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Table of Contents 3 EDITORIAL We Need a Better Sexual Violence Policy 4 NEWS ISA Rally 57 PRINCE-ARTHUR EST • CAFECAMPUS.COM
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“Trust is a Hard Thing to Gain” BEI Ineffective The Open Door Moves
8 SCI+TECH A History of Science at McGill: Otto Hahn 9 COMMENTARY Letters 11 FEATURES Invisible Work CULTURE 14 Funny or Why Through the Looking Glass
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EDITORIAL
Volume 108 Issue 14
January 21, 2019 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
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We Need a Better Sexual Violence Policy
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Content warning: mention of sexual violence
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s of January 1, 2019, McGill has missed the deadline set by Quebec’s Ministry of Education to update its sexual violence policy. Bill 151, passed in December 2017, mandates all post-secondary institutions in Quebec to adopt a new sexual violence policy, or to update their existing policies. Other institutions, such as Concordia University, have met the deadline, while Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and most CEGEPs have not. Although Bill 151 provides the first step to creating a more comprehensive sexual violence policy, it still has issues that need to be addressed. The Bill demands that the new policies include mandatory trainings for students and staff, a standardized complaint process, and support services for survivors. While these changes must be implemented by September 2019, our demands should not stop at Bill 151. McGill’s current Policy against Sexual Violence was adopted in 2016, and received a grade of C- from OurTurn, a student movement that addresses sexual violence on campuses across Canada. According to Provost and Vice-Principal Academic Christopher Manfredi, the new policy is “in review,” and is expected to be completed in February and seek approval from the Senate in March or April. The current policy mandates compulsory training for counselling and front-line healthcare professionals, but not for other members of the university community, as Bill 151 stipulates. McGill’s Code of Student Conduct also does not explicitly include a section on relationships between students and teaching staff, which is mandated under Bill 151. In a roundtable discussion with the Daily, Principal Suzanne Fortier maintained that McGill already introduced a policy on sexual violence in 2016, and therefore did not miss the deadline set by the province. Fortier’s argument neglects the fact that students still have to live with a policy that does not comply with provincial regulations. The McGill administration has not done enough to address student concerns about its sexual violence
policies. At last year’s walk-out, organized by the Concordia Student Union and SSMU, several hundred students demanded that the administration take action. This came after allegations of sexual misconduct emerged against at least five professors within the Faculty of Arts. McGill students called for an external investigation into sexual misconduct of professors and for a stand-alone sexual violence policy. The report published by the AdHoc Committee on Teaching Staff-Student Intimate Relationships does not fully ban student-staff relationships. The administration has continually ignored student concerns over the inadequacy of the report. In response to students chanting “we want a ban” at a Senate meeting on December 5, Principal Suzanne Fortier said, “I think we all heard you. You don’t have to repeat that twenty times.” McGill has failed to demonstrate that it is committed to ensuring the safety of students and supporting survivors. An open letter published a year ago by OurTurn and several other organizations included other recommendations to improve Bill 151. While McGill’s sexual violence policy is still being reviewed, we have the chance to push administration to exceed the requirements of Bill 151. McGill students have made clear through their actions that they advocate for a survivor-centric approach from the administration. Until then, the burden of care continues to fall on students. While this continues to be a problem, there are ways to pressure the administration to improve their policy and overall attitudes regarding sexual violence. The first step is to follow the policy updates, and hold the administration accountable for the deadlines Manfredi announced. Secondly, you can email Angela Campbell (angela.campbell@mcgill.ca), who is in charge of the external investigation on teacher-student relationships to voice your concerns. Third, you can show up when demonstrations are organized on campus. Lastly, you can go to the next Senate meeting on February 20 and disrupt the event if nothing has been done by then. SACOMSS and O-SVRSE are on-campus resources for students who have experienced sexual violence.
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News
January 21, 2019 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
McGill
ISA Rally
Solidarity with Unistot’en
Chloe Wong-Mersereau The McGill Daily
T
he Indigenous Student Alliance (ISA) held a rally to show solidarity with the Unistot’en Camp on Monday January 14. Around 75 people gathered at the Y-Intersection on campus to protest the recent encroachment of the RCMP on Indigenous land in Northern British Columbia, to serve as a critical reminder of Indigenous presence on campus, and support for Indigenous sovereignty. Vanessa Racine, co-chair of the ISA, and Tomas Jirousek, SSMU Indigenous Affairs Commissioner, focused on the importance of respecting Indigenous sovereignty in their remarks. Indigenous group the Buffalo Hat Singers performed between speeches. Ella Martindale, one of the organizers of the gathering and co-chair of ISA, emphasized that
this issue goes beyond piplines; the main reason people were gathered, and why the Unistot’en Camp has received international attention, is the issue of Indigenous sovereignty, specifically over their land and water. Martindale reiterated how important it is for people to do their own research on the issue and to listen to what Indigenous people have to say on the subject. Nakuset, director of the Native Women’s Shelter, also spoke at the protest. She discussed how settlers undermined the consent of Indigenous peoples. While some Indigenous chiefs are cited in the media for having agreed to the pipeline, Nakuset views this agreement as coerced and not representative of all Indigenous nations and their communities. While the RCMP states that it was enforcing the rule of law, many at the protest argued that Canadian laws do not acknowledge Indigenous sovereignty, rights, and legal customs.
India de Saint Phalle | Photogapher
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January 21, 2019 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
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McGill“Trust is a Hard Thing to Gain”
Admin Meets with Student Press
Claire Grenier The McGill Daily
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rincipal Suzanne Fortier, Interim Deputy Provost Student Life and Learning Fabrice Labeau, Dean of Students Chris Buddle, Vice Principal Communications and External Relations Louis Arsenault, and Interim Director of Internal Communications James Martin sat down with student press to answer their questions. Members of the McGill administration fielded questions from The Bull and Bear, Le Delit, The McGill Tribune, and The McGill Daily. Below are highlights from the hour long roundtable. McGill Tribune (MT): Could you, or someone at the table, shed some light on what the restructuring of the SEDE office is going to look like? Fabrice Labeau (FL): The restructuring of the SEDE office started a few months ago. Basically what we’re trying to do is take the different functions of SEDE and put them in locations where they’re going to be strengthened and have more support. So we’ve relocated some people from the SEDE office to the office of the Provost, and we have created a few additional jobs [related to equity]. Some of the other activities of SEDE have moved to Student Services. The portion that has to do with the family care coordinator is now going to be integrated in the new Wellness Hub, and will also benefit from the other services that are there. So the services are now more integrated in the location where they are needed, and also have the advantage of being in a larger structure. Outreach and community services are moving
to Enrolment Services. The transition is really happening right now in January. The idea behind this is to try and consolidate all the outreach activities we’re currently doing for people; we’re trying to have a more cohesive approach to outreach and recruitment. Putting these things together in the same service is going to help out. Chris Buddle (CB): A lot of the programming around equity was initially built in SEDE, so what we’re trying to do is scale up. A great example of equity programming that we’re introducing is in residence halls. We’re taking expertise from SEDE, building and scaling it up because I think everyone recognizes the quality and value of some of the programs that have been developed there. We’re restructuring to build it up. I know that sounds like administrative speak — I get it — but it’s actually quite true. McGill Daily (MD): Over the past few years McGill has seen a few public debates and demands for action on topics such as #changethename and gendered and sexual violence. Overall there seems to be a feeling that students don’t trust the administration to keep them safe. Are there any steps that the administration is taking to reconcile this and improve students’ sense of safety? Suzanne Fortier: I would say that of course, we’ve heard the students. We have had a policy on sexual violence since December 2016. [...] We have had requests for additional actions more recently on intimate relationships between faculty members and students. The question is a complex one. Many times someone [with a
“To jump to the simple answer would not be a responsible thing, I find myself in the middle of those debates where we don’t think that acting quickly is necessarily the best answer and so we do have to take the required time to put in place a policy that will serve our community.” — Suzanne Fortier, Principal of McGill University
