The McGill Daily Vol104Iss23

Volume 104, Issue 23 Monday, March 23, 2015

McGill THE

DAILY Still I rise since 1911 mcgilldaily.com

Race

The Daily’s Special Issue

Contents

03

March 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

14

NEWS

SCI+TECH

2015-16 SSMU executive elected

Examining racism within medicine

McGill nixes women-only gym hours

15

Student senators question admin on funding for students with disabilities

2

SPORTS

Building community through sport

Protocol deficiencies in McGill radiation facilities

The history of the Redmen name

Medical students on strike against Bill 20

17

AUS executive candidates face off in debates

CULTURE

TNC adapts Bukowski poetry with mixed results

French lit students join anti-austerity strike

What to check out this week

Anti-austerity activities night

Hip Hop Week Montreal is a critical addition to the McGill community

FEUQ on the brink of collapse Scandal plagues SSMU executive elections

Jean-Michel Ross turns his art collection into commodity

10 COMMENTARY Identity politics and class politics can work together

19

Letter

McGill needs to make accessibility a priority

Bill C-51 is hypocritical and the product of fearmongering

12 FEATURES

EDITORIAL

20 COMPENDIUM! McGall gets accessible and hires a Countess

An experience of colourism

SPECIAL ISSUE: RACE WANT TO TRAVEL? Work with international students?

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The staff of

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the 2015-16 editorial board the positions

Twenty editors share equal voting rights on issues, and work together to produce the newspaper every week. Each editor receives a small monthly honorarium.

For more information on individual positions, contact each section editor (emails can be found on page 19 of this issue). You can also stop by The Daily’s office in Shatner B-24.

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News

March 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Kareem Ibrahim elected SSMU president by 225 votes

3

ECOLE project fee levy passes in referendum

President

VP Internal

16.7%

VP Clubs & Services

32.5%

27.3% 36.5%

43.7% 39.6% Alexei Simakov

Lola Baraldi Johanna Nikoletos

No

Abstain

Abstain

Abstain

VP University Affairs

Creation of the ECOLE Project Fund Yes 2662 (64.0%) No 1497 (36.0%)

60.4%

7.1%

36.2%

Kareem Ibrahim

Renewal of the SSMU Access Bursary Fund Yes 3062 (75.2%) No 1009 (24.8%)

Kimber Bialik

VP Finance and Operations

Creation of a MSE SSMU Councillor Seat Yes 2841 (80.7%) No 680 (19.3%)

34%

32%

56.9%

60.8% 7.2%

Renewal of the Referral Services Fee Yes 2785 (69.3%) No 1235 (30.7%)

9.1% Chloe Rourke

Zacheriah Houston

No

No

Abstain

Abstain

SSMU election results.

Emily Saul The McGill Daily

K

REFERENDUM RESULTS

areem Ibrahim was elected Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) president for the 2015-16 academic year, taking 52.5 per cent of the vote against opponent Alexei Simakov’s 47.5 per cent. 16.7 per cent of voters abstained from the presidential vote.

Lola Baraldi will serve as VP Internal, beating her opponent Johanna Nikoletos by only 13 votes.

All those running unopposed secured seats: Chloe Rourke as VP University Affairs, Zacheriah Houston as VP Finance & Operations, and Kimber Bialik as VP Clubs & Services.

Voter turnout was 25.9 per cent, a slight decrease from last year’s 31.4 per cent turnout.

Though Ibrahim was not present at the election results announcements due to personal reasons, he said in a statement released to The Daily, “I’d like to thank you for having trust in me and my ability to continue to serve this community with passion and expertise. Two weeks is an awfully short amount of time to gain one’s trust, let alone that of thousands of people.”

“I’ve made mistakes, this I won’t deny. I’m more than happy

to admit my flaws. On the other hand, I’m also happy that in being a part of this community for three years now, I’ve demonstrated to enough of you that I do care about student life and that this is truly important to me.”

He continued, “Whether or not this outcome is what you hoped for and whether or not you think SSMU should exist altogether, I want to hear from you. [...] SSMU serves all students, and I hope to do that as well.”

Ibrahim’s platform was based on transparent leadership and improving SSMU’s communications, inclusion, and accessibility. Prior to being elected president, he served as president of McGill Inter-Residence Council (IRC), as the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) VP External in 2013-14, and this year as an Arts Senator and Senate Caucus Representative to SSMU. The 2015 campaign played out largely online, with each candidate posting heavily on Facebook.

While the forum proved a useful means for members of the McGill community to question the candidates, it also became a very visible platform for a number of allegations, including leaked screenshots pointing to Ibrahim’s potential involvement in planning a SSMU Judicial Board (J-Board)

Rachel Nam | The McGill Daily case seeking the invalidation of Tariq Khan’s short-lived 2014-15 presidency, and allegations against Simakov of unpaid debt.

Simakov, who ran as a protest candidate, told The Daily that, despite the loss, he was satisfied with his campaign.

“I’m disappointed, obviously – we really thought we had a chance at the end. In the last few days, I think the campaign took a really positive turn. We had a lot of support coming in from people who usually didn’t vote [...] people who usually didn’t pay attention, people who were usually alienated and didn’t feel they have a voice – I hope at least this year I gave them someone to vote for who represented their views and interests.”

“We did our best,” added Simakov. “I’m really proud about coming out of nowhere, we didn’t prepare at all, we didn’t know what we were doing. [...] We tried to make an honest campaign, a campaign where we answered the hard questions.”

Baraldi’s win was incredibly close, with Baraldi receiving 50.2 per cent of votes to Nikoletos’ 49.8 – a margin, in the end, of only 13 votes.

Baraldi has spent the past two years as a SSMU councillor, as well as a member of the Students’

Society Programming Network (SSPN), and is the current AUS VP External. She told The Daily that consultation of the student body would be a priority for both her as well as her fellow executives.

“I think all of us have made student engagement a really big point in our platforms and from working with all these people, I’ve worked with most of the incoming execs since first year, and I know that they truly do care about student engagement so next year could really be good for that,” Baraldi told The Daily.

Nikoletos said that her involvement in student life would definitely continue. “I am more involved on the event planning side, so I am definitely going to keep doing those things. [...] I’ll still be involved, but not really student government,” Nikoletos told The Daily.

Running unopposed, Rourke will be the next VP University Affairs, with 89.4 per cent of the vote.

Rourke has served as the Arts & Science senator and a SSMU councillor.

“I’m really excited to work with the incoming executive. I think we’ll make a great team and hopefully we’ll do a lot of great work this year,” she told The Daily.

Rourke said that her priorities

next year will be dealing with the impact of budget cuts, and also that current state of mental health resources at McGill. “I’ve sat on the [mental health] committee so I know how bad it is, and it is something that we really need to talk about.”

She also addressed those students who are critical of SSMU and may view experience with SSMU as a negative. “I think they might be worried that that the executives with experience in SSMU will be less open to changes, but I think that that is totally false.

Many of the executives that did get elected [...] were all very aware that we would like to see SSMU be more relevant and more engaging with students.”

Bialik was also elected unopposed, to the position of VP Clubs & Services with 89.4 per cent of the vote. In the past, Bialik worked as the SSMU Interest Group Coordinator, and is currently the president or co-president of three SSMU clubs. Bialik noted that her first project will be the completion and analysis of the club survey.

“We’re gonna get all this data, and I’ll be able to define my mandate based on what clubs really want, which is something that’s really needed right now,” she said.

“I’m really excited to get into the data and seeing what people want me to do.”

Houston, the only candidate for VP Finance & Operations, won the position with 86.2 per cent of the vote. Houston sat on the SSMU Funding and SUS Finance Committees, as well as on SSMU Council and as the VP Finance for a club. “I am very excited – we’re going to work with a great team next year,” he said.

Elections SSMU also announced that current Science Undergraduate Society (SUS) VP External Emily Boytinck and Jewish Studies student Joanna Schacter will run in the SSMU VP External by-election, with the campaign period beginning on March 23.

Referendum results All referendum questions passed, with the creation of the Educational Community Living Environment (ECOLE) project fee levy garnering 64.0 per cent of the vote, the SSMU Access Bursary Fund fee renewal receiving 75.2 per cent, and the creation of a School of Environment seat at SSMU Council passing with 80.7 per cent of the vote.

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McGill shuts down womenonly gym hours negotiations Students had come close to reaching compromise with Athletics

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March 23, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Jill Bachelder The McGill Daily

T

he University has effectively shut down attempts of students and McGill Athletics to reach a compromise over the women-only gym hours proposal, according to Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP University Affairs Claire Stewart-Kanigan.

Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens communicated the administration’s decision to Stewart-Kanigan on March 16, attributing it to a stance that the proposal, as well as any compromise reached, would be unfavourable to the University. According to Athletics and Recreation Executive Director Drew Love, this is due to lack of “reasonable need for modesty.”

The students behind the proposal, Soumia Allalou and Raymond Grafton, began communicating with members of McGill Athletics as well as Stewart-Kanigan to address the issue of women feeling uncomfortable exercising alongside men in the gym.

Allalou said she met on March 12 with a McGill Athletics staff member who proposed that the McGill Varsity Weight Room might be usable as a women-only space at certain times. “[McGill Athletics Manager of Marketing and Communications Jill Barker] told me that [the room] could open a few hours a week, and this is the best solution she sees,” Allalou explained. “She pretty much agrees with women’s hours, and she didn’t really see it as such a big problem.”

However, according to a statement released by Stewart-Kanigan on March 18, Dyens informed her during a March 16 meeting that “the negotiations were being shut down completely.” Realizing that the students behind the proposal were not aware of this, Stewart-Kanigan insisted that Dyens meet with them before issuing a public statement regarding the University’s stance on women-only gym hours.

“It was made clear that the ending of talks on finding a compromise [or] solution on women’s hours was not for any logistical or cost-based reason – it was made on a purely principled stance that further negotiations on the subject could never lead to an outcome that was acceptable to McGill,” Stewart-Kanigan told The Daily.

At a meeting with Stewart-Kanigan and Allalou on March 19, Dyens showed no change in the University’s

Mathias Heilke | Photographer stance against the students’ proposal or any sort of compromise directly related to it. “He basically told us that he’s not going to allow it,” Allalou told The Daily, saying that Dyens explained he was against “segregation.”

“He sees one way to run McGill, and he wasn’t really open to the fact that I had endorsements from a lot of groups,” said Allalou. “He’s basically stopping it as a matter of principle.”

The administration has said that it looks favourably on increasing the harassment policy measures and looking into how to make the gym generally more comfortable for everyone, but does not look favourably on targeting specific groups who might feel uncomfortable within the gym.

“We encourage and will continue to encourage all our patrons to engage respectfully with one another, just as we expect all members of our community to treat each other equitably and respectfully in whatever context,” Dyens and Love wrote in a statement sent to The Daily. “[The University was] unable to provide any tangible steps as to how this new strategy of addressing harassment would be different from the current strategy, which does state that it is a zero-tolerance policy for harassment and bullying,” said Stewart-Kanigan.

Love maintained the University’s stance that it does not want to provide accommodations to certain groups. “It’s not our intention to specifically provide women-only hours in a facility,” Love told The Daily, emphasizing that the University wants to keep all of its facilities “secular and coeducational.”

When asked about the existence of women-only pool hours, Love said, “I think most people would agree that the pool, with the nature of the type of clothing or swimwear that is ap-

propriate in a swimming pool […] creates a reasonable need for modesty.”

He continued, “I don’t think that’s the case for looking at modesty in a fitness centre or other centres, where, in fact, there is no limit to the amount of clothing or other things that an individual can wear.”

“I think there [are] problems when a man is deciding how a woman should feel about her body and what she feels is modest for herself,” Allalou noted. “It’s not up to somebody else to judge […] what modesty is. […] It’s up to the individual, I think.”

While SSMU has not currently taken a stance on women-only gym hours, Stewart-Kanigan said that it falls within the mandate of her portfolio to “publicly stand against the blocking of discourse and efforts to reach compromises with the University led by students advocating for issues that are significant to them.”

“The students who are engaging in these kinds of negotiations are going above and beyond to advocate for student interests to the University and to effect institutional change in what they believe is in the best interests of other students,” she said.

Stewart-Kanigan added, “To pose these additional barriers of inconsistent and unclear chains of command and decision reversals and significant changes undermines these students’ efforts to continue advocating for student interests.”

Overall, Allalou expressed disappointment in the administration’s reaction, particularly when the students were only “steps away from a solution that maybe most people would have agreed to.”

—With files from Igor Sadikov An earlier version of this article appeared online on March 20.

News

March 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Non-transparent allocation of disability grant angers students

5

Advising, Glen relocation issues discussed at Senate

Janna Bryson The McGill Daily

S

enate convened on March 18 for its monthly meeting, where student senators brought forward questions about the unclear allocation of funding for students with disabilities and the interfaculty disparity in the availability of student advisors.

Funding for students with disabilities Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Arts and Science Senator Chloe Rourke, Arts Senator Jacob Greenspon, and Medicine Senator David Benrimoh presented a question regarding the allocation of McGill’s $1.2 million share of a provincial grant for the support of students with disabilities.

According to the official response to this question, provided by Provost Anthony Masi and Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens, this money has been absorbed under the annual budget, with the administration claiming that a sufficient amount is already spent on services benefitting students with disabilities.

“The unrestricted envelop [sic] of approximately $1.2 [million] provided this year is part of the overall university budget from which much more than $1.2 [million] has been allocated for services to students with disabilities and other needs across the university. In essence, then, the funds have already been distributed,” the response read.

However, the response also

noted that the Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD) would be facing “budget restrictions” in the coming year, along with other units on campus, and that there was “no pending disbursement to OSD.” Rourke said that the student senators asked the question because students had expressed concern that the OSD was inadequately funded. “We realized that the current budget is not able to sustain operations even without funding cuts,” said Rourke. “How is the University going to ensure that this service is able to fulfill its mandate and operations?”

In response to Rourke, Masi said that the OSD is an “important service,” but emphasized that the current climate of decreased government funding requires budget cuts. “We have to make difficult choices sometimes [...] and [the funds] can’t just be given because it’s an important service.”

However, Benrimoh insisted that more information be provided about how the funds would be disbursed to ensure that they were actually being used to directly help students with disabilities.

“How can you guarantee us clarity of purpose for these funds?” he asked Masi.

Masi responded that the University can guarantee “only what we can afford to guarantee.”

“We cannot put any more money into this operation than what we are already doing,” Masi continued, adding that these circumstances would not lead to the dissolution of the service.

Speaking to the OSD’s apparent

The Leacock building.

Robert Smith | The McGill Daily

operating difficulties, Dyens said, “I was not made aware of this. This is a discussion that [Executive] Director of Student Services [Jana Luker] and I must have. [...] We are committed to making sure we provide these services.”

