audiences watch as characters both dehumanize each other and attempt to “reach across the gap.” Abracen initially began writing the play in college, intending for the script to be written “by and for students,” with no adult characters ever actually appearing on stage.

In a unique chance for young people to access theatre, Centaur Theatre hosted a mid-afternoon matinee in addition to evening performances, allowing groups of high school students to experience the

power of live performance. The students sat on the edge of their seats, deeply engrossed as they whispered to their friends, gasping and laughing at outrageous lines.

In a talk-back panel after the show, the director noted a personal interaction she had with a 13-year-old student after the show, claiming he related strongly to the white, privileged characters and expressed frustration over the play, annoyed that there was “no right answer” or character.

What Rough Beast provokes difficult conversations, delving into the challenges of creating dialogue and empathy within a small, polarized community. Despite the weighty subject matter, the plot is surprisingly dynamic and colourful. According to

Abracen, the script’s tone is “a marriage of humour and humanity with political horror,” and this is evident in its bold and raunchy style that manages to make up for any awkward dialogue.

Charlotte Dennis delivers a particularly poignant and heart-breaking performance as Alyssa, capturing the anguish of a sister watching her brother’s rapid descent into right-wing extremism and critical mental health issues. Her portrayal of Alyssa’s struggles is both nuanced and raw, conveying the complexity of emotions—guilt, helplessness, and fear—that comes with watching a loved one slip away. Dennis’s performance highlights the devastating impact of radicalization and mental illness on families and communities, leaving a strong, lasting impression on audiences.

The immersive experience of live theatre allows audiences to connect in a more authentic way, especially in an era where screens mediate much of our communication and dialogue across differences. By investing in younger audiences and creating spaces for them, Centaur Theatre is helping to cultivate a new generation of theatre-goers who are eager to engage in meaningful conversation.

The plot and conflict of the play exhibit haunting parallels with the demonstrations that took place on McGill’s campus against the “Sex vs. Gender (Identi-

Pop Dialectic: To Ed Sheeran, or not to Ed Sheeran?

ty)” debate and anti-trans speakers in early January. Much like the right-wing professor invited to speak in the play, the debate in Chancellor Day Hall sparked discourse about the difference between encouraging open dialogue and platforming hatred and intolerance. Abracen’s script is perfectly geared toward McGill students, providing an enlightening and sobering social commentary on the current state of political tensions and vulnerabilities on campus.

“It was very important to me that the students are central characters,” Abracen said in an interview with The McGill Tribune . “Each of [them], in some way, feels that they are carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. They are making decisions that are going to have major ramifications. The stakes are no less high because they are students.”

What Rough Beast asks the question many college campuses are currently grappling with: Does fostering genuine discussion have to mean legitimizing bigoted views, and if so, how can we achieve consensus and unity? This thought-provoking and nuanced conversation is sure to have a lasting impact on audiences, sparking discussions about politics and ideological differences long after they leave the theatre.

What Rough Beast ran at Centaur Theatre from March 2 to 11.

The McGill Tribune debates the ethics of this parasocial pop culture ginger

Sarah Farnand & Michelle Siegel Sports Editor & Arts & Entertainment Editor

In defence of Ed Sheeran

Sarah Farnand

When I was an angsty, emotional teenager, I regularly listened to Ed Sheeran’s music. My entire family found his music to be heartwarming and relatable. I won’t lie, when my grandma passed away, I may or may not have listened to “Visiting Hours” on repeat while sobbing in my bed. Sheeran’s music is basic, sure. But with remarkable accuracy, he can capture feelings that we all experience like grief, love, and joy. Sheeran also regularly authors songs for other artists. And when traditionally attractive artists like One Direction sing songs written by Sheeran, they suddenly receive less criticism. Now, this is not to say that Ed Sheeran is Perfect. I’m sure we are all sick of hearing “Shape of You” or the discourse surrounding the questionable decisions that he’s made in his personal life. But does that really make him deserving of ridicule more than any other celebrity?

When I ask people who are self-proclaimed Ed Sheeran haters what their issues with the English singer are, most bring up, directly or indirectly, his failure to meet conventional beauty standards. The memes about his wide-set eyes or ginger hair are funny, for sure. And a singer making that

much money couldn’t likely care less what jokes are made at his expense. But to me, it brings up a deeper issue. If Ed Sheeran was a woman, he would not be famous. Despite having talents in singing, songwriting, and performing, women singers become as much a spectacle for the public to look at as they are to listen to. Ed Sheeran is a talented artist with a catalogue of quality songs. He can take the memes about appearance. But liking and sharing such mockery perpetuates the idea that a singer’s appearance—especially those of women singers—is what matters most.

In defence of memes

Michelle Siegel

If there’s one thing that avocado-toastloving millennials, technologically hapless baby boomers, and Gen-Zers have in common, it’s this: As much as they try, none of them will ever really know the real Ed Sheeran. Yet as they traverse the chaos of the Metaverse, celebrity memes may be one of the few silver linings that appeal to all users alike. French literary theorist Roland Barthes struck a distinction between a work, the physical space of media, and a text, the metaphysical, social space that carries the more genuine, inherent meaning of a story. Sheeran’s online ridicule can be broken down the same way—his songs and public persona are his work, and the memes about him are a natural public reaction. When you

put enough content and music out into the public consciousness, internet reactions gear toward the collective, implied authorship of a persona, not Sheeran or other writers themselves.

It’s simply incorrect to say that people only make fun of Sheeran for his appearance—not only is he far from the only ginger to face immature taunting, but looking at his album covers forces consumers to confront a difficult subject—mathematics. The basis of these jokes may not be deep, but the logic of the quips still stands: From his negative impact on tattoo artists to cringy Game of Thrones cameos to Dennis The

Menace-esque property disputes with his neighbours, Sheeran’s public presentation has rightfully rubbed people the wrong way. These jokes, however, ultimately do not aim to genuinely tear Sheeran down a peg—they serve as comfort to the envious witnesses of Sheeran’s expanding wealth and influence.