personal experience with the issue] will request immediate action, thinking that it might be good for this particular situation, but [not thinking about the implications] for the broader community. We take immediate action when there’s something that is obvious. For example, when there’s a fire at McIntyre. Things that affect the whole community, where the solution requires really to think about the whole community, we have to do the proper work of consultation. People are requesting a total ban [on teaching staff-student relationships]. We have to ask ourselves what level of authority we should have over people’s private lives. Is it for me to say that a student who is a TA in engineering cannot have a relationship that is intimate with a person who is an undergraduate student in the humanities? That’s the kind of question I have to ask myself. It’s not a simple answer. To jump to the simple answer would not be a responsible thing, so I do find myself in the middle of those debates where we don’t think that acting quickly is necessarily the best answer and so we do have to take the required time to put in place a policy that will serve our community well. CB: If I could add one piece as well, a lot of this is about trust, right? We know that and we would like our students to trust in our policies and our procedures, but trust is a hard thing to gain. It’s difficult to maintain, and it’s easy to lose trust as well. Right? But I think there are signs that things in some way have improved. I think of the Office of Sexual Violence Response Support Education (OSVRSE) that didn’t exist when I started as Dean of Students – now it does. The number of students and other community members accessing that office is continuing to increase, so there is a recognition of the support provided there. I think also of some of the changes we’ve made to our policies and procedures that have been through the lens of supporting survivors, and I think that’s an approach that we’ve taken that’s been effective. It will take time to develop [good] policies, [and more time] for trust to be gained from students using those policies. I just wanted to add those couple examples. It’s a very good question. FL: To add to this: when we have deep discussions about these issues, between the administration and the
Sherwin Sullivan Tjia | The McGill Daily students, I think we take enough time and we end up realizing we really fundamentally agree on the main problem. So if we decompose some of these issues they end up being about student safety, and we fully agree on the principles there. Going from the big principles, that we all agree on, to something that is a policy which has to be applied to many complex cases is what I think has been very difficult. It’s where we have never been able to gain that trust. If we manage to have more of these discussions, and understand why we’re landing where we’re landing, I think the that’s how we gain that trust. MT: McGill and a few other universities and colleges across Quebec missed the January 1 deadline to implement the sexual violence policy. What are the consequences of missing the deadline? SF: McGill has had a sexual violence policy since 2016, so we didn’t miss the deadline. We have a policy. When we put the policy in place, we also put in place the instruments to allow us to track the implementation of the policy, and to track what is happening on our campus. We have people who are leading the review [so we can] adjust our policies. It’s hard to make change to your policy if you haven’t tracked how it worked and it’s implementation. So our work is on adjusting to the Quebec law using
our own experience of implementing the policy. Our schedule didn’t work perfectly with Quebec. We’re going to look as well at what adjustments we need to make to be one hundred per cent in agreement with the Quebec policy. We are almost at one hundred per cent, but not entirely. In the papers it was reported that we missed the deadline. It’s not true at all. In fact, we were the first one to do it in 2016. We did not miss the deadline in terms of the big policy. [We missed the deadline for] adjusting the few parts that are not completely aligned. I had told the Minister [of Education] that that was the case when I met with him, that we were aligning it with our own review of our own experience with implementing our policy. CB: The policy revision will come to Senate for information in February and ideally for adoption in March. That revised policy will reflect the changes required by Bill 151. Then, over this current calendar year, there will be additional trainings for the community. So, as the principal said, it’s really about alignment of the government expectations in the end. So the nuance was missed in those articles. In fact, in many ways our policy is quite strong. It is compliant in many ways, but just in a few ways it’s not. This interview has been edited extensively for length and clarity. A longer version is available online.
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News
January 21, 2019 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
Montreal
BEI Ineffective The Open Door Moves
110 Investigations Opened by Civilian-Led Watchdog But No Consequences Sian Lathrop The McGill Daily
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alf of all accusations of police misconduct processed by Quebec’s Bureau of Independent Investigations (BEI) come from Indigenous peoples, the CBC revealed in a January 15 article. The organization has yet to sentence or convict a single officer. The BEI is a civilian-led watchdog organization created in 2015 following a series of police shootings and cover-up scandals. It aims to hold Quebec’s police force accountable, and to bring transparency to investigations. Since the BEI’s inception, 110 investigations have been opened up yet, but none have led to any charges. Before the BEI was created, the yearly rate of officers charged with misconduct was higher, with 1.9 per cent of investigations leading to charges. Indigenous leaders have yet to comment on the report, although it is widely acknowledged that the treatment of Indigenous people by the Quebec police force is both exploitative and violent. In the spring of 2015, the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal was recruited to investigate the small northern town of Val-d’Or.
The town’s police force was judged incapable of carrying out the investigation, as many of their own officers were implicated in allegations of sexual and physical abuse against Indigenous women. Viviane Michel, president of Quebec Native Women, spoke out about the Val-d’Or scandal, remarking that “violence against Indigenous women constitutes a national emergency.” When the SPVM took over for local police, there were 93 complaints against police officers. When the investigation concluded, only two officers were charged, both of whom died before sentencing. “These cases show the systems currently in place to protect the public do not work when it comes to Indigenous women,” observed Michel. To combat the lack of convictions, Quebec’s National Assembly began an inquiry into the sexual abuse of Indigenous women. They have opened a hotline for complaints, and expanded the investigation to include the SPVM and all police forces across the entire province. Furthermore, if an indigenous person complains about police treatment, it must be transferred to the BEI. The Daily will publish a followup on this piece next week.
Nelly Wat | The McGill Daily
Shelter for People Experiencing Homelessness Reopens Doors on Parc
Nelly Wat | The McGill Daily Kelsey McKeon News Writer
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n November 30th, The Open Door shelter moved from St. Stephen’s Anglican Church, on Atwater and Dorchester, to the Notre Dame de Salette Church, located at 3535 Avenue du Parc. The centre reopened its doors on December 3. Since its founding in 1988, The Open Door has mainly operated out St. Stephen’s Anglican Church. The church was sold to developers in 2017. As a result, The Open Door was forced to relocate. The Open Door is a drop in centre that provides laundry access, meals, counselling, employment opportunities, and medical services, among other forms of assistance to people experiencing homelessness and those at risk. In an interview with the Daily, David Chapman, director of The Open Door, described how the shelter aims to blur the line between “professional” and “homeless” populations: “we are a grassroots movement, run by the homeless themselves. From the man at the front desk, the men doing laundry, and those making lunch — they’re all homeless,” he told the Daily. Chapman expressed his initial concern regarding the distance between the new location and the shelter’s former location. However, Chapman estimates that around 70 per cent of people from the old neighbourhood have come to join the shelter in its new space. Many of the people that the shelter had previously worked with were located on Avenue
du Parc, particularly at Parc and Sherbrooke. “There was quite a bit of movement between Atwater and Parc or the Place des Arts area, more than I realized. What I’ve come to realize is that [people experiencing homelessness] are more mobile than most realize,” Chapman said. Though many of the shelter’s previous visitors have joined the shelter in its new location, Chapman recognizes there are also people who are committed to remaining in the old neighbourhood. The new space also allows for amenities that were not possible in The Open Door’s former location: showers, a commercialsized walk-in refrigerator, more bathrooms, and a ventilated room for soapstone carving. Regarding the greater amenities available at the centre’s new location, Chapman commented, “what we have here is a more functional space than what we had before, but it’s a tradeoff. What we had there [St. Stephen’s Church] was an aspect of serenity.” Chapman described St. Stephen’s Church’s tall beautiful windows, wooden ceiling, and sunlight as characteristic of a space that had previously been used as a place of worship. According to Chapman, the change has been well received by the people the shelter works with. “When you ask the homeless population themselves what they think about this space, what I’ve found is that four out of five prefer this space to the old space. Maybe serenity is overrated. Maybe when you need a shower, stained glass windows aren’t
as much of a big deal,” he said. The Open Door is situated on the edge of the Milton-Parc community. Chapman feels that the shelter is well supported by the community, despite the fact that the move was initially met with a small petition of about 40 businesses within the area. Soon after the initial petition was started a counter-petition emerged, signed by more than 400 people, to show support for The Open Door’s move to the area. As Chapman said, “the critics actually ignited the supporters.” Despite challenges throughout the process, the transition to its new location on Parc has been relatively smooth. The move required the shelter to close for just one day. “What’s been interesting is while we’ve been moving, our services have been multiplying. A lot of energy has been tied up in moving, yet during that process we’ve put more people in detox and rehab than ever before, put more people into apartments than ever before, and sent more people to the airport than ever before,” Chapman said. The move has not hindered the spirit of The Open Door, nor has it affected their capacity to provide support to those experiencing homelessness. “In the end, I would say that we’re receiving quite a bit more support from the neighborhood in this new location than we were in the old location.” The Open Door accepts volunteers at any time. If you wish to volunteer, you can contact the centre at (514)939-1970 or simply stop by.