Advising disparity between faculties Greenspon presented a question about the disparity in advisorto-student ratios between faculties and about the University’s actions to address this. The question noted that the ratio was 843 students per advisor in Arts, compared to an inter-faculty average of 265 students per advisor. Law, the faculty with the lowest ratio, has only 88 students per advisor.

Dyens said that the University has been making concerted efforts to obtain donations to fund for advising. “This is a resource issue. [...]

I think we’ll be making progress

very soon on this.”

Dyens also noted that the “Ask McGill” website, which serves to respond to simple questions to free up advisors for larger discussions, saw a usage increase of almost 20 per cent in February. “[Survey] data says students are seeing progress, but we’re still behind our peers,” he said.

Grad student relocation concerns Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Martin Kreiswirth presented his annual report to Senate.

Many questions raised in response to the report pertained to the recent move of many research students to the new Glen site of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC). Medicine Faculty Senator Edith Zorychta asked what was being done to address space concerns, given that roughly 9 per cent of the graduate student population has moved to this new location.

Kreiswirth did not provide a specific solution, but acknowledged the problem that some units have research and funding but lack space. He suggested better liaising with the Glen site, but said that there were “no simple solutions.”

PGSS Academic Affairs Officer Jennifer Murray expressed concern with the impact of the move on students’ workflow and quality of life. “We have received many complaints,” she said.

Murray requested that Kreiswirth form a working group to investigate issues with the move and report to Senate in May and September. Kreiswirth said he would get back to Murray with a decision.

New programs, Principal’s remarks Principal Suzanne Fortier said that McGill’s proposal for the use of the Royal Victoria Hospital, which will become vacant next month, has been made a priority by the government. The University will conduct a feasibility study, half of which will be funded by the government, on the use of the space. “[We] need to have a clear picture of what problems we would face if we developed the site, and what costs we would incur,” said Fortier, adding that McGill would require significant investment from the government before committing to developing the site.

Two graduate certificate programs, one in digital archives management and the other in information and knowledge management, were approved by Senate, along with two new concentrations for Masters programs in the Faculty of Arts.

Inspection finds McGill radiation protocol lacking

Unknown whether the McGill University Health Centre has met compliance deadlines Marina Cupido The McGill Daily

I

n early December 2014, during an enhanced inspection by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), a number of deficiencies in the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC)’s Radiation Protection Program were discovered.

According to a letter dated January 2015 – sent by the CNSC to the MUHC’s Associate Director of Quality, Patient Safety, and Performace – workers whose jobs brought them into contact with radioactive material had received inadequate training. The inspection also found that radiation safety procedures

were “not implemented properly or uniformly among the three hospitals under MUHC control.”

In addition, the CNSC expressed concern about the lack of a program for verifying and calibrating most radiation instrumentation. Finally, the MUHC’s Radiation Safety Officer (RSO) reportedly “demonstrated indifference and a lack of knowledge about radiation protection management and control” and “a lack of understanding of regulatory requirements, as well as his role and responsibility for ensuring radiation protection across all MUHC activities.”

In light of these findings, the

CNSC formally requested that the MUHC undertake specific steps to remedy the situation.

These included submitting a detailed action plan, reviewing the responsibilities of the RSO’s position with the individual in question in order to ensure that they are able to properly perform their duties, conducting an audit of worker training, and validating all instrumentation.

The letter stipulated that all of the aforementioned measures were to have been completed by March 13; yet, as of publication, it is unknown whether the MUHC ever complied with this request.

In an email to The Daily,

Sean Cory, president of the Association of McGill University Research Employees (AMURE), expressed his concerns regarding the incident.

“The CNSC involvement was triggered due to an incident at the [Montreal Neurological Institute] involving radiation exposure to one of our members,” said Cory.

“As an employer, McGill is responsible for the health and safety of its employees. However, we feel that a lot of the time, supervisors will leave that responsibility to the employees themselves.” “[AMURE] should be contacted after [an] accident concerning one of our members,” added Cory.

At the time of publication, no MUHC representatives responded to The Daily’s requests for comment.

David Kalant, VP Finance of the McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA), concurred with Cory.

“The [health and safety] representatives of a union can be helpful when trying to assess an incident, protecting their members’ wellbeing and rights, and resolving problems,” Kalant told The Daily.

“Too many managers are fearful of union involvement, without reason. And too many managers and supervisors do not understand their responsibilities where [health and safety] is concerned.”

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH CREATIVE WRITING PRIZES AND AWARDS The MONA ADILMAN PRIZE IN POETRY, for one student, estimated value $500, or for two students, estimated value $250, is open to undergraduate or graduate students registered in the Faculty of Arts for the best poem or group of poems relating to ecological or environmental concerns.

The CLARK LEWIS MEMORIAL PRIZE, estimated value $400, is open to major or honours students in the Department of English. The prize is awarded annually or from time to time for original plays staged in the course of the academic year.

The CHESTER MACNAGHTEN PRIZES IN CREATIVE WRITING, two prizes, one of estimated value $600, one of estimated value $300, are open to undergraduate students of the University for the best piece of creative writing in English, i.e. a story, a play, a poem, an essay, etc. Printed compositions are ineligible if they have been published before April 17, 2015.

The PETERSON MEMORIAL PRIZE, estimated value $2,000, is open to undergraduate or graduate students registered in a degree program in the Department of English with distinction in English Literature (CGPA 3.30 or above) who has also shown creative literary ability.

The LIONEL SHAPIRO AWARDS FOR CREATIVE WRITING, three prizes, estimated value $1,300 each, to be distributed if possible among the genres of poetry, fiction, screen writing and playwriting. Each prize is to be awarded on the recommendation of the Department of English to students in the final year of the B.A. course who have demonstrated outstanding talent. (A note from your academic adviser verifying you will have completed your program requirements and the minimum credits required by the Faculty of Arts MUST accompany your submission.)

________________________________________________________________________ These competitions are restricted to students who have not previously won the First Prize.

Forms to be completed are available online at www.mcgill.ca/english or at the Student Affairs Office (Arts 155).

Submissions must be IN TRIPLICATE.

Deadline for submissions: Friday, April 17 2015

SACOMSS Sexual Assault Center of the McGill Students’Society

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News

March 23, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Medicine students vote for one-day strike against Bill 20

McGill joins province-wide mobilization for March 30 demonstration Cem Ertekin The McGill Daily

T

he Medical Students’ Society (MSS) will strike for one day on March 30 to participate in the demonstration organized by the Federation médicale étudiante du Québec (FMEQ) against the proposed Bill 20. A motion to that effect passed at the annual MSS General Assembly (GA) on March 17, with 89 votes for, 19 against, and eight abstentions.

Medical students at Université de Sherbrooke passed a similar motion the same day, and those at Université de Montréal did so on March 10. Those at Université Laval are expected to move a strike motion next week, which, if passed, would mean that all four Quebec universities with medicine programs will have joined the mobilization against Bill 20.

The heavily criticized Bill 20 effectively establishes a quota for the number of patients that a physician must take on, with the government requiring that family doctors serve at least 1,000 patients. As per section 19 of the bill, physicians failing to meet their quotas will face a salary cut of up to 30 per cent.

On February 23, MSS was mandated by referendum to take a stance against Bill 20 in its current form and to maintain that stance should the bill become law.

Speaking to The Daily, FMEQ Political Affairs Delegate Alexis Rompré-Brodeur said that the bill would force physicians to look for ways to meet their quotas more easily. “Vulnerable populations like psychiatric patients, older patients, diabetic patients that do take a lot more time when you take them on […] will be a bit set aside,” he said.

At the GA, some members voiced concerns regarding the efficiency of a one-day strike in order to affect government policy.

“I have a couple of questions about what the goal of FMEQ is in doing this strike. Is the goal to get media awareness? Is the goal to get public support? Is the goal to actually change the government and the government’s perception?” asked medical student Annick Gauthier.

Another student argued that

Cem Ertekin | The McGill Daily the MSS could oppose Bill 20 without going on a strike.

“We’re in a province that loves to strike,” they said. “We don’t want to harm our patients. We could be totally against it – we have voted against this bill – [and] not going for a strike doesn’t mean that we’re not against it.”

Fourth-year medicine student Olivier Gagné disagreed, and spoke to the importance of standing in solidarity with the rest of the province.

“What really frustrates me sitting here today is [that] McGill is always the one who backs down.”

Olivier Gagné, fourth-year medicine student “What really frustrates me sitting here today is [that] McGill is always the one who backs down.

We never support our confrères.

Every time we have consensus in the province, McGill clearly sends a message in not supporting the political action that is taking [place] on a provincial level,” Gagné said.

While the text of the motion makes no mention of the growing anti-austerity mobilization in the province, some attendees noted that Bill 20 is in fact deeply related to the Liberal government’s austerity policies.

“[Bill 20] denies the social and human role of the healer.

It considers medicine as purely mechanic, but we don’t treat machines,” said first-year medicine student Anne-Sara Briand. “The government has to stop burying its head in the sand. […] There will be less workers, less time for the patients, and hence, more distress. But the health of our patients will be harmed by many more cuts. The government’s austerity will have consequences on the health of the society.”

In an interview with The Daily, Medicine Senator David Benrimoh echoed Briand’s concerns.

“I’ve had several patients myself, [with whom] if I didn’t have the half an hour or forty-five minutes to spend with them and to talk to them about […] the terrible experiences they’ve gone through, I don’t think it would have been able to have the therapeutic effect that I was able to have,” said Benrimoh.

Benrimoh continued, “[Bill 20] asks us to do more, without giving us any more resources.

It doesn’t give us more nurses, which we need. […] It doesn’t give us more operating rooms, it doesn’t give us any more resources into our healthcare system, but it asks us to handle a higher volume – and that means that the quality of care is not assured. It also means that it’s another way the government is saying ‘do more with less’ – which is austerity.”

An earlier version of this article was published online on March 18.

News

March 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

AUS executive candidates debate

7

Most candidates running uncontested

Igor Sadikov The McGill Daily

C

andidates for the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) executive positions convened in the Arts building on March 18 to defend and debate their platforms.

As of this year, the VP Finance position is no longer an elected one, which left six positions to be contested among the eight candidates.

VP debates Gabriel Gilling, VP External of the Political Science Students’ Association (PSSA) and candidate for AUS VP Academic, was the first to present his platform. He emphasized the need for regular data collection through surveys to be able to effectively lobby the administration on academic matters, and identified transparency in grade distribution as a major concern.

“Most of the time professors are very reluctant to go into [detail about grades] – they feel like their rights are being attacked, although they have a lot of rights,” said Gilling.

VP Social candidate Christine Koppenaal spoke next. She highlighted the need to establish “continuity” and good relations with the rest of the executive, noting that the position has historically been an isolated one. She listed “diversifying the events portfolio” and “rebranding the AUS student identity” as goals.

On the topic of Frosh, Koppenaal said that she intends to institutionalize recent positive changes, notably in terms of equity, following up on the work of the Frosh bylaw committee on which she currently sits.

She added that the most inequitable aspect of Frosh is currently its cost, and suggested finding sponsors to fund free or subsidized tickets.

In response to a question from The Daily on the role of the AUS Equity Commissioners during Frosh, Koppenaal said, “There really just needs to be a conversation before Frosh happens, where we can agree on what the Equity Commissioners feel comfortable doing and what their role should be throughout Frosh, because, frankly, that conversation didn’t happen this summer.”

A debate between VP Internal candidates Ali Taghwva and Maria Vedeshkina followed.

In his opening remarks, Taghva said that he intended to give students “opportunities to network” and get involved in AUS. Taghva also highlighted a “fiveyear plan” for sustainability that would build on the Ethical Purchasing Policy adopted in 2014 by AUS. In response to a follow-up question from The Daily, he indicated that he would focus on edu-

cation, but was not able to provide concrete implementation details.

Current VP Academic Erin Sobat further noted that some of Taghva’s suggestions were “beyond the scope of AUS operations.”

Vedeshkina’s platform focused on improving the room-booking system, holding a departmental presidents’ roundtable for incoming presidents in April instead of only in September, providing better representation for the First-Year Events, Academic, and Representative Council (FEARC) at Discover McGill, and creating a FEARC event planning guidebook with guidelines on social activities, educational activities, equity, and sustainability.

In order to better liaise with departments, Taghva spoke in favour of meeting with the departmental presidents more often and in smaller groups, while Vedeshkina advocated for effective use of the presidents’ roundtable to minimize the need for constant communication.

VP External candidate Becky Goldberg followed with a presentation of her platform, which included continuing collaboration with organizations on campus – such as the Social Equity and Diversity Education (SEDE) office and Healthy McGill – to foster safer space and accessibility during events, as well as working to alleviate tensions with other faculties, since the “long-term goal should be not just fostering community within AUS, but within McGill as a whole.”

Answering a question from Sobat on decolonization, Goldberg indicated that she would move beyond the recently-adopted traditional territory acknowledgement by making people “more aware of the history” and emphasizing its importance, both on AUS Council and in the community.

VP Communications candidates Elaine Patterson and Thomas Cole Baron faced off in debate next.

Patterson centred her platform around “collaborative communication,” namely her desire to improve information outreach – in particular by making the listserv “appealing and concise” – while providing feedback channels in the form of surveys as well as through the recently launched AUS app.

Baron, who is currently the AUS Francophone Affairs Commissioner, emphasized communitybuilding in his platform. “I do want to foster communication between different departments [...] different clubs, and different activities,” said Baron. “That’s a huge part of community-building, that people know what’s going on around campus, and specifically within the AUS.” Asked about the relationship

Goldberg presents platform. with the francophone community, Baron highlighted planning francophone events and then promoting them to the anglophone community as a possible way to bridge the gap. Patterson, who is not fluent in French, indicated that she would utilize a team of translators to ensure that all AUS information was available in French.

Presidential platform Jacob Greenspon – current Arts Senator, former VP Academic, and AUS presidential candidate – was the last executive candidate to speak. Two of his main ideas were the replacement of AUS’ current Guaranteed Investment Certificates (GICs) with an endowment

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Andy Wei | The McGill Daily fund, and “democratic reform” that would involve students voting directly on budget proposals in addition to electing representatives.

Questioned at length about his endowment fund proposal, Greenspon admitted that it would mostly act as a centralized “rainy day fund,” and is unlikely to generate enough interest to fund services.

Sobat noted that many of the executive positions were uncontested and raised the question of their accessibility. Greenspon suggested that reducing the workload and increasingly delegating tasks to administrative assistants would help solve the problem.

On the topic of relations with the administration, Greenspon in-

dicated that he would encourage greater attendance at events like the sit-in earlier this month as he negotiates to include SNAX’s right to sell sandwiches in AUS’s Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the University, and would gather “hard data” through surveys and petitions, and seek support from faculty.