Even if the Ed Sheeran discourse was actually rooted in appearance shaming, it still could never offset his lavish lifestyle. When one has seven BRIT Awards, four Grammys, three People’s Choice Awards, and a net worth of around $200 million, isn’t Sheeran always the one getting the last laugh?

The title ‘What Rough Beast’ refers to a line in W.B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” which explores the turmoil and chaos of a society in crisis. (emeliahellman)

Princess Beatrice allegedly once slashed Sheeran’s face with a sword during a mock knighting ceremony. (m.imdb.com)

Food Q&A: Surviving lunch at McGill Finding affordable bites around campus amid rising food prices

Harry North Staff Writer

Campus food. It’s what everyone’s talking about.

High prices, insufficient options, and food quality to rival the mouldy scraps in the back of your freezer. I dread to think what Gordon Ramsay would do if he ever got the McGill Food and Dining Services team by the collar, but I can’t lie, I’d be jolly pleased if he did.

The campaigns are coming in fast now. Let’s Eat McGill’s community assemblies and student protests are leading the charge to shed light on the food insecurity crisis at McGill. But despite students’ best efforts so far, the university is working at a snail’s pace. Campus food accessibility and quality have not improved. So, since they’re uninterested in addressing this problem sufficiently and quickly, we have a pressing issue: What’s for lunch?

Here are some affordable options to get you through the day.

Super Savings ($0-3)

Midnight Kitchen

Midnight Kitchen, a nonprofit volunteer collective, is back

and on a mission to increase the accessibility of campus food. Operating out of the second floor of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) building, the student-funded service provides free vegan meals.

And look, I’ve had my fair share of bad vegan food; most are not worth a side eye, but hand on heart, Midnight Kitchen is worth your time. Free, simple, sustainable food that fills you up—take notes, McGill.

It’s only operating two or three times a month at the moment, as it’s underfunded, but when it is serving, be sure to get there well before 1:00 p.m. because the line will snake fast.

Homemade sandwiches with ingredients from local grocery stores

Sometimes nothing beats a homemade sandwich. It’s also a smart idea when it comes to lunchtime savings, and when it comes to price, it’s a hard sell to beat Segal’s on St. Laurent for consistent cost savings.

My advice? Keep it simple. Stick with sandwiches or salads, and let the creative juices flow for dinner. Grilled ham and cheese or a Caesar salad play well for the school day. For me, I like to take

What is good sex to you?

inspiration from Marco Pierre White: Sourdough, shallots, anchovies, butter, parsley, and dish-dash-dosh, sorted. You can also mix and match your ingredients with other independent stores. Fruiterie du Plateau, for example, in the Plateau offers cheap, fresh fruit.

Lunch on the go ($4-6)

Super Sandwich

It’s one of our own, as we say. I’ve heard some talk recently that McGill should buy it or allow it to move on-campus. Don’t forget that it’s so super because McGill has precisely nothing to do with it. That and the fresh sandwiches— made in front of you faster than your eyes can blink, and for prices that don’t make you rethink.

Tim Hortons

Tim Hortons on Sherbrooke troubles me. Not in terms of price, quality, or anything in between, but the waiting in the 20-minute desolate line. I find myself fading in and out of reality, lost. Thankfully, Tim’s $4.99 roast beef and crispy onion and $5.99 BLT brings me back to reality. And, as it’s just across from campus, it’s a great lunch on the go.

Nearby deals

Metro hot food counter deals

It might seem counterintuitive to say that McGill students should support Metro, which is perhaps one of the main culprits of the latest food price spikes, but their hot food counter on Parc has some great deals, from a $5.29 chicken leg meal on Monday to $4.99 poutine on Thursdays. Portion sizes are also not for the faint of heart, either.

Sansalizza

Another deal to consider is up Parc Ave: Sansazzlia’s special of the day––a different nine-inch pizza

Professor Catherine Roach discusses changing norms around equitable sex

Lillian Borger Contributor

When it was announced that a twotime Fulbright-winning HarvardPhD professor from the University of Alabama was coming to speak at McGill about her new book, most students probably weren’t expecting it to be titled //Good Sex//.

But when professor of gender and cultural studies Catherine Roach visited McGill on March 14 to speak on a panel about the book, she was greeted with a room of very interested students and faculty.

“Good sex is good as in ethical, and good as in pleasurable,” Roach said to open up the discussion.

Her book, which she actually finished writing while on a fellowship here, covers five “manisextos” for how to change the norms around sex as part of the new gender and sexual revolution, including positive sexuality, equity and inclusion, body positivity, consent, and mutual pleasure.

The panel featured three students from McGill’s Gender, Sexuality, Feminist, and Social Justice (GSFS) program—Ashna Naidoo (U2), Céleste Pépin (U2), and Juliet Morrison* (U2)—who each shared their views of the book.

Naidoo discussed the hookup culture on campus and how gender norms not only create a double standard but make sex positivity

impossible for all students.

“Women who partake in [hookup culture] are seen as promiscuous, [...] men as commendable or honourable,” Naidoo said.

She also expanded on the challenges that racialized individuals face in partaking in sex positivity under Eurocentric beauty standards.

“The binary convention of what it means to be conventionally attractive in [a] university of tall, skinny, and white [...] perpetuates exoticism for anyone existing outside of this,” Naidoo explained.

Roach’s book covers many of the risks bad sex entails. “As we screw around, sex can screw us up,” she writes.

For panellist Pépin, one of these risk factors is many individuals’ lack of selfawareness and inability to question their intimate preferences.

“We also need to stop for a second and think about what our fantasies might mean to us [...] I’m submissive, I’m dominant, but why do you feel like that?” Pépin said.

According to Roach, so much of sex is based on gendered scripts that circulate and embed patriarchy through pornography and social media. These norms also factor into conversations surrounding consent.

“Full consent [arises] out of egalitarian gender norms,” Roach said.