news
January 21, 2019 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
7
Beyond Al-Shabaab Attack on DusitD2, Nairobi Nabeela Jivraj The McGill Daily
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ilitants carried out an attack in a luxury hotel in a wealthy suburb of Nairobi, Kenya, on January 15. The siege lasted 19 hours, and 21 lives were lost. Dozens more have been hospitalized, and the Kenyan Red Cross listed another 19 people as missing. As of Thursday morning, all 94 people present had been accounted for. Militants from alShabaab have claimed responsibility for the Riverside attack and the suicide bombers involved. Among the dead are many Kenyans, as well as several international workers from the US, South Africa, and the UK, all based in Nairobi. Kenya has been a target for al-Shabaab militants since 2011, when the Kenyan military entered southern Somalia in an attempt to “stabilize” the
region. The Riverside attack is not the first committed by alShabaab in Kenya; in 2014, the group bombed buses in Nairobi, which killed three people. Furthermore, they committed an attack in 2013 on the Westgate Shopping Centre, which killed 67 people, and an attack in 2015 on Garissa University, killing 148 people. Al-Shabaab has stated that the most recent attack was in retaliation to Donald Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The Nairobi community has come together in response to the deadly attack. Many turned out to donate blood following an urgent call for donations, with Uber Kenya offering free rides to Nairobi Hospitals to those able to donate blood. In President Uhuru Kenyatta’s statement on the attack, he thanked the Kenyan law enforcement, emergency
crews, and first responders for their swift response to the crisis, and spoke to the ongoing and upcoming plans to improve national security. Western media coverage has been criticized for its sterile and polarizing coverage of the attack. The New York Times issued an apology in response to the Kenyan outcry around their decision to publish dehumanizing photos of the dead on scene. The death of American Jason Spindler, who survived 9/11, but was killed at the Riverside Attack, has been used by some outlets to magnify the threats of Islamic extremism. In Kenyatta’s address he added: “I also take note of the Kenyans who took to social media to encourage one another, to spread hope and hold those distorting information to account. Kenyans showed the world the best part of us: brave, patriotic, loving, and unbowed.”
General Strike Throughout India Kate Addison News Writer
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n January 8-9, between 150200 million workers went on general strike in India. Large-scale demonstrations took place in New Delhi and Bangalore. The general strike and associated rallies and demonstrations denounce the anti-worker policies of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. More specifically, this general strike comes in response to proposed amendments to laws regarding trade union activity, which the Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) says will be “extremely damaging to the independent functioning of unions.” These strikes are the third of their kind since the BJP came to power in 2014, and will likely be the last before federal elections in April and May of this year. The CITU says that the Modi government has failed to create jobs. The government has also
failed to act on the CITU’s 12-point charter demanding rights for workers such as: universal social security, the eradication of contractual labour, and a minimum wage of $339 per month. The strike was organized by the CITU, a coalition of the country’s ten central trade unions. The striking workers blocked train lines and highways, disrupted banking, postal services, and education. Workers from both formal and informal sectors were on strike. Support among public transport, industrial, bank, insurance, child care, and health care workers was particularly strong. Farmers and students also voiced support for the strikes through their associations. According to Amarjeet Kaur, general secretary of All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), eight states were completely shut down by strikes, including Kerala, Bihar, and Goa. He also said that
“the strike is quite visible in Assam, Meghalaya, Karnataka, Manipur, Bihar, Rajasthan, Goa, Punjab, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Haryana.” In other words, the workers were on strike across the country. Despite the fact that the 150-200 million worker strike has been called the “largest strike in history,” some argue that the one or two-day strikes that have occurred frequently in India since 1991 have not demonstrably led to policy change. However, according to The Economic Times, the unions warned of an indefinite strike if the government does not heed to their demands. There has been little coverage of the strike in North American media. The consensus from students interviewed around campus was that they were not aware of the strike taking place since they had not read about it in the news.
Cyntoia Brown Granted Clemency Lydia Bhattacharya The McGill Daily cw: sexual violence
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n January 7, Tennessee governor Bill Haslam granted Cyntoia Brown clemency. She will be released on August 7, 2019. Brown will have spent 15 years in prison, and after her release, she will have 10 years of supervised parole. In 2006, Cyntoia Brown was charged and convicted of aggravated robbery and firstdegree murder. She was 16. Despite being a minor at the time of the conviction, she was tried as an adult, resulting in a life sentence without possibility of parole for 51 years. This decision was widely criticized, considering the circumstances of the murder. At the time, Brown had been living with a trafficker named Cut Throat. He sexually assaulted her and forced her into prostitution. In 2004, when Brown was 14, Johnny Allen picked up Brown and offered money in exchange for sex. When
they were in bed, Brown saw Allen reach over and she thought that he was reaching for a gun. Later in the night she shot him in his sleep, took the money and gun he had with him, and ran away. Brown testified that Allen’s behavior had made her “scared for her life,” and that she took the money because she was scared to come back to Cut Throat without any money. This case inspired activists and lawyers to fight for criminal justice reform with respect to cases of juvenile criminal activity. Since her incarceration, Brown has earned her high school equivalency diploma, earned an associate’s degree, and is on track to earn a bachelor’s degree in May of this year. In a statement after hearing of her clemency, Brown stated, “thank you, Governor Haslam, for your act of mercy in giving me a second chance. I will do everything I can to justify your faith in me. I am committed to live the rest of my life helping others, especially young people. My hope is to help other young girls avoid ending up where I have been.”
