The Tribune Vol. 44 Issue 14

What we liked this winter break

had

of

School of Continuing Studies

Shani Laskin Managing Editor

In a less than 60-day process, on Dec. 31, Quebec’s Tribunal Administratif du Travail certified the Association of McGill Academic Staff of the School of Continuing Studies (AMASCS), forging the fourth faculty union at McGill. The School of Continuing Studies (SCS) marks the first faculty to bid for unionization following a Memorandum of Understand-

becomes McGill’s fourth faculty union

ing (MoU) from Oct. 6 between McGill and the university’s inaugural union, the Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL).

The MoU brought an end to over 13 weeks of AMPL strikes which delayed the start of the law faculty’s Fall term by over a month. In return, McGill dropped its contestation efforts of AMPL’s certification and abandoned efforts to block the certification of two other faculty unions—the Association of McGill Professors of Education (AMPE) and the Association of McGill

McGill does not contest the latest faculty union certification: A shift or merely an exception?

n Jan. 2, the Tribunal administratif du travail certified the Association of McGill Academic Staff of the School of Continuing Studies (AMASCS) as McGill’s fourth faculty union. AMASCS is the first instance of faculty unionization that McGill did not contest in court—a pivotal moment for the unions, who have faced protracted, embattled paths toward certification over the past few years.

In April of last year, the Association of the McGill Professors of Law (AMPL) went on an indefinite strike to protest stalled negotiations over a collective agreement (CA) with McGill that would protect faculty governance, pay, and work conditions.

Ellen Lurie Opinion Editor

Awidely unpopular progressive party leader, having unsuccessfully attempted to fend off a populist conservative challenger, is forced to step down for the sake of his party’s re-election pros-

Professors of the Faculty of Arts (AMPFA).

Another central aspect of the MoU was the agreement to form a confederation for collective bargaining between faculty unions and McGill. According to the McGill Media Relations Office, the confederation would “establish a grouping of unions to negotiate university-wide working conditions for instructors.” Under this system, faculty-specific issues would be negotiated with individual unions, whereas broader issues would be negotiated across the entire confederation. PG. 2

pects. Wait, who are we talking about?

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation on Jan. 6, 2025 shares eerie resemblance with former U.S. President Joe Biden’s choice to step down this past July. Both represent an attempt to distance the two parties from the poor image

voters have of their soon-to-beformer leaders. Americans now know that Biden’s decision to step down from the position of Democratic Party nominee was neither sufficiently impactful nor well-timed enough to win former Vice President Kamala Harris the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election.

(Armen Erzingatzian / The Tribune)

Provisional injunction against SSMU Policy Against Antisemitism has expired

Policy will undergo review by the BoD this semester after passing in Legislative Council on Dec. 5

Mairin Burke News Editor

The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU)’s proposed Policy Against Antisemitism sparked intense debates at Fall 2024 Legislative Council meetings, and ultimately faced legal contestation when it was passed on Dec. 5. A Dec. 9 courtordered injunction prohibiting the policy’s ratification ultimately expired on Dec. 19, allowing the SSMU’s Board of Directors (BoD) to potentially pass the policy this semester.

According to SSMU Vice-President (VP) External Affairs Hugo-Victor Solomon, the proposed Policy Against Antisemitism intends to bridge gaps in SSMU legislation to more sensitively and rigorously address the many forms of antisemitism among SSMU members. A draft of the Policy was initially presented during the Oct. 24 SSMU Legislative Council meeting as a notice of motion. Solomon reported that he had requested consultation on this draft from stakeholders such as McGill’s Hillel, Chabad, Chavurah, Independent Jewish Voices, and the Jewish Studies Students’ Association. Members of some of these groups expressed concerns that the Policy did not use the working definition of antisemitism established by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Solomon stated that some of these members then met with SSMU President Dymetri Taylor.

“[They] told the President that all of the

executives needed to immediately step down, that they needed to issue an immediate statement apologizing,” Solomon said on if the motion passed.

Taylor wrote to The Tribune that he neither agreed nor disagreed when approached with these requests.

The Policy motion was then debated without approval at Nov. 7 and Nov. 21 Legislative Council meetings, during and between which councillors proposed amendments to the Policy. These recommendations led to the Legislative Council removing multiple passages from the Policy by the end of the Nov. 21 session.

One of these amendments removed the phrase “between the river and the sea” from the Policy, which had appeared in a clause stating that support for full legal equality for all inhabitants of Israel’s geographic locale would not be considered antisemitic. Solomon explained the removal followed criticism from some McGill Jewish groups.

“Groups like Hillel McGill requested that this phrase be removed in a public letter,” Solomon told The Tribune. “Students felt like that was an attempt to legitimate or provide some kind of tacit support for a political slogan, and as I was able to find other language that accomplished the exact same goal, but without the part of that slogan [...] it was removed.”

The Policy was again discussed during the Dec. 5 Legislative Council meeting, unchanged from its Nov. 21 form. The Policy was passed with 16 members in favour of the

motion, six against, and two abstaining.

Less than 24 hours later, lawyers Neil Oberman and Michael Hollander sent the SSMU a demand letter on behalf of groups including McGill’s Jewish Law Students’ Association, Hillel, Chabad, and Israel on Campus. Oberman and Hollander alleged that the vote on the Policy had occurred incorrectly and lobbied for its withdrawal, claiming that affected individuals had not all been properly consulted by SSMU, nor given proper notice that the motion would potentially be passed.

Both parties’ lawyers attended court on Dec. 9, where a judge granted Oberman and Hollander’s request for a provisional injunction against the Policy, set to expire on Dec. 19. SSMU then sent Oberman and Hollander an affidavit alleging that the lawyers had relied on outdated SSMU governance regulations from 2021 to make their case. Oberman and Hollander thus allowed the injunction against the Policy to expire on Dec. 19, requesting that SSMU inform the plaintiff side when the BoD will next vote on the Policy. Taylor confirmed that SSMU executives have not yet established this BoD date while the Policy is reviewed by their lawyers.

tial legal concerns, whether those be internal to the SSMU, or external to Quebec law, to ensure that no one’s rights are being invalidated,” Taylor told The Tribune

“As the matter is pending before the courts I cannot comment on it,” Hollander wrote to The Tribune

“The SSMU has already approved a budget of $1,000 [CAD] to get a review of the Policy, just to ensure that there are no poten-

Representatives from McGill’s Jewish Law Students’ Association, Hillel, Chabad, and Israel on Campus did not respond to The Tribune’s requests for comment regarding the lawsuit.

School of Continuing Studies becomes McGill’s fourth faculty

union AMASCS joins the confederation of existing faculty unions to collectively bargain with the university

Shani Laskin Managing Editor

Continued from page 1.

Talks to unionize in the SCS emerged in October, explained AMASCS interim Vice President Margaret Levey, and quickly progressed with a supermajority of academic staff in the school signing membership cards. The union applied for certification on Nov. 15.

In 2021, SCS underwent organizational restructuring “to strike a balance between adaptability and flexibility on the one hand, and stability and consistency on the other,” Carola Weil, Dean of Continuing Studies, wrote in a proposal to the McGill Senate. According to the proposal, these changes were preceded by extensive community consultation. However, Levey and her colleague John Gradek claimed that not only was there minimal consultation, but also that the restructuring added undue layers of bureaucracy which have posed challenges to faculty in the school.

“We are not Arts, we are not Science, we are not Management, we are not Engineering. We are a School of Continuing Studies,” Gradek said. “And to me, that moniker means that we are there to be an extension of what the McGill brand ought to look like [....] What we see happening

is that there’s been a strong push, in my opinion, by the current leadership of the School of Continuing Studies to be considered a faculty and with that approach, it’s changed who we are, and it’s changed our mission, and it’s changed how the marketplace sees us.”

Levey told The Tribune that once she and Gradek began discussing the potential of unionization with other faculty members, they found that many of their colleagues faced similar challenges.

“It’s hard for one person to say, ‘No, I reject this as part of my mandate.’ But collectively, if we were all reject it as part of our mandate, then that has a certain weight to it,” Levey said.

Between the restructuring, federal and provincial restrictions on immigration, and McGill’s projected upcoming financial deficit, AMASCS organizers felt it was crucial to have a seat at the table in discussing the future of the school.

“[I felt like] we’re in danger if we don’t actually [...] push back and say, ‘No, we have the right to be involved in this. We’re going to negotiate the right to be involved in the division of the school.’ If we don’t do that, I don’t think we’re going to survive,” Levey said.

Before the confederation can begin negotiating collective agreements with McGill, it must determine a democratic voting system and which subject mat

ters will be negotiated across the unions. AMPL Vice President Kirsten Anker welcomed AMASCS, expressing that the lack of contestation from McGill marks a shift in labour relations at the university.

“The effect of our strike in the fall was to change the culture of faculty unionization at McGill. We’re seeing that it’s quickly led to certification of three other unions and we expect that that’s going to continue,” Anker said. “[We’re] just very

happy that this is a significant change of union culture at McGill.”

To Gradek, the lack of contestation from McGill is not necessarily a change in attitude toward unionization efforts but rather a recognition of their existence.

“I think the university has come to the conclusion that [...] unionization of its academic staff is inevitable. It’s not worth fighting because it’s going to be [futile].”

In Fall 2024, the School of Continuing Studies reported 1,696 total students, compared to 1,829 in 2023 and 2,843 in 2019. (Hannah Nobile / The Tribune)

Neil Oberman, one of the lawyers who filed an injunction request against the Policy, also requested one against the Palestine Solidarity Encampment on McGill campus in 2024. (Ruby Reimer / The Tribune)

Trans students report increased barriers to Hormone Replacement Therapy access at Student Wellness Hub

Some students referred to endocrinology clinic with wait time of three months

Amelia H. Clark Staff Writer

Some students are reporting increased difficulties accessing gender-affirming care following the temporary leave of Hashana Perera, reportedly the only doctor at the Student Wellness Hub (SWH) willing to prescribe Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). For some, this has called into question the ability for the SWH to provide specialized resources for transgender students.

HRT is a medical treatment and a form of gender-affirming care used to augment levels of specific hormones in the body. According to an

official statement from the Trans Patient Union (TPU)—a student organization dedicated to advocating for better healthcare for transgender patients in Montreal—those requiring HRT will now be referred to the Hygea endocrinology clinic for treatment. Students have reported wait times of over three to six months at this clinic for the first of three mandatory appointments they must attend before they can receive a prescription for HRT.

TPU addressed concerns about patients being referred to an endocrinologist in a written response to The Tribune. The Union claimed that the Hygea clinic is currently understaffed and therefore ill-prepared to manage both their current patients and the Hub’s referrals.

“In Quebec, any general practitioner can prescribe and supervise HRT—it is an unnecessary burden on endocrinology clinics to exclusively shoulder this responsibility, and as specialized medicine, endocrinology is harder and slower for patients to access than general practice,” TPU wrote.

The union wrote that they have previously expressed concerns

to the SWH about the instability of having only one doctor available to prescribe HRT. During Perera’s previous temporary leave, another doctor at the SWH stepped in to provide HRT and other gender-affirming care for students. TPU was reportedly told by SWH employees that more doctors would begin to take on the appropriate training to prescribe this medication. Despite this, the SWH currently has no plans to have another doctor take on this responsibility during Perera’s absence.

In addition, Perera was also the only doctor at the SWH able to provide recommendation letters for gender-affirming surgeries, a requirement to accessing surgical transition in Canada and a service Hygea is unable to provide.

In a written statement to The Tribune, the McGill Media Relations Office (MRO) stated that the SWH will continue to provide HRT to patients with preexisting prescriptions and that, in the future, they plan on hiring more doctors able to provide the same services as Perera.

MRO also commented on gender-affirming care at the SWH prior to Perera’s leave, stating that they have always been dedicated to prescribing HRT in a way that prioritizes students’ wishes.

“Specific medication prescriptions are individualized based on many factors but especially the individual patient’s goals of treatment,” McGill wrote.