According to all three panellists, the book’s accessibility makes it all the more enjoyable. Roach collected various images,

sidebars, and quotes from students at the University of Alabama, making the academic content much more legible.

During the panel, Roach and the students discussed the newly re-released McGill “It Takes All of Us” training module. The attending students also had a lot to say on the matter.

“We can have these great conversations as students here at McGill, but is the administration actually going to take it into account?” said audience member Gabriela Toharia, U1 Arts.

This comes after multiple student groups, including Sex and Self and the Union for Gender Empowerment, expressed their disappointment in a lack of consultation in the program’s redevelopment, with many questioning how a module for improving the norms around sex can be successful without first consulting with students about what those norms are.

In addition to frustration towards the state of sexual health and safety on campus, there was also a resounding hopefulness in the room, with students and staff wanting to improve both the quantity and quality of sexual education opportunities at McGill.

“What are ways in which we can push for more of this education? We need accessibility to those courses and to that education,” said Dominique Magleo, U1 Arts.

“We need to make education so much more fun and accessible, like this book!” said Pépin, adding that “the sexual and gender revolution is for everyone.”

every day for $6.90. Sansalizza is opposite New Residence, but don’t fret about running into first years— they only go at midnight when they’re listening to Drake, high as a kite.

A short stroll away

Café Aunja

I’ve mentioned this before in a café recommendations article, but it’s still worth bringing up: An Iranian café-lunch spot on Sherbrooke, a few steps down from street level, offering a range of sandwiches and brunch bites, as well as coffee and herbal tea.

Roach seemed impressed with students’ passion and engagement. She hopes that this book will create conversation about these important topics, and lead them in a positive direction.

“Sex should do good, and feel good.”

If you’re looking to learn about what’s going on with your sex life, have a read of Roach’s new book, Good Sex, on sale at Le Paragraphe, or online.

*Morrison is currently a News Editor at The McGillTribune and was not involved in the publication of this article.

The Tim Hortons on Sherbrooke won the Golden Broom statuette for being the cleanest store in the region. (Sofia Stankovic/ The McGill Tribune)

Professor Catherine Roach is taking “The Sex Lives of College Girls” to a whole new, and much more gender-balanced level. (calendar. ua.edu)

Mapping out your career path How to plan for graduation in the COVID era

Margo Berthier Staff Writer

My university experience has not been the conventional one.

I entered McGill as a first-year student in the fall of 2020, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Classes were online, and I felt disconnected from my fellow student community. Making matters worse, I could not come to Montreal during my first semester, which made me feel all the more distant from student life. Having spent my first two years of university behind a computer screen in my bedroom, at a café, or in a public library, I missed out on so much. Not only was I unable to meet people and make friends at school, I also didn’t have the opportunity to benefit from McGill clubs and events. Like many others, I felt robbed of my university years, which everyone told me would be the best of my life.

When I look back at it, although my younger self was sad that she couldn’t attend all those fun university events, I now realize there was much more to McGill than just making friends and partying. I wasn’t just missing out on the fun: I was also missing out on the relationships, the in-person learning opportunities, the networking, and the chit-chatting with professors in the hallways. These experiences would have helped me build my career path, find exciting opportunities, and grow personally and professionally. I am now in my third year and graduation is looming. This lack of connection to my school and its prestigious community has slowed me down in my pursuit of a career.

Graduating is scary. You are thrown into the real world, and cast into a sea of opportunities. This puts a lot of McGillians, especially “COVID-students,” under a significant amount of pressure toward the end of their degrees as they try to plan their careers in an in-person world that Zoom school did not prepare them for.

The stress of graduating

The McGill community is extremely competitive. McGill is indeed a highly-ranked, global institution where students are concerned with their academic performance. I’m sure you can relate to watching students discussing and judging each other’s successes and achievements, leaving others (and maybe yourself) feeling inadequate.

Michelle Maillet, an undergraduate program advisor in McGill’s geography department, has come across a number of students who feel distressed because of constant comparison with other students.

“Some people go to their advisors to talk about their insecurities, claiming they don’t know what to do once they graduate,” Maillet said. “These are common discussions that students have behind closed doors with their advisors. But between themselves, they don’t share

this concern, for fear of being judged.”

Students must understand that one “correct” career timeline just does not exist. Just because someone else sounds like they have their whole life planned doesn’t mean that you’re falling behind. While some people are natural planners who meticulously calculate every step of their careers, others prefer to go with the flow. It’s important to strike a balance between planning and being adaptable.

Graduate applications, job hunting, and looking for internships are arduous and time-consuming tasks. As these processes often take place during the final year before graduation, which for some, is the most difficult year in their degree, McGillians feel increasingly overwhelmed.

Mira Almrstani, U3 Arts, has had a lot on her plate, particularly with the stress of her looming graduation.

“Honestly, trying to juggle workload with internship or job applications has been difficult, especially being in such a fast-paced, high-demand environment,” Almrstani said. “Trying to find the right step, narrowing down what I want to do with my life after my undergrad, and trying to find something within my skill set and experience has made me feel overwhelmed and stressed.”

A competitive environment, a devastating COVID pandemic, and difficulty juggling tasks are some of the biggest concerns among students on the verge of graduating. However, this stress can make students forget that it’s alright not to have their whole life figured out. What matters is making the most of your experience and developing as a person.

What to do with an Arts degree

In life, you never stop learning. You will continuously have new experiences and develop in both your career and your personal life. A lot of students are fixated on jobs that they feel their degrees directly lead to, which can be daunting. This is especially the case for Bachelor of Arts students, who are unsure how to parlay their studies into a profession because a BA isn’t necessarily a professional designation degree.

“As an Arts student, you must see yourself as a jack-of-all-trades,” Maillet said. “You have qualities and some expertise in a variety of topics. You can navigate working with many different stakeholders and you’ve been taught to be a critical thinker. So it’s not just about the marketable skills. It’s about using your critical thinking skills and knowledge, and continuously developing them.”