“Unfortunately, one of the things I’ve learned this year at Senate is that [...] student voices are often discounted at McGill, but faculty voices are given so much power here,” he said. “If we get profs on our side, which they already are [...] the administration is going to listen to them.”

The voting period runs from March 22 to 26.

French Language and Literature students vote for week-long strike

he Association générale des étudiants de langue et littérature françaises (AGELF), McGill’s French Language and Literature students’ association, has voted to go on strike against austerity measures from March 30 to April 3, after passing a referendum motion to that effect on March 19.

These students will now join tens of thousands of university and CEGEP students mobilizing against cuts to services made by the provincial Liberal government that will negatively impact students.

AGELF’s referendum included two motions. The first was for a oneday strike to occur on April 2, the day of the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ)’s anti-austerity demonstration, which

passed with 79.07 per cent in favour. The second motion, brought forth during the assembly, was to strike for a week instead of a day and passed with 53.5 per cent of the vote.

“I think the idea was to mark our solidarity from the very beginning of the movement,” Ghislaine Le Moing, a U3 joint honours English and French Literature major, told The Daily. She noted that, because the department has a greater proportion of Quebec students than most other departments, its students have looked favourably on student strikes in the past.

Following the passing of the motion, AGELF commented in French on the strike vote on its Facebook page: “AGELF considers it its duty to make sure that the strike mandate

voted by its students is respected, throughout the period from March 30 to April 3.” It also announced that it will be holding a “strike council” on March 25 to allow people to “exchange different methods for mobilization, negotiation with the administration, and general organization of the strike days.”

Le Moing said that AGELF members hoped to inspire other students to hold similar votes. “A lot of people at the GA mentioned that they were hoping to galvanize other departments, other faculties,” she said.

“By having our department strike now, we were hoping that maybe it would encourage other departments to strike too.”

—Jill Bachelder

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March 23, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Students organize educational anti-austerity fair

News

Event examines local effects of government budget cuts

Celia Robinovitch News Writer

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he Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) hosted an Anti-Austerity Activities Night on March 19. Structured similarly to Activities Night, which traditionally happens at the beginning of each semester, different McGill groups set up tables and stations related to the local effects of recent austerity measures.

“Sustainability groups, labour unions, and campus media have all come out because this issue affects them directly,” Bronwen Tucker, SSMU Campaigns Coordinator and co-organizer of the event, told The Daily. “We were really lucky to be able to collaborate with a lot of different groups, I think it shows how many aspects of society austerity affects [...] and helps get a lot of students engaged.”

The Union for Gender Empowerment (UGE), Demilitarize McGill, CKUT, the Association of McGill University Research Employees (AMURE), and other groups hosted stations to inform those at the event about how the effects of austerity pertain to education, colonialism, environment, labour, health, militarism, and gender issues. People at the stations also shared skills about safety at demonstrations, student strikes, net security, and direct action.

“I’m here to make connections with community groups and see how I can join them in their struggles,” first-year student Aishwarya Singh told The Daily. “On an individual basis I find it difficult to fight austerity, because I think it requires

mass mobilization.”

The event, attended by roughly fifty students, follows a motion passed at the Fall 2014 SSMU General Assembly regarding solidarity against austerity. “The aim of SSMU’s campaign right now is to give students resources to mobilize around the issue,” noted Tucker.

Tyler Lawson, AMURE Collective Agreement Coordinator, discussed the impacts of austerity on McGill employees. “The [McGill] administration uses the provincial cuts to justify freezing full-time positions or precariously hiring more casual employees,” Lawson told The Daily. “What’s been happening now is people are working three-month contracts without job security, pensions, or any benefits, fulfilling the responsibilities that otherwise would have been accounted for under full-time positions.”

“The government is choosing to make budget cuts that hurt the most vulnerable and disadvantaged populations.”

Bronwen Tucker, SSMU Campaigns Coordinator In terms of actions taken in response to such budget cuts, AMURE has launched a sexual

Andy Wei | The McGill Daily assault counselling program to support members who have experienced sexual assault, domestic violence, or abuse.

“The government is choosing to make budget cuts that hurt the most vulnerable and disadvantaged populations,” Tucker pointed out.

“Even though it affects students directly through tuition, it affects everyone in so many other ways.”

McGill student and member of the Indigenous Women and Two Spirit Harm Reduction Coalition Molly Swain highlighted the effects that austerity has on the Indigenous community.

“With austerity, you start to see a lot of disturbing colonialist

rhetoric. People start saying, ‘If they’re going to raise tuition, why don’t we just continue expanding resource extraction in the North via Plan Nord, and pay for the tuition using that money?’” Swain explained at her station.

“Continuing the expropriation of Indigenous lands often ruins them for activities such as fishing, hunting, and harvesting,” she added.

“This is also an issue of [...] violence [specifically] against Indigenous women and children,” continued Swain. “There’s been research done that shows that gendered and sexualized violence against women and children tends to go up a lot once areas get

opened for resource extraction, since what ends up happening is these corporations will bring in largely male-dominated and transient populations.”

Although McGill has not taken as much action against austerity as other universities in Quebec, the Activities Night was evidence of ongoing interest in anti-austerity activism among students.

“It’s definitely not an issue that’s going away,” Tucker stressed.

“For this mobilization [...] to continue, we’re trying to use the last bit of the semester to really get students involved before the summer, so it’s something that will definitely still be relevant next year.”

The Daily is always looking for contributors and for contributions!

Want to get involved?

Get in touch with a section editor – emails can be found on page 19.

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Email coordinating@mcgilldaily.com for more details!

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Send your thoughts to letters@mcgilldaily.com – we’ll print it!

News

March 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

FEUQ on the brink of collapse

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SSMU, FAÉCUM discuss formation of new student federation Emmet Livingstone The McGill Daily

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uebec’s largest student federation is in crisis. The Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) is facing the threat of disaffiliation from its largest member association, the Fédération des associations étudiantes du campus de l’Université de Montréal (FAÉCUM), which is planning on creating a new province-wide federation.

In a damning report released in February, FAÉCUM lists a number of issues – including education funding shortfalls, fee hikes, and unpaid internships – on which FEUQ has ineffectually represented student interests.

The report also points to FEUQ’s general inaction over austerity measures as a reason to disaffiliate.

Representatives will vote on disaffiliation at FAÉCUM’s annual convention at the end of the month. A vote in favour will effectively spell the end of FEUQ: FAÉCUM, a founding member of FEUQ, comprises roughly 40,000 students, out of a total of around 100,000 in FEUQ. “FEUQ has been around for 25 years now, and it had its glory days [...] but I think that at this point it’s

kind of run its course and it might be time for something else,” said Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP External Amina Moustaqim-Barrette.

SSMU, who disaffiliated from the now-defunct Table de concertation étudiante du Québec (TaCEQ) student roundtable last year, is not a member association of FEUQ, but Moustaqim-Barrette said she was mandated to act as an observer of the federation.

Created in response to a tuition fee increase in 1989, FEUQ has lobbied the provincial government on matters of student concern ever since. However, some associations began airing serious criticisms during the 2005 Quebec student strikes.

At the time, FEUQ recommended that associations sign an agreement with the provincial government, effectively ending the strike.

Xavier Dandavino, chair of UQAM’s Association des étudiantes et étudiants de la faculté des sciences de l’éducation (ADEESE), commented in French in an email to The Daily that his association held a disaffiliation referendum in 2005, which did not reach quorum.

ADEESE successfully voted to disaffiliate this January, becoming the

fourth association to disaffiliate from FEUQ since 2013. Member associations have increasingly complained of FEUQ’s undemocratic practices, as well as its lack of transparency.

Dandavino told The Daily that it was frequently difficult to access FEUQ documents, and that compared to other associations, ADEESE had little influence.

FEUQ voting is proportional to association membership, meaning that the largest associations – FAÉCUM and the Concordia Student Union (CSU) – can carry votes at the expense of smaller members.

Moustaqim-Barrette echoed this sentiment, and explained that the night before each FEUQ congress, “association members would get together and discuss the motions that would come to the floor” unofficially.

“So CSU would vote with FAÉCUM, and they would have 16 votes.

And basically you can make anything go your way if you have one or both of those [associations] on your side. So it was a lot of back-door politics – like a lot,” she commented.

“House of Cards is the reference that we always make when [we] talk FEUQ,” continued MoustaqimBarrette, before describing the institutional set-up as “problematic.”

She added, “You could see that the smaller associations were incredibly discontent, and rightfully so.”

New federation Not every association is pleased with the potential collapse of the FEUQ, however.

“The FEUQ has its flaws but it has undeniably achieved far more concrete results for students than TaCEQ, ASSÉ [Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante], or CFS [Canadian Federation of Students],” said Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) External Affairs Officer Julien Ouellet in an email.

“FEUQ affiliates and nonmember associations were shocked that FAÉCUM, an otherwise wellresearched organization, would publish a report that is both unfair and of poor quality to trigger a disaffiliation procedure without going through a referendum,” said Ouellet, casting doubt on FAÉCUM’s own democratic practices.

The FAÉCUM report proposes the creation of a new Quebec student federation, and calls on associations from other universities to join it. Last weekend, representatives of several interested associations, including SSMU and PGSS,

met to discuss the option.

Asked whether SSMU would consider joining ASSÉ – the smaller, but more militant Quebec student federation, instead of a FAÉCUMorganized federation – MoustaqimBarrette explained that SSMU did not meet ASSÉ’s requirement for a “sovereign general assembly” due to its online ratification procedure. She explained that she admired ASSÉ for its ability to resist government policies and actions, however.

“I think FEUQ definitely could have used more of [an] ASSÉ touch in the way that it mobilizes its members and [...] I think it lost the ability to do that,” she said.

She clarified, though, that she believed that representation at the provincial level was important, and that in theory, she supported joining a wider federation to better represent student interests.

“People just don’t care, that’s the impression I get all the time,” she continued, referring to the typical McGill student’s interest in provincial politics. “Having this institutionalized for SSMU to be represented on this provincial and national level is so important.”

Both FAÉCUM and FEUQ declined to comment.

Screenshots reveal controversial conversation involving incoming SSMU executives Former presidential candidate Tariq Khan alleges Facebook hacking

Emma Noradounkian The McGill Daily

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cGill students have been in an uproar over screenshots, initially posted on Reddit, of a Facebook conversation leaked on March 18, the first day of the voting period of the Students’ Society of McGill University’s (SSMU) 2015 elections.

The screenshots document an 18-member Facebook conversation that occurred on March 26, 2014, in which participants discussed a potential SSMU Judicial Board (J-Board) petition to invalidate the short-lived 2014-15 presidency of Tariq Khan. This year’s newly elected SSMU President Kareem Ibrahim and VP Internal Lola Baraldi were participants in the conversation.

Incoming VP Finance Zacheriah Houston, also a participant in the Facebook thread, explained that the group was meant to “allow for collaboration on the compilation of evidence [of Khan’s campaign bylaw infractions] and potential preparation of a J-Board petition.”

During the week following this discussion, on April 1, 2014, Khan’s SSMU presidential results were invalidated on the basis of SSMU bylaw infractions committed during his electoral campaign.

The Facebook thread includes the discussion of plans to possibly record a then-upcoming meeting between Ibrahim and Khan, an act legal under Quebec law. However, in said thread, Ibrahim also considers hacking into Khan’s Facebook account during the meeting, which would be illegal under the Criminal Code of Canada. According to Khan, he had asked Ibrahim to meet with him to establish a working relationship for the upcoming year.

Khan told The Daily that his Facebook account was hacked on March 27, 2014, and that he filed a police report at the time in response to this invasion of privacy.

Last Wednesday, the day of the Reddit leaks, Khan made a public statement on Facebook claiming that, after reading the image posted during Ibrahim’s Reddit “Ask me Anything” thread, he could

not deny the parallels between the contents of the conversation and the fact that his account had been hacked the year before.

He will be not be suing Ibrahim, as he claimed he would in a post following the release of the screenshots, nor will he be pressing charges against any of the parties involved in the Facebook chat – though he will be updating the police report he originally filed with the newly released evidence.

Ibrahim told The Daily that the comments he made in the leaked Facebook conversation had not been appropriate. “They definitely were very poor comments on my part,” he said.

“Nonetheless, I don’t feel there’s grounds to assume that I went forward with any of those suggestions or would have acted on them.”

Houston added that the revealing of messages solely from Ibrahim and Baraldi was indicative of a direct attempt to specifically target them in an effort to sway the opinion of voters during the SSMU elections period.

“Of nearly [18] names, all were redacted except for Lola’s and Kareem’s, and only select messages [from the Facebook thread] were posted and taken grossly out of context,” he told The Daily in an email.

In an email to The Daily, Baraldi similarly questioned the timing at which these Facebook messages were revealed on Reddit, calling the post “quite clearly calculated.”

“I am completely fine with this issue resurfacing and addressing concerns because I stand by my actions, but I am against the way in which it is being conducted, as a smear campaign with private and out-of-context screenshots,” Baraldi added.

Ibrahim told The Daily that he suspected that his rival candidate, Alexei Simakov, was involved in the scandal, saying he met with Simakov hours before Khan released his allegations, and their conversation led him to believe that Simakov knew of Khan’s impending post.

However, Simakov denied having had any pre-existing knowledge of the Facebook post of Khan’s

message, arguing that, had he been aware of this information prior to the Facebook post, he “would’ve obviously leaked it beforehand.”

While speaking to The Daily, Khan said, “I know Kareem more than Alexei Simakov. I’ve rarely met with Alexei Simakov – two or three times.”

Simakov did mention that Khan had attempted to associate with his campaign. “Tariq reached out to me with advice, but I declined. He was politically toxic,” Simakov said.

“I don’t want to undermine the importance of bringing issues to light, I think that’s very important, and I think some people did that during the campaign,” Ibrahim explained.

He continued, “People brought up issues such as ‘Farnangate,’ people brought up ‘Blurred Lines.’

These are important to students and I was more than happy to address those. But this effort in the last two days of campaigning, to bring up issues and to blow them out of proportion without me having [hacked Khan’s account] is completely unwarranted.”

Commentary

March 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Factions of the left, unite!

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The divide between identity and class politics is misguided Subhanya Sivajothy The McGill Daily

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ising income inequality across the world suggests that we increasingly need class-based movements. These movements already exist, of course, but they are often criticized by people concerned with identity politics (or individual oppression) for ignoring other inequalities. This rift between class politics and identity politics is unnecessary. Activists from both schools of thought need to put aside their differences and collectively fight to break down all structures that oppress and exploit.