Despite this, students reported that accessing HRT at the SWH was challenging

even prior to Perera’s leave. In an interview with TPU, one student—who wished to be unnamed—reported that the SWH refused to prescribe them above the minimum starting dose for two years, despite the student wanting to increase the dosage over time.

“I felt that my experience was subpar compared to every other care experience I have had before and after attending the Hub,” the student said. “I am very frustrated that I am further behind in my medical transition than I would have been if I had received better care.”

TPU states that while the wait time for gender-affirming treatment at the SWH has gotten shorter over the last few years, the lack of another doctor in light of Perera’s leave has set back this progress dramatically, leaving transgender students at McGill with unreliable and inaccessible gender-affirming healthcare.

“Unfortunately, it simply seems that many doctors at the Hub, and in Quebec generally, do not believe that providing gender-affirming care is their job,” TPU wrote.

Those seeking gender-affirming care can self-refer to Local Wellness Advisors (LWA) or Access Advisors, including one LWA that specifically serves 2SLGBTQIA+ students. Students can also book appointments with a Counsellor or Sexologist at the SWH to navigate services and access support. TPU additionally offers a resource index for gender-affirming care and more on its website.

SSMU BoD debates gender-neutral washrooms at first meeting of 2025

Board discussed internal SSMU protocols and potential gender-neutral washroom expansion in the University Centre

Mairin Burke News Editor

The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Board of Directors (BoD) held its first meeting of 2025 on Jan. 7, discussing topics ranging from hiring practices to gender-neutral washrooms in the University Centre.

The meeting began in a confidential session before SSMU President Dymetri Taylor presented the Executive Committee Public Report, which included a motion on hiring at the student bar and café Gerts to prepare for its Jan. 6 reopening.

Next, Taylor reviewed motions passed on Jan. 6, including some delegating the oversight of SSMU staff under the Vice-President (VP) Sustainability and Operations portfolio to other executives. VP External Hugo-Victor Solomon moved to oversee SSMU’s Grocery Program Coordinator and Sustainability Coordinator positions, while VP University Affairs Abe Berglas now supports the Campus Crops Coordinator.

Next, the Board ratified a motion to approve 2025 Winter Referendum dates, establishing the nomination period as Feb. 3 to 21 and the campaign and polling period as March 10 to 21.

The second motion, brought forward by Berglas, aimed to increase the number of gender-neutral washrooms in the SSMU building by modifying existing bathroom designations. Director Rishi Kalaga reported that some students raised concerns regarding the presence of gender-neutral washrooms directly next to the

campus bar.

“A lot of women have come to me and said, ‘Look, this motion does not represent us. This motion is a threat to our safety and our security,’” Kalaga said.

Berglas responded that the motion aligns with SSMU’s Trans Advocacy Plan, stating that McGill’s Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) exclusively has gender-neutral washrooms in the Thomson House, which also hosts a bar. According to Berglas, PGSS has not reported issues relating to this matter. Berglas further noted that three-quarters of SSMU’s Legislative Council were in favour of the motion on Dec. 5, and discussed the need to centre trans voices in conversations about the motion.

“I don’t think, if you’re not a part of a minority group, you get to decide whether or not you’re transphobic,” Berglas said. “Just like I wouldn’t be able to decide whether or not I did something racist. That’s just not really for people not in that group to say.”

Councilmember Hamza Abu-Alkhair raised concerns from the Muslim Students Association about a lack of women-only washrooms next to the Gerts-adjacent SSMU prayer room.

“Women who wear the hijab, for example, when they want to wash up or fix their hijab, they have to do so in a female space, and men shouldn’t be able to see that, so they had expressed concern about the motion,” Abu-Alkhair said.

Alongside other Board members, VP Finance Pauline Jolicoeur and General Manager Maya Marcus-Sells expressed uncertainty about the motion’s adherence to Quebec build-

ing code and health and safety provisions that do not explicitly address genderneutral washrooms. Berglas affirmed the importance of these facilities.

“We shouldn’t be making a choice between the comfort of women and the ability for trans people to go to the bathroom. To me, that just doesn’t sound like a reasonable assessment,” Berglas said.

Jolicouer also noted concerns that McGill’s ownership of the building would require SSMU to request university permission to pass the motion. President Taylor motioned to approve a budget of $1,000 CAD for a review of the gender-neutral washroom motion’s adherence to Quebec law and McGill policy by the firm Melançon Marceau Grenier Cohen. The Board approved the Quebec law review component of Taylor’s motion. Councilmember Emma Chen suggested a postponement of the original gender-neutral washroom motions until after legal review, which the Board formally agreed to.

The Nominating Committee is currently seeking a BoD Memberat-Large, up to four Nominating Committee Members-at-Large, and a BoD International Student Representative and two BoD Alumni Reps. (Armen Erzingatzian / The Tribune)

Safety Committee, which ensure the well-being of full-time employees at SSMU.

Moment of the Meeting:

Taylor reported that the Menstrual Health Project has increased its number of coordinators.

Soundbite:

Before moving back into confidential session, the Board unanimously approved a motion to nominate a vetted candidate to a Judicial Board role, a motion to appoint Director Honoah Xu to the Finance Committee, and a motion to approve Terms of Reference for the Health and

“It’s very important for us to realize that we have a very large and diverse membership, and we should try to take them all into account.” — Marcus-Sells on increasing gender-neutral washrooms in the University Centre.

SSMU Queer Improvement and Partnership Solidarity bursary covers some gender-affirming care but doesn’t finance HRT. (Anna Seger / The Tribune)

SSMU President Taylor hopes to improve transparency after facing impeachment vote

SPHR views impeachment efforts as a success despite “No” vote

Eliza Lee News Editor

On the evening of Dec. 16, polls for the referendum on the impeachment of President of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Dymetri Taylor closed. The referendum failed, with 58.6 per cent of voting students voting “No,” 41.4 per cent voting “Yes,” and 8.4 per cent abstaining. With an overall 16.9 per cent voter turnout, Taylor remains in the position.

The referendum came after the approval of the Motion Regarding the Removal of President Taylor at a Dec. 5 SSMU General Assembly (GA) meeting. The motion called for Taylor’s removal on the grounds of “impropriety” and “delinquency of duties” as per SSMU’s constitution.

At the GA, students claimed that Taylor had unduly denied a motion—brought forth by Students for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance (SPHR) at McGill—which sought to have students vote on whether SSMU would participate in a student strike for Palestine. Taylor claimed the wording of the strike motion was nearly identical to that of the Policy Against Genocide in Palestine and would therefore violate the injunction suspending this policy. Taylor also told SPHR that there was no way to maintain the strike motion’s support of Palestine without breaching the injunction.

Students argued that through this communication, Taylor had inflated the extent to which legal orders hindered the union from showing support

for Palestine. They cited as evidence a document containing SSMU’s legal advice, which an anonymous source claiming to be a former member of SSMU’s Board of Governors shared with student groups, including The Tribune, on Nov. 27.

Taylor told The Tribune that he misunderstood the legal constraints SSMU faced and acknowledged that he misrepresented these constraints to students. Taylor went on to emphasize that he will seek to improve transparency by sharing more information with students around what actions SSMU can take with regard to supporting social movements.

“It’s trying to continue to walk the steady line that comes with all our rules, regulations, and everything that binds the SSMU, to work within the bounds of what we’re faced with [...] and to ensure that—so long as nothing is against what the law, our rules, and McGill’s rules—to keep it open as to what people can do,” Taylor said.

“If we can’t do anything, for instance, then perhaps there [are] other avenues that you can take that we can offer you to reach the end goal,” he continued.

Taylor also spoke to the importance of the SSMU Accountability Commissioner in ensuring that the union’s employees, including its executive team, act in accordance with SSMU’s constitution, policies, and internal regulations. Students can raise concerns about the performance of a SSMU employee to the Accountability Commissioner, who investigates these claims and makes recom-

mendations to the relevant governance body on how to address infractions.

A representative from SPHR, who wished to remain unnamed, highlighted the success of the GA and explained that the group does not see the referendum’s ultimate outcome as a failure.

“This GA shook things up [....] It really opened people’s eyes to the fact that SSMU does need to change,” they said. “Obviously, there were issues with the strike motion being purposefully delayed. This is a pattern for SSMU [...] waving their hand and using legal jargon as an excuse or [using] bureaucratic constraints as an excuse. I think the student body, and even people within SSMU, are realizing things do need to change.”

erendum as a way to hold Taylor responsible for his errors, regardless of whether his actions were intentional or not.

The representative was hopeful that the impeachment would signal a new precedent to future candidates in the upcoming SSMU executive elections in the Winter 2025 semester. They noted that SPHR will continue to encourage students to use their democratic rights to demand accountability from student leadership.

In interviews with The Tribune, some students echoed the value of the impeachment ref-

“I think that when you’re in a position of leadership, you have the responsibility to make sure that you’re not making careless mistakes that are harming the student population and the world beyond,” Chloe Wei, U1 Science, told The Tribune Kennedy McDiarmid, U3 Arts, expressed frustration at how Taylor handled the strike motion and spoke to a feeling that SSMU is “constantly band-aiding” its problems.

“It would just be nice to have a student union that’s effectively run and represents the voices of the people in a factual, [...] and effective manner,” McDiarmid said.

McGill’s student bar reopened to the public on Jan. 6 after being closed for the Fall semester Gerts serves its first beers after spending eight months closed for renovations and restructuring

Daniel Miksha Staff Writer

Gerts, McGill’s campus bar, reopened to the public on Jan. 6 after spending the Fall semester with shuttered doors. Located in the basement of the University Centre, Gerts served its last beer on April 26, 2024, before closing for over eight months due to problems with its electrical system and management structure.

Despite delays in reopening, the 50-yearold student bar is fully operational again. The Gerts Café, which used to occupy the same space as the bar, has been slated to relocate to the main floor of the University Centre.

The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) executive team wrote to The Tribune explaining that infrastructure problems and difficulties with Gerts’ management arrangement were the main reasons for the bar’s closure last semester.

“Gerts was initially closed due to changes in the management structure that made hiring for new managers necessary, as well as newly identified issues pertaining to purchasing new furniture and equipment and the electrical system in the Gerts bar area that required moving the café upstairs,” the executives wrote.

After Gerts’ management was reconfigured, the staff hiring process continued throughout the entirety of the Fall semester, and contractors began carrying out renovations.

Former SSMU Vice-President (VP) Op-

erations and Sustainability Meg Baltes helped coordinate Gerts’ renovation and eventual reopening throughout the fall. This involved sourcing higher-quality furniture for the bar and replacing aging equipment for the wellloved hub of student life.

“A significant amount of effort was put into predicting future issues and accounting for them during our renovations and restructurings [....] There were definitely hiccups in the reopening, as any bar will face, but most of these were due to delays in working with third-party service providers,” Baltes wrote to The Tribune. “We are [in] a McGill building, so we are not allowed to modify the building ourselves and [renovations] must operate on Facilities Management and Ancillary Services’ timeframe.”

The position of VP Operations and Sustainability, which is responsible for managing Gerts, sits vacant following Baltes’ resignation effective Dec. 13. Though a by-election was held to fill the position, its results were nullified after it failed to reach the required 15 per cent quorum. However, SSMU executives remain confident this vacancy will not affect Gerts’ operations in the coming semester.

“This vacancy has no impact on the funding or operations of Gerts. Management of Gerts is stable independent of the VP’s role being filled, as the Gerts Bar Manager and Gerts Cafe Manager report to the Student Life Operations (SLO) Director, who is a full-time employee of the SSMU,” the SSMU executive team wrote to The Tribune

As part of SSMU’s SLO department, Gerts is owned and operated by SSMU. As a result, Gerts does not have to pay rent, nor does it have to maintain its own communications team or HR division, and the bar receives funding from student fees.

“Gerts does not receive direct funding in the form of a specific amount from the SSMU; however, Gerts staff, like any SLO staff, are paid by the SSMU and any losses incurred by Gerts are covered by the SSMU,” the executive team told The Tribune

Leo Ortega, U3 Arts, enjoyed a beer with his friends on Gerts’ opening night, excited to see the bar reopened.