Your experiences at McGill matter more than you think. What you do outside the classroom, whether it’s participating in newly-opened clubs and athletics, organizing events, or contributing to student associations (yes, even in your third year), are very valuable for your personal and professional growth. Through these experiences, you will discover more about yourself, learn transferable skills that you can’t learn in class, and

take on tasks that will help guide you toward a career you’re interested in.

So don’t worry too much. Go with the flow, let one experience lead you to the next, and never overlook the value in seizing different learning opportunities in all their forms.

Benefitting from McGill services while you can

If you need help navigating your post-graduate options, you should also try using Career Planning Services (CaPS). CaPS at McGill is like your personal career GPS, guiding you to your dream job and helping you develop the skills and experience to take it on. With CaPS, you can explore different career options, get expert advice on job search strategies, and learn how to make your resume and cover letter stand out. They also provide interview preparation support to help you impress prospective employers.

In addition, CaPS offers exciting career workshops and events, employer information sessions, and networking opportunities to connect you with employers and industry professionals. Plus, you’ll have access to exclusive job postings and internships to jumpstart your career.

With the click of a button, you can find everything on their website. They are also very accessible, open every day from 9 a.m.-5 p.m., and are always present on the second floor of the Brown Student Services Building.

Susan Elizabeth Alersh, associate director of CaPS at McGill, shared some of the benefits of this service in an interview with the //Tribune//.

“The goal of CaPS is to get students to start thinking about their careers as early on as they can,” Alersh says. “Whether at orientation or before students even come to McGill, they should be aware of these services to get exposure right away.”

So, as a McGill student, try benefiting from these services available to help you succeed!

Moving forward toward growth

Although my university experience has not been the one I imagined, I feel that I owe it to my younger “COVID-student” self to take advantage of everything I can on campus in my third year. Whether it’s using the McGill-offered career services, joining clubs and student associations, or even having conversations with professors during office hours, I constantly look for new opportunities to experience, learn, and grow. I’ve found this to be tremendously beneficial, allowing me to find internship opportunities and research assistant positions, and helping me figure out what career I potentially want to pursue. I truly believe that by adopting a similar mindset, others can enjoy experiences that bring them joy, light them up, and, who knows? Maybe eventually you’ll figure out what career path suits you the most, or at least, which step to take next.

Many students who entered university during the COVID-19 pandemic may feel unprepared to graduate and begin a career in the newly in-person world.(123rf.com)

Stiffer DNA hydrogels open new paths for biomedical applications

McGill researchers discover novel structure that forms stronger DNA-based biomaterials

K. Coco Zhang Contributor

Besides acting as the backbone of genetic material, DNA is getting significant attention for being a versatile building block of nanomaterials—particles one-thousandth of the diameter of a hair strand—including a type of nanomaterial called DNA hydrogels.

As a rising star in the field of nanoengineering, which is the study of extremely small-scale particles, these hydrogels have great potential for biomedical uses. In a recent paper published in Advanced Science , McGill researchers proposed the use of a novel structure that would allow the formation of stronger DNA hydrogels for wider biomedical applications, such as enhancing drug efficacy.

Hydrogels are structures that can hold large amounts of water. For example, some hydrogels can absorb up to 600 times their original volume of water. They can be prepared from protein molecules, such as collagen and gelatin, and carbohydrate molecules, such as starch and agarose. DNA’s ability to absorb water enables it to possess the properties of a hydrogel.

DNA-based hydrogels, which are composed entirely of DNA, can be produced through chemical or physical linkages between DNA strands. They exhibit various sought-after qualities, such as biodegradability, the ability to self-heal,

and non-toxicity, making them an ideal choice for in-body tasks such as drug delivery, targeted gene therapy, and cancer treatment.

However, DNA hydrogels are not without their drawbacks. For instance, hydrogels made of unmodified DNA are extremely soft, making them incompatible with certain environments, such as the spleen, which has stiffer cells.

Additionally, unmodified DNA hydrogels lack a convenient chemical handle, so they cannot be used for specific biomedical applications, such as controlled drug delivery, tissue engineering, and cell transplant therapy. Chemical strategies for the construction of hydrogels, notably ligase-mediated reactions, allow the hydrogels to be fine-tuned and tailored for these kinds of applications.

“Scientists who wish to combine the attributes of DNA with say, catalysis, drug delivery, photochemistry, cell growth, or any other purpose for which chemistry has many solutions, rely on synthetically modified DNA,” wrote Christophe Lachance-Brais, a PhD student in McGill’s Department of Chemistry who led the study, in an email to The McGill Tribune “Without a convenient chemical handle, DNA hydrogels are limited to the chemistry of DNA, and that may not be enough.”

In other words, a convenient chemical handle allows biomaterials such as DNA to be re-constructed for biomedical applications.

Lachance-Brais and his team proposed the use of a novel nucleic acid structure resulting from a genetic assembly called a dA/CA motif, which is made up of poly-deoxyadenosine (dA)—a derivative of DNA components—and cyanuric acid (CA)—a small non-toxic molecule.

“Our hydrogels could theoretically load up one molecule per adenine base, while the ones incorporating the molecule as low-density synthetic modifications could only release one per strand,” Lachance-Brais wrote. In other words, the new hydrogels are high-density, allowing them to have a high drug-loading capacity. This is advantageous because it means fewer hydrogels could be used to deliver the same amount of medicine.

This novel DNA hydrogel can also respond to complex stimuli, including

Call off the search for a “normal” brain

Growing sample size opens doors for more inclusive neuroscience

Ali Baghirov Staff Writer

A“normal” brain—also termed “neurotypical”—has long been used in cognitive science research as a benchmark for brain activity comparisons. But this distinction between brains actually limits neuroscience research and has long escaped the notice of experts.

Jakub Kopal, a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience at McGill, researches the effect of genetic mutations on brain architecture and behaviour, and has come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a normal brain—at least in the general population.

“We talk a lot about a normal brain [...] and I think these are notions that were used in the literature. This is more like the vocabulary from the 20th century,” Kopal explained in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “We are trying to argue now that there is no such thing as a typical brain or a normal brain.”