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sci+tech
January 21, 2019 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
A History of Science at McGill: Otto Hahn Nuclear Fission & Ethical Ambiguity
Aiden Drake Sci+Tech Writer content warning: mention of Nazis
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cGill professor Ernest Rutherford is famous for his study of radioactive materials. He discovered the concept of the atomic half-life, studied radiation particles, and discovered the element radon. These investigations, conducted at McGill, won him the 1908 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Aside from Ernest Rutherford, two other McGill faculty members have received the Nobel Prize, and are often forgotten: Frederick Soddy and Otto Hahn. Both were collaborators with Rutherford at McGill in the early twentieth century. Frederick Soddy won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his theory of atomic isotopes in 1921. Otto Hahn won the 1944 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission, the process eventually used for atomic bombs. Hahn’s biography is also a window into 20th century history and that of the atom bomb. Although his work was not overtly political, his complicity was, as he developed chemical weapons in WWI, and quietly continued his nuclear research under the Nazi regime in WWII. He suddenly became politically active following the atomic bombing of Japan, after which he started campaigning against the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons. His life and work raise questions about the role of science in the public sphere, and the responsibilities scientists have as public figures. He learned through experience that the consequences of research can be difficult to predict or control. Hahn worked in Rutherford’s research team at McGill from 1905 to 1906. In his correspondence with Rutherford before joining the lab, Hahn claimed to have discovered a new “element” related to thorium (the theory of isotopes was not yet established), which he called radiothorium (later found to be the isotope thorium-229). Rutherford doubted those claims, but Hahn was quickly able to convince Rutherford and his team that he had discovered something new. While at McGill, Hahn tried to calculate
Courtesy of the Dutch National Archives (CC-BY-SA) the half-life of his “radiothorium”, and also discovered a form of actinium, an element now used in radiation therapies. After working at McGill, Hahn returned to Germany, where he began collaborating with Dr. Lise Meitner on the study of radiation. They focused on beta radiation – the emission of electrons (or their antimatter twins, positrons) from radioactive elements. In 1911, Hahn became the head of the Department of Radiochemistry at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin. He was drafted during WWI in 1914 and earned an Iron Cross. After that, he became a chemical warfare specialist, and tested chemical weapons for the Germans at both the Eastern and Western fronts. His unit trained under Fritz Haber, a notorious chemical weapons researcher. After the war, Hahn returned to his nuclear research. In 1934 Hahn, Meitner, and Fritz Strassmann, another German chemist, began to investigate the products of uranium decay.
“Millions of innocent human beings were allowed to be murdered without any kind of protest being uttered […] you did not want to see; it was too uncomfortable.” – Dr. Lise Meitner
Hahn and Strassmann posited, hesitantly, that uranium atoms split into two atoms as part of their decay process. Dr. Meitner and her nephew, Otto Frisch, confirmed the process, outlined the mathematics, and gave it a name that would soon become notorious: “nuclear fission.” Dr. Meitner, who was Jewish, fled Germany for Sweden in 1938, and Hahn helped her escape. Hahn and Strassmann continued their research and found experimental evidence that uranium, when bombarded with neutrons, produces barium and other lighter elements. Hahn continued his research during WWII, trying to explore and categorize the many different kinds of elements that arise from fission. As a primary researcher on the principles of nuclear fission, Hahn had developed the ideas which led directly to the creation of the atomic bomb. When a German research group was formed to investigate military applications of atomic power, Hahn was not included. While Hahn continued his research, thousands of scientists and intellectuals fled Germany for fear of the Nazi Regime. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, Hahn was imprisoned in England, along with many other German nuclear scientists, in a British attempt to learn about the Nazi atomic weapons project. The scientists were interned together near Cambridge when news broke about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In 1945, five weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima, Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of nuclear fission. Hahn could not be present at the ceremony because he was still detained in England. He did not share the prize with either Lise Meitner or Strassmann. Meitner almost certainly deserved a share of the prize for her collaborations with Hahn for the duration of their research. In the team, she advocated for the theory that the atoms were “splitting.” Even after she had fled Germany, her experimental results in Sweden were crucial to supporting a the theory of fission that Hahn himself was reluctant to propose. Meitner joined the likes of Rosalind Franklin, whose diffraction images of DNA directly inspired the double helix theory accredited to Watson and Crick, and many other women overlooked by the Nobel Prize Committee. When Hahn returned to West Germany he was elected president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, renamed the Max Planck Society after the war. These research institutes remain prestigious today. He used his position in the scientific community to campaign against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He became a wellregarded public intellectual, receiving many national medals and honors including fellowship in the Royal Society of London, the French Légionne d’Honneur, and the American Fermi Award, which he shared with Strassman and Meitner. Discussion of Hahn’s life has often centred on the Nobel Prize controversy. His complicity with the Nazi Regime, on the other hand, has often been overlooked or ignored. In an unsent 1945 letter to Hahn, Meitner wrote, “you [scientists who researched during the regime] all worked for Nazi Germany. And you tried to offer only a passive resistance [...] millions of innocent human beings were allowed to be murdered without any kind of protest being uttered […] you did not want to see; it was too uncomfortable.” What’s more, in a 1933 visit to Canada, Hahn was interviewed by The Toronto Star, and was quoted as defending Hitler, saying: “I am convinced [...] that Hitler is not responsible for the atrocities ascribed to him.” Hahn developed chemical weapons during WWI, defended the Nazis in WWII, and received a Nobel prize that overlooked Meitner’s part in their shared discoveries. He seemed content to ride the wave of political change in Germany under Nazi Rule, until his own discovery was used to kill thousands in Japan.
Speaking up against nuclear proliferation in West Germany won Hahn prestigious international honours. However, his complicity in the Nazi Regime to achieve these accolades force us to question the objective value of these scientific achievements, and to examine the ethical responsibilities we have as scientists.
We have a responsibility to ensure that our discoveries arrive in a society that will use them justly and to benefit all people. As scientists and researchers, we often feel that our work has minor significance outside the lab. Research, in most cases, is carried out with the intention of expanding knowledge for the betterment of society. Working from the confines of the lab, applications of research can appear distant and benign. Hahn’s life should serve as a reminder that knowledge is difficult to control after it leaves the lab. The effects of discoveries are unpredictable and, sometimes, horrible. For this reason, scientists have a responsibility, beyond that of ordinary citizens, to speak up against unjust political structures and violent aims. Hahn gained social status and influence from his research, and his moral detachment and inaction towards the Nazi regime is a grave failure. His later activism against nuclear weapons seems to attempt to rectify this type of failure. However activism after the fact is of little to no consequence and does not excuse a life of complicity. People who unlock terrible power through science are not always virtuous themselves. Often, these scientists are as morally detached as the forces they discover, no matter how many foreign orders, medals, and awards they win. As student researchers and future scientists, we have a responsibility to ensure that our discoveries arrive in a society that will use them justly and to benefit all people, and to be aware of their potential usesboth beneficial and harmful. We should not wait until late in life to discover that responsibility, and we must speak up against grave injustices, whether we are directly complicit or not.