“I think it’s a good use of SSMU money,” Ortega told The Tribune. “You don’t really have any community spaces on campus, this is the closest we have to that. Bands play here, people meet up here. I think it’s something that was lacking over the last semester.”

Baltes was also optimistic about the semester to come.

“[Gerts] spans generations as a staple of the campus, with many alumni visiting, telling the bartenders about old Gerts stories from decades ago,” she wrote. “I am happy that the SSMU has been able to support this institution and bring it back to students in full force this semester.”

President Taylor’s term ends on May 31, 2025. (Drea Garcia Avila / The Tribune)

Originally called ‘Gertrudes’,’ Gerts Bar has been a staple of McGill student life since 1974. (Drea Garcia Avila / The Tribune)

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McGill does not contest the latest faculty union certification: A shift or merely an exception?

The Tribune Editorial Board

Continued from page 1.

McGill maintained an anti-union stance throughout its legal battle with AMPL and the subsequent strike, delaying the Fall semester, before finally reaching a settlement with the union in October.

The Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) faced similar hostility when negotiating with the university for higher wages and a new CA. McGill refused to meet AGSEM’s demands for a wage increase, and its counter-proposal only addressed one of several main demands—allowing one Union Delegate per Hiring Unit to attend their annual meetings— leading to a strike in March that delayed coursework grading and put overwhelming pressure on McGill professors.

While a necessary first step, McGill’s lack of contestation of AMASCS does not make up for the university’s long-standing “bad faith” in union negotiations, its reluctance to adequately meet demands, or, more broadly,

its institutional stance towards unions on campus. The acceptance of AMASCS is an important step forward, but it may have more to do with the nature of the faculty itself than a fundamental change in McGill’s attitude. While the academic staff of the School of Continuing Studies are critical workers at McGill, the faculty is relatively small, and its unionization empowers a smaller number of members in relation to the McGill administration compared to larger faculties.

If McGill remains committed to recognizing and respecting faculty unionization, the certification of AMASCS will mark a monumental step toward fostering a true workers-first environment. Continuing to support unionization efforts in other faculties would demonstrate McGill’s dedication to equity, solidarity, and the empowerment of all workers, laying the foundation for a more just and collaborative campus community. However, if McGill chooses to sustain historic hostility towards unionization and union demands, the AMASCS certification will be little more than a token example to which McGill can point when

criticized for its anti-union attitude.

Unions are a vital artery in any institution, but especially an educational one. They bring individuals together to act as a collective bargaining unit to protect rights, wages, work conditions, and a salient voice in the administration and its decisions. Unions are a benefit to faculty and students alike; when professors are better paid and better treated, they are able to offer a higher-quality education to their students, thus maintaining the academic prestige McGill proudly advertises.

As unionized workers have gone on strike for their rights at McGill, students and administrators have wrongly misplaced the blame, criticizing striking TAs or Law professors for the inconvenience of overdue grades or delayed semesters, respectively. McGill’s historically anti-union stance has exacerbated this animosity towards strikers—a resentment which should be directed at the administration whose mistreatment made the strike necessary in the first place. Such misdirected anger only adds to the exploitation and disrespect

Hawes

Amalia Mairet Features Editor

CONTRIBUTORS

Isobel Bray Abbey Locker, Armen Erzingatzian, Cam-Ly

Shatner University Centre, 3480 McTavish, Suite 110 Montreal, QC H3A 0E7 - T: 519.546.8263

When I open X, Instagram, or Substack looking for something to read, I am often confronted with a series of textbites:

it’s yearning hours what’re y’all yearning for tn big year for yearning, longing, pining, and obsessing my playlist for yearning and sighing this month

I don’t know about you, reader, but these make me want to put my fist through some drywall. “Yearning”

editors or its staff.

strikers have already endured as victims of administrative mistreatment.

Despite McGill’s institutional attitude towards unions, the aggregated progress of AMPL, AGSEM, and now AMASCS has paved a smoother road for future collectives. In the same way unity within a faculty births political power larger than the sum of its parts, unity between faculties does the same. It proves to both McGill and its non-unionized faculties that unionization is possible and can be won, even against an administration that opposes it.

Where this animosity threatens to pit members of the McGill community against one another, students and faculty alike must remember their solidarity, and strength in numbers. We must acknowledge that unions are a universal good, and remind ourselves that we are all fighting for the same future community. Faculty rights become students’ gains, and students’ gains are McGill’s gains, both as a worldrenowned university and as a community of people who have come together to teach, learn, and support one another.

I’ve had enough of yearning

is yet another in a series of internet buzzwords to grip the nation. Google searches for “yearning” and “longing” have been on the climb for the past two years. The uptick matches a similar swing in melancholic media, with releases like Past Lives and All of Us Strangers, and of course Normal People, especially the quote: “Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t know if she would ever find where it was or become part of it.” On social media, Tiktoks about Sylvia Plath’s fig tree abound.

So, why are we yearning? There seems to be a collective sense of deprivation: Years lost to the pandemic, unfulfilled promises of adulthood, wages which buy less than they ought to. Fewer friends, fewer parties, less sex. Endless hours moping in bed, considering our bored disillusionment with adulthood. Sigh. Yearn.

Many people are fine with being home all day, or almost all the time. It’s okay to rot in bed, to want to rot in bed, to normalize that stasis instead of actively seeking fulfillment. This new attitude wouldn’t be a problem if everyone was happy. But I see the emergence of internet yearning as

psychological displacement, a hernialike, Freudian bubble of dissatisfaction.

In Cruel Optimism, author Lauren Berlant postulates that media trends reflect our attempts to represent affect, to create art which encapsulates the way life feels. Berlant explains that the modern individual feels unsteady, without a rewarding job or pension plan, stable government or a nuclear family. All this ‘yearnposting’ seems like a cultural reaction to our feeling of emptiness and absence. Many relationships—platonic, romantic, economic—feel unreciprocated, unconsummated. They offer little, promise nothing at all, or fall short of what you would want. So, we offer less of ourselves in return. It’s simpler this way. When the world is intolerable, you can always go to bed. Embracing dissatisfaction is easier than reshaping your life.

And yet: The advent of yearning is evidence that despite our efforts to detach, we still crave meaningful connections and relationships. So, what do we do?

Berlant’s work offers a possible avenue. They argue “all attachment is optimistic,” because it forces us to enter the world. Attachment brings “the satisfying something that you cannot generate on your own but

sense in the wake of a person, a way of life, an object, project, concept, or scene.” The opposite of yearning is satisfaction—optimistic attachment provides direction, pointing us toward places that can offer meaning when we cannot create it for ourselves.

Longing is inherent to the human condition, but the emotion itself is not the beginning and end of experience. Yearning should be a catalyst, a forward step in the broader quest for self-actualization. Your desires should not confine you to your bed but lead you forward. As Berlant advises, the things we long for—people, projects, scenes—are guideposts for where we should invest our time, new places we could attach. Our emotions can be a tool for change, if we allow them to be. Yearning should make you do terrifying, embarrassing, rewarding things. It should overpower the lull of routine, shock you out of complacency. If you feel the pang of absence, don’t post about it. Don’t waste time normalizing or examining the feeling. Start looking for what’s missing.

As Maggie Nelson says in Bluets, “When I was alive, I aimed to be a student not of longing but of light.” Do not become a student of your longing. Go looking for the light.

Celine Li, Daniel Miksha, Ella Gomes, Jasjot Grewal, Katie Lau

TPS BOARD OF DIRECTORS TRIBUNE OFFICE STAFF

Alex

Silva, Amelia Clark, Asher Kui, Annabella Lawlor, Bianca Sugunasiri, Bianca Tri, Daniel Miksha, Daniel Pyo, Ethan Kahn, Jamie Xie, Luken Castañeda Garces, Mahin Siddiki, Mairin Burke, Olivia Ardito, Reuben Noam, Samathar Senso, Sarah McDonald, Tamiyana Roemer, Zain Ahmed.

Aiqing Qiu, Anna Seger, Ariella Morgan, Eliot Loose, Lilly Guilbeault, Nour Khouri, Ruby Reimer, Ryan Dvorak.

Nguyen

COMMENTARY

Ellen Lurie Opinion Editor

Continued from page 1.

In the wake of Trudeau’s resignation, U.S. political polarization should serve as a cautionary tale

until Mar. 24, 2025 ensures that the Liberals will have several months to choose a party leader who could reasonably win the election before a motion of confidence is called.

To ensure that Trudeau’s resignation will not result in a similar failure, the Canadian Liberal Party must seize the lifeline Trudeau has thrown to them.

Looking back, perhaps the largest obstacle that stood between Harris and the U.S. presidency was her association with the Biden administration, as many Americans doubted that she would go beyond echoing Biden’s policies. A similar concern exists now among Canadian Liberals; almost all the potential replacements for Trudeau have either worked or are still working in his cabinet. If Liberals wish to compete with Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre in the upcoming election, they must clearly differentiate themselves from the Trudeau period and demonstrate their capacity to move forward.

However, the Liberals do have a crucial factor on their side: Time. Harris had come into the presidential race without the execution of an open Democratic primary, limiting the American public’s faith in her, and leaving a mere three months to mount a campaign from scratch. Trudeau’s resignation differs, as there is ample time to identify an inspiring replacement through a traditional leadership race. Trudeau’s proroguing of Parliament

COMMENTARY

Luken Castaneda Garces Staff Writer

Happy 2025. If you are like most Type A students at McGill, chances are you made a list of New Year’s resolutions. Perhaps you’ve also made a mood board, a list of predictions for the year, and a to-do list for the past week. You are not alone. About 49 per cent of young adults aged 1829 made at least one resolution in 2024. Unfortunately, only about eight per cent of people who make such resolutions accomplish them.

Many people who fail to meet their resolutions reportedly do so because their expectations are unrealistic. At the core of New Year’s resolutions lies an obsession with achievements, leading people to evaluate time well spent based on what they can accomplish.

What if, instead of adding to a list of unattainable goals, we got comfortable with trying to achieve less—where might that take us? Would it be so bad to do nothing new and be comfortable with who we already are? Adopting an approach of contentment would emphasize that our lives do not ultimately

In addition to their differences in electoral timeline, two additional factors exist that could win the Liberals favour: The prospect of a U.S. tariff on Canadian goods and Trump’s remarks on making Canada the ‘51st state.’ Such an international threat could generate a rally-around-the-flag effect, as Canadians, regardless of their party affiliation, would be united in their fear of threats to Canadian sovereignty by U.S. economic force. The Trump problem could thus be, if weaponized efficiently by Trudeau and his successor, a tool to attract voters to the Liberal party with effective solutions to tariff threats.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, it is necessary to recognize that Canadian politics are not nearly as polarized as U.S. politics. The election of President Donald Trump represents an undeniable threat to American democratic processes, both due to his identity as a convicted felon and perpetrator of sexual assault and rape and because of his political agenda. Trump’s Agenda47 is centred on the deportation of immigrants— who Trump refers to as ‘illegals,’ censorship of ‘radical’ educational topics, aggressive attacks on TSLGBTQIA+ rights, reversal of climate change policies, and still more. Severe ideological divides followed in the wake of these extremist proposals, meaning

that bipartisan collaboration in favour of the people was almost inconceivable. By contrast, Canada has witnessed numerous instances of cross-party cooperation, such as in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, worker striking laws, trade relations with the U.S. and Mexico, and the rights of Indigenous peoples. The Liberal Party therefore must be cautious over these next few months so as not to introduce a level of polarization that makes democratic collaboration impossible.

As shapers of public discourse, McGill students must commit to collaborative

A rejection of New Year’s resolutions

rely on how many things we accomplish; existing as a human being in the world is more than enough.

The time we have on this Earth is limited. By focusing on our potential future accomplishments, we remain perpetually unsatisfied and unable to appreciate the beauty of the present moment. New Year’s resolutions, as is the case with most goals, exist in the future. While we can take steps in the present to accomplish such goals, our idealized fixation would remain future-oriented— unsatisfied with what currently is and always wanting more as a result.