The ‘universal classism’ of traditional Marxism assumes that the proletariat has one uniting interest, and that is its economic exploitation as a class. Class divisions are absolute, because one’s economic status can be easily defined. However, proponents of identity politics argue that class universality is a flawed concept: it ignores the intersection of a myriad of other factors that contribute to varying degrees of social alienation.

Identity politics, then, are tied to the concept that one’s identity, such as one’s gender, race, sexuality, or other attributes, can make one particularly vulnerable to oppression. With the emergence of large-scale political movements in the latter half of the twentieth century, such as the civil rights movement or LGBTQ movement in the U.S., identity politics have come to encompass a large range of political projects that are based on providing support to marginalized groups. The driving force behind identity politics is the need to correct the injustice of the dominant culture’s alienation of marginalized groups, through raising consciousness about their communities. The ultimate aim, though, is to ensure the safety of these groups, and end their marginalization.

However, much debate surrounds what defines ‘identity.’

There are questions on whether focusing on individual oppression in fact isolates people from each other, making it easier to exploit and discriminate.

Class struggle, meanwhile, focuses on economic justice and labour rights for the working class; though there are different definitions for what that means. Previously, the working class referred to the “industrial proletariat, employed in large-scale factory work,” according to Jacobin, a socialist magazine. The term ‘working class’ as it’s used today, though, is broader. It generally refers to people who earn low wages, as well as the cultural signifiers associated with low wages.

Proponents of class-based politics, though, are often criticized for not taking different identities into account. Typically the ‘workingclass member’ that these activists refer to is really a white, workingclass man. And even though they are working-class, white men such as these benefit from structural privileges that many other groups don’t.

Similarly, identity movements have been criticized for disregarding class differences. For instance, second-wave feminism has been criticized as primarily emphasizing the needs of upper middleclass women, and not properly considering class in their analysis of social oppression.

But class can also be analyzed through the lens of identity politics, because class distinctions are often correlated with such distinctions of race, gender, sexuality, and so on.

However, many still see class and identity as separate. This is in part because some intellectuals, like Barbara Ehrenreich, still defend a universal class identity. Along these lines, class analysis is more extensive than identity analysis; class politics dissolve identity issues.

There is divide and distrust be-

tween the two sides of leftist politics, and sometimes it seems that supporting one side is to the detriment of support for the other. This shouldn’t be the case. Class, just like every other type of identity such as race, gender, and sexuality, is interwoven in the web of inequality and oppression. Furthermore, there is value in analyzing economic exploitation in broad strokes.

Each mode of analysis is influential on the other, and trying to combat exploitation and oppression separately is not an effective tactic. Neither class nor identity should take priority over the other.

“It’s important to recognize that these struggles are not in a zerosum relationship with one another,” writes Kevin Carson, a senior fellow at the Center for a Stateless Society, a left-wing think tank. “They are complementary and cumulative. It is not a distraction from the racial and gender justice struggle to put a special focus on the needs of the economically oppressed. It is not a distraction or detraction from the struggle for economic justice

to address the needs of workers of colour or of women, gay, and transgender workers. Just the opposite.

It creates a positive synergy.”

In fact, recognizing both class and identity struggles would be the opposite of a zero-sum relationship; the value in harmonizing both would result in more than a sum of the parts. Both types of politics are complementary because, in effect, they do different things. Class movements mobilize based on people’s relation to the economy, whereas identity movements fight against individualized oppression that stems from social structures.

People can be oppressed both as a member of a class, and a member of an identity group. It’s important that both movements recognize the importance of the other.

Indeed, trying to abolish economic exploitation is futile without acknowledging how that is experienced differently through different identities. Carson refers to the ‘divide and conquer’ strategy used by the ruling class to point out that creating divisions between classes

extent, by reforms in the 1990s.

Unlike what’s suggested in the article, we ought to focus on monuments because they are not just ‘the West’s’ desire to place itself above others, and to seek “self-validation.”

Monuments are common to all cultures: they are in fact our global heritage. Denying their existence relies mostly on our discomfort with how monuments have been treated in the past by Europeans like Fletcher.

The flaw of earlier generations, like Bannister Fletcher’s, was to simply see the styles of history as one tree that was theirs: Europe. We need not fall into this trap if, thanks to our modern awareness of history in other parts of the world, our tastes have likewise been broadened.

If we go on being afraid of real differences in architectural masterpieces versus architectural necessities, we will continue to cast it as an

ongoing battle between our social liberties and the prejudices of bigoted Eurocentrics. Forced to look at architecture forever as the history of how to make things, we will slowly forget its historical artistry.

My defiant hope, in fact, is that European architecture continues to dominate McGill’s campus. In no political way am I harangued by spires or entablatures on the Arts building, and “the menagerie of im-

Jonathan Reid | The McGill Daily and identities only weakens dissent to the status quo. Presenting a unified front has long been a problem on the left, but doing so is crucial; otherwise, groups become atomized, and the ability to affect change through collective actions is weakened. To build true solidarity that has power, all those who are disadvantaged must be considered. Strengthening the power of those who are the most oppressed – whether economically or individually – will strengthen collective power as a whole.

Identity politics cannot replace class politics, and vice versa. It is useless to deny that identity is interlaced with class implications, or that class is interlaced with identity implications. Instead of wasting time debating the value of one form of politics over another, activists from both sides should focus on uniting to combat their common enemy.

Subhanya Sivajothy is a U2 Biology and English Literature student.

To reach her, please email subhanya@gmail.com.

Letters

Submit your own: letters@mcgilldaily.com The problem of modern revisionism I had the unsettling experience of reading Samer Richani’s “Beyond Eurocentrism: the slow decay of academic colonization in McGill’s School of Architecture” (January 26, Features, page 13). It showed that there had been a prejudice to our school’s architectural history for decades – a largely unchallenged Eurocentrism, only removed, to a large

ported styles of the buildings on this campus” do not roil my sensibilities of justice. I simply don’t see, or fear to see, through its monocular “lens of Eurocentricity and its ubiquitous hegemony.” I feel oppressed only by a few ugly crenellations here and there, and the words of a few historical demolitionists.

—Benjamin Cohen-Murison, U3 English and History

Special Issue:

Race

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The Race Issue

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elcome to The Daily’s special issue on race. This issue aims to facilitate a diverse dialogue about race within the McGill and Montreal communities. With it, we hope to create a space for voices to overcome the media’s silence on race – by discussing it through lived experience, critiquing racialized oppression, and celebrating resistance and diversity.

This, of course, is an imperfect attempt at doing so. In publishing this issue, we understand that it is by no means representative of all groups on campus: The Daily, as a historically majority-white institution, is not yet a space that can be completely representative without being tokenizing. Nor has the process of putting together this issue been a smooth one. We quickly realized after pitching this issue that our initial approach failed to acknowledge our own power dynamics as a majority-white editorial board. Upon this realization, we tried to acknowledge and understand our shortcomings, and sought help from other student organizations. Their input and dedication are what made this a far stronger publication than what we could have produced on our own.

Race is an issue that is not often openly discussed at McGill, within the larger Montreal community, or at The Daily. When it does come into conversation, people tend to discuss race in a negative way – often disregarding the lived experiences of racialized people.

This is even more the case in both mainstream and alternative me-

dia – including The Daily – where racial diversity is sorely lacking.

But it isn’t the responsibility of racialized people and groups to bring up racial inequities – it’s everyone’s. Diversity in racial identity, ultimately, is something to be celebrated, even if student conversations about race tend to be more homogenous in their subjects.

This issue, while it aims to open up space for just that kind of celebration, is not without flaws. There were limitations in the ways in which we reached out to contributors, as we mainly used our normal channels of communication. Furthermore, we only reached out to student groups we were already aware of, and did so in a way that could be considered tokenizing. We also recognize that editing – one of the most decisive processes in media creation – is riddled with power dynamics, and that the editors at The Daily are largely white.

Many groups were reticent to work with us on this issue, and understandably so: The Daily lacks experience, and often maturity, in both writing about race and providing a platform for it.

Despite all of these shortcomings, we hope that this dialogue will persist beyond this issue. We are enormously grateful to the groups and people who helped out with the race issue and made it possible.

We welcome any feedback that you, as a reader, might have. Shoot us an email at community@mcgilldaily.com if you’d like to express private concerns, and send us a letter at letters@mcgilldaily.com if you’d like to publish your thoughts.

Table of Contents Solidarity across diasporas 3 The media’s distortion of East Asian sexuality

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Advice for a younger self 5 Celebrating beauty and hair 6 The problem with white feminism 8 Indigenous resistance for the environment

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A conversation with Kosisochukwu Nnebe

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Investigating faculty and race at McGill

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A search for identity 12

Additional online content online-only multimedia content and additional articles, as well as all pieces found in this pullout, are available at

mcgilldaily.com/race

mcgilldaily.com/race

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Creating communities of solidarity Solidarity is more than just a buzzword written by Frances Calingo

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arginalized communities, such as those formed in the wake of diaspora, are often internally fractured and artificially removed from one another. While it can be hard to point to one all-encompassing reason for division, a fair amount of fracture can be attributed to the violence of the colonial project. Colonial powers created hierarchies among and between people, often relying on pre-existing ethnic tensions to strengthen rule. These hierarchies ranked things like skin colour, sexuality, and class. The ultimate objective was to utilize ‘divide and conquer’ rhetoric: allowing some subjects to experience benefits because of their perceived likeness to the colonizers, while harshly denying basic rights to other subjects because of their essentialized difference. The phenomenon of fracturing is not subconscious. Rather, it is an intentionallyimplemented used tool to uphold colonial rule.

This history is simplistic, and obviously does not account for the entirety of the story. While divisions may or may not have existed before, the intense violence and aftermath of the colonial project exacerbated differences and constructed more points of tension.

White supremacy, the system colonialism continues to use to justify violence, benefits from fractures among and within communities. White supremacist fracturing is perpetuated by everything from the ‘model minority’ myth, which is used to erase the racism and whitewashing experienced within communities, such as the Asian American and Asian Canadian communities; to capitalist framing of rights and empowerment as finite resources in a zero-sum game. These myths are used to put marginalized communities into competition with one another and disregard any potential for intersectional marginalization or oppression on the basis of multiple identity features such as race, gender identity, class, ability, or sexual orientation. When combined, these myths squash resistance movements by negating the possibility of communities of solidarity.

What is solidarity?

Solidarity is tricky, because it is seems intuitive yet remains curiously elusive. Current discourse frames solidarity more as a buzzword than as a fully fledged concept, which makes it harder to understand what it means and how it manifests in our communities.

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Alice Shen explain it in the simplest terms possible, solidarity is similar to support and allyship. All of these things – solidarity, support, and allyship – involve an intention to unite bodies, and are motivated by a strong sense of compassion. Additionally, all of these forces speak to the power of community and the strength of community-based organizing.

However, solidarity differs from support and allyship in fundamental and essential ways. bell hooks conceptualizes the distinction between solidarity and support as something that is ongoing versus something that can be given or withdrawn at any time. In addition, having been in a number of support circles, I’ve noticed that there tends to be a power differential, in that the person giving ‘support’ is seen as having power over the person requiring support.

Solidarity also differs from allyship.

While allyship can be incredibly impactful, it still tends to be based on power differentials. An ‘ally’ is someone in a position of relative privilege who may not personally relate to the struggle at hand, but wishes to show compassion and support. Even the most well-informed and best-intentioned ally can unwittingly cause harm by not acknowledging the power that they hold over the people they wish to help.

If support and

allyship can be defined as forms of sympathy, solidarity can then be defined as empathy. It usually involves marginalized bodies and groups. While there is recognition that bodies and groups don’t necessarily experience harm or violence in the same way, there is also a sense of affinity based on shared experiences of institutional harm.

Solidarity matters because it offers us an alternative to ‘colour-blind’ narratives. Solidarity matters because it undermines constructions of division.

Solidarity matters because it allows us to build communities based on similarity as opposed to difference (i.e., ‘we can both relate to being Othered,’ as opposed to ‘you are the Other and I am the Self ’).

What would a community of solidarity look like?

The nice thing about solidarity is that it is already a tangible phenomenon in place. We’ve seen it in reactions to the Ferguson protests, as spaces were created to forge relationships and discuss impactful global change. Recently, representatives from the Black Lives Matter movement joined a ten-day trip with the Dream Defenders to foster linkages with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and Israel.

There has been similar organizing within parts of the Asian American community, including a photo campaign to stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

While the potential for crosscommunity organizing is incredible, a lot of the labour of building a community of solidarity can be done on an individual basis. As a marginalized body, my process of solidarity begins with listening. We need to work to fully listen to and validate the concerns of other marginalized bodies, because it provides space for people to articulate their experiences of structurally-enacted violence. When people have the language to recall their experience, they have an arsenal that they can use to call out harmful behavior when it happens. Additionally, fostering an environment where people feel safe and heard restores legitimacy to their lived experience. When people feel like their perspectives are legitimate, it allows them to heal from the harm done by forces that actively try to convince them that they fabricated their experiences.

Another way that we can work to ensure solidarity is through the power of relationships. I firmly believe that relationships are the capital that motivate social change.

Being in spaces where marginalized bodies can understand, respect, and celebrate one another is important because it empowers individuals and empowers communities. Additionally, these spaces serve as places of selfcare and collective care, which are essential when taking on the labour of reducing harm and resisting harmful systems.

These suggestions may be simplistic, but I do not feel that they are fixed. One of the most exciting things about working to build a community of solidarity is that there’s always room for improvement, always space for new information. While I do not have a starry-eyed, idyllic conception of a world free from structural harm (there’s always work to be done), I find a lot of hope in models of care and solidarity.

4 mcgilldaily.com/race

Stop judging me through your white male gaze!

The media’s distortion of East Asian sexuality written by Isabel Lee

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....he American and Canadian media have always treated East Asian people unfairly.

We have been the butt of many unfunny jokes, whether they’re about the variety of food that we eat, the rich cultures to which we belong, the way that we look, or our languages. We have always been portrayed as cringeworthy stereotypes that force us to adopt internalized racism or into silence.

Despite the myriad problems surrounding East Asian representation in white-dominated media, one of the most harmful portrayals regards sexuality.

Asian women are often portrayed as being hypersexualized, while Asian men are asexualized. Asian women are seen as sexy props that don’t speak or exercise thought, but rather, exist to fulfill exotic and Orientalist white male fantasies. On the other hand, Asian male sexuality is completely ignored and degraded. Asian men are almost never portrayed as being sexy or strong or romantically-capable beings, but are instead relegated to the world of being virginal and awkwardly intelligent.

Lucy Liu’s character Alex in Charlie’s Angels is an example of Asian women being fantastically oversexualized. She plays a sexy ninja who specializes in martial arts to fight bad guys in this action thriller movie. The ‘Dragon Lady’ trope of Liu’s character is an example of clear misrepresentation in which the producers of the film have taken certain elements of Asian culture that they find appealing and distorted them to please white male fantasies.