The idea of a “normal” brain is usually found in studies that look to distinguish between subjects with and without a brain disease. Those with “normal” brains make up the control group—a sample that is not affected by the experimental condi-

tions and is used as a baseline—and are labelled as neurotypical.

“The term [neurotypical] was really focused on WEIRD [Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic] people. Most of the research takes place at the universities, [and] there is a specific [socioeconomic] group of people that go to university,” Kopal said.

Previous research has focused mainly on WEIRD people, who actually do not make up more than 15 per cent of the global population. Another defining factor of neuroscience research, according to Kopal, is its high cost, which had limited sample sizes to only 15 to 20 subjects per study until the 2000s.

“[We] need to reduce the ‘noise,’ so [researchers] would focus only on people that are right-handed or meet several other criteria,” Kopal said. “They would put these criteria to homogenize their group to get the strongest evidence. But then it is really not telling you much about the whole population.”

As Kopal explained, the inclusion of only right-handers in studies consolidated a popular conjecture that our language centre is localized in the left hemisphere of the brain. It was only when researchers included left-handers in their studies that it

became clear that the lateralization of the language centre in the brain is quite different for lefties—found in the right hemisphere. In this case, narrow sample sizes lead to results that don’t apply to the wider population and are not reproducible in future experiments.

Lack of reproducibility in current research has been a big motivation for the creation of databases such as UK Biobank and Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, which allow us to look at neuroscience research from a more global, inclusive perspective. UK Biobank is a resource with extensive genetic and health data from British patients, while ABCD comprises research focusing on the brain development of children in the United States. These databases have shown that ethnicity, gender, and other socioeconomic and personal characteristics factor into the makeup of one’s cognition.

“The reproducibility crisis [showed that] we need large sample sizes in order to reproduce our results. And then there was another set of studies showing that the samples we have right now are really WEIRD,” Kopal said. “And this probably means that our results might not generalize to the whole

specific DNA sequences and small molecules. When the hydrogels come into contact with a stimulus, such as a drug solution, they swell up to absorb the drug.

The new hydrogel can even influence gene expression by delivering a high concentration of gene-related therapeutics. This is done by enhancing the gene-silencing efficacy of antisense oligonucleotides—a versatile group of therapeutics with gene-silencing effects used to treat diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy and spinal muscular atrophy.

Although the development of DNA hydrogels is still in its infancy, McGill researchers have opened up exciting possibilities for biomedical applications of DNA hydrogels by making them a little less rigid—and their uses a little more flexible.

population.”

A potential application of expanding sample sizes in neuroscience research is using technology to assess risks of developing neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.

“With the advances in machine learning, we also saw that often our algorithms fail for minorities,” Kopal said. “Our machine learning approaches are really tailored to the majorities and they fail non-stereotypical populations.”

This is especially critical in the medical industry because physicians must provide high-quality services to diverse patients and need reliable data based on inclusive studies.

“I don’t want to claim I can predict Alzheimer’s disease if you are of European ancestry, well-educated, have a higher income and you’re a male,” Kopal said. “This doesn’t really serve us as a tool. [We want] a tool that serves the whole population.”

Nadrian Seeman, a nanoscientist, founded the field of structural DNA nanotechnology in the 1980s. (Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews)

Over 55 million people worldwide live with dementia, a neurodegenerative disease of which about 60 to 70 per cent are Alzheimer’s cases. (Flickr)

On the origins of stereotypes: Implicit bias rooted in identity markers

Study sheds light on how in-group identities affect race-gender associations and stereotyping

Eliza Wang Contributor

Are Canadians ridiculously polite?

Is Gen Z exceedingly self-absorbed? Stereotypes pervade our day-to-day lives, with their roots grounded in false notions and “othering” media portrayals. However, stereotypes of age, race, gender, and other identifiers do not exist in a vacuum—an identity consists of multiple identifiers that mesh and interlock. A person is not just their age or their race—they also have gender identities and sexual preferences that affect how they move through and experience the world.

In a recently published article, assistant professor Jordan R. Axt of McGill’s Department of Psychology examined how in-group identity and group status affect people’s race-gender associations. The researchers discovered that theBlack women and Asian men respondents in their study exhibited weaker stereotypical associations between race and gender.

In the first part of the study, 1,071 American participants of different racial and gender backgrounds completed a computer mouse-tracking task, categorizing Black and East Asian faces as either male or female. The mouse movements were tracked as participants reacted to each face, mostly collecting straightline responses for Black man and Asian woman faces but recording a pull toward the incorrect gender label when shown the faces of Black women and Asian men.

While there could be a multitude of reasons for this race-gender bias, Axt offered an explanation rooted in societal stereotypes due to repeated, harmful media portrayals that essentialize entire racial groups.

“Black people are disproportionately likely to be shown as perpetrators of violent crimes on [news outlets]. Exposure to this type of media could, over time, build up this association between Black and masculine,” Axt said in an interview with The McGill Tribune

In a similar vein, Asian people in North America are underrepresented in high-status or leadership positions that are societally associated with masculinity, which the researchers theorize leads to an association between being Asian and femininity.

When audiences are exposed to these images in the media, they subconsciously absorb this misinformation to form stereotypes and biases. These race-gender biases exert a weighty influence on educational institutions, workplaces, and even how people choose their romantic partners.

“When these associations exist, they might subtly push us in one direction [over] another,” Axt explained. “For example, we live in an educational context where, oftentimes, students are rewarded for portraying behaviours […] like leadership and assertiveness that have more historically masculine components.”

Structural discrimination does not

end in educational institutions. Starting with disproportionately excluding Black students from gifted and talented programs to phenomena such as the bamboo ceiling in the workplace, Black and Asian people are often subjected to microaggressions at various levels due to unjustified stereotypical associations.

Axt’s research team also found that Black women and Asian men—the respondents who most opposed the stereotypical association—exhibited less of a pull towards incorrect gender labels in the mouse-tracking task, suggesting that people’s intersectional identities influence their perception of other groups.