Commentary
January 21, 2019 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
Open Letter to the Senate Honorary Degrees and Convocations Committee I
was one of four people who disrupted Hillel Neuer’s convocation speech last May as he was receiving an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from McGill University. Hillel Neuer is a graduate of McGill Law who runs a Geneva-based NGO called UN Watch and is an unabashed promoter of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Neuer is a staunch supporter of Donald Trump’s move of the US embassy to Jerusalem, which is contrary to international law, particularly UN Security Council resolution 478. He defends the Israeli army’s massacre of Palestinian protesters in Gaza in 2018. He advocates for the defunding of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNWRA). Neuer calls himself a “defender of human rights,” and McGill’s announcement of the honorary doctorate parroted these claims. And yes, Neuer attempts to support human rights in all the countries that the US alliance targets. He castigates the “criminal Castro regime in Cuba,” the “dictatorship” of Maduro in Venezuela, and human rights violations in Iran, China, and Russia. These critiques could be taken more seriously if Neuer criticized human rights violations closer to home, in the US or Canada, but unfortunately the West gets a pass. In fact, Neuer mocks UN officials like Philip Ashton for investigating extreme poverty and gross violations of international law in the US and the UK, suggesting that he should investigate the world’s poorest countries instead. Neuer publicly displays his support for the Trump administration and other far-right causes on Twitter and other social media accounts. When Nikki Haley resigned as American ambassador to the UN, Neuer tweeted that she was “irreplaceable.” He approvingly retweets John Bolton, the new far-right American national security chief, as well as Bolsonaro, the far-right Brazilian president. He has also appeared on the REBEL YouTube channel with Islamophobe Ezra Levant to condemn Trudeau’s funding of UNWRA. He routinely criticizes mainstream human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, deeming them “hard-left” organizations. Honorary degrees are awarded to individuals who “will serve as an inspiration and role model to our students, graduates and our community as a whole, and which positions them to enhance the reputation of McGill University.” Now, a right wing supporter of the Israeli oppression of Palestinians, masquerading as a human rights defender, surely is not a “role model for our community,” nor is he “enhancing the reputation of McGill.” Neuer’s views are publicly accessible. Either the Senate Committee was negligent and did not investigate these comments, or it did investigate them, and gives them some support. Neither possibility is comforting. I would invite the Senate Committee to review and rescind the awarding of an honorary doctorate to Hillel Neuer. This award is a shameful reflection on the university and casts a shadow on the whole McGill community. Paul Tetrault B.Com. 1967 (McGill) MA 1972 (McGill) LLB 1987 (UBC)
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January 21, 2019 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
commentary
Letter to the Working Group on Principles of Commemoration and Renaming D
ear members of the Working Group on Principles of Commemoration and Renaming,
I am writing to you today as a McGill student who supports changing the R*dmen name to something non-racist, neutral, and uncontroversial, like that charmingly deformed bird that is the mascot of most teams at McGill anyway. While almost all universities call all their sports teams by one name, McGill is exceptional. There must be a specific reason why McGill’s male sports teams have a different (gendered) name. Perhaps it’s not enough for some male McGill athletes to grunt angrily and ram into each other while engaging in a physical contest to assert their masculinity; maybe having a specifically male team name really adds to the testosterone-fueled aura that they rely on for their success. Therefore, calling male sports teams by the same name as female and co-ed teams under the principle of university-wide unity would be just too run-of-the-mill for such a prestigious institution as ours. And so, may I present an alternate candidate for our male sports teams: the Martlet MEN, or the M&Ms for short. Think of the promotional tagline: all the man, none of the racism. Now, I know what you’re thinking: changing the R*dmen name could wreak havoc on McGill’s manliest teams. In light of their stellar record as R*dmen, is it really worth it to change the name and mess up their extraordinary success? Sure, the name “R*dmen” is a racial slur and a slap in the face to any Indigenous McGill student, faculty, and staff member. Sure, it perpetuates McGill’s legacy of ignoring (at best) and actively contributing to (at worst) the enslavement, disenfranchisement, and general screwing-over of Indigenous people, but that’s not what was intended! No, R*dmen simply refers to James McGill’s Scottish heritage, not Indigenous people (who he enslaved, by the way). Obviously, the first thing anyone thinks of when they hear the term “red” to describe a person is Scotland, a country where the national colour is blue. This sentiment was most eloquently expressed in the Disney classic Peter Pan; the song, “What Makes the Red Man Red?” really is a striking description of Scottish culture. Perhaps it could be used as a McGill R*dmen fight song if the name is not changed at the end of your deliberations; it’s a catchy example of R*dmen’s true meaning. Besides, others argue, red is just a colour. It’s just like naming a team the McGill Black Men, or the McGill Yellow Men, or the McGill White Men. These are totally neutral adjectives that have no other connotations in our society apart from delineating crayons in your kid’s 12-piece Crayola set. Why is everybody getting all up in arms about a sports team named after its jersey’s hue? And it’s a tradition. This name dates back to the 1920s, when Canadians were known for their sensitivity to issues of race and Indigenous rights. If the R*dmen name was good enough in the heyday of residential schools, then it should be good enough for us now! While I acknowledge how important these points are, I would err on the side of not further insulting people upon whose suffering and death McGill as an institution was erected. Change the name and eradicate the use of a racial slur as a moniker for McGill students, or keep the name because it’s just so descriptive of what jerseys look like. I know, it’s a doozy. Best of luck with your decision, and may the Martlet MEN win the day! Signed, Vida Javidi
Nelly Wat | The McGill Daily
features
Invisible Work: Reflections on Precarious Labour at McGill
January 21, 2019 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
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features
January 21, 2019 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
INVISIBLE
Work Ella Hartsoe & Catherine Jeffery Features Writers Nadia El-Sherif Illustrator Ella Hartsoe is the current President of the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE), and Catherine Jeffery is the current Chair of the Board of Representatives at AMUSE. Major conversations about labour are happening on campus. While “value your labour” has been a rallying cry, and a consistent reminder among friends for a while, the social work students’ strike in the fall reminded us all of a pervasive campus truth: none of us can graduate without working for free. This is not a new concept, but one that is worth reflecting on intentionally, as many before us have done. When we talk about labour in this article, we’re talking about work both in a formal sense (for example, somebody having a secure, waged, and possibly unionized and protected job) and an informal sense: it can be school work, work to keep a space clean and running orderly, activist work (like making posters or going to meetings), and much more. Within our definition is also time and energy that goes into caring for and collaborating with others, which could be called “care work.” This is the way we define labour, but it can also be defined differently; the main point we want to make is that people do labour every day, even if they don’t submit a timesheet or call it “my job.” Precarious and casual work are, broadly, kinds of work that are done without the protections of unions, lack
insurance of steady hours, often are done in unsafe workplaces, and are generally devalued. Both of us are excited by these conversations about workers’ rights and precarious labour, having spent time organizing at the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE), the labour union which represents 2,000 temporary, casual, and non-academic employees at McGill. We are interested in the ways that talk about labour can expand beyond its usual limits, and include honest conversations both about the ways McGill consistently fails to prioritize casual (especially student) labour, while also noting the ways in which student organizers sometimes forget about workers’ rights in our spaces. We want to seriously ask: what does putting labour at the centere of our analysis say about this place? How can it deepen our understanding of marginalization in an isolating school dominated by white, wealthy students? Why are we not talking about the labour that Black and racialized women are carrying out on this campus more than others? And what could McGill look like if all of us had access to an understanding of labour which went beyond the usual understanding of what we consider “work?” Basically: what if workers knew our worth?
“Your Adventure Awaits”: McGill and the Profits of Devalued Labour McGill directly profits from unpaid and underpaid labour, done by both students and members of the larger Montreal community. This looks like the plethora of clubs and services offered at McGill that give it value and draw
prospective students each year. Networks such as the Black Student Network (BSN) and Muslim Students’ Association provide valuable sources of community. Services like SACOMSS, Nightline, and Peer Support Centre offer vital support. While some students doing this work will get paid, they are still unevenly paid, often with long delays between paycheques and reimbursements — and almost none of these student workers are protected through unionization. As well, a large number of these roles are taken on by women of colour and other racialized and gender oppressed groups. These are only a few examples: we simply want to stress that the majority of “student life” at McGill is driven by student labour. And instead of aiding in this work with extensive resources, McGill requires these organizations to continually justify their existence. A lack of physical spaces for these groups to organize and endless fee levy cycles are just some of the barriers imposed on these organizations. Students face many hurdles in this kind of work, operating in a landscape of scarcity which McGill consistently refuses to acknowledge. Student politicians are severely overworked, and because of lacking capacity, often fail to hold the University accountable in the various ways it cuts back on resources for its students. Instead of representing student interests and confronting McGill’s austerity tactics, scarcity mindsets and language are justified to students as a necessary evil. In addition to student groups, we also think it’s important to expand our understanding of McGill’s role in the prioritization of the upperclass beyond the boundaries of campus. While McGill prides itself on being located in Montreal, it consistently profits off of working class communities of colour. McGill and its cohort of wealthy, white students rarely reflect on the ways that the University promotes the rising cost of living in this city. This is in addition to gentrification processes in many Montreal neighborhoods, which McGill students live in. As Roxane Gay noted during her Homecoming Keynote speech at McGill last fall, Montreal is a city with a large Black community, many of whom are Caribbean immigrants and working class. Yet the majority of people sitting in the hall where she spoke were white. She highlighted how McGill has done little to extend invitations to communities of colour, specifically
Black communities, in the city it resides in and profits off of. This is not an accident. This is similar to many students’ ignorance and the administration’s lack of acknowledgement of the Kahnawà:ke and Kanehsatà:ke communities that are close to McGill’s campus, a campus which resides on the unceded territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka. The land on which McGill resides is a stolen resource and is part of a larger reality of the concentration of wealth in the hands of settlers. We see then, how whiteness and wealth are inextricably tied together here. Thus, McGill profits off of both communities in Montreal, as well as the students attending McGill who comprise much of its casual working force. Yet, this labour is rarely talked about. We think this might be because many students on campus are not thinking about class when thinking about being in Montreal or being students. This is a mistake, because by focusing on the ways in which McGill is withholding resources, especially wages, from the large amounts of folks working in its sphere, we can ground administrative shortcomings in tactile numbers.