In creating this character, the filmmakers have hugely satirized and misconstrued the culture of a group that is already

quite underrepresented in Hollywood strictly for the purpose of mainstream entertainment.

This implies that the ways in which people in the media are typically portrayed are not only sexist, but also racist.

The white male gaze, or the idea that that the audience experiences media through the lens of white heterosexual men because they are able to influence and control how media is produced, skews the way that Asian men and women are shown because we represent something unfamiliar and foreign. This kind of racism hides from judgement because it’s usually packaged as off-colour or controversial humour. Racism in the U.S. and Canada has evolved in such an insidious and adaptive way that we laugh at the expense of others, without knowing that what we’re doing is implicitly propping up racist structures.

There’s nothing funny about families having to abandon everything they know to take a chance and move to another continent, to learn a new language and lifestyle, to find a job to support their family, and to try to stay sane at the same time. Jokes about Korean people owning convenience stores or laundromats are unfunny and uncreative – and to be honest, untrue. Humour and entertainment can be used as silencing mechanisms when those who are in positions of power and privilege make light of the hardships of those who are historically oppressed and marginalized.

Racism has evolved to enforce new and creative means of punishing those who do not belong to the dominant white culture. These means are more subtle and insidious than historically racist structures, such as the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 (otherwise known as the Chinese Exclusion Act), which banned most Chinese immigrants from entering Canada. These new yet equally harmful ways of punishment are passive on a medium to which everyone has access: TV and film.

This historical racism has fed American fears of East Asian expansion into business and culture, and manifests by cutting down Asian identities in the U.S. and Canada. They’re so afraid of our booming economies, advanced technology, and rich culture and food, that they portray us as dehumanized satire for their own entertainment.

Tropes have not improved, because I still see Asian folks being portrayed as dehumanized, alien characters whose only purpose is to serve as comic relief.

For example, in the movie Pitch Perfect, Hana Mae Lee plays the character Lilly Okanakamura, a bizarre girl who rarely speaks throughout the whole film, and who only opens her mouth to say things like, “I set fires to feel joy,” and “I was born with gills like a fish!” She also makes snow angels in her friend’s vomit, showing us that the makers of Pitch Perfect think that Asian people don’t even deserve to speak or act like normal human beings.

Even ‘progressive’ shows like Community depict Asian people as nonhuman caricatures. Ken Jeong’s beloved Ben Chang is shown as an nutty Spanish teacher who is constantly bullied by the main cast. When he ends up having sex with Shirley, one of the main characters, in a moment of desperation, everyone reacts in a disgusted manner, and it’s clear that she regrets the act. Although Community may be trying to expose the very stereotype that it uses by giving Jeong’s character a humanizing storyline in later seasons, it’s extremely harmful to depict Asian male sexuality as disgusting and repulsive. Also, the trend of naming Asian characters ‘Chang’ is terrifying, as the latter sounds like the racial slur ‘ching chong.’

Showing complex, multifaceted Asian characters should be the norm, not the exception, but we shouldn’t just be satisfied when Asian people are simply depicted as human beings.

Underrepresentation is still a huge issue and shouldn’t be forgotten; Alison Brie’s character Diane Nguyen

Alice Shen

on BoJack Horseman – an animated TV show – is a stellar example of this.

Although she is a groundbreaking character because she gets to be a real, complex person who isn’t oversexualized or undersocialized as an Asian woman, she is still voiced by a prominent white actor. This is insulting considering the various talented Asian actors in Hollywood that could have been hired.

Although Nguyen is witty, smart, cool, and awkward all at once, and we get to see her experience self-discovery, we still face the problem of underrepresentation. It’s difficult to stereotype or generalize Nguyen’s complexity, but the fact remains that Asian actors are not empowered because they are not allowed to play diverse roles or even participate in writing their own characters.

The dichotomy between the hypersexualization and asexualization of East Asian people, regardless of what gender identity they identify with, is an arbitrary illusion created by white-dominated media. Asian women are not necessarily sexy ninjas or Japanese dolls who can’t speak English, and Asian men are not nerds who lack social skills or awkward boys who have never been kissed. The media must stop forcing these harmful stereotypes on us.

It must be noted that Asian women and men who choose to adopt these sexual identities should not be shamed for it. Instead, the onus should be on those who are in positions of power, and who force these sexual identities upon people without their consent, to realize the harms they are creating. There is nothing wrong with choosing to be a hypersexual or asexual person, but we must be cognizant of the element of consent and power that exists.

Still, agency is the most important factor in empowering people who have otherwise not been able to control their own narrative.

Allowing Asian people to realize their own sexual identities directly combats these stereotypes and allows others to portray us as human beings with complex diversity. Is it too much to ask to be treated like a real person?

mcgilldaily.com/race

Mali Foster

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Back To t

Celebrating our inHAIR itance w

*Disclaimer: These quotes were randomly placed on the page a

written and Photographed

“For so many years, we were told that only white people were beautiful, only stra could – to straighten their hair, lighten their skin – to look as much like white wom

The natural hair movement: a history “I realized that I didn’t need to go through so much pain of using relaxers [...] it burned my scalp [...] only to have this kind of flat, lifeless sort of hair on my head [...] it didn’t feel real.”

The sixties marked the beginning of the first natural hair movement, wh by hair picks and natural curls. The goal of the movement was not only to g of Black hair in its natural state, but also to repel the colonial belief that Blac Moreover, wearing natural hair meant embracing the connection to on diaspora. The afro became a symbol of pride and empowerment. However, replaced with increasingly popular new hair trends, including permed style

The movement and industry

The Black hair industry is a hugely underestimated m second wave of the natural hair movement. From 2008 to jor hair companies. Abisara Machold, owner of the Montr clientele are being taken very, very seriously for the first t is a chance for the Black community in general to awaken of funding large hair companies that tend to be white- or

Hair politics and empowerment

Machold explains that natural hair is “highly politicized” because “it’s mixed contexts, the hair still survives perhaps more than the melanin. It is Over the years, the idea of beauty has lost its sense of being ‘in the eye eyes. As a result, Black people were and are taught to hate their hair not o unfortunately, still stigmatized.

Machold says that many of her clients have been treated unjustly beca job last year in the Old Port because her boss feared she would “scare custo highlight why the natural hair movement is still needed today.

The movement continues to question ‘conventional’ ideas. Wearing na people shouldn’t fear going natural – it is an individual decision.

According to Machold, “the whole journey to become natural is a journ etal standards of beauty in order to reconstruct and redefine what you con [...] not as a mistake, not as a flaw, not as something you have to hide and cor

Beauty at McGill “I like my hair because growing up, my hair [was] a big representati[on] of my dad’s side of the family, and I do not have many links with him, so my hair is the only thing that links me to him.”

“I wanted to get away from the Western beauty standards of having long, straight hair, and preferred being who I am and owning my own style.”

Some Black students at McGill have embraced natu status quo, embrace their identity, or enjoy their differe and textures, and we are excited to celebrate this beauty

“I am experiencing self-acceptanc gain confidence and explore myself went from hating my hair to accep

the Roots

with the natural hair movement

and are not necessarily associated with the pictured individuals.

by Anne-Sophie Tzeuton

aight hair, light eyes, light skin were beautiful, so Black women would try all they men. But this has changed because Black people are aware [...] Isn’t it beautiful?”

– Kathleen Cleaver

hen hair relaxers and pressing combs were tossed and replaced get rid of these oppressive tools, which symbolized the shame ck people and their natural features were inherently flawed. ne’s African ancestors and with Black people throughout the , at the onset of the eighties the movement began to dissipate, es such as the Jheri curl or the Wave Nouveau.

“Go with whatever hairstyle, as long as it is a personal choice and you are not trying to erase what makes you YOU to fit in, or look like a white person. Then do you booboo!”

multi-billion dollar market that has taken a big hit in recent years due to the 2013, sales of chemical hair relaxers decreased by 26 per cent, alarming mareal natural hair salon InHAIRitance, explains, “Black consumerism, Black time because of those huge numbers dropping.” Machold stresses that “this n and be aware of the power of [their] consumption.” She adds that instead Asian-owned, community investment and empowerment need to occur.

s one of the signifiers you can [see regarding] ethnicity. So even in very s our ancestry, it represents the motherland.” e of the beholder,’ tending to be restricted to the holder of Westernized only by their own community but by the whole world. Natural hair is,

ause of their natural hair, and recounts a story where a woman lost her omers away” after refusing to “straighten her hair.” Anecdotes like these

atural hair is a personal choice that should be available to everyone, and

ney to yourself, and a journey to self-love.” Dismantling perceived socinsider beautiful is very powerful, because “you are considering yourself rrect, but as a gift. [....] And that changes your whole perspective on life.”

ural hair, whether to make a statement, uproot the ences. They come in a multitude of shapes, origins, y and be inspired by their personal experiences!

“My history teacher told me my hair was against school rules.

Like, really?”

ce, and my hair has enabled me to f. I am not completely there yet, but I pting it, and I think it is a big step.”

“I would see all of these beautiful Black women rocking bald [heads] and I thought ‘Wow! This is so fierce, this is so empowering, why can’t it be me?’ […] Fuck what people say, you know, I felt like it was beautiful.”

More photos can be found online at mcgilldaily.com/race.

“You need to feel it to rock it.”

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We share the same gender but not the same pain

Written by SONIA LARBI -AÏSSA

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t this year’s Oscars, Patricia Arquette made a call to action to fight against the gender wage gap.

While she was widely applauded for her speech, she also inadvertently summed up ‘white feminism’ perfectly. A privileged white woman implores ‘everybody else’ to help women get equal pay because, as she said, “It’s time for all the women in America, and all the men who love women, and all the gay people and people of colour we’ve all fought for, to fight for us now.”

Arquette used the oft-repeated statistic that women earn only 77 cents for every dollar men make, a statistic that overlooks the 64 cents Black women earn for every dollar a white man makes and the 53 cents Latino women earn.

Arquette’s entitlement smacks women of colour in the face with her erasure of those who face more than just gender bias, especially when assuming that they should work for white women to close the wage gap. What makes this brief outburst especially harmful is the pervasiveness of her platform and the lack of recognition of the harm done. Millions of women witnessed her short manifesto and Meryl Streep’s en-

suing fist pump. But the dissenting voices of womanists – Black women who reject the moniker “feminist” for its historically erasing properties – and other WoC are lucky to get even a fraction of the visibility when they try to publicly respond.

There are some exceptions. After #yesallwomen trended on Twitter in 2014 – sharing stories of misogyny and sexual harassment – intersectional feminist and Black woman Mikki Kendall created the hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen, pointing out how whitewashed mainstream feminism marginalizes women of colour. In the space of a morning, it became the most popular hashtag in the U.S.. The hashtag was a pointed response to tweets by a particularly odious self-ascribed male ‘feminist,’ but soon morphed into an awareness campaign of white feminism’s current and historical exclusion of women of colour. For some, this hashtag was their first exposure to the rarely-recognized privilege inherent in the increasingly in-vogue white, middle-class feminism. For many others, the hashtag was their first visible platform.

Encouragingly, intersectional feminism is slowly gaining popularity and visibility, and critiques of white feminism are growing more influential. Orange is the New Black boasts a massive following, but so does Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, a New York Times bestseller, which addresses the problematic white feminism in the show. Gay notes that while the series increases the visibility of minority women simply by their presence, the entire plot (excluding flashbacks) derives from protagonist Piper Chapman’s white, up-

Alice Zhao per-middle class perspective. Gay argues that the adaptation of Piper Kerman’s novel, instead of a jail memoir written by a woman of colour, allows privileged, white viewers to approach the racial and socioeconomic issues in the show from a ‘relatable’ point of view. The show’s enormous popularity with white, middle-class America, in that sense, becomes just as problematic as the content itself.

The sole redeeming quality of Orange is the New Black, according to Gay, is its casting of Laverne Cox, a trans woman, to play Sophia Burset.

White feminists need to take a backseat and allow women of colour the space to discuss their own experiences. In response to Patricia Arquette, Kendall wrote on her blog, hoodfeminism: Life at the Intersection: “If your calls for solidarity aren’t informed, inclusive, and intentional in focusing on ending inequality for everyone then all you’re doing is demanding that you be supported in your quest to be an equal oppressor.” Or rather, as Flavia Dzodan of Tiger Beatdown put it, “My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.”

DecolonizING the environment indigenous sovereignty is tied to environmental justice

Written by Sami Fuller

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s climate change continues to accelerate in a world that is warming at an alarming rate, individuals, organizations, and governments alike are mobilizing to adapt to the increasingly precarious situation. In the Canadian context, the predicaments are plenty: Canada’s diverse array of ecosystems and regional climates face a wide range of issues, both natural and human-made. This is of particular importance to many Indigenous communities, as activities such as mining and tar sands often take place on their land without their explicit consent, or share in the profit.

For many Indigenous communities, environmental

protection is thus closely intertwined with the fight for self-determination.

According to the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources, almost 80 per cent of Indigenous communities live in forested areas – highlighting the importance of stopping further deforestation. Despite the fact that Indigenous peoples are the fastest growing population segment in Canada, half of Indigenous children are living in poverty – triple the national average. With this in mind, it becomes clear that the environmental movement within these communities is inseparable from the larger struggle to achieve social equality with other Canadians.

The background for Indigenous environmental movements differs from mainstream environmental movements, as they are deeply linked to decolonization. Leesee Papatsie, an Inuit activist from Nunavut, explained to The Daily that many of the challenges Inuit face today are due to the “legacy

of colonization, [because] Inuit cannot [live] as their ancestors did.” She explained that due to elements of Canada’s colonial past, such as the permanent settlements and residential schools, “not everyone hunts up here anymore. Hunting is a skill, and not every[one] has that anymore.” Hence, for many Inuit, sustainable living relies on the decolonization of Indigenous lands and practices.

Not only is the motivation different for many Indigenous environmental movements, but also, the way in which some movements establish themselves varies. Papatsie highlighted, for example, that protesting is not a common practice for Inuit. “There is not even a word [for it] in Inuqtituq.”

Another large difference lies with Indigenous reliance on treaties. While treaties are mutual agreements between Indigenous people and settlers, it is usually the Indigenous people who have to fight for them to be respected, and not the settlers. In recent years, Indigenous groups have put significant effort into fighting Canadian le-

gislation that has infringed on previous treaties and agreements between the government and Indigenous communities. The movement Idle No More, for instance, seeks to “repeal provisions of Bill C-45 (including changes to the Indian Act and Navigable Waters Protection Act, which infringe on environmental protections, Indigenous, and treaty rights),” according to their Facebook page. Additionally, the movement fights for further democratization of the Canadian parliamentary process, through creating measures such as more proportional representation and legislation that restricts corporate interests.