“It could be that, for example, Black women and Asian men are more proactive about the type of media that they choose

to consume,” Axt speculated about the reasons behind this difference in racegender association. The race-gender identity of all other respondents were white and Hispanic men and women, with more women than men being surveyed.

Axt suggested that considering intersectionality in social psychology research is crucial going forward.

“Social psychology has done a lot of great work to show some of the effects of these social characteristics, such as race, gender, and age, in isolation,” he said. “But we can begin to more fully appreciate, in the years to come, that when we start to combine these social identities, there are unique effects. And I hope that our research is just one more example of that.”

Advancing scientific frontiers through undergraduate research

Inquisitive McGill students present the highlights of their curiosity

Russel Ismael Science & Technology Editor

Continued from page 1.

The cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulators (CFTR) from patients with CF are currently being sequenced to deduce the exact genes that cause CF. As opposed to a panel test, which screens against a common set of mutations, CFTR sequencing has fewer false positives.

“We’re able to now discharge all these people we can identify as healthy carriers of cystic fibrosis,” Parish explained in an interview with the Tribune “ You need two cystic-fibrosiscausing alleles to have cystic fibrosis, [but] they have one allele that’s cystic-fibrosis-causing, and one that’s normal.”

Despite fewer false positives, CFTR sequencing can still produce inconclusive tests, leading to over-medicalization— when your health is harmed because of undue treatment— which has unknown long-term side effects. But this is balanced by how versatile CFTR is, as it isn’t limited to CF.

“[CFTR sequencing] can be applied to any kind of genetic disease. In some cases, that already is being applied,” Parish said. “Identifying [CF] mutations and new mutations would be useful.”

Poetry as a mathematical language

Eve-Marie Marceau, a recent graduate from McGill’s Département des littératures de langue française, de traduction et de création, is researching how words can be translated into a mathematical context to devise a way of evoking the “sublime” in poetry.

“Edmund Burke said that the sublime was, and I quote, ‘the strongest emotion that the mind could feel,’” Marceau told the Tribune Marceau almost experienced the sublime after having an inexplicable emotion when reading a poem.

“I was like [...] ‘what is this kind of emotion I cannot explain?’ So, I went to ask my friend who is doing his PhD in mathematical logic if he could define what I was feeling—the

infinity of discovery,” Marceau said.

Marceau and her friend then combined mathematics and poetry to construct a model for the sublime. They used both mathematical and linguistic approaches, including category theory and semantics, but this proved to be challenging.

“The more and more we try to find a model, the less we can really grasp the sublime,” Marceau said. “We realized that poetry was really similar to mathematics in a way that [it] was going toward the sublime, but never reaching it.”

She asserted that the sublime was “the best way to describe the experience of infinity, but in a qualitative way,” and that the sublime is about “hazard and imperfection,” not beauty.

Astrophotography: Intersecting art and science

U1 Science students Ben Coull-Neveu and Piotr Jakuc transformed their astronomy hobby into art. As astrophotographers, both Coull-Neveu and Jakuc carefully control the colour and focus of their photo -

graphs for artistic flair.

“A lot of [astrophotography] kind of comes back to the person who processes it to find what they wanted to get out of the image,” Coull-Neveu explained to the Tribune . “Even if they’re using the exact same initial data, the final image will pretty much always come out completely different because it’s their choice as to [...] what colours they really want to bring out on the image.”

When it comes to space photographs, this artistic freedom is

also found in the James Webb Space Telescope’s photograph of the Pillars of Creation, which Jakuc states is colour-saturated to give a sense of awe.

“And that’s kind of like the artistic side of things because no one’s supposed to really tell you how to present your pictures if the final goal is to just impress the public,” Jakuc told the Tribune . “At that point, [astrophotography is] just what’s prettiest to you and what’s prettiest to most people.”

Racialized women working full-time, full-year jobs earned 33 per cent less than non-racialized men in Canada. (onlineissues.co.uk)

During certain months, exoplanets appear brighter than stars when seen under a telescope. (Russel Ismael / The McGill Tribune )

MLB’s new rule changes: Should we be excited?

Pitch timer, bigger bases,

Tillie Burlock Sports Editor

Baseball fans, it’s finally here––a new era of the sport is on the horizon. With the average game length coming in at three hours and four minutes, a plummeting fanbase, and offensive output on a steady decline since the juiced ball of 2020, Major League Baseball (MLB) finally recognized its dire position and took action last September, when its competition committee voted to implement a slew of rule changes for the 2023 season.

shift bans, pickoff restrictions all introduced at Spring Training

“I think we’re gonna see a more exciting brand of baseball,” Mike Wilner, former playby-play announcer for the Toronto Blue Jays and current columnist for the Toronto Star, told The McGill Tribune. “There will be more action more often.”

The new rule changes are set to alter critical aspects of the game, with a pitch timer, bigger bases, shift bans, and pickoff restrictions implemented at the start of Spring Training. Fans got a sneak peek of the impacts in Minor League Baseball (MiLB) games in 2022 during the rules’ testing period. And with average game

length dropping from three hours and three minutes in 2021 to two hours and 38 minutes in the 2022 season, it’s safe to say that MLB made the right call.

With the new pitch timer in place, pitchers will have 15 seconds to deliver their pitch with the bases empty and 20 seconds with a runner on base. Hitters will have to be in the batter’s box, ready to hit with eight seconds left on the timer. If the pitcher fails to initiate their motion to deliver the pitch before the expiration of the timer, they will be charged with a ball, and if the batter is not ready to hit at eight seconds, they will be charged with a strike.

“[The pitch timer] is something that is absolutely brand-new that people have never had to deal with before,” Wilner said. “Baseball has always been this game without a clock but [the timer] sort of gets it back to where it was 30-40 years ago.”