Why are we not talking about the labour that Black and racialized women are carrying out on this campus more than others? Because it is more profitable for the University to continue to deny the fact that our work is vital, we need to all admit that we’re working for free and use this to our advantage. An example of this is when we think about student demands for a fall reading week — students often justify it by saying that we work hard and we deserve a break. To this, the University throws up its
hands and claims they are powerless. This is because the University has shown it does not care about our work. Our argument would be stronger if we all got on the same page about the value of our work, and wielded the threat of a collective strike or other disruptive action. Trying to prove to McGill that we “deserve” a break will never work. We should instead argue that we should be given one because if we are not, there is the potential that we can simply stop contributing the monetary value that we currently do. Strikes can be genuinely effective bargaining strategies, even if they don’t achieve their demands right away. The social work student strike is a great example of this. While the University is not paying for social work students’ internships yet, the strike brought to light the labour that has been taken for granted by many people on campus — not only the administration, but other students, too. In this sense, even if demands are not immediately met, collective action brings discussions about the value of work to the forefront. Finally, it is also important to remember that there is a legacy of student strikes at McGill. We need to research, remember, and rearticulate previous students’ demands in order to access better arguments in the struggles we are currently fighting for.
Skipping Class: Who Has To Work? The reality is that we are all working. We go to class, spend time doing readings, writing papers, conducting research, and submitting ideas and findings. However, we are not paid for this work; we pay to do this work. In turn, many of our ideas contribute to our classmates and supervisors’ understandings of material, which results in collective learning, awards, research, and publishing of work which, again, we are never paid for. The argument against waged academic work by students is that we “need” this time in school so that we are “ready to work” when we graduate. There are two problems with this thinking. First, if it is true, that means that students are all being required to pay for their own job training. This is unethical, and contributes to the overwhelming predominance of wealthy students on campus. Many higher paying jobs require unpaid work experience, which is only open to students who can afford to live on alternate resources, like familial wealth. Secondly, many of us are already working while getting our degrees,
features even before graduating. For student workers, we develop a kind of living which allows limited time to grow interests or hobbies outside of being a student and being a worker. This lack of time limits our autonomy and makes it incredibly hard for us to make it all the way through our degree. It is unacceptable that students on this campus are forced to choose between a night of studying and an extra shift to buy groceries. You may not think this is a real dilemma that student workers face, and you would be wrong. You would also be articulating a kind of worldview which permeates almost every space on campus. Because while all of us are working, not all of us are workers in the same way. Even the simple question, “what will you do after you graduate?” is a question that many McGill students ask one another.
When your friend mentions a bad work situation or you find yourself overworked and in an unsafe environment, contact your union. The assumption that there is something that a person must do after they graduate is ridiculous, because it is obvious what many McGill graduates will do after we graduate. We will work just as we worked before getting into university, and just as we continued to work through university in order to pay our bills. The advice one of us got from an older student that “sometimes you have to work a job for a bit after graduating, and that’s ok!” is preposterous — the almost constant assumption that McGill students will only start working after graduation and that we will only work certain kinds of jobs temporarily is a form of middle- and upper-class understanding of what work even is. In the same way that McGill is a predominately white institution, it is also a place full of wealthy upper- and middle-class students. Upper-class ideals show up in the form of worrying about “real” jobs, but also in the absolute silences around money and class. It can be disorienting for student workers to be expected to work for free, and be dismissed when we request more. For example, one of us applied for an internship position under the impression that at least some of
January 21, 2019 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
1 Learn the basic
language around worker’s rights and understand what it means.
2 Understand what
labour unions do and how they are here to help you. You may be unionized and not even know it!
its cost would be covered. When we found out we would have to live in a major city for a number of months with no income (because students are extremely discouraged from working on the weeknights or weekends when they have an unpaid internship), we withdrew our application after being accepted. We were then treated as immature and pressured to take the position anyway. The idea that someone could accept a binding position with the real possibility of it being unpaid is absolutely wild — but at McGill, it is accepted as a necessity and norm. We also have to be honest about how these norms permeate into organizations and spaces on campus which try to be accessible and politically radical. We need to talk about the labour of certain organizers in comparison with others. Women of colour are expected to carry out more underpaid and free work than others. When it comes time to picture and praise student leaders on campus, these conversations consistently fail to place racialized women at their centre. This is particularly frustrating when we think about the nature of the work many women of colour are doing. Often, it is work that is paid less or thought about as less important because it is considered to be for women and for people who are not white — we can say that this work is racialized and feminized. Specifically, we are talking about the labour of women of colour who are leaders at McGill, but are almost constantly made invisible to the broader (white) community. We are talking about the women of colour doing care work in McGill residences as Floor Fellows who are often expected to pull more than others they work with. We are talking about the women of colour who take on huge amounts of work because they fear if they do not show up, no one will. Large portions of those working nonacademic, casual, and temporary positions that AMUSE represents are women of colour and other racialized and gender oppressed groups. More broadly, we would
What CAn 4 You Do? involved! Con3 Get sider getting in touch with the unions on campus. They are here to help and fight for you! Go to AMUSE’s Annual General Meeting on January 31!
like to stress the importance of conversations around women of colours’ boundaries and self care, which are often dismissed, while other more privileged workers are allowed to take breaks to look after themselves. In general, student activists at McGill should think about who is involved in their organizations and who is not. We should all be thinking about who is not around because of racism, ableism, transphobia, misogyny, and queerphobia— but we would stress that we have also not seen nearly enough reflection on how to involve more low-income and working students in these spaces, especially otherwise marginalized underpaid workers. In general, we need to ask: who is able to spend all Saturday at a demonstration because they don’t have to go to a job? Who can, by some miracle, spend hours on Slack and Messenger and in endless meetings strategizing? Who has to worry about loan and visa requirements? Who can write articles like this? Who understands the codes and languages of upper-class dominated activism? Who can speak at your
Don’t be afraid to make demands! You have the right to unionize and discuss work conditions with otherworkers.