Ambition is certainly not a bad thing, but when we set so many goals for ourselves, we fail to admire the beauty of the world in front of us and inside of us. Conversely, rejecting the temptation to add New Year’s resolutions to our endless to-do list compels us to reckon with the boredom and overwhelming vastness of our existence. This can be uncomfortable for many people, a fact that inspires their pursuit of a variety of external outlets to stay occupied. Some resort to books, video games, sports, alcohol, school, work,

or resolutions. While some may be more or less positive than others, they are all distractions. After all, being alone with one’s thoughts can be a scary place for so many.

Our assumed obligation to productivity and selfimprovement can feel even more overwhelming when considering the overstimulation of our globalized world. We live in a hyper-connected world in which we can cross the globe in hours, reach any friend any time with one text or call, or order a new pair of shoes online to be delivered the next day. New Year’s resolutions tend to fall prey to similar delusions of attainability. But time and effort are not unlimited, and there is only so much we can— or should—try to accomplish. By giving up on the goal of perpetual self-improvement, we can find a new sense of worth that does not regard our human experience as a means to an end, but rather an end in itself. So what if we don’t get the perfect GPA, land the best summer internship, attain the killer body, follow the healthiest diet, or amass the highest savings? In the grand

dialogue over partisan divides. Through forums for cross-partisan student discussion, the McGill student body can fight the drift towards polarization, shaping a better political future for generations to come. Regardless of whether history repeats itself in Canada this election cycle, the disturbingly polarized nature of U.S. politics should serve as a cautionary tale. Members of the Canadian political landscape must take deliberate steps to avoid entering a state of deep division that has already paralyzed governance and fractured communities in the United States.

schemes of our lives, these goals are almost meaningless, especially in comparison to this beautiful thing we call life; it is

inherently precious, and there is nothing we need to accomplish to make it more valuable than it already is.

Trudeau, citing the desire to give Canada a ‘real choice’ in the next election, has decided to step down after nearly a decade in power. (Hannah Nobile / The Tribune)

The tradition of New Year’s resolutions dates back to ancient Babylon. (Cam-Ly Nguyen/ The Tribune)

A Complete Unknown is a love letter to Bob Dylan’s asynchronous

genius

James Mangold’s recent Bob Dylan biopic explores Dylan’s early career, romances, and eventual political upheavals in the early 1960s.

Lulu

Calame Opinion Editor

My expectations were high when I sat down to watch A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic directed by James Mangold and starring Timothée Chalamet. Dylan’s career is one of the most monumental in music history, and Dylan himself—with his nasally voice, stoic affect, and famous dexterity on the guitar—is singular in every regard. But by the time I left the theatre, Chalamet, along with his co-stars Monica Barbaro, Edward Norton, and Elle Fanning, had exceeded every expectation.

The film follows Dylan (Chalamet) from his arrival in New York City in 1961 to his controversial performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. It portrays his first small gigs at the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village from which his fame quickly sprung. Woven through his rise to stardom are his romances with Sylvie Russo—a stand-in name for the real-life Suze Rotolo (Elle Fanning)— and musician Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), his friendship with fellow folk musician Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), and his explosive fame in the folk world—and eventually beyond it.

If the saying “show, don’t tell” applies to films as well as writing, then Mangold’s interpretation of Dylan’s early career should be the

textbook case. Each actor so wholly embodies their character that they could have spent the entire film drinking a cup of coffee and one still could have seen clearly into Dylan, Baez, or Seeger’s souls. While Chalamet’s performance embodied Dylan’s genius, it also brought to light his human flaws and pretension. “You know,” Baez says to Dylan in his bedroom one morning, “you’re kind of an asshole.” Dylan only chuckles.

Mangold synthesized Dylan’s rise to stardom, his brooding frustration with the folk scene, and his reluctance towards emotional vulnerability in a tight, seamless narrative fuelled by the characters themselves, and illustrated through moments whose beauty is in their simplicity. One evening, Dylan runs into a man named Bob Neuwirth (Will Harrison) who invites him to his band’s gig downtown. Watching the energetic Neuwirth play electric guitar from the corner of the Irish bar, Dylan begins to crack a rare smile—a moment cut short when the blonde woman in front of him turns and screams, “IT’S BOB DYLAN,” and chases him out of the bar. That night would spark Dylan’s signature rebellion against folk music and inclination towards electric guitar, culminating in the film’s climactic Newport Folk Festival performance.

Amidst the effortlessly evolving plot, the artfully chosen settings in Greenwich Village, the detailed recreation of Newport, and the beautifully unadorned cinematography, it

Something wicked this way comes!

Jamie Xie

Staff Writer

It’s good to see me, isn’t it? I’m a certified sentimental fan and infamously famous son of a witch. If you were to ask me my favourite musical, I’d answer like a mother would if asked her favourite child: I love them all equally but differently. Of course, I would be lying. In a film where no good deed goes unpunished, and the gold standard is a bygone dream, Stephen Schwartz’s Wicked stands out as a musical that not only defies gravity but expectations themselves. Upon hearing about the adaptification of Wicked to the silver screen, I was so happy I could’ve melted.

A tale of change which is as tragically beautiful as it is beautifully tragical, Wicked centres the untold story of the notso-friendly friend of Dorothy’s: Wicked Witch of the West Elphaba Thropp, and her relationship with Good Witch of the North G(a)linda Upland. Cleverly named after the author of The Wizard of Oz , L. Frank Baum, Elphaba endures the trials and tribulations of Oz all while acting, dancing, and singing—oh my! Through subversion and references, the adaptation expands on the preexisting world of Oz to remind us that there are two sides to every story. Wicked is representative of a New Age fascination with antiheroes and their origins, a genre of story that seems to be here for good. It is an invitation to return to a popular classic with new in -

is Chalamet’s musical talent that is the most striking. Dylan is known for his swinging, nasal voice and his clear finger-picking control of the acoustic guitar. Where many biopics would use original tracks over which the actor would lipsync, Chalamet sang every note of the film himself. But, most impressive of all, is that he performed the songs live on set. To even approach the mechanics of Dylan’s musicianship is impressive enough, but to do so, as Chalamet did, with complete control—enough to take creative liberties himself that one can easily imagine Dylan might have made—is almost incomprehensible.

Between grasping at soon-to-be-famous lyrics on a hotel notepad in the middle of the night, or playing simultaneous guitar and harmonica in front of 10,000 people at the Newport Film Festival, Chalamet literally did not miss a beat. His co-stars didn’t either; the tal-

ent of Norton and Barbado alongside Chalamet came together in moments of palpable joy on screen—like when Barbado sings ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ for the first time with Dylan on his bed, harmonizing with the soon-to-befamous chorus, or when Seeger joins Dylan’s acoustic guitar with his banjo amidst high-end party-goers eager to hear Dylan play.

A Complete Unknown is a masterpiece of a love letter to Dylan’s career, to the 1960s, to political and musical revolution, and to raw genius.

finity glasses and reexamine our own perspectives.

Wicked is the musical on everyone’s mind, and as the story has worked its way into the hearts of so many, it has inevitably managed to get on some nerves. In a wonderfully weird interview between journalist Tracy Gilchrist and Wicked costars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, the phrase “holding space” took flight, igniting public discourse from internet cynics who point out the over-the-top saccharine sentimentality of theatre kids. The interview drew fame from Gilchrist’s tenderly “cringe” questions and Erivo’s emotionally-charged response to hearing that queer people are finding strength in “Defying Gravity,” a renowned song from Wicked about rejecting social convention and embracing otherness. Grande reaching out to comfort Erivo by clasping her index finger and gently tapping has since become its own viral image, recalling the Sistine Chapel’s Creation of Adam Grande and Erivo have since discussed the hand-holding in a Variety interview.

“I didn’t know what any part of it meant, I didn’t understand the first sentence and then I definitely didn’t understand how you responded. And I just wanted to be there. Because I knew something big was happening and I didn’t know how to be there,” Grande recounted.

“After a while, I didn’t know how to be there,” Erivo said.

In many ways, Wicked has become the poster child for the modern pop musical.

By interpreting The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , Wicked cleverly works within the confines of a world audiences are already familiar with, while also delivering its own story with unique moral takeaways. It thus escapes the pitfalls of being a regressive screen-tostage-to-screen adaptation. With Wicked available to stream on digital videoon-demand services, we can rejoycify and say there’s truly no place like home.

Though Gregory Maguire’s book tackles dark, uncomfortable political issues, including fascism, terrorism, and a newly introduced Ozian apartheid state, the adaptation fixates primarily on worldbuilding. The musical does a lot to sanitize the original story and make it more palatable to audiences by removing themes of sexuality and violence, erasing allusions to religious extremism, and fo -

cusing instead on forbidden romance. The movie adaptation strikes a masterful balance between Maguire’s macabre world and Schwartz’s family-friendly matinee. Wicked is able to fully engage with the more radical themes of its predecessors to feel more relevant than ever as we arrive on the precipice of great political change. But remember, my sentimental friend—a musical is not judged by how much it is loved by others, but by how much you love it.

Timothée Chalamet spent five years practicing the guitar and harmonica in preparation for his role in A Complete Unknown (Eliot Loose / The Tribune)

“Are we born wicked,

we have wickedness thrust upon

Wicked (Drea Garcia Avila / The Tribune)

Written by Kellie Elrick, Arts & Entertainment Editor

Designed by Mia Helfrich, Design Editor

This fall, security guards flooded the campus, the West Coast burned, the library sat empty of books, and thousands of students walked into classrooms to study art and literature and film.

When I was applying to university, I thought I wanted to study oceanography, or marine biology, which morphed into an interest in primatology, then anthropology and archaeology, and eventually into languages and literature. I stumbled across disciplines, taking courses in physics and classics and Japanese poetry, relentlessly confused and at one point registering for a class only to discover that it was in fact being taught in Africa. I eventually landed in McGill’s Liberal Arts major, wracked with doubt and joy.

Anita Parmar, Co-Director of McGill’s innovative education space Building 21, also began university torn between the humanities and sciences, and ended up with a PhD in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics.

“I distinctly remember in high school thinking, well, artists use art to dive into their understanding of the world. Authors or storytellers write stories. And all those philosophers use philosophy. I chose physics [....] I think there is this fundamental wanting to understand the world,” Parmar said in an interview with The Tribune

Inversely, Anastassios Anastassiadis, a History and Modern Greek Studies Professor at McGill, studied physics as an undergraduate student at a Liberal Arts college before ending up with a Doctorate in history.

“The important elements in physics are space and time [....] And, as a matter of fact, it’s the same thing for history,” said Anastassiadis in an interview with The Tribune

The questions I wanted to explore through science—how we understand landscapes and animals, how to change our relationship to the natural world, how we ended up in this ecological crisis—are in many ways the same ones I’m exploring now through the environmental humanities.

Disciplines are often different versions of the same questions, the same

sentiment in different clothing.

“I think that I’ve learned so much more about, let’s say, philosophy, from my English degree than when I actually took Philosophy classes. And I’ve learned so much about history that I did not take away from my History classes,” Gaëlle Perron, a U3 Honours English Literature student with a Classics minor, said.

But increasingly, students do not only come to university to understand the world; they come expecting prospects in return. And what’s education for, anyway? To learn hard skills, or how to live? To become a better person, or an employed one?

which never resonated with me. I didn’t want to be a CEO; I wanted to read novels. Learning languages does not come naturally to me. But, very simply, they bring me joy, and

who suffered under Italian Fascism, wanted for her children: “Not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.” Ginzburg knew hardship; she knew pain—the Fascists tor-

open up my life.

“From the 1980s onwards, we had this development of the corporate university,” Anastassiadis said. “Now the idea is not that education is a public good that has to be provided, but education is a consumption.”

My friends and family will ask, for instance, why I decided to study literature in Italian, a language that is not my own, and why I decided to write an honours thesis on Natalia Ginzburg, and what within her work could possibly be so important to me. The answer is that I still don’t know—it’s the unknown that propelled me into the humanities in the first place. I read her six-page essay “Winter in the Abruzzi,” and somehow felt that when I looked up from the last page, things around me had changed—I had emerged from the text a different person. I wasn’t sure how it happened. I had to try to understand it.