Dan Parker, a Brazilian rapper and climate justice activist from Ontario, noted at a panel that recently took place at McGill that “Indigenous groups are on the forefront of the environmental movement because Indigenous sovereignty is tied up with environmental justice.” Indigenous groups are faced with what many consider an intersectional fight for the preservation of ways of life that have been present in their societies for generations.

mcgilldaily.com/race

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Celebrating Resistance with Art kosisochukwu nnebe on visualizing race and gender politics Compiled By Rackeb Tesfaye and Rosie Long Decter

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osisochukwu Nnebe is a Nigerian Canadian artist who has made a name for herself in the Montreal scene. With pieces currently on display in the U.S., Nnebe regularly speaks on local art panels and conferences, sharing her vision with the Montreal community. In her spare time, she somehow also manages to pursue a degree in Economics and International Development Studies (IDS) at McGill. Her art explores the intersection of race, gender, and class, and in doing so exemplifies the intersection of self-expression and political resistance. Nnebe invited The Daily into her home/studio to talk about how she approaches these intersections through her multimedia project Coloured Conversations.

McGill Daily (MD): So, can you tell me what Coloured Conversations is?

Kosisochukwu Nnebe (KN): Coloured Conversations is something I started in July 2013. Initially, what it was supposed to be was a platform for collaborations that revolved around race and art.

[But this year I] decided that what I wanted to do with Coloured Conversations was to kind of merge my love for visual arts practice with my love for critical race theory. I really wanted to combine theory with art. I wanted to focus on exhibitions, art projects, collaborations, but at the same time [still] participate in conferences, give workshops, and give presentations on the subject of race, gender, [and] class. I really wanted to bring all of that together.

MD: How did your experience as a Black woman at McGill shape your artistic endeavours, this journey that you’re on right now?

KN: So in my first year of university, I was very excited. I knew exactly what I wanted my first year at McGill to be like – it was supposed to be like all my other friends’ experiences. [...] But then, as soon as I got [to McGill] all I could feel was the whiteness and the privilege. From the getgo I felt excluded.

I tried extremely hard to kind of fit into that mould, and to be able to participate in the activities, things like going to a club and being able to pay for a cab. To anyone who’s from that kind of background where your parents pay for everything, it’s totally fine, but when you’re paying for it, it’s totally different. Or things like my friends constantly hooking up with all these different guys, and me not being able to find anyone who was interested in me – just all these [moments] piling up, and I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it. There was a lot of confusion. Then at some point I realized a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was a Black woman at McGill, and, because of that, my experiences would not be the same as my friends’.

Realizing that that was in part the reason why I wasn’t [having] the experience I had expected caused me to really look into the issue of race. It pushed me toward

artwork, actually, because the best way for me to really refocus on myself and really ask myself those questions was through art. So I started to find images of Black beauties, and I just felt like this impulse to draw them, to paint them.

[My McGill experience] was the catalyst, basically; it was that feeling of not being welcomed, and needing to create your own space, needing to represent yourself in a different way. Because I can’t control how others can perceive me, but I can control how I perceive myself.

MD: Other people of colour are still feeling the exact same way. Do you feel that your art speaks to them on the same level? What has been the reception from the community?

KN: It’s been a really great reception.

In terms of my artwork, the inspiration is 100 per cent personal. I’m hoping that other people get inspired by it, but at the end of the day, whatever I create, I create out of a personal need. I’m speaking to myself, I’m speaking to five-year-old Kosi, I’m speaking to 11-year-old Kosi, I’m speaking to 15-year-old Kosi, and I’m going back and I’m seeing all of the things I wish I had seen, and I’m creating it myself. So it’s an extremely personal journey, but at the same time I felt as if there was a lot that could be shared. If I’m talking about trying to inspire my younger self, then at the same time I can maybe try to inspire other people.

It has gotten a really good reception because in the same way that I was starved for that kind of representation, I feel as if a lot of other people are as well, and they’ve really responded well to it. [But] there are some things in terms of [that need for representation] that are kind of iffy. I remember I removed the description for [my first series] “Eze Nwanyi [Queen of Women]” because I knew it wasn’t something I wanted to say anymore. Art should be what we use to critique. So I’m not gonna be here, promoting work that says that the African woman should be refined, queenly, because it says a lot about what she shouldn’t be. It’s conducive to an ostracization of other women.

MD: A lot of the time when we talk about race it’s very negative. Your work is centred around the celebration of resistance, and the way you perceive, or want to perceive yourself. Why did you want to focus on celebrating that resistance?

KN: I’m going to draw this back to bell hooks. bell hooks says that Black love, or loving Blackness, is the most revolutionary tool that we have. I think that’s extremely true because when we talk about Blackness there’s this need to kind of centre the narrative on Blackness as pathology, as something to come to terms with, as something that’s bad, like, ‘yeah, we’re working on it’ – it’s never something to be loved.

I remember reading some of bell hooks’ work and stopping and being like, why do I love being Black? And I couldn’t answer, because I never thought about it that way. Me and Blackness was always something I had to come to terms with.

You’re Black, deal with it. It’s never loving.

What is there to love?

Every time we’re talking about Blackness as pathology we’re fixating on whiteness, [and] if we’re gonna talk about it in that way, then Blackness was something that was created by white people to validate themselves. They will always have a bottom and that bottom is Black.

So if we can just shift that paradigm and talk about Blackness as something that is loved, that is beautiful, that we can learn from, then it can actually create something

Kosi Nnebe’s studio. new. So more and more I’m trying to inspire myself from her words.

MD: So what’s this next piece that you’re working on?

KN: It’s technically for Black History Month but it’s taking place in April. It’s a group exhibit, there are about eight artists in all, and we were given the theme of Oliver Jones. Oliver Jones is a jazz pianist, he grew up in Montreal in Little Burgundy, and he’s very celebrated – a little less famous than Oscar Peterson.

So I did my research, I found out that he made a trip to Nigeria that was filmed by the National Film Board that I [could] rent and watch. At the same time, I was also reading some of Stuart Hall’s work on the diaspora, and on culture as something that’s becoming and never fixed. He talks about la présence Africaine, and Africa as something that we can never quite go back to. It’s kind of like it’s constantly changing; we bring a part of it back with us and we recreate it wherever we are.

When [Jones] was in Nigeria you can see this sense of familiarity; the chiefs of the village welcome him and he says ‘thank you, I’m glad to be back.’ It’s just that idea of going back to your roots. There’s this one point where you see something called the talking drums – these small drums with two faces. You can speak with it, and when the slaves were taken from West Africa to wherever they were, to the Caribbean

for example, they recreated it using materials that they found. They used it as a form of resistance. Because in the same way that you can communicate between villages you can communicate between plantations, [and so] it was banned.

So what I’m doing is creating a miniature piano, and the legs are going to be the talking drums, and the rest is just going to be wood, and then the interior is going to be the painting. It’s going to be titled

Rackeb Tesfaye The Bone Memory of Oliver Jones, and it’s really just going back to that experience of him in Nigeria. It will say that you may have been there only for that time period, but this has always informed your music – it has been with you from the very get-go and it is always going to be the basis of your work.

MD: So what would you say is the biggest lesson you’ve learned from your journey?

KN: That is a good question. One lesson was that I’m enough, and that has to go back again to the reason why I started – [being] in a place of not feeling sure if I was enough, and feeling excluded, feeling like a lot of bad emotions. Really understanding that I’m enough – I needed that and that’s a much more personal thing.

Another lesson was always be critical. A third lesson would be always challenge yourself. If you’re not doubting yourself, you’re not doing it right either.

– This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Head to mcgilldaily.com/race to see the art of Coloured Conversations and to read about the artist’s favourite pieces.

10 mcgilldaily.com/race

NO MORE EXCUSES

Investigating the lack of equity at McGill and how faculty staff experience race Written By Niyousha Bastani And Rackeb Tesfaye

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.t is no secret that racialized minorities are sorely underrepresented on McGill’s campus.

This lack of representation is strikingly visible within the composition of academic staff at McGill, where racialized pepole are outliers in a homogenous environment. This is a visible reality that is not only impossible to miss within classrooms at McGill, but it is also one that is supported by statistics.

In 2011, a report on the issue of diversity and equity was released by a task force created in 2009 under the purview of former principal Heather MunroeBlum in response to the university’s lack of diversity. The report’s first recommendation called on the University “to demonstrate a firm commitment to the recruitment, retention, and professional development of diverse and excellent academic staff, administrative and support staff, and students.” That same year, a report on employment equity showed that an underwhelming percentage of staff self-identified as a ‘visible minority,’ ‘ethnic minority,’ or ‘Aboriginal.’

Yet to this day, four years later,

D

uring this investigation, many of the academic staff interviewed requested to speak off the record, with some even declining nterviews. This makes it clear that there is a vicious cycle of silence and a fear of jeopardizing one’s livelihood by talking openly about race at McGill. Concerted efforts need to be put into creating a safe and open environment.

It should be noted that professors interviewed spoke to their personal experiences, and their statements should not be taken as the sentiments of all racialized faculty members. Listening to the lived experiences of McGill’s academic staff is the first step to breaking the silence.

“My experience differs” “It’s definitely been an isolating experience coming to McGill,” said Allan Downey, academic associate in Indigenous Studies at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, when talking about how race has influenced his experience at McGill. “Currently there are no Indigenous tenure-track faculty members here. There are only a couple of us that are in limited term positions.”

Charmaine Nelson, an associate professor in Art History, echoed this sentiment. “Of course my experience differs, so my experience, as a Black woman, reflects then the way that I am marginalized both in terms of sexism and racism.”

Nelson explained that her iden-

these statistics remain largely unchanged, and in some cases have even regressed.

The Daily obtained an unpublished report compiled by the Social Equity and Diversity Education (SEDE) office in 2014 which indicates that of McGill’s total academic staff, only 0.18 per cent identify as ‘Aboriginal,’ 9.2 per cent as a ‘visible minority,’ and 14.7 per cent as an ‘ethnic minority.’ Of McGill’s tenure-track professors, only 25.5 per cent identified with at least one of these three designated groups.

The worst-performing faculties in terms of tenure-track professors who identified as a ‘visible minority,’ ‘ethnic minority,’ or ‘Aboriginal,’ include the Faculty of Education (19.5 per cent) and the Faculty of Arts (22.8 per cent), yet similar numbers can be seen in the majority of faculties.

The aforementioned 2011 report led to the creation of the position of Associate Provost (Policies, Procedures & Equity), an expansion of Lydia White’s former role as Associate Provost (Policies and Procedures). Other than the rebranding of the role and the collection of aggregate data regarding staff representation, there have been few other tangible advancements. Although SEDE has done a small amount of Employment Equity training with the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Law (only at each faculty’s re-

quest), McGill has yet to officially implement such proactive measures across all its faculties. When asked about this in an interview with The Daily, Associate Provost (Policies, Procedures & Equity) Lydia White said, “That is a matter of money in the end, which currently is not available. A real education drive in all departments […] would be great but it isn’t financially feasible right now.”

When asked for details about concrete advances on McGill’s part since 2011, White said she recognized that there is a gap between “the recognition of the problem and the implementation of solutions.” She added that “there is a lot of education work going on by certain deans,” and continued to say that the administration hoped that the drive for education and awareness “would be filtered down to the units within the faculty.” She did not clarify further on how this process would work.

“Particularly problematic” The need for equity is made clear by the several human rights complaints filed against the University in recent years on the basis of racial discrimination. Racial barriers extend beyond hiring practices into the work environment. The Joint Board-Senate Committee on Equity –

the main body that deals with equity in University governance – recently established an ad-hoc working group to investigate whether systemic bias affects academic staff at McGill, especially with regards to reappointment, promotion, and tenure, as well as work environment.

When The Daily reached out to the working group for comment, members refused to answer questions on whether they believed that their research and report will be followed through with tangible action by the administration. Additionally, when asked for an interview to address their lived experiences as professors of colour at McGill, members agreed it would be a conflict of interest with their role on the committee.

White spoke to her understanding of the issues that the working group is currently studying. “My assessment of the situation is that actually reappointment and tenure are not particularly problematic,” she said with regards to the University’s procedures. However, White also added that she believed that professors of colour should shoulder some of the blame for not getting tenure. “But there may be [a problem] with respect to promotion to [tenured] professors [...] that people are holding back because they perceive that they may not be promoted.”

Faculty Voices tity interacts with “every aspect of my job, the teaching in terms of how I’m engaged by the dominant white student population […] there were incidents of people being aggressive with me, being rude with me, wanting to address me by my first name as opposed to professor or doctor, et cetera. [It affects] the way that I’m engaged by colleagues, and the way that I have to fight with the discipline itself, which is racist. So all of it is different for me as a Black woman.”

“We are all products of our society and socialization,” Zoua Vang, an assistant professor in the department of Sociology, told The Daily. “So for us to pretend that because we have [...] a PhD after our name, that we are immune to racial images, racial stereotypes, that that doesn’t affect our daily interactions with each other and with students – that I think is a huge misconception and a huge disservice that we do to ourselves, to the university community, and to our students.”

Race at McGill, Vang continued, is not talked about enough. What Vang found “really surprising about coming to Canada [from the U.S.], and coming to McGill in particular, was how much race and issues about race are minimized and silenced at the university,” something to which she is still adapting, she said.

“I myself have refrained from bringing up issues of race in my own department and at McGill more generally because there is not this welcoming environment where people can freely talk about race without fear of repercussions,” she said.

Nelson presented a similar assess-

ment of the climate at McGill, linking this to a broader Canadian narrative. “EuroCanadians do not see themselves as having a race. So there is no concept for them of their experiencing white privilege,” said Nelson. “So to get them to go from having a race to understanding that they experience racial privilege is a huge leap for a white Canadian in the space of a nation that has taught them that none of that exists.”

This colour-blind attitude at McGill also directly affects teaching. As a professor who often discusses the intersection of feminism and race within the context of art history, Nelson mentioned how she was told by the McGill administration to ‘tone down’ the racial content of her lectures.

Speaking to the McGill environment, Downey pointed to the surprising “lack of Indigenous awareness on the campus [...] the visibility of Indigeneity on the campus is really limited. It’s much further behind most universities,” he said, adding, “even though [...] steps like incorporating the Indigenous Studies program into the university are good, positive steps, there is a lot that needs to be done.”

However, Downey also provided a more optimistic outlook, saying that in regards to his interactions with colleagues at McGill, he found himself supported. “From the faculty’s perspective, there are a lot of people that are supporting more Indigenous content and more Indigenous awareness.”

The myth of meritocracy Some of the professors interviewed by The Daily also commented about the myth

of meritocracy promulgated as a popular discourse at McGill, and the lack of recognition of white privilege within the university.