5 Check your lan-
guage! Friends around you may actually be struggling. Don’t say you’re “broke” or “poor” unless you really are.
event for free? Who can travel, who can go to workshops, and who can start projects without certainty of their end products? Who can accept stipends as wages? Who can afford the opportunity cost of organizing? We recently heard a friend of ours say, “but if the social work students get paid for their internships, that would mean all of us... all over campus... would have to be paid.” Exactly. We hope that all of us can start envisioning a world in which we can think critically about what is not being talked about here at McGill. If we were to centre conversations about labour and class when we talk about McGill’s shortcomings, we would be able to see that McGill’s devaluing of student labour, resistance to recognizing its profiting off of Montreal’s working class communities of colour, and casualization of labour and lack of resources for students are not accidental. They are not random inefficiencies, and when considered directly, magnify other serious problems with the University like institutional racism, inaccessibility, and participation in settler-
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colonialism. This is not to say that there isn’t power in other analyses, but that a class analysis has specific benefits because of the tangibility of money, especially when combined with others. This is not a metaphor so much as a reality: without casual, precarious labour on campus and in this city, McGill could not function. We should consider how much power is in our work.
What can we all do? First, an understanding of basic ideas around workers’ rights is important. It is impossible to imagine a world that engages antioppression, gender discourse, and anti-racism without workers involved. A radical vision of labour needs knowledge to go along with it, and labour unions are a place to start. Do you know what a labour union is and what it is that we do? Consider getting in touch with any of the unions on campus (ideally yours) and coming by the AMUSE/ AMURE Labour Library. If you’re a member, come to AMUSE’s Annual General Meeting on January 31! Think about checking for yourself and friends if you are unionized or not. If you are, check out your Collective Agreement on your union’s website, or get a copy in person. This document outlines all your rights, some of which you might not know about. When your friend mentions a bad work situation or you find yourself overworked and in an unsafe environment, contact your union. Their job is to help you. Bring the topic of waged labour, timely pay, and unionization to the group you spend time working for, and open up this conversation long term (we are looking at you, faculty societies and SSMU!). Demand more resources from the administration, resist pointing fingers when we are all in a landscape of scarcity, and remember who keeps money in the hands of the few! Include price as an accessibility point as often as possible, and make a point to talk openly about the privilege you might have when it comes to class. Don’t say you’re “poor” or “broke” unless you are. Talk openly about money, take your poorer friends out to coffee and lunch if you can, consider splitting rent differently, and reflect on the passing privilege you might have while being a poorer student who others see as wealthier. Learn and talk about class and race, class and gender, class and ability, and more intersecting oppressions. Complain! Strike! Walk out! Value your labour! We would like to thank the folks who currently work around AMUSE and AMURE for teaching us so much and working beside us day to day. Credit is also due to the many organizers who worked on these issues long before we did, especially at these unions — we have learned and continue to learn so much from you!
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January 21, 2019 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
culture
Funny or Why
An Interview with The Why Intersection for and by students without any university oversight. It’s completely independent. CM: And we really try welcoming writers from any level of experience, especially if they have none! We view the site as a way to gain experience, and there are no boundaries in writing for us. For types of jokes and content, our writing staff and contributors make up who we are and what we publish, so it’s super important that we include viewpoints that aren’t necessarily prevalent in the pop comedy scene. We want our platform to be theirs.
Yasna Khademian & Nadia El-Sherif The McGill Daily
T
he McGill Daily sat down with Grace Bahler and Catherine Morrison, executive editors at The Why Intersection (whyintersection.com), to discuss their website and their opinions on the role of political satire. Bahler and Morrison started The Why Intersection in August 2018 and hope to provide a platform for students to discuss McGill, the administration, as well as issues on campus and in Montreal in a comedic and accessible way. The McGill Daily (MD): Can you tell us a little about what The Why Intersection does? Grace Bahler (GB): Essentially, it’s an online satirical magazine. When we created it, we envisioned it as a place where people could make fun of the administration, and just the ridiculousness of being at McGill or in Montreal. Catherine Morrison (CM): It’s just a place for people to get their voices heard about anything that bothers them or anything they want to make fun of about being a student.
The Why Intersection has been a great way for us to think critically about the small things on campus. It’s turning observational humour into a very structured headline. – Grace Bahler MD: So you started it because you saw the need for an outlet like this? GB: Yeah, I was a fan of The McTavish Radish but I noticed they weren’t posting anymore. I thought it was an opportunity to create something, so we started messaging each other over the summer saying “let’s do this!” CM: Both of us already had a background in journalistic writing, but neither of us had really gotten into satire, even though it’s a huge interest for both of us.
Serene Mitchell | The McGill Daily MD: What do you see as The Why Intersection’s role on campus and for students? GB: I think it’s adding a much needed voice to the McGill campus for people who feel like they’re not being represented through traditional op-ed pieces or other kinds of reporting. Anyone can write for it, and it shows an entirely new perspective on things and people on campus. CM: Even though other student publications do take people of all levels of experience, sometimes new writers feel like they don’t have a lot of control over their writing or that their writing isn’t appreciated. I know that when I started out, it was a little hard to break through the system, so I think this is a good way for people to start. We have a really direct editing style, so people’s articles don’t change too much. We accept almost all of the submissions we get, so it’s a really good way for people to get their voices heard and express themselves. GB: And to think critically too, even about the small things on campus. It’s turning observational humour into a very structured headline. A lot of stand-up comedians and sketch writers write for sites like The Onion, Reductress, and The Beaverton, so it’s cool for people to have that at a university level. That way they’re ready to apply and submit pitches to bigger publications. MD: Opinions, or “hot takes” that are actively harmful are often passed off as just satire. How do you navigate submissions that are potentially harmful? GB: We have had a few instances where people will submit something and it’s like, “that really doesn’t sound right.” I think it’s our role as editors to look at it and walk them through why it’s not okay
to want to say that, and why we wouldn’t publish it. We really dive into the underlying meaning of the “joke” and maybe offer a different perspective they can take so that it’s not problematic anymore. CM: We definitely wouldn’t publish anything that’s offensive. We haven’t really had anything that could be described as offensive satire. GB: If anything, we’re mean to the administration. But we would never want to hurt any students on campus. It’s a huge responsibility, especially with humour, because it can be really easy to cross lines. MD: Do you feel a responsibility to comment on current social issues and try to dismantle some of them through comedy? CM: We definitely address current issues. A good example of that was the article we wrote about the professor who was accused of sexual assault; we felt like satire could also be a good way to address issues like this. Sometimes comedic relief can be really helpful in getting through things, for me personally as well. It’s really important for us to help people do that too; sometimes writing it out
in a satirical style can be a really good way to address issues and cope with them. GB: Just like serious journalism can work to dismantle things from white supremacy to aspects of the patriarchy, I feel like satire can play its part if done correctly. MD: Is there anything else you want to add about politicallyaware satire and the role of The Why Intersection in that? GB: We definitely think politically-aware satire is really important, and I look at it as a way for marginalized people to take the spotlight and run with the humour and have full control over what’s being said. That’s really important to us because it could be a way for voices to be heard that aren’t being heard through other kinds of journalism. MD: How do you make sure that your content remains accessible to students, as comedy can often be an exclusive and elitist space in terms of content, types of jokes, etc.? GB: We try to emphasize that The Why Intersection is a platform
We wrote an article about the professor who was accused of sexual assault; we felt satire could also be a good way to address issues like this. Sometimes comedic relief can be really helpful in getting through things, for me personally as well. – Catherine Morrison
MD: What direction do you want to take the website in the future? GB: We have big projects planned for this semester. We’re definitely going to dive into video production. We would also like to produce a variety show with sketch, improv, stand-up, really anything. CM: One of our big goals is to help people prepare for their future, especially people who want to go into comedy, so this is a good space for them to practice that in a comfortable way. It’s not competitive or anything; it’s just a fun way to practice it. MD: What has been your favourite piece that you’ve published or written? CM: My favourite article that I wrote was around Halloween. I was in my political science class and trying to figure out what I was going to wear to a Halloween party, and I wrote “Woman Uses Period Blood for Halloween Costume.” I wrote it all during my class, and I edited in a picture of this girl wearing a bloody costume. GB: There are some wacky, weird ones, and some that follow the “satire formula,” so it’s kind of all over the board. I wrote “McGill to Salt Sidewalks with Students’ Tears” a couple of weeks ago. I liked that one. We also have the John Milton opinion column. It’s the ghost of John Milton; I write that one for him. It’s just a funny way to yell at students for being annoying. One of my favourite ones ever was also “SNL to Air on Mondays Pre-Recorded.” I thought that was so funny! And “Four Ways to Catch a Dick at Activities Night.” I loved that one. You can also tell which writers write which pieces because everyone has a very unique voice and it’s been really cool to see them grow into that.