When

stories reach through time, across land and language, and somehow end up with us,

I can’t help but feel that it means something.

I’ve heard a few times that humanities graduates make good CEOs,

CURIOSITY Language,

literature, are you going to do

Pasha Khan, now an Islamic Studies Professor at McGill, initially accepted an offer to study Computer Science as an undergraduate.

“I kind of cried and wept and threw a tantrum, and my parents allowed me to do an English Lit degree. So it was out of love. It was out of desire for literature, for language. But it was never really about the English language as such. During my undergraduate degree, and even before that, I was relearning the languages of my heritage [...] I learned to read Urdu. I learned to read Punjabi, both scripts,” Khan said.

I feel fundamentally that the end goal of education should not just be to make enough money that you can buy something to dry your tears with. I’ve encountered numerous times the sense that happiness is impractical; meandering curiosity is a hindrance on the path to employment; learning for joy is a treat for only society’s most privileged. However, it’s also what Ginzburg, a Jewish writer and intellectual

tured and killed her first husband—and yet she wanted her children, above all else, to be curious, and to love.

I often feel like the world is—for a lack of a better term—going to shit. But then I stumble across Gaspara Stampa in 16th-century Venice, writing about being heartbroken and hopeful and lost, asking and struggling with the same questions that I have now. When stories reach through time, across land and language, and somehow end up with us, I can’t help but feel that it means something.

“You’ll hear about Orpheus in Hozier’s music [....] Why are we so obsessed with this man that goes back to save his wife, and then looks back at her? Why does that speak to humanity thousands of years after the original myth was written?” Perron said.

My paternal grandmother was supposed to attend St. Olaf College and become a wife, or a Lutheran nun. Instead, she got a scholarship to attend the University of Wisconsin. She studied nursing, then education, and somewhere along the way, she

IN

thing was actually new, and I felt very, very silly.

The humanities can teach students how to exist in the world, how to be fulfilled, how to be good. Reading has altered, on an essential level, the way I am—but this has its limits.

Fiction is much more difficult to put into practice. Tolstoy’s argument for abstinence in The Kreutzer Sonata had such an effect on one 18year old reader that he

CRISS I

and “What the hell with that degree!?”

read The Golden Bough. The book changed everything; she quit the Young Republicans’ Society and the Young Lutherans’ Society and joined a theatre group and started skinny dipping and married a Canadian soil physicist and travelled lots.

graves on the grounds of the university’s New Vic Project. It was hard not to feel like the real world—where the things that mattered were happening—was somewhere out there.

I didn’t know how to reconcile all the images around me, scrolling past shiny red shoes and libraries in Europe and wildfires and floods and cats on windowsills and my friends travelling and drinking and dancing and hippopotamuses and protests and rubble.

grandfather started spouting stories about their lives before they immigrated. I didn’t know how to explain that this was what I wanted to study—people, places, languages— that the world of the humanities was not that far from ours. But justifying the study of marginalized voices, the literature of oppression and resistance, to people who had actually lived through these things somehow rang hollow.

She’s now 87 years old and has dementia, and there are lots of things we can’t talk about anymore. But books are one of the things that stayed. We can talk about novels she read when she was young and that I’m reading now, and she remembers everything. The humanities stayed with her throughout her whole life. Perhaps the intangible, subtle, wide-ranging nature of its impact is precisely what has allowed it to last.

During an anthropology lecture, my professor sent us outside for a few minutes, asking us to look at the world ethnographically and notice things we hadn’t before.

The next day, walking out of Parc La Fontaine, it really did seem as though I had never laid eyes on these streets before: The trees and brightly coloured doors and balconies seemed completely novel. It was only when I hit Boul. St-Joseph that I realized I had in fact walked the wrong way out of the park, and had not unlocked a new register of perception; every-

castrated himself, and dedicated his life to farming a small plot of land. When he was 30, he went to visit Tolstoy’s estate, and discovered that the great writer—who asked “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” and concluded six feet (enough space for a grave)—lived on a sprawling estate, and had around a dozen children.

Sophia Tolstaya’s diary from Aug. 31, 1909 recounts the reader’s visit: “He was obviously very hurt, said he wanted to cry, kept repeating, ‘My God, my God! How can this be? What shall I tell them at home?’ and questioned everyone, seeking an explanation of this contradiction.”

“So maybe I’m studying theories of injustice, but can I actually ever apply any of this to solve a problem of injustice in the real world?” wondered Elisia Wong, a U2 Joint Honours English Literature and Political Science Student. “I think I’ve slowly about whether or not that real value in understanding what the consequences that you want are and what is possible.”

The realm of beauty, fiction, and language is also fundamentally imaginative, and therein lies a kind of power to think beyond material conditions and understand minds that are not our own.

Curiosity asks us to think beyond transaction: To give yourself over to questions and problems and pain bigger than yourself and expect nothing in return.

There are times when big-picture thinking feels very small—I still struggle sometimes to justify my education to my family. My maternal grandparents don’t know what I’m studying. They never learned English, and no one in my family knows how to say “Liberal Arts” in Cantonese. “I told them you study history, and other things,” my mother said. “Even if I explained it, they wouldn’t understand it.”

I don’t know what my role is in all these stories and paradigms; I live at some sort of crossroads between identities and privilege and oppression that I can’t quite get at. I’ve spent most of my life terrified that I’m not “getting” what I should from my identity. That I’m not who I say I am because I’m not feeling the right kind of pain.

Grasping at these intangible things that affect me in ways I don’t understand—race, power, art, science, family, history, language, poetry— may be the only way to begin figuring out what I’m doing here. Curiosity asks us to think beyond transaction: To give yourself over to questions and problems and pain bigger than yourself and expect nothing in return.

“We have to allow people the margin of thinking uselessly. If you’re driven only by what is concrete— ‘I need to have an answer today!’—we don’t allow our minds the liberty and the capacity of being imaginative,” said Anastassiadis. “Human evolution requires the capacity for our mind not to function according to what has been passed down to us, and what we have been asked to do, but [rather] what we’ll be able to invent ourselves and to imagine.”

Last spring, lectures became punctuated with protests. My classes kept going, as protestors proclaimed through the door that there was a genocide going on in Palestine; that McGill was exploiting its TAs; that there were unmarked Indigenous

They gave up their whole lives for their children and fled their country on foot and worked in factories, inhaling toxic fumes, and now I study paintings in buildings with stainedglass windows.

When my grandmother died, my

The lovely ambiguity and contradictions of the humanities, of studying poetry in times of crisis, trying to understand lives that we can’t live, making sense of the endless stream of information and images being thrust upon us, asking how things can be so beautiful and so terrible all at once, learning to live in new languages, dreaming of a future in a world where tomorrow is uncertain, are a fundamentally true expression of the contradictions and complications within the real world, and within my own life.

“I think anybody would say that the most interesting questions,” Parmar said, “are the ones that seem impossible.”

What we liked this winter break Whales, exiled aristocrats, game shows, jazz—look no further for recommendations!

Squid Game Season 2

Bianca Sugunasiri

Staff

Writer

Dec. 26 marked the release of director Hwang Dong-hyuk’s highly anticipated Squid Game Season 2. The show revolves around the titular “Squid Game,” which extorts the vulnerabilities of financially struggling Korean citizens by offering a once-ina-lifetime opportunity to win a fortune. Accepting the offer lands contestants in a game that has them gambling with their lives. The extortion of the weak is nothing new, but the game’s twisted design features a series of traditional Korean children’s games with gruesome stakes: Elimination by death.

Season 2 veers away from the shock factor of Season 1 to a layered plot that is both horrifying and psychologically intriguing as characters are forced into impossible decisions. Innocent individuals turn murderous as their desperation turns to greed. The impeccable acting elevates the plot with visceral portrayals of pain and torment. Each character displays inconsistency in the morality of their actions. Lee Byung-hun’s portrayal of Hwang In-ho was particularly mesmerizing. In-ho, one of the masterminds (The Front Man), inserts himself into the game and befriends tragic hero Seong Gihun (Lee Jung-jae), who seeks to undermine the twisted organization. At times In-ho appears genuine in his support of the players’ successes, inviting the audience to question the integrity of even the most abhorrent characters.

The perfect blend of horror and satire, Squid Game Season 2 investigates the good, the bad, and the gory of the human condition in a way that will have you binging the series in a week (or 48 hours, as I did).

Squid Game is available on Netflix

The Good Whale Tamiyana Roemer

Staff Writer

Oscar Wilde once argued that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life,” and the podcast The Good Whale exemplifies this concept particularly well.

When Keiko starred as the titular orca in the 1993 Warner Bros. classic Free Willy , he became a beloved global icon. So when it was revealed that Keiko was dying—largely

due to the sub-par facilities in which he lived—the public outcry was remarkable. Keiko’s millions of adoring fans, led by armies of impassioned children, inspired a massively ambitious operation in which well-meaning experts butt heads over what it truly meant to free Keiko. In six episodes, host Daniel Alarcón delivers Keiko’s journey from Mexico to Norway through a lyrical line of storytelling alongside immersive, atmospheric scoring. His interviews with Keiko’s former trainers and advisors are both compelling and conflicting, reflecting the infighting that defined the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation.

I was devastated by a whale’s setbacks and elated over his achievements. Keiko’s tale is one of hope and dedication, but it is also a reminder of human fallibility, amidst even the best of intentions.

A Gentleman in Moscow

Isobel Bray Contributor

Based on Amor Towles’s 2016 book of the same name, A Gentleman in Moscow is an emotional short series set amidst the changing political landscape of 20th-century Russia. We follow Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov (Ewan McGregor) in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution. Rostov, a member of the deposed aristocracy, avoids execution—and is instead sentenced to spend the rest of his days in the luxurious Metropol Hotel. The story captures the unique environment of post-revolutionary Moscow with beautiful cinematography.

The series shines in its combination of vivid characters and self-contained setting. It is mostly filmed in the hotel, creating a simultaneously comforting and claustrophobic atmosphere. Very few scenes take place outside and are mostly given in flashbacks: The viewer gets to experience Russia as Rostov does, from within the confines of the Metropol.

McGregor delivers a charismatic and emotional performance, blending the Count’s elegance and humour with grief and melancholy. We not only follow the Count’s life but the many characters that move in and out of it. The hotel guests and staff are loveable and eccentric, both in their own stories and the parts they play in Rostov’s—teach-

ing him valuable lessons along the way.

A Gentleman in Moscow is an immersive story of resilience and friendship, perfect for adding warmth to the dark winter months.

A Gentleman in Moscow is available on Paramount+ or for free on CBC Gem.

Space 1.8 by Nala Sinephro

Annabella Lawlor Staff Writer

Crickets and chirping birds underscore the crunching of coiling leaves beneath feet; plucked harp chords and brassy notes creep into view. Harpist and synth composer Nala Sinephro explores the concavities of the auditory universe in her 2021 ambient jazz record, Space 1.8 . This wondrous ambiance is alluring, mysterious, and intense. Its entrancing rhythms placate the senses, hushing anxieties with whooshing melodies and electrified synthesizers.

With each song like a different constellation to be observed, Sinephro’s atmospheric landscape transports listeners to unearthly dimensions. Nubya Garcia’s outstanding saxophone performance on “Space 4”—her only appearance on the record— traipses through the starlit sky, dancing through nebulous psychedelia and drifting debris.

Sinephro and ensemble effortlessly capture the curiosity, peril, and looming unknown of space exploration. Its seeming simplicity is rather a complex mastery of the ambient soundscape; Sinephro’s work is a stunning study of what lies beyond our world, inviting listeners to imagine this orbiting, threatening, and immense environment.

Although it was released in 2006, Alfonso Cuarón’s dystopian film Children of Men , based on the P. D. James novel, feels eerily prescient as it imagines the not-sodistant future of 2027. Set in a world reeling from an infertility pandemic and societal collapse, the story unfolds in a chaotic Britain. When Theo (Clive Owen), a jaded bureaucrat, is unexpectedly contacted by a former lover, he is drawn into a desperate fight to protect humanity’s last hope.