According to the administration, in some cases a lack of qualified candidates is a ‘barrier’ to diversifying McGill. “In employing, taking on people at McGill, the first criterion is your suitability for the job and your qualifications,” White told The Daily, adding that the question for the University is whether there “are ways of being more proactive, without telling units that they have got to choose people who may not be the best qualified for the job.”

This concept of objective qualification is one that Nelson challenges. “White people who possess the degrees are still not meritorious enough to own [their] positions,” she argued. “They’ve been given them through networks of power and privilege that are also quota systems that are hidden.”

Vang also debunked the myth of a fair and unbiased process. “In a purely meritocratic system [...] we’d want to hire people not on the basis of their ethnic or racial background, but because of their qualifications. But we know that our hiring decisions are not all about the applicants’ best qualifications. We hire people because of subjective assessments about personality compatibility and prestige of degree.”

“And if we, people of colour, enter those, or intercede, or intervene [...] they call it quota, they call it tokenization,” Nelson added. “But really, the reality for us as people of colour is that if you sit down with us and look at our CVs […] we’re overqualified and underpaid.”

mcgilldaily.com/race White, however, puts forward this very excuse when asked about the slow progress of diversifying McGill: “So for one grouping at least – Aboriginal persons – the proportion with the qualifications is low, and that may be true for persons with disabilities as well, [though] it’s not true for the other [designated groups].”

“They’re wrong,” says Nelson, addressing such claims from the administration.

“There is actually a sizable population, inside the nation, and outside the nation, of Indigenous people and people of colour who are walking around with PhDs, if not post-docs.”

“A concerted effort” Many of the professors interviewed suggested that it was time for McGill to step up and actively combat this myth of meritocracy and increase the number of Indigenous faculty and faculty of colour at the school.

“Listen, it’s 2015. If it’s not going to change now, when’s it going to change?”

Nelson asked. “You have to work at it [to] hire that few people of colour. No, seriously, because you just hire us by accident every once in a while.”

Speaking to an effort to diversify McGill more broadly, Vang highlights that diverse representation, and “a colour-blind culture” that “minimizes and denies race,” are two separate issues, and should be approached as such. “If you are able to successfully increase representation among students and increase representation among faculty members, that doesn’t necessarily translate to a disappearance of this culture about race.” Additionally, in regards to

representation, Vang mentions that diversifying McGill’s population must also transcend the student and faculty bodies, to reach higher administrative powers.

Significant efforts have been made already, namely a report submitted in 2010 by the Joint Board-Senate Subcommittee on Race and Ethnic Relations, which Nelson chaired at the time. The report, which contextualized the experiences of professors at McGill within a history of institutional racism in Canada, made numerous recommendations to the Principal’s Task Force on Diversity, Excellence, and Community Engagement.

The report’s recommendations included “immediately hiring senior professors of colour,” and mirroring certain equity practices like those in some parts of Canada and the U.S. where successful initiatives are already in place, such as creating administrative positions with authoritative power to act on equity concerns.

Nelson told The Daily that she felt the report was not taken seriously, saying that she doubted it “ever made it to [former McGill principal] Heather MunroeBlum’s desk.” Ultimately, the report was never published – nor were its recommendations considered or followed up on.

Universities across Canada are not only starting to take initiative to address concerns such as those raised in Nelson’s report, but are also starting to “reconsider how these institutions might be perpetuating the exclusion of Indigenous peoples and Indigenous knowledge,” according to Downey.

Downey spoke about the particular need for hiring more Indigenous faculty, and explained that McGill

is lagging compared to other universities in Canada. “There needs to be a concerted effort to increase the number of Indigenous faculty at the university. And [the administration has] to find ways [of ] being able to do that. [...] There [are] universities across this country that are in double digits now, in all departments,” said Downey, referring to the number of Indigenous academic staff. He added, “It’s not just about [the Indigenous Studies program], there needs to be a decolonization process throughout the university.”

“There are quite a few universities that are just beginning to have these conversations. McGill is one of them,” Downey said.

“Of course that’s a positive development, at least they’re open to that dialogue. Now we need to see a little more action.”

“Issues around race shouldn’t just be raised by minority faculty and minority students. It’s a problem and an issue that affects everybody at the university,” Vang said. “The fact [is] that the university explicitly relies on minority staff and students to raise issues.”

“It’s an open discourse, and there is no cringing” Within McGill’s academic life, the Institute of Islamic Studies leads the way in terms of diversifying its environment.

Rula Abisaab, associate professor of Islamic History, described her experience with race at McGill as “extremely positive.” However, she added, “I have to, though, qualify this [...] I don’t know if that would be the same experience in another department.”

Beyond having a diverse academic staff, Abisaab also found that the Institute creates an open environment to talk about race. “I think I can easily say that I and a number of my colleagues would be completely comfortable discussing issues

Alice Shen

of race and gender [...] it’s an open discourse, and there is no cringing.”

The research conducted at the Institute also aids this dynamic. “The fields that we work within are [...] always making headlines,” Abisaab said. “We are forced to have these conversations. It is not a choice, even.”

“You know what, this matters to us” Vang, Downey, and Nelson all emphasized the importance of students in bringing about change at McGill.

“Sometimes I am amazed by how much courage my students have – so much more than I have, so much more than faculty more generally have,” said Vang. “We are supposed to be the adults and the leaders in the picture, yet it’s the students that have the courage to talk about race [...] to share their racialized experiences even in an environment that is not always receptive to issues around race.”

Like Vang, Downey also pointed to students as the catalysts of positive change. “What keeps striking me is just how it’s the students that are calling for it. [...]

Students are calling for more Indigenous professors to be at this university because it exposes them to a whole new set of knowledge and ideas.”

According to Nelson, more can be done by the student body. “So what would it look like for the students of all races at McGill to say, you know what, this matters to us? When we look at the front of the class […] we want to see the diversity, the racial complexity of our nation teaching us, because we understand that it matters, because we understand that the questions people pose come from their identity, because people understand the world through their own bodies, which are race, which are gender, which have a sexuality, et cetera.”

“It matters who gets to produce knowledge,” Nelson said. “So if the students get that, and get to university and say ‘this is not working for us,’ then that would change overnight.”

Writers’ note: It is disheartening to hear the administration excuse their lack of action by citing funding and resource shortages. This is indicative of a lack of concern, and a refusal to take the systemic exclusion of racialized faculty seriously. Equity is not a passive, adhoc approach of trickle-down education, but must rather be a proactive effort to correct the practices inherited from a legacy of colonialism. That the University needs to investigate whether systematic bias affects faculty members is telling of a broader myth that racism does not exist in Canada. As students, we are at an advantage, because to stay in business, the University must cater to the demands and needs of the consumers of its products. Far too often, the voices of faculty members are forgotten in student activism. We must listen to the faculty’s lived experiences and come together to take action in numbers that the University cannot afford to ignore. We, in partnership with all members of McGill’s academic staff must be persistent in breaking the silence that surrounds us.

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mcgilldaily.com/race

Hafu x Half

Forging solidarity through biracialism written by Kazumi Hoshino-Macdonald

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. think there is something to be said about seeing Canadian society as a cultural ‘mosaic.’ Not that it accurately describes any particular national directive, but when writing about race in Canada, it’s hard not to acknowledge it as a vocalized cultural discourse. Even in contrast to the American ‘melting pot,’ there is an ambiguity to the concept of ‘Canadian’ nationality.

Growing up as mixed race provides a different vantage point to experiencing what it means to exist within this ‘mosaic.’ In interviews with people of similar descent to myself, I got the feeling that we shared this sense of being ethnically half-Japanese, yet growing up as nationally ‘Canadian.’ In attempting to carve out our own place in society as one of the first large generations of half-Japanese Canadians, we not only struggle to determine how we identify ethnically, nationally, and culturally within this modern Canadian mosaic of liberal values, but we also strive to acknowledge and digest the shared legacy of internment contextualized within our mixed heritage.

One of the unique difficulties of our particular mixed identity comes from the legacy of internment in Canada. From the early to late 1940s, William Lyon Mackenzie King’s administration moved approximately 23,000 Japanese Canadians – mostly from B.C. – into camps, shut down cultural publications, seized and sold their property, all the while enacting a policy of repatriation of Japanese Canadians. Some of these citizens served in the First World War in the Canadian forces, putting their lives on the line for their homeland.

Growing up in Vancouver definitely made me relate to my Japanese heritage in a very conscious way, as I was always asked, “What are you?” I would be told how ‘Asian’ I was by white people, and how ‘white’ I was by other Asians.

This sparked a form of racial and political awareness that was exacerbated by the fact that, within my physical surroundings, many ethnic groups had their own neighbourhoods within Vancouver – Chinatown being one of the most well-entrenched and resilient areas in a quickly gentrifying landscape. When I realized that what used to be Vancouver’s Little Tokyo was sold off during internment, I began seeing Canada through a political lens that I think I was too young to fully grasp.

Through experiences like this, I found

The Lemon Creek Internment Camp, 1944-1945, constructed specifically to intern Japanese Eli Oda Sheiner Canadian families. The school in the centre held classes for kindergarten-grade 12. The Pine Crescent School was part of the Lemon Creek Internment Camp, where Eli Oda Sheiner’s grandma was held. myself turning to others’ experiences for answers about my own.

Karlene Ooto-Stubbs’ family was originally from B.C., but was forced to move to Manitoba during internment. I met her while studying political science at McGill, and found her to have an interesting perspective on Japanese Canadian identity. She sees her citizenship within Canada as non-normative as affected by the legacy of systematic racial persecution of Japanese people in Canada.

She says, “Queer citizenship is having no place to directly call home with the same sense of ownership as someone who hasn’t faced systematic persecution from their own state. Always having to explain what you are and justify your own existence.” At the same time, Japan doesn’t allow people to hold dual citizenship, and this contorts one’s sense of belonging in a world where nations and states are supposed to be cohesive – even though we’ve both acknowledged that this sense of historical insecurity doesn’t diminish what it means to be Canadian. As one of the first large generations of mixed race peoples, we could not exist anywhere else – our home is, in a sense, a form of limbo.

With around 98 per cent of Japan’s population identifying as ethnically Japanese, and a conservatively rigid culture defining what it means to be nationally Japanese, there is little room to be non-conforming.

Eli Oda Sheiner, a Masters student in psychology at McGill who spends some of his time working and travelling in Japan, conveyed to me a norm wherein being politically active is viewed as a social faux pas.

He told me a story that I found strange: he described the clothing store American Apparel as a sort of commercialized source of counterculture in Japanese society. He

depicted it as a place where young people in Tokyo – whether LGBTQ, mixed race, or just culturally subversive – could exist in a place where there was less cultural rigidity, while still not being overtly political. I found this interesting, as Japan has historically had a difficult time dealing with issues like immigration, integration, and assimilation.

Take, for instance, people of Korean descent (Zainichi), who have for generations spoken Japanese, taken Japanese names, and lived within Japan, yet were nevertheless denied full citizenship rights. Whether in Canada or Japan, being half-Japanese creates barriers to accessing and conceptualizing our citizenship, ethnicity, and culture, but at the same time it gifts us with the awareness to speak out in ways that others can’t.

I also spoke to Kai Nagata, a man who has fought to promote public awareness for years, first as the Quebec City Bureau Chief of CTV News, and now as the Energy and Democracy Director at the Dogwood Initiative. His family suffered through internment, but he told me that he has always had a strong sense of being Canadian, and that his ethnic background has really been a gift, acting as a point of access in relating to other minorities and often marginalized peoples. His grandparents would emphasize how internment gave them an understanding of how conditional their rights were. When discussing how being half-Japanese affected his sense of ownership of the Canadian state, he walked me through some of his experiences with his own citizenship. From joining the Canadian reserve forces to entering the field of journalism with CBC and then CTV, Nagata saw himself as being politicized because of his very nature and heritage. He told me that “his-

tory does repeat itself, it rhymes,” and about how he saw himself and others like him as having the responsibility to actively fight the marginalizing trends in our society. He pointed to the dispossession of Indigenous people and the denial of their rights, and Islamophobia as manifestations of marginalizing trends that cannot be excused in a democratic society. He believes that the very thing that irreparably degraded the previous generation was what makes people of mixed descent today so politically aware – just enough to be able to take on a position of stewardship of civil rights issues from a point of empathy, while having enough distance not to be harmed in the process.

Today, people like myself have a unvique opportunity to build our own cultural understanding of what it means to be ethnically half-Japanese and nationally Canadian.

Though historical winds that push and pull us in many directions exist, we have to determine for ourselves what lessons and duties we can take from these legacies.

I do see people like myself, like the others here have outlined, as being one of the first generations that can speak out and act as a bridge to provide allyship and solidarity; not only to other people of mixed race, but also to those who now face disadvantaged positions within our society. Having a foot in both worlds gives us access to a vantage point wherein we can speak from a place of empathy, not just sympathy. As mixed race people become globally more commonplace, we must act preemptively now, to make our own society a leading example of how solidarity between identities can forge understanding between communities previously divorced by animosity, oppression, and ignorance of each other.

Commentary

March 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Who watches the watchers?

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Bill C-51 is hypocritical and the product of fearmongering Katherine Brenders The McGill Daily

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n this age of information, violence is more often ideological than physical. Society’s understanding of terrorism is slowly changing.

Government rhetoric often refers to the term consciously to evoke horrific imagery of bombings and unwarranted deaths – scenes that the vast majority of Canadians are wildly unlikely to experience. Almost as often, it is invoked simply to vilify Islam. In practice, terrorism involves the subversion of principles – presently, both religious extremists and their opponents have twisted Islam to their own purposes. Currently, the federal government is also moving to also undermine the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by pushing its new, highly hypocritical “Anti-terrorism Act,” Bill C-51.

At the time of publication, the bill has passed its second reading, moving into parliamentary committee hearings following a Conservative motion to limit debate after only three days. The hearings – which had initially been allotted only a meagre four meetings – were expanded to eight under pressure from the New Democratic Party (NDP), and will allow up to fifty witnesses to speak on the bill.

The hasty treatment of such an important bill certainly backs up accusations that the Conservative government is using fear as a tool for re-election and turning terrorism into a wedge issue. While an ‘anti-terror’ bill has long been on the Conservative agenda, recent events have made it a key element of their platform. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders this past January, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that “the international jihadist movement has declared war,” and noted his government’s plans for legislation that would give security agencies more power. Taking advantage of the insecurity felt in the wake of the October 22 shooting at Parliament Hill, the government has grossly exaggerated the threat. In this case, it is using a rhetoric of ‘jihad’ and ‘terror’ as a scare tactic, and a means by which to convince voters that the excessive measures of Bill C-51 are necessary to ensure ‘safety.’