Email thewhyintersection@gmail. com or join “The Why Intersection contribz and writerz” group on Facebook to contribute to The Why Intersection. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
culture
January 21, 2019 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
Through the Looking Glass
Katya Conrad Culture Writer
J
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The Portrayal of Women in Vermeer’s Paintings
ohannes Vermeer, a Golden era Dutch painter, was an artist emblematic of traditional Dutch genre paintings. His works, The Glass of Wine (right) and The Girl with a Wine Glass (below) are two very similar scenes that highlight societal anxieties about women and their activities “behind closed doors.” These anxieties were especially elevated when the patriarch of the house was absent, and the home was left solely to the responsibility of women. In Dutch society, women were seen as a vessel through which the Dutch Republic could explore its moral and religious ideals. Virtue and domesticity were considered to be attributes of a “good” woman, who kept her house in order, even when her husband was away. Vermeer references the societal anxiety about women engaging in immoral activities, such as entertaining strangers – soldiers in particular. The morality of the newly founded Republic was read through the actions of women, so any sexual impropriety was a sign of the failure of the Republic to firmly stand among the powers of Europe. Because of this, the burden heavily lay on the women depicted in art to not only keep her household in order, but also to project an image of herself
which works in accordance with the ideals of the emerging Dutch nation. Vermeer’s The Glass of Wine demonstrates an implicit insinuation of immorality, while The Girl With a Wine Glass is an explicit statement on the sexual impropriety of the painting’s female subject. In The Glass of Wine, a woman is depicted drinking from a glass handed to her by a man who stands beside her, waiting to pour another. The Girl with a Wine Glass shows two characters engaging with each other, who appear to be the same as in the former painting, with an additional male figure in the background. The woman, who is entertaining the original man, looks directly at the viewer. The importance of the presence of a male figurehead is depicted through the paintings that Vermeer chooses to hang in both of the rooms. The initial and implicit depiction of immorality occurs in front of a landscape, whereas the woman’s sexual impropriety is witnessed by the portrait of what the viewer can assume to be the “man of the house.” Thus, while the architectural features of the room remain the same, the background of the artworks give new meaning and consequences to the actions of the woman. The use of the female body for a blank canvas on which male rulers could paint their theories
The Girl With a Wine Glass Courtesy of Johannes Vermeer: Paintings, Biography, and Quotes
The Glass of Wine of morality is an idea which can still be considered in the context of today’s society; one might even argue that Vermeer’s work is a precedent for the consideration of women as peacemakers and vessels of moderation. In contrast to this, throughout the 17th century, a wide variety of literature was published by male authors depicting the common trope of a clever, evil wife out to betray her husband. Vermeer promoted this characterization of women within his artwork; the women in his paintings were either portrayed as wellbehaved, domestic caretakers, or as malevolent, deceitful beacons of impropriety. In the case of The Girl with a Wine Glass, the woman is entertaining strangers and bringing the outside world into what is seen as her husband’s domain, signifying that once he leaves the house, he has no power and is thus emasculated by her. Vermeer uses the glass in the two different paintings to demonstrate her deteriorating morality, as she is depicted as holding it in two different ways. In The Glass of Wine, the woman is holding the glass in a way which would imply she is of a higher social class. In The Girl with a Wine Glass, the woman is holding the glass with her fingers splayed, in a way that is indicative of lower
Courtesy of Johannes Vermeer: Paintings, Biography, and Quotes
The burden heavily lies on the women depicted in art to not only keep her household in order, but also to project an image of herself which works in accordance to the ideals of the emerging Dutch nation. class. Because of this, the interior of the household is changed from a domestic scene to one resembling a brothel. These small details also subconsciously promote classist and misogynistic undertones, implying that lower-class women are inherently immoral in the eyes of Dutch society. Vermeer uses the jug to symbolize the supposed immoral action that the female figure is about to pursue, employing it in a way that starkly contrasts with its traditional use as an object symbolizing female domesticity. It is a clear act of defiance against the moral code of 17th-century Dutch society, one that permitted men to engage in sexual activity, while shaming women for the same. When we consider the effects of this act of adultery, the man will likely not face as serious societal repercussions. The jug also carries alcohol instead of water
or milk, highlighting the fact that the domestic household is being turned into a site of immorality. These artworks show a rather interesting view of morality centred around the woman figure in the two paintings. Her abandonment of domestic chores and embracing of sexuality is symbolic of what was thought at the time to occur if women were left alone in the domestic space. With the recent establishment of the Dutch Republic, the domestic space could not afford such unpredictability. Thus, female subjects within artwork, much like the women of the Republic themselves, became synonymous with the country as a whole. As women became symbols of the state’s agenda rather than people, their agency, even in the domestic space, was limited, and their morality and humanity was reduced to their perceived relationships with men.
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compendium!
January 21, 2019 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
Lies, half-truths, and c’est le bare minimum.
HECK’in DUMB HOROSCOPES Aquarius
Pisces
(Jan 20 - Feb 18)
(Feb 19 Mar 20)
The start of Aquarius season is coming so get ready for some “big aquarius energy,” whatever the fuck that means. Think of it kind of like Big Dick Energy, except not related to sexist power dynamics, ya know?
Taurus (Apr 20 May 20) You will face a difficult choice in the coming weeks. Neither of the options offered to you seems appealing, but if you think outside the box you’ll be able to have the best of both worlds.
Unfortunately, you’ll have to deal with a lot of bullshit philosophy bros in your classes — don’t worry their opinions are trash and they’ll probably end up dropping the class since the prof “imposes their leftist opinions” and “politics don’t belong in the classroom.”
Gemini (May 21 Jun 20)
It’s gonna be fine. You’re gonna be fine,,,,,,,
Leo (Jul 23
Virgo
- Aug 22)
(Aug 23 Sept 22)
debauchery. d e b a u c h e r y
Scorpio (Oct 23 Nov 21)
You sexy beast! You’re feeling hot, and let’s face it... you are, but remember to focus that energy on what’s important: DEFEATING INSTITUTIONAL RACISM.
Good news! Your hard work paid off and rewards are coming. But don’t get greedy because capitalism is gross and you deserve better.
Sagittarius (Nov 22 Dec 21) Listen here you saucy wench, this week is gonna be really sexy and you’re gonna need to control your pheromones. Or don’t control them! Go fucking wild. ;) But be safe and always get consent!!
Aries (Mar 21 Apr 19)
This week is going to be filled with unexpected badass femme energy. Embrace it and remember to use it to crush the patriarchal powers that dominate our fucked-up world.
Cancer (Jun 21 - Jul 22) It’s time to branch out and make new connections, Cancer. Be open to new relationships, but be wary of men you don’t know very well who rely on you for emotional support. You’re not a therapist (unless you are), and you don’t owe anyone SHIT!!! Value your emotional labour and all labour!!!
Libra (Sept 23 Oct 22) Lucky you! Your least-favourite class will be cancelled sometime soon!!! Use the extra time to learn sign language and help an elderly person cross Sherbrooke.
Capricorn (Dec 22 Jan 19)
We don’t know what your future holds. Consult a tarot deck. Or a Crystal Ball? (is that still a thing)