On a technical filmmaking level, Children of Men is unparalleled. Despite its existentially heavy premise, the film delivers some of the most breathtaking action set pieces of the 21st century. One standout scene involves a flaming car ambush in the woods, followed by an anxiety-inducing motorcycle chase—all within the first 45 minutes. This heart-pounding sequence, one of the most intense 20 minutes I’ve ever experienced, is just the beginning. The film maintains its relentless pace, constantly raising the stakes and leaving no room for the characters—or the audience—to catch their breath. With world-ending stakes and viscerally intense action, it is impossible to look away, even for a moment.

The eerie accuracy with which the film predicts—or at least mirrors—global events of the late 2010s and early 2020s only enhances the brilliance of its script. Most notably, it highlights how pandemics can incite systemic violence and discrimination against marginalized groups. In Children of Men , the infertility crisis leads to a government program aimed at deporting immigrants under the guise of protecting ‘British jobs’ for ‘real citizens.’ This fictional medical emergency becomes a haunting allegory for how fear and scarcity can drive authoritarianism, xenophobia, and the erosion of fundamental human rights. Children of Men doesn’t just envision a dystopian future—it forces us to confront the fragile foundations of our own society and the devastating consequences of their collapse.

Children of Men dir. Alfonso Cuarón

Charlotte Hayes Arts & Entertainment Editor

Alfonso Cuarón won the Academy Award for Best Director for Roma (2018). (Ariella Morgan / The Tribune)

Take The Tribune’s Science and Technology quiz

How well do you know the technological landscape of Montreal and the McGill campus?

Ella Paulin Managing Editor

Which McGill campus building has an observatory on its roof?

a. McIntyre Medical Building

b. McCall MacBain Arts Building

c. Burnside Hall

d. Ernest Rutherford Physics Building

What causes the glowing green light in the sky over Montreal?

a. The aurora borealis / northern lights

b. The Desjardins Complex

c. Global warming

d. Aliens

Barbara Althea Jones was a Trinidadian professor at McGill in the 1960s who had what combination of vocations?

a. Physicist and painter

b. Neuroscientist and historian

c. Geneticist and poet

d. Mathematician and philosopher

How many watts are the light bulbs in the spinning beacon on top of the Royal Bank of Canada building in downtown Montreal?

a. 800

b. 1,800

c. 2,500

d. 6,000

Which of the following is a real degree at McGill?

a. Environment, Ecology, and Ethics

b. Sustainability, Science, and Society

c. Climate Change, Culture, and Criticism

d. Global Warming, Geopolitics, and Governance

What unusual material are the wheels of the Montreal Metro made out of?

a. Plastic

b. Carbon fibre

c. Steel

d. Rubber

Which Canadian institution did Maude Abbott, for whom the Maude Abbott Medical Museum is named, receive her medical degree from, after being refused entry to McGill on the basis of her gender?

a. Bishop’s University

b. University of Toronto

c. Queen’s University

d. Royal Victoria College

Which two McGill buildings burned down in unrelated incidents in 1907?

a. The original Burnside Hall and the Redpath Museum

b. Royal Victoria Hospital and Royal Victoria College

c. MacDonald Engineering and the Old Medical Building

d. The Arts Building and MacDonald-Harris

MacDonald Engineering and the Old Medical Building

Five must-see science events this semester

Learn something new at science exhibits and events around the city

Leanne Cherry Science & Technology Editor

With the add-drop period coming to an end and several more cold months lying ahead, the winter semester at McGill seems as daunting as ever. Luckily, for those who take pleasure in learning new things, there is respite to be found on campus and throughout the city of Montreal. With that, here are five science events and exhibits to attend when looking for some educational enrichment.

TSI seminar series

The Trottier Space Institute hosts a recurring seminar nearly every Tuesday of the semester at 3:30 p.m. in the Bell Room of the Rutherford Physics Building. This week’s seminar on Jan. 14 features research from Michael L. Wong, astrobiologist and planetary scientist at Carnegie Science.

In his talk, Wong will explore our place in the universe, describing various projects of his, from exoplanet biosignatures—evidence of life on planets outside of our solar system—to the philosophical principles guiding space exploration.

Banquet at the Montreal Science Centre

While many of the exhibits at the Montreal Science Centre target a younger audience, Banquet is guaranteed fun for all ages. This interactive culinary adven -

ture, running until Mar. 16, 2025, has several different sections to explore.

The Kitchen section goes over a few basic cooking skills, and explains the physics and chemistry behind them. For an immersive sensory experience, head to the Multimedia Show, which combines images, sounds, and aromas in a production inspired by French chef Thierry Marx and chemist Raphaël Haumont.

Scientista symposium

The Scientista Foundation aims to support and connect pre-professional women in STEM across Canada and the United States. Women are consistently

underrepresented in STEM disciplines, making up only 34 per cent of the scientific workforce. The foundation believes that creating a network of women in scientific fields will increase accessibility to resources for young scientists, and ultimately unify the voices of those who frequently go unheard.

The McGill Students Chapter for Scientista will be hosting its third annual symposium on Mar. 18, 2025, in the SSMU Ballroom. The event runs all day, featuring a McGill professor panel, two keynote speakers, as well as poster and three-minute thesis (3MT) competitions. Register for free to attend or to participate in these competitions before Jan. 19, 2025. Enjoy complimentary food and drinks throughout the day.

Witches: Out of the Shadows Spending time in Old Port with $27 CAD to spare? Interested in paganism?

Unveiling the adaptive roles of autistic behaviours

The adaptive roles of restrictive and repetitive behaviours in autism

K. Coco Zhang Science & Technology Editor

Autism, also known as autism spectrum disorder, affects approximately one in 100 children worldwide. It constitutes a diverse group of brain development conditions that impact how individuals perceive and socialize with others, often leading to differences in social interaction and communication in comparison to their neurotypical peers.

One of the hallmark features of autism spectrum disorder is the presence of restrictive and repetitive behaviours and interests (RRBIs).

According to Stephanie Lung, a PhD student in McGill’s Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, one characteristic of RRBIs is repetitive motor behaviour, such as hand flapping, finger flicking, and feet flexing.

“Another characteristic of RRBIs is insistence on sameness. This can translate into behaviours like eating the same food every day, having to sit in the same room every single time, or sticking to a specific routine. Any changes to the routine can be overwhelming,” Lung said in an interview with The Tribune . “The third characteristic is exceptional knowledge in a very specific area that could appear developmentally inappropriate.”

Interestingly, RRBIs serve regulatory purposes for autistic people. Present from

early childhood, RRBIs are associated with developmental benefits, and their continued presence beyond early childhood suggests that they may serve adaptive functions.

To gain a deeper understanding of RRBIs, Lung and her team recently conducted a study that examined the current literature and investigated the primary functions of RRBIs in autism.

Drawing from key evidence in existing literature, Lung found that RRBIs serve several important functions for autistic individuals, one of which is sensory regulation. Compared to non-autistic populations, autistic people are more sensitive to changes in environmental stimuli.

“For example, they may be exceptionally sensitive to bright light or loud noises. If the clothes are not soft enough, they will not wear them. If there is a droplet of water on their clothes, they have to pick it out right away,” Lung explained.

Due to these sensory sensitivities, the study highlighted a need to provide a calming environment for autistic children so that they can optimally learn and process information. A Snoezelen room, for example, provides an environment with light, sound, and touch stimuli designed to help reduce agitation among people with autism.

Another important function of RRBIs is to manage elevated levels of anxiety, which are common for autistic people.

Head to Pointe-à-Callière—Montreal’s Museum of Archaeology and History—to learn all about witches. This exhibit features over 400 objects to help recount the history of the witch, detailing everything from traditional practices in witchcraft to the tragic witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries.

It additionally delves into the evolution of witches, explaining where the figure originated and how it came to represent feminism as it does today. Running until Apr. 6, 2025, this exhibit is certainly worth checking out for those looking for an interactive journey through history.

Understanding tropical ecosystems and climate change

Because tropical forests vary so greatly with respect to species diversity and human interaction, it is difficult to predict how individual forests will respond to climate change and land-usage change.

Join Elsa Ordway, assistant professor in University of California, Los Angeles’ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, in her discussion on Mar. 28 at 12:00 p.m. in Room 426 of Burnside Hall, where she explores the use of remote sensing to predict a tropical forest’s reaction to its ever-changing environment. Remote sensing measures the radiation emitted from a given area to monitor its physical characteristics and is typically performed from an aircraft or a satellite.

Anxiety in autism is often associated with unpredictability and sensory processing issues, such as loud noises, physical touch, and specific food textures or tastes. Repetitive motor behaviours can serve as a calming strategy, helping to temporarily disconnect autistic individuals from unpleasant sensory experiences and alleviate anxiety related to sensory overload.

The identified functions of RRBIs can serve as criteria for evaluating the usefulness and effectiveness of existing behavioural interventions for autism.

Furthermore, the study suggests that RRBIs, particularly insistence on sameness, play a role in establishing familiarity in unpredictable surroundings. The adherence to a known routine or ritual reintroduces certainty to a changing environment, thereby alleviating feelings of fear and anxiety associated with the unknown and chaos.

Lung’s research sheds light on the constructive characteristics of RRBIs, contrasting with the broader literature that often focuses on their interfering impact.

Although Lung’s paper strives to be systematic and comprehensive, it primarily includes studies from Europe and North America, potentially limiting the cultural representativeness of perspectives on RRBIs. Additionally, the exclusion of non-English studies restricts the inclusion of non-English-speaking autistic experiences.

“Future research should also explore how these behaviours vary across different age groups, life circumstances, and cultures,” Lung added.

The Montreal Science Centre turns 25 this year. ( Mia Helfrich / The Tribune)

Boys are nearly four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls. (Drea Garcia Avila / The Tribune)

New year, same us:

Resolutions McGill students

Not every year needs a new you

Tamiyana Roemer Staff Writer

Perhaps you spent Dec. 31 writing down your New Year’s resolutions with the best handwriting your journal has seen in months. Maybe that impressive penmanship was a first impression for the fresh notebook you bought yourself, committed to the first page of your year of self-improvement. Or maybe, like many other students, you lived Wednesday, Jan. 1 just as you did Tuesday, Dec. 31—without a list of lofty intentions. If your start of 2025 has lacked the transformative energy you think it should have, you are not alone. Here are five New Year’s resolutions McGill students didn’t make this year.

Stop drinking

For Alex Gagnon, U2 Engineering, the goal to drink less didn’t make it onto her resolution list—not because it’s a bad idea, but because life has other plans.

“I’m not doing Dry January because I know I have a bunch of events that include drinking, especially E-Week,” she said.

At McGill, where social life is tied to drinking culture, abstaining from alcohol can feel like sitting out half the fun. And maybe that’s okay. There won’t be many opportunities like E-Week after our time in university, so for now, skipping a Dry January in favour

Is

Bianca Tri Staff Writer

Gof a moderately misty one doesn’t seem so bad.

Better sleep

For many students, the elusive “seven to eight hours a night” often feels like a luxury rather than a necessity. Adele Omichinski, U2 Engineering, isn’t losing any sleep over skipping this resolution.

“As a student, it’s not attainable, and I have too many things to do,” she said. “If I want to do all the things I want to do, then I can’t get all the sleep that I need.”

Between juggling coursework, extracurriculars, and a social life, sleep often feels like the first thing to go. If your schedule doesn’t always afford you eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, perhaps the true resolution should be mastering the art of the occasional power nap.

Healthier eating

“I never have time to actually cook good meals,” admitted Michael Beyrouthy, U2 Engineering. “I’m stuck eating Kraft Mac and Cheese and stuff like that.”

It’s a sentiment many students can relate to. When you’re racing between classes and assignments, balanced home-cooked meals seem like a distant fantasy, attainable only to your parents and Nara Smith. On top of this, the high cost of food on campus and in the city makes healthier eating an even greater

challenge.

However, there are some affordable options for students. Initiatives like the Midnight Kitchen offer free, healthy meals, and budget-friendly grocery stores like Segal’s provide staples at more affordable prices. These resources can help students strike a balance between cost, time, and nu trition.