Outside of the pitch timer, the shift––a situational defensive realignment where infielders and outfielders shift from their traditional positioning if the hitter has a tendency to hit the ball to a specific part of the field––will no longer be allowed. The shift saw a major increase in use after its employment by the Houston Astros and the Tampa Bay Rays with usage rates skyrocketing league-wide from 6.2 per cent of the time in 2016 to 33.6 per cent in 2022.

“It’s going to open up the infield for ground balls,” Wilner said.“Teams will find ways around it but I do think batting averages are going to go up as a result and especially the

left-handed pull hitters.”

The remaining rule changes––outside of restricting instances when position players can pitch, to when a team is winning by 10 or more runs in the ninth inning or losing by eight or more at any time––all hope to revive a crucial element of baseball: Base stealing, an art that has largely been lost over the years.

Bases will increase in size from 15 to 18 inches squared, but the home plate will remain unchanged, giving players more room to maneuver around tags and avoid collisions. Pickoffs—when the pitcher attempts to throw the runner out before delivering the pitch—will be limited to two attempts per plate appearance, and the count will reset if the runner advances. If a third attempt is made, the pitcher will be charged with a balk—when a pitcher makes an illegal motion on the mound with runners on base that the umpire deems to be deceitful to the runners—and the runner will automatically advance. The league announced that it will also crack down on the enforcement of balks, a move that forced a number of pitchers to completely restructure their deliveries.

While some mourn the loss of a game slowed down by the adjusting of velcro, the tossing of the rosin bag, and the rubbing of hands in the dirt, the baseball of 2023 will be a welcome change for the majority of fans. No more dozing off as a 1-0 game on July 15 heads into hour three in the seventh inning. No more yelling at your TV for the batter to get in the goddamn box. A new brand of baseball is upon us and it’s time to get excited.

McGill Figure Skating celebrates comeback year with end-of-season show

Team capped off first competitive season in two years with dazzling exhibition performance

Jack Armstrong Contributor

On March 17, McGill’s Figure Skating Club hosted its end-of-season show at McConnell Arena in front of a lively crowd. The performance was a fitting finale to the season, with each teammate showcasing their individual and synchronized skills.

“I think we just enjoy skating with no pressure and sharing what we’ve been working on and how we’ve improved with all those who come to watch,” first-year Arts student Elisia Wong told The McGill Tribune. “[The] show definitely lived up to expectations for us and we’re hoping that everyone in the audience enjoyed it as much as we did.”

Like many other McGill teams, varsity and otherwise, the figure skating program took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic—their 202021 and 2021-22 seasons were cancelled, leaving the team without any competition. Despite the disappointment, the club rallied for the 202223 season, competing in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) Fall and Winter Invitationals. The team performed well for their first competitive season in two years, and won gold in the Fall Invitational women’s freeskate as well as silver in the star 10 women’s event during the Winter Invitational.

Unfortunately, the figure skating team’s lack of varsity status prevented them from competing in the OUA championships, so the skaters decided

to host an exhibition performance at McGill to showcase their achievements. Although the show was not a competition, the team felt it was a fun and entertaining way to end their comeback season.

“The mood amongst the skaters was very light and fun,” said third-year biochemistry student Jessamine Mattson in an interview with the Tribune. “There was no pressure to be perfect and we were able to cheer for each other in a way that can’t be done on practice ice.”

The show got off to an energetic start with a number of synchronized and individual performances, each one more daring than the last. The low stakes allowed the skaters to fearlessly attempt their best skills and the crowd was rewarded with a number of jumps and spins, with a few axels mixed in. Each performance was met with boisterous ovations from the crowd and applause from the team, who all stayed rinkside after their performances to cheer on their teammates.

Halfway through the show, there was an emotional moment when the graduating skaters were celebrated at centre ice, marking a new era for the team.

“All the team members are different now, and after the graduating members leave, there won’t be anyone on the team who was on the last team before COVID,” Wong said. “We want to focus on building the team and showing up as strong competitors to each competition.”

The second half of the performance proceeded much like the first: The team continued

to showcase their skills as individuals, pairs, and even quartets. When the show concluded, the skaters received a final thunderous round of applause from the crowd as they made their way to the stands, officially bringing the season to a close. In the aftermath, the figure skating team is already setting their sights on improving their competitive edge for next year.

“Next season, we hope to continue to foster an inclusive and fun environment where team members can continue to work and train in the sport they love,” Mattson said. “We hope that

these efforts will show at competitions as we strive to work our way up the rankings.”

Wong echoed her teammate’s statement. “We want to recruit more skaters and hopefully regain varsity status from McGill,” she added. “We’re definitely looking to take home more medals and higher placements, so we’ll be working hard and doing our best to improve in the coming season.”

While the McGill community will have to wait and see if the team can live up to expectations, it is clear that a new era in McGill figure skating has arrived.

Rule changes in MiLB saw stolen base attempts jump from 2.23 per game at a 68 per cent success rate in 2019 to 2.81 per game with a success rate of 78 per cent in 2022. (Nathan Ray Seebeck / USA Today Sports)

McGill has the only university figure skating team in Quebec. (McGill Figure Skating Club)

Know Your Athlete: Catherine McGee

Artistic swimmer shares their hopes for the future of the sport

Julie Ferreyra Staff Writer

Growing up, Catherine McGee’s interest in anything aquatic, combined with their dance background, ignited their love for artistic swimming. She held her passion close throughout her school years and eventually, it landed her at McGill.

“[Being in the water] just felt so calming for me, almost therapeutic, if that makes any sense,” McGee explained in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “When you go under there, everything just kind of goes still and you’re really just able to ground yourself and be a lot calmer.”

Through artistic swimming, McGee pushes herself to her physical limits by learning and mastering new techniques.

“When I’m swimming, it’s the physical part and the athleticism that I appreciate [more],” McGee said. “As a spectator, [...] you have a greater degree of appreciation for the craftsmanship that goes into making the routines and performing them as well.”

McGee joined the McGill team that was revived after a twoyear, COVID-19-induced hiatus.