Language learning

According to Columbia University, only about 25 per cent of people main tain their commitment to their resolutions after the first 30 days. (Ryan Dvorak /

lenge as the last, so perhaps there’s no need to formalize any language learning goals.

More exercise

For U2 Engineering student Robinson Libman, a native French speaker, language learning has taken a backseat this year. Although he used to aim to “speak English as much as possible,” he explained. “I think I’ve improved enough in the past few years. Also, we’re in Quebec.”

Fair point. Between navigating bilingual conversations and deciphering Montreal street signs, McGill students are already living a language-learning crash course daily. The new year brings just as much linguistic chal-

Ah, the classic “I’m going to go to the gym more this year” resolution. For some, like Amanda Klunowski, U3 Arts, it’s a wellworn path that no longer leads to motivation.

“I didn’t make any resolutions regarding going to the gym,” she shared. “If you’re going to make a resolution about it, you’re probably going to give it up anyway. I feel like it’s kind of a self-defeating prophecy.”

Let’s face it: Sometimes the pressure to turn a goal into a resolution is the fastest way to make it feel like a chore.

Gerts the right venue for your next event?

Reviews from student organizers on Gerts’ hosting abilities

erts Bar’s re-opening on Jan. 6, 2025 marks the return of McGill’s beloved student-run pub. However, the basement-floor room is not just a watering well for off-duty academics; Gerts is also a well-known venue for university clubs and music shows. The Tribune interviewed several club executives who have hosted an event at the bar before to get their insights on Gerts as a venue and collaborator. If you’re planning an event this semester, take a look and stay tuned for how to plan your special affair at the end!

What do students think about Gerts’ booking services?

As part of their celebrations for their opening week, Gerts hosted a live music event by Resonance, an alternative rock and indie music band from Montreal. In an interview with The Tribune , band member and Concordia student Nick Kouniaris discussed their experience with developing their event with the bar.

“Overall the booking for Gerts is probably the easiest out of the majority of venues we’ve played at. They respond pretty fast and are very understanding of us,” Kouniaris shared.

Mayra Baca, U3 Management, hosted a Halloween party in 2023 at Gerts with her club, K-rave. She explained in an interview with The Tribune that the bar provides certain event amenities at no extra

cost, such as microphones and screens to project videos on. While A/V equipment is available through the McGill Library and certain faculties, Baca expressed that it was nice to have the items on location and staff who know how to troubleshoot any issues.

Sarah Kotb, U3 Management, who hosted a karaoke night in 2024 with McGill’s Filipino students’ association as part of Gerts’ culture night event series, echoed that sentiment.

“[The staff] were very accessible. If we needed something, they were very easy to talk to and they would explain to us how to hook up the mics, adjust the music, and how to work with the TV,” she said in an interview with The Tribune

In the past, the bar has supported a variety of gatherings, from clothing swaps to partnered events with The Player’s Theatre, offering discounted drinks on show nights.

“It’s a good venue for clubs big and small. The staff are extremely flexible,” Baca added.

Kotb also noted that the location is easy to communicate to guests and that passersby can often get drawn in by random events they’ve never heard about— it’s a universal McGill experience to wander into Gerts for a pint only to discover there’s a whole event underway.

However, the limitations of the space and staff should be known to any event organizer. The bar’s capacity sits at 250 people, which can pose a challenge to larger clubs. Additionally, if you’re a small club and can only book half of the

bar, it’s hard to create a barrier between your event and regular visitors.

Baca explained in an interview with The Tribune that the security and bar staff were unable to verify which guests had tickets to her event, leading to some people walking in on the private party. Since their admission tickets included one free drink per person, the confusion also led to several people receiving drinks for free who were not attending the event.

Given that the bar is re-opening with almost all-new staff and managers, it remains to be seen how the crew will deal with pre-purchased drinks and ticketed events in the future.

How to book an event

The scheduling process is fairly simple: Gerts has a form available on the SSMU website where interested parties can input all booking details. These forms must be filled out a week prior to the event at a minimum—though it’s usually better to submit further in advance. It’s essential to have all the little details of your event accounted for, like the expected amount of guests attending and any external items you may need.

Once you submit the booking form, your event will be reviewed by the Gerts manager and a SSMU representative, after which you can sign the final agreement.

Did you know? Gerts first opened in 1974, and actually is short for Gertrudes! Some sources say that it’s named after Gertrude Stein, a non-McGillian. (Abbey Locker / The Tribune)

Ella Paulin Managing Editor

Nobody tell the Office québécois de la langue française, but if you keep a careful eye out, there are a handful of improperly-francized signs hiding around the McGill campus. For once, though, they’re not in English—and no, it’s not the Italian “pasta” advertised at the Royal Victoria College Dining Hall either. This time, the culprits are older than Quebec itself—or French, for that matter: This time it’s Latin and Greek quotes. Although including Latin and Greek inscriptions in modern construction is rare, if you look closely at some of the older buildings on campus, you can still spot several ancient phrases on building stones and above archways.

Grandescunt aucta labore

This is likely the most common Latin phrase you can spot on campus, as it is McGill’s official motto and part of the university’s coat of arms. Translating to “By work, all things increase and grow,” the quote compliments McGill’s official mascot: The martlet, a mythical bird that has no feet and can never stop flying, symbolizing industry and studiousness. Taken together, the motto and mascot paint quite a picture of the ideal McGill student’s work-life balance. You can see this inscription inside the Arts Building,

Dead languages live on campus A guide to Latin and Greek inscriptions at McGill

Although

Latin and Greek phrases are no longer commonly included in modern Architecture, inscriptions in ancient languages were common in the 19th and 20th centuries. (Ruby Reimer / The Tribune)

over the door to the James Administration Building, and in the lobby of Sherbrooke 680.

One of the few Greek inscriptions on campus, this is a historically-attested phrase meaning “Water is the best of all things,” and suitably appearing over the drinking fountain on the first floor of the Birks Building. It is attributed to the An

How to do the ‘To-dos’

Listing tips to list more efficiently

Auxane Bussac Student Life Editor

Every year we hear the same thing: “Start off the new year right by making a list of all the things you wish to accomplish during the coming 12 months!” And every year, that’s what we—at least I—do. For the past three years, my New Year’s “resolutions” or “goals” list has looked pretty much the same…just ignore the fact that I never actually reach any of those goals. Nevertheless, I keep on making this Jan. 1 list, because the idea of a fresh start is always appealing.

That being said, making lists is not only a New Year’s thing. We make lists all the time for anything and everything, from grocery items that need to be bought, to assignments due during the semester, to what movies we desperately need to watch with our roommate before the end of the term. Yet, lurking in every student’s notes app is a trove of to-do lists full of items left unchecked. Here are a few tips to actually start the year right by learning how to do the to-dos effectively.

Use pen and paper instead of your phone

It’s 2025, and everyone uses their phone to make lists. It’s easy, convenient, and always within reach. However, the ease quickly becomes a flaw rath -

er than an advantage. Having this tool available at any time can actually make it less effective. With such a low barrier to adding new list items, we start making lists because we think of things we need to do at the moment, but those things will soon be replaced by additional information that needs to be stored in new lists that will subsequently be forgotten.

In the long run, this will just take up space in your phone storage. Instead, use your phone as a temporary sticky note to remember what needs to be done and, once you’re home, write it down on a piece of paper. You can then stick that paper somewhere in your room so that you’re reminded every day of what you have to do. Handwriting has also been shown to improve memory recollection compared to typing. Plus, making lists on paper means you’re not spending that time on your phone, where you can easily get sucked into Instagram or TikTok instead of actually doing the tasks you’ve written down.

Set deadlines

Using an agenda or organizing your list by date is the best way to keep up with what needs to be done when. It also helps you to not lose track and feel overwhelmed by the number of things your list encompasses.

For example, you will keep on adding new lines to your to-do list of home -

cient Greek poet Pindar and can also be found in the town of Bath, England, inside its 18th-century pump room supplying a Roman-style bath.

Concordia salus

While technically on campus, this phrase is actually part of Montreal’s official coat of arms. It appears above an archway of the McTavish Reservoir & Pumping Station, visible from Ave. du Dr-Penfield.

The Latin phrase translates roughly to “Salvation through harmony,” and was also the inspiration for choosing the name “Concordia University” when Sir George Williams University and Loyola College merged in 1974.

This Greek inscription actually appears twice on campus, once above the fireplace in the Birks lounge, and once over the inside of the main entrance to the Arts Building. It translates to “The finest

provision for old age is education,” and is attributed to Aristotle, as quoted by Diogenes Laertius in his Lives of Eminent Philosophers

Nosce te ipsum

Unlike most of the other phrases on this list, Nosce te ipsum is a fairly recent addition to the McGill campus. Located in the Strathcona Anatomy and Dentistry Building as part of an exhibition by the Maude Abbott Medical Museum, the quote can be found in several old fireextinguisher boxes in the stairwells and hallways. The expression means “Know thyself” and was popular in both Latin and Ancient Greek philosophical texts. During the Renaissance, it became common to use this quote in medical texts, with the mantra symbolizing the quest to understand the human body more deeply.

Hic est locus ubi mors resurgens rediviva est

If you look up at the Duff Medical Building from Ave. des Pins, you’ll find this bold assertion over the top of an archway. Proudly declaring, “Here is the place where death arises to new life,” this statement reflects the optimistic, but often arrogant, tone of the medical profession in the early twentieth century. The inscription dates back to the original construction of the building in the 1920s.

On average, we have about 15 ongoing goals and projects at any given time. (Mia Helfrich / The Tribune)

work throughout the entire semester, and that can easily get scary, stressful, or even depressing—especially during exam seasons. Additionally, setting deadlines is a good way to motivate you to be efficient. In the same vein, put a tick or a cross or whatever you prefer to mark each step you’ve completed. That’s a great way to feel a sense of satisfaction whenever you complete one of your goals.

Allow yourself rewards for checking a box

Keeping up with to-do lists can be challenging because they often become

filled with tasks you keep postponing or things you simply don’t want to do. To help make this process less unpleasant, prepare some rewards for each time you complete a task. For instance, we all have assignments that are easier to tackle than others. You could therefore tell yourself to do one small and easy assignment for each difficult one you submit. Or it could be something that has nothing to do with your to-do list, like allowing yourself to indulge in your favourite activity every time you check off a new item. Overall, the goal is simply to motivate you to complete everything that you have planned or need to do.

Martlets volleyball push through countless long rallies to beat Laval in

The victory caps off an exceptional weekend for the team

Kaitlyn Pereira & Eliza Lee

Contributor News Editor

After a surprise victory against previously undefeated Université de Sherbrooke Vert et Or just two days prior, Martlets volleyball (8–9) took to Love Competition Hall on Jan. 12 for a game against Université Laval Rouge et Or. Despite a tough 16-25 loss in the fourth set, McGill triumphed in the final set, winning 15-9.

Following a strong first set by McGill, Rouge et Or had fought back to win a close second set. With Laval in the lead midway through the third set, McGill began regaining momentum. Decisive hits from outside

hitter Rachel Leduc, U3 Management, and strong serves from setter Selima Guidara, U2 Arts, helped the team regain their lead and win the third set 25-21.

Rouge et Or went on to dominate the fourth set, beginning and ending with long serving runs as the Martlets’s defence waned. In spite of this, McGill claimed an early lead in the fifth set, going 3-0 and forcing Laval to an early timeout. Although Laval managed to regain their footing and fought hard for long rallies, the Martlets powered through to take the final set.

In an interview with The Tribune , Leduc explained that, despite the challenging fourth set, the team went into the final one energized and focused on winning.

“We really prioritized staying calm, and every point felt like a victory,” Leduc said. “We were going one point at a time, and then as soon as we hit eight first, [...] I think we kind of knew we had it in the bag, but we kept our calm.”

Head Coach Rachèle Béliveau

explained that the win against Vert et Or on Friday had served as an important motivator for the team going into the game, especially as over half of the team’s players are currently sick.