The Martlet squad is composed overwhelmingly of first-years, with only four returning swimmers for the 2022-23 season. When preparing routines, the team’s young core was a source of creativity, but also required added attention to bring cohesion and unity to the routines.

“Everyone brought a different perspective on the sport based on their own experience,” McGee explained.

“We had to take a lot of time learning how to swim with each other because we’re new at it [...] Before you can even focus on polishing the routine, you need to finalize that kind of degree of comfort within a team. We have to take time to learn how to be a team.”

Community is central to artistic swimming: Coordinating choreography with eight individuals requires a great deal of confidence and cohesion.

According to McGee, the kindness of Lindsay Duncan, the team’s coach and associate professor of kinesiology, has been crucial to creating a welcoming environment at the pool.

As strong as McGee’s passion for artistic swimming is, the pitfalls of the sport remain in the back of their mind.

“I don’t think the sport inherently promotes any sort of disordered behaviour and when I say that, I mean the construction of the sport itself,”

McGee explained. “I do think that the way that we’ve presented artistic swimming, or some of the standards that artistic swimmers are held to, particularly regarding your body and eating habits, are just not sustainable and they’re not fair.”

Their personal experiences in the sport have made them critical of how artistic swimming is promoted, especially compared to other sports with an emphasis on aesthetics over skills.

“Artistic swimming is very much a performance sport, right, similar to that like ballet or dance,” she admitted. “I think the way that artistic swimming has been marketed, even from the getgo, has made us lose out on a lot of global awareness that we could have gained.”

Looking toward the future, McGee is excited by the increasing inclusivity of artistic swimming, both when it comes to gender and to financial and outreach programs that connect low-income communities to artistic swimming and swimming in general.

“I think that we’re definitely moving in the right direction, especially in terms of inclusivity with men in the sport,” McGee said. “It would be a great idea to continue some outreach

As part of the experienced McGill artistic swimming team, McGee finished in second overall at the Eastern Championship in Ontario. (Matt Garies /

programs with artistic swimming.”

As the McGill team is entirely self-funded, McGee is acutely aware of the costs of the sport, between the costumes and bathing suits, as well as transportation when the Eastern Championships or Nationals are held out of province.

“It’s really important for us to raise as much money as possible to minimize the cost for the students because we want to make artistic swimming at

McGill as much of an economically inclusive environment as possible,” McGee said. “It’s just such a shame to think about the fact that finances or cost of the sport [are] what’s in the way of people who might be really interested in the sport from trying it.”

The McGill artistic swimming team will head to the University of Toronto for the Canadian University Artistic Swim League National Championship on March 24.

No more settling for mediocre soccer Promotion and relegation would make North American soccer more appealing to fans

Anoushka Oke

Creative Director

Canada and the United States are often criticized for their lack of soccer culture. Though some cities’ enthusiasm shows that the two countries’ soccer culture is alive and well, the city-concentrated support for Major League Soccer (MLS) and National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) teams is not as pervasive as it could be.

Unlike most successful soccer leagues, Canadian and American leagues—including the MLS and the NWSL—do not have a system of promotion and relegation. Systems

of promotion and relegation typically consist of three or four leagues organized according to strength: The top league is where the strongest teams play, the middle league where average teams play, and the bottom league where the lowest-performing teams compete for a chance to advance. Top finishers of lower-tier leagues are promoted to the next-highest level for the following season, while bottom finishers are demoted to the league immediately below their own.

If North American soccer culture wants to continue to grow its fanbase, it must implement relegation. Without this system in place, teams drop off to an uncompetitive level of soccer as

the top spots in the league become unattainable. Low-performing teams become comfortable with knowing that they will remain in their league with guaranteed access to the financial benefits of playing at the top tier. Implementing a system of promotion and relegation eliminates that sense of security. Cincinnati FC, for example, was dead last in the MLS Eastern Conference for three consecutive years, facing few consequences— except the disappointment of their fans—for their consistent abysmal performance. The Houston Dynamo has been the Western Conference’s equivalent to Cincinnati, having placed last every year since 2019. Although every team naturally wants to win, teams become complacent when there is no sense of urgency, or incentive, to improve. The threat of relegation would put pressure on teams to maintain a competitive level throughout the entire season because too low of a finish could warrant demotion.

The prospect of promotion, on the other hand, would be an excellent motivator. Teams in lower-ranked European leagues still have heavily invested fanbases who remain invested throughout the season because winning records in lower leagues could actually move them up. To fans of bottom-of-the-table teams, relegation drama can have the same allure as title-race drama. This highly contentious aspect of European soccer is why so many Canadian and American fans opt to support an overseas team instead of an MLS or NWSL team.

The NWSL does not currently have an

affiliated second-tier league, but is in the process of planning for one. Introducing a relegation system could complement the new league and would likely propel the growth of women’s soccer, with fans getting to experience the highs and lows that come with the risk of demotion and the prospect of promotion.

However, men’s soccer in Canada and the U.S. already has a multi-tiered system, with the United Soccer League (USL) as well as USL League One and League Two sitting under the MLS. So, implementing promotion and relegation shouldn’t be a difficult task. Several USL teams already have thriving fan bases that will continue to grow if the more successful teams have the chance to get promoted to the MLS.

Despite concerns regarding poor USL teams’ ability to compete, performances at the yearly Open Cup, a tournament where MLS and USL teams face off, prove otherwise. Last year’s Open Cup in particular showcased the USL talent, with several teams taking down their MLS opponents to advance to later rounds.

Promotion and relegation will give newlypromoted teams a chance to compete for the top spots in the MLS—just like how the English team Leicester went from being a seconddivision team to winning the Premier League in less than five years. The MLS and the NWSL must implement promotion and relegation if they hope to recreate spectacles and capture sustained interest from fans. Everyone loves a good underdog story, so let’s create some in North American soccer.

McGill Athletics)

The MLS and NWSL need the relegation battles of the Premier League, where teams like Leeds United were able to celebrate not moving down at the end of the season. (Isaiah Alonzo / My San Antonio)