“I tried to just keep the energy so that when it was time to push, that we would have the push and then try to recover in the little moments we had,” Béliveau said. “So I’m very proud of them, because it was a really tough situation to deal with, playing [...] two of the best teams in the league, and being able to come out with a win.”

Renewed confidence wasn’t the only thing the team took from Friday’s match; Leduc highlighted that during the game against Sherbrooke, the team had experimented with their normal lineup, with position changes such as setter Charlotte Chouinard-Laliberte, U3 arts, hitting rightside. As these changes proved effective in the match against Vert et Or, the Martlets adopted the same strategy going into the Laval game.

“It was kind of a risk, but it worked really well,” Leduc said. “We’ve always known that [Chouinard-Laliberte] was a good hitter, but she never tried it in a game, so having her on the right side helped.”

Guidara—who had a career-high 45 assists during the game—noted that the Martlets hope to use the momentum from these wins to reach their goal of making the Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec playoffs later in the season. The team is currently sitting in fifth place, with the top

four teams moving on to playoffs in February.

“We have an underdog mentality. You know, we’re a young team, [and] we won against some of the best teams,” Guidara said. “I feel like right now, nothing is impossible, and we could make it to playoffs.”

Moment of the game:

Martlet power hitter Elyssa Lajmi claimed back-to-back kills early on in the fifth set, reenergizing the team and the home crowd toward the end of the game.

Stats corner:

Four players had double-digit kills throughout the game: Lajmi,

Quotable:

“I think we just stepped on the court trusting ourselves and trusting every girl, and knowing what we were capable of doing Friday against a top-ranked team.” — Selima Guidara, on the team’s attitude before the game.

The Martlets will return to the court on Jan. 19 to play against École de technologie Supérieure at Love Competition Hall.

Ilona Maher’s smashing debut for the Bristol Bears captivates a record-breaking crowd

Maher’s growing popularity has put women’s rugby sevens

Lialah Mavani Contributor

On Jan. 5, rugby superstar Ilona Maher made her debut appearance for the Bristol Bears against defending league champions Gloucester-Hartpury. Despite the team’s loss (17-40), Maher’s first performance with the Bears was a great success. Following her signing back in early December, the Bears moved the match to a bigger stadium due to the high volume of ticket sales. The match attracted 9,240 fans, doubling the club’s previous match attendance record and breaking the attendance record for a single Premiership Women’s Rugby (PWR) regular-season match.

Maher’s name is recognized by more than just rugby fanatics across the globe. She’s known for her performance at the 2024 Paris Olympics, playing rugby sevens for Team USA, where she led the team to its first-ever bronze medal. Beyond her impressive athletic resume, Maher’s popularity has grown through her social media presence, particularly on TikTok. With over three million followers on the platform, Maher’s content promotes body positivity by facilitating open discussions about women athletes and the criticism they face when their bodies do not fit societal norms. She has openly discussed the hate she’s received about her body “not being athletic enough,” and shuts down online trolls who bombard

her with comments about her Body Mass Index, which they believe to be too high.

Her platform has allowed her to connect with women athletes worldwide and work to normalize all body types. These discussions have created a wider representation of young women athletes. Maher was featured in a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition back in September, and her cover showcased athleticism and femininity, showing that to be strong is to be beautiful. The cover is contributing to a shift in popular narratives around women’s beauty standards, with people increasingly understanding that muscular bodies are feminine.

While Maher herself had gained popularity before the 2024 Olympics, her performance at the games helped create a lasting impact on under-represented sports like rugby sevens. The 2024 Olympics featured more niche sports and shed light on women’s teams, allowing for more viewership and visibility. While the Olympics are already widely-anticipated events with many in-person spectators and a large online audience, the 2024 Paris edition had a record-breaking 218 million streams on BBC Sports, which was more than double the streams during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. More than 84 per cent of the global audience—around five billion people—viewed the games, which became an essential form of exposure for these lesser-known sports.

Viewership is key to promoting un-

on the map

der-represented sports, as rugby sevens is sustained by financial investments, for instance. Prior to the 2024 Paris Olympics, the sport received a $4 million USD investment aimed at fostering the growth of rugby and ensuring teams could compete in the 2028 Summer Olympics. Investments like these make the sport more accessible to players and fans alike, encouraging participation and fostering local communities around the game. Moreover, the increased exposure and excitement generated by the Olympics helps attract sponsors and spurs interest by players and audiences to further long-term growth.

Athletes like Maher and the platforms they leverage can further draw people to these niche sports. Connecting fans with their favourite athletes through social media fosters an ongoing bond, offering insight into their dayto-day lives in competition and struggles, while keeping audiences engaged. The Olympics are a platform of visibility to lesser-known sports and athletes, capti-

vating audiences and generating excitement for other aspects of their career—like Maher’s signing to the Bristol Bears. By continuing to connect with her fans, Maher’s social media engagement is just one aspect in which athletes sustain the growth of these lesser-known sports and leagues.

Ilona Maher is “the most followed rugby star on the planet,” according to World Rugby. (Zoe Lee / The Tribune)

The team had a combined 55 kills, 52 assists, 70 digs, and 11 aces.

(Hannah Nobile / The Tribune )

Leduc, middle blocker Emilia Grigorova, and Chouinard-Laliberte.

McGill Women in Sport Program

changes the game for what it means to be a Martlet

Roxane Carrière and Gordon Bloom speak on the vital work being done in the program

Alex Hawes Silva Staff Writer

The McGill Women in Sport (WiS) program, established in September 2018 through a transformative $3.5 million CAD donation from alumni Sheryl (BCom’67) and David Kerr (BSc’65), is dedicated to advancing gender equity in varsity sports at McGill. As one of the few initiatives in Canada focused exclusively on women athletes and coaches, McGill’s WiS program aims to increase women’s representation in coaching and empower student-athletes through services like mental performance training, career readiness workshops, and nutrition guidance. By focusing on leadership development, empowerment, and professional growth, the WiS program is helping pave a path for women in sports at McGill and beyond.

Roxane Carrière, the current manager of the WiS program, is a driving force of its success. With seven years of experience and research in applied sports psychology, Carrière brings an abundance of knowledge and resources to the program, backed by a passion for fighting injustice and inequity. According to Carrière, this passion derives from first experiencing gender inequity when she moved to France as a teenager.

“Growing up in Canada, every young girl I knew played soccer, so it was quite a shock to see how [few] soccer teams there were for girls and how difficult it was to find a team

to play for in France,” Carrière shared. “That was probably the first time I’d experienced gender inequity in that way.”

This experience helped to instill a passion for creating more opportunities for women athletes and bleeds into the work Carrière does at McGill.

A huge testament to Carrière’s work is the WiS student-athlete council she created. Comprised of 10 members, the council serves as a collaborative platform to address the challenges faced by women varsity athletes. The council ensures that WiS services and initiatives align with the needs of women student-athletes. By generating ideas from the students and acting as a liaison between athletes and the program management team, the council plays a pivotal role in shaping a more inclusive and supportive sports environment at McGill.

Gordon Bloom also plays a crucial role in the formation of mental performance support within the WiS. As the director of the McGill Sport Psychology Research Laboratory, Bloom uses his 25 years of experience in the field to work with the WiS to allocate mental performance support where it is needed within the varsity teams at McGill.

“We have assigned each Martlet team with a Mental Performance Consultant, who aids the athletes with mental health support, performance strategies, and really just helps them elevate their mental game,” Bloom said.

Another notable achievement of the WiS

program is the increased proportion of women coaches at McGill, which has more than doubled from 16.7 per cent when it was first created to 38.1 per cent by 2022.

Additionally, WiS fosters a sense of community among women varsity athletes through events like Women in Sport Day, where all McGill Martlets teams come together to watch a sporting event at McGill. The next upcoming Women in Sport Day is Jan. 26 at Place Bell; young student-athletes from the greater Montreal area will be invited to watch a Martlets hockey game and meet the team afterward. Events like this bring together the woman athlete community and help to inspire younger players by giving them role models to look up to as they keep pursuing their athletic aspirations.

McGill adopted the name “Martlets” for their women’s sports teams in 1976. (Armen Erzingatzian / The Tribune)

der equity, increasing women’s representation in coaching, and providing support to studentathletes, the program has had a transformative impact on the lives of women athletes not only within McGill but across Montreal and Canada.

“Going forward, we hope that the program continues to elevate the female athlete experience here at McGill, but also that they use these skills they have learned here as a tool to grow as people after their time here,” Carrière stated.

The McGill Women in Sport Program is a significant example of how targeted initiatives can create meaningful change in the world of varsity athletics. By prioritizing gen-

Who’s to blame for the NBA’s viewership struggles?

As it continues to expand, the Women in Sport Program not only empowers women athletes and coaches; it also inspires future generations of women and other universities to fight for equality and inclusion in sports.

Lack of access to TV broadcasts and the changing modern game turn viewers away

Ethan Khan Staff Writer

There are few things in sports more exciting than a professional basketball game.

High-flying dunks, intense defense, and an electrifying atmosphere make for an enthralling product. However, in recent years, television ratings for NBA games have gone down across the board, and fans are disgruntled with the state of the league and lack of viewing access.

According to Sports Media Watch, NBA viewership during the 2024-25 season on ESPN, ABC, and TNT—the league’s national television partners—was down nearly 20 per cent compared to the 2023-24 season. Additionally, from late October until early February, the NBA is competing with the NFL for the eyes of sports viewers. NFL viewership is down roughly two per cent, meaning the NBA’s decline in viewers is ten-fold compared to that of its main competitor.

Some consideration must be given to the changing state of the game when examining this perceived dropoff in popularity. Teams are shooting more three-pointers than ever before, the culmination of changes that have been brewing since the Golden State Warriors began the three-point revolution in the mid-2010s. From 2000-2009, teams averaged 15.7 three-point attempts per game. In the 2020s, that number has increased to 34.9, accounting for nearly 40 per cent of total shot attempts. In the current season, the Boston Celtics attempt nearly 50 three-pointers per game,

The 2024 NBA Finals received an average of 5.8 million TV viewers per game, a decrease from the 6.1 million per game the year before. (Abby Locker / The Tribune)

prompting fans to claim the team has “ruined the sport.” For many fans, this can generate disinterest in the modern game.

This is a natural reaction to a changing sport, but it is not the players’ or league’s fault. To many, this version of the game may be the most exciting, with teams propelled by highpowered offenses. Fans of the “old” game may also feel alienated by the modern NBA superstar, a player who, while talented on the court, may make headlines off of it. The blurring of lines between sport and entertainment may dissuade a fan of the “classic” NBA.

Another quirk of the modern era railed against by fans, both young and old, is the in-

creasing prevalence of “load management,” where star players will sit out games in order to rest and avoid injury. Fans who tune in to games expect to see the sport’s brightest stars. However, the players are increasingly unavailable in the interest of preserving their energy throughout a gruelling 82-game schedule, with additional games through the NBA Cup, created in 2023. That same year, the league introduced a new Player Participation Policy that sought to reduce load management by placing restrictions on the number of players that could rest per game and banning players from missing games televised on national TV for load management reasons. This policy has been largely success-

ful, but teams can work around it by placing an injury designation on players that may not be injured to the extent teams say in order for the player to get rest.

The final and arguably most prevalent problem plaguing the league is the lack of access to games on television. The most common causes of this are local blackouts—where games are blacked out in certain areas due to broadcasting agreements and streaming restrictions—meaning games may only be shown on expensive streaming services. This represents a massive barrier to entry to prospective fans. The emergence of third-party pirated streams is also a growing concern, particularly with younger fans who wish to work around blackouts or streaming restrictions.

In order to avoid alienating viewers, the NBA must ensure that its games are accessible to the greatest population of fans possible. Regional blackouts and expensive streaming packages are hurting the popularity of the game and slowing its growth, taking away potential new fans because of the barriers to entry. Many of the problems fans have with the state of the on-court product are over-exaggerated, but problems with access to games are very real and hugely consequential. Commissioner Adam Silver and his Board of Directors must address this issue as soon as they can in order to limit the long-term effects of decreased viewership and ensure that the next generation of basketball fans will not be dissuaded by increased streaming costs and lack of availability.