The bill also establishes the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, which requires all governmental organizations to freely share information; and the Secure Air Travel Act, which allows the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to draft a secret list, on which Canadians’ names and other private information may be collected in order to prevent ‘suspicious persons’ from travelling by air.

Bill C-51 also amends extant legislation, including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and the Criminal Code of Canada.

The Information Sharing Act, described by the first part of the bill, seeks to open communication between all federal government institutions, so that any institution can request information from another on “reasonable grounds.”

It involves, among other things, amendments to the Income Tax Act and the Customs Act, such that any taxpayer information or confidential business information – or, any information obtained by any federal agency – can be disclosed and circulated upon request. This section completely disregards citizens’ expectations of privacy.

Further to the Conservativedriven Islamophobia that surrounds (and has been cited in support of ) the bill, Bill C-51 has given Canadians reason to fear their own government. As some critics, including Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, have pointed out, Bill C-51 turns the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) into a ‘secret police’ that can act freely and without oversight.

In fact, CSIS’ power would be limited only when its actions directly violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in which case its agents would simply require a warrant to proceed.

The possibility of prosecution under an unclear law is enough to silence voices that may have otherwise spoken out on important issues.

To justify the expansion of CSIS’ reach, there are new, broadly-defined ways in which the ‘security of Canada’ can be threatened, including communications that could potentially lead someone to commit an act of terrorism, or any proliferation of terrorist propaganda. The language is so expansive that innocent people wishing to weigh in on current events may find themselves accidentally incriminated. The possibility of prosecution under an unclear law is enough to silence voices that may have otherwise spoken out on important issues, and to limit dialogue that the federal government might find objectionable.

The very existence of Bill C-51

Joelle Dahm | The McGill Daily is an affront to the Canadian Charter, as well as to moral good sense.

Criminalization of communications of any sort is contemptible; more importantly, the major breaches of privacy that Bill C-51 will allow should never be tolerated. That our elected representatives have both proposed the bill and tolerated it for so long should be a matter of national embarrassment. Further, the fact that even the Liberal party, which should be expected to contest such legislation, has expressed support for the bill (with amendments) for fear of seeming ‘soft on terror’ is a testament to the efficacy of the Conservative party’s fearmongering. In reality, Bill C-51 will be more likely to undermine Canadians’ confidence in their own government, than to deter the ‘jihadists’ with whom we are allegedly ‘at war.’

A simple definition of ‘terrorism,’ according to the Oxford English Dictionary, involves “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.” But “violence” is not only physical. The legal definition, as it exists in the Criminal Code, is far more expansive, but still encompasses anything that “intimidat[es] the public […] with

regard to its security.” According to the law, then, Bill C-51 could be making itself illegal.

Terrorism implies the propagation of fear, with the aim of controlling or directing people’s thoughts.

Bill C-51 has already generated national outrage – on March 14, people in cities across Canada, including Montreal, gathered to protest the bill. While these protests were ‘lawful,’ Bill C-51’s phrasing is such that it could render similar demonstrations punishable, if they were judged to interfere with ‘Canada’s interests.’ As a whole, the bill is clearly designed for control.

Even if we assume the best intentions, the bill is sloppily written, leaving significant detail open to the interpretation of the person in power; at worst, the ambiguity of its language shows that the government is not focused on ‘terrorism’ alone. In fact, despite the misleading title, measures described within the bill do not apply exclusively to ‘terrorism’ at all, but condemn anything that threatens the security of Canada, whether that be “interference with the economic and financial stability of Canada” or even “an activity that takes place in Canada

and undermines the security of another state.” The Conservatives’ unwillingness to entertain any amendments betrays their true intentions.

Any suggestion that the Conservative government could be unaware of the implications of its bill is naive – Bill C-51 is a deliberate move that, through fear, allows the Conservative majority’s ideology to exert power over all the lives of people in Canada. In fact, rather than deterring terrorism, the bill’s condemnation of anything interpretable as terrorist ‘propaganda’ is likely to be counter-productive, prosecuting legitimate dissenters and making real threats much more difficult to detect. The hypocrisy and superficiality of the clause in Bill C-51’s enactment that “there is no more fundamental role for a government than protecting its country and its people” is clear – the government will not protect Canadians from itself.

Katherine Brenders is the Design & Production editor at The Daily, but the opinions expressed here are her own. To contact her, please email katherine.brenders@ mail.mcgill.ca.

Features

March 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

ot j a v i S nya a h b u S y Written b

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l sua Vi by Al ice Sh en

Unbearable darkness The hidden politics of shadeism s

hadeism, also known as colourism, is not a term that many may be familiar with. In fact, a lot of people may not even be aware that it exists. However, shadeism is an experience that most people of colour are very well-acquainted with, and have either felt it or witnessed it. It is a type of discrimination based on the lightness of skin tone, and it occurs within communities of colour as well as intr-

aracially. Shadeism is the result of self-hatred and internalized racism that attributes beauty to the tone of one’s skin. Although many have felt the impact of shadeism, there is little awareness of why it exists in the first place. Shadeism continues to flourish because it is a direct consequence of societies being pressured to conform to Western ideals and socially constructed standards of beauty.

Features

March 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Kali the goddess

Shadeism in a modern context

There is variety of terms used by different communities to categorize shades of skin colour. Many of the terms that describe darker skin tones are typically derogatory. One term that I once heard was particularly disturbing to me. After my cousin and I spent the day outside, we returned home (several shades darker) only for her to be chided by my aunt for staying in the sun for so long. My aunt jokingly called my cousin kali a word that is derived from Sanskrit and means black or dark-coloured. This is not an uncommon term to describe a darkskinned South Asian girl. However, it was especially concerning for me because the word kali, used as an insult in many parts of South Asia, is actually the name of a Hindu goddess.

Kali is symbolically depicted as black because she is an entity that existed before time and light themselves. The blackness represents the infinite and pure nature that transcends colour and light. Although she has been historically associated with death and destruction, these traits were not usually seen in a negative way. Rather, Kali was greatly revered as the goddess of salvation and feminine empowerment, and she is considered by devotees to be a protector and the mother of the universe. She is worshipped in many parts of South Asia, the darkness being part of her beauty. How is it that the name of a goddess that represented powerful feminine energy is now tossed around as a casual insult? Although there are many factors that play into this subversion, it largely stems from British colonialism in India.

Under the gaze of colonial imagination, Kali’s image was objectified and she became a symbol of the violent and strange ‘Oriental Other.’ Especially within the Victorian culture at the time, the colonial image of Kali challenged the perceptions of society. She became this distorted depiction of the ‘dark’ and ‘savage’ which the colonizers attributed not only to the goddess, but to the colonized as well. To the colonizers, the assumptions based on the darkness of one’s skin were not only affecting religious figures, but were used as stereotypes for all members of society.

This idea was pervasive, as being dark was soon equated to also being violent, sexually aggressive, and somehow morally depraved.

This, of course, is just one very specific example that I am aware of as a member of a South Asian family that is also Hindu.

However, the idea of the ‘exotic otherness’ in comparison to the ‘standard whiteness’ is a concept that is deeply rooted in many communities of colour. This subversion of natural beauty suddenly creates the need to be ‘fixed’ and ‘whitened’ as whiteness becomes the symbol for purity, elegance, and sophistication. Having white skin is not only more pure, but it is also perceived as more beautiful and powerful. The result is a mental scale of whiteness, where having a skin shade closer to white is linked to ‘better’ opportunities. Interestingly, studies have shown that in communities where this scale is very much an indication of social classification, it may be used to discriminate against other racialized people, but the complexion of white people is a much lesser concern. Whether white people are extremely pale or tan, very rarely (if at all) are they subjected to the same scale of whiteness in communities of colour.

This emphasizes the very tangible racism inherent to this scale, as skin tone is one of the most prominent visible cultural identifiers.

Rooted in a history of racism and class discrimination based on coloniality, shadeism has evolved to become indicative of desirability within communities of colour. The Western standard of beauty, which has been projected into other parts of the world, is based on European traits such as fair skin, soft hair, and light-coloured eyes. Based on colonial structures of white supremacy, this is also associated with intelligence, wealth, and, ultimately, power – and sadly that standard is still very prevalent today. Many people have internalized the idea that being closer to ‘whiteness’ means attaining more beauty and power, and therefore will provide more opportunities.

Drawing from my experiences in the South Asian community, one of the more hurtful and glaringly obvious instances of shade being equated with beauty is within the Indian film industry. All the Tamil movies that I have seen since I was a child have always depicted the main heroine as this beautiful, fair-skinned woman. It is also notable that fair skin was much more important for the female characters than the male characters. Although men also feel the effects of shadeism, women are more likely to be objectified within this very narrow perception of beauty. In many cultures, the lightness of skin

normalized these products have become. In many countries, skin-lightening creams or bleaching creams are as common as moisturizers. Even in Canada and the U.S., many drug stores in communities of colour widely sell these types of products. Even more horrifying is the fact that there are many people who cannot afford these types of products, and settle for more dangerous, toxic bleaching products, all in the pursuit of fairer skin.

Media and film play an incredibly strong role in the creation and affirmation of unnatural beauty standards that are then perpetuated and exploited by large companies.

Historical context of shadeism

Shadeism, however, existed long before the first film was ever played in a theatre. The origins of discrimination based on skin colour and the historical attitudes toward light skin are complex, but even though the implications or situations vary, there is almost always a common thread seen throughout different cultures that experience shadeism.

It is related to the systems of privilege that are created through class differences. These differences, and the discrimination that followed based on social hierarchy, were further exacerbated by European colonization.

For the most part, shadeism was reinforced by the colonial acts of social classification and establishment of power.

The idea of the ‘exotic otherness’ in comparison to the ‘standard whiteness’ is a concept that is deeply rooted in many communities of colour. tone also has a great effect on the desirability of girls as brides, as the whiteness of their skin is perceived to be directly correlated to their femininity and innocence.

In fact, the importance of having a lightskinned actress becomes even more evident when the film industry uses actresses who are not even Tamil. Currently, a popular actress in Tamil and Hindi films is Amy Jackson, a white British model who has no South Asian heritage whatsoever and does not speak the Tamil language. For all the Tamil movies in which she stars, she has to be trained to learn the dialogue or the film must be dubbed, requiring extra effort. The only conclusion that I can draw from this is that having the right shade is such a great concern in the industry – and in society – that actual talent and ability are of secondary importance. When I first became aware of this, I was shocked and appalled, but it is merely another sad affirmation of the hypocrisy surrounding the construct of beauty.

It is now probably not surprising to hear that some of the more profitable companies in India and other parts of Asia are those that provide skin-lightening products. One popular skin-lightening product, called Fair & Lovely, produces ads that have garnered a great deal of controversy, as many of them depict dark-skinned girls who are unable to find a job or get a marriage proposal but are then ‘saved’ by the whitening cream. We live in a world where Unilever – the company that owns Dove and created the awardwinning “Real Beauty” campaign, which promotes ‘natural beauty’ in Canada and the U.S. – owns Fair & Lovely, and perpetuates internalized racism and self-hatred in Asian countries. The frightening part is how

In Europe the term ‘blue blood’ was used to describe aristocrats, because their skin was so pale that their blue veins could be seen through it. This was desirable, as it differentiated them from members of the working classes who had darker skin tones because of outside labour. With the industrial revolution, this perception changed, as more people began working indoors and tanned skin became a luxury. Even though having pale skin has largely lost its previous value in the West, it is still sought-after in Asian, African, Hispanic, and Indigenous communities.

In the U.S., shadeism is thought to have originated from the ‘pigmentocracy’ of slavery.

There was a difference between slaves who worked in the house and slaves who worked out in the fields. While the house slaves would typically be lighter-skinned, the field slaves would be darker, which the slave owners saw as ‘more African’ and associated with aggression and resistance. Those who had a mixedraced heritage, often resulting from sexual relations between the slaves and the slave owners, would have fairer skin and would get preferential treatment, such as less labour-intensive work and better healthcare. The privilege that came with the lightness of one’s skin effectively established a hierarchy of shades.

This hierarchal mentality remained active long after the abolition of slavery. One of the more shocking examples is the ‘paper bag parties’ that were held in the first half of the twentieth century. An individual had to be at least as light as a brown paper bag to be admitted into certain black social events or organizations. Many believe, even today, that to get better employment and access to higher education, they need to be accepted by the perceived white majority. This perpetuates a

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type of self-hatred, which is visible in many communities, in which a person feels as if they have to distance themselves from their own ethnicity in order to achieve a certain status or class privilege. Shadeism has led to divisions in the community, with darkerskinned individuals seeing themselves as disadvantaged, and lighter-skinned individuals feeling targeted and socially victimized for having advantages in the broader society.

Beyond shade

Although I’d say that I’ve distanced myself from shadeism, I still see it insidiously reveal itself in unexpected ways in my own behaviour. One of its obvious manifestations is my disdain for the sun. This experience of shadeism being a voice in the back of my mind is an experience that I share with many of my friends who are people of colour and who have similar childhood memories of tanning being seen as repulsive. Even now that I do not see shade as a factor in beauty at all, I still feel uncomfortable when sunlight hits my skin directly. There is this constant irrational fear that if I don’t ‘hide’ from the sun – either by wearing extensive sun protection or just staying inside – somehow I will be exposed as an ‘other.’ In the end, even if individuals do not use shadeism to discriminate against others, it remains a tool for hating ourselves and judging our self-worth according to external factors. Shadeism is dangerous in the way that it subtly ties in with an individual’s selfperception of their own beauty. It becomes difficult to convince yourself that it doesn’t matter when the world is filled with products and images that say otherwise.

However, we are not mere objects that have to passively accept the world for what it is. Different forms of resistance around the world are raising awareness of shadeism.

Decades ago, the “Black is beautiful” cultural movement was started in Canada and the U.S. to empower Black people and repel the notion that their natural features aren’t beautiful. It encouraged them to celebrate their racial traits, including skin colour, in pursuit of conformity to Western ideals. More recently the “Dark is Beautiful” campaign was launched in India to fight the effects of shadeism, and new laws are being drafted to prevent companies from presenting individuals as disadvantaged because of their skin tone in advertisements.

Many documentaries and films have also shed light on the issue. In places such as the Caribbean, the fight against shadeism has been integrated into educational programs to prevent it from being ingrained in the minds of young children.

In 2010, a group of students from Ryerson University created a short documentary film called Shadeism. With voices from Toronto’s South Asian, Caribbean, African, and Latin American communities, the film exposed the shadeism present in contemporary society, which many people were not fully aware of.

The film saw a very positive response and is now being shown in many classrooms in the greater Toronto area. It has since evolved into a multidisciplinary initiative that includes workshops and discussions on shadeism. A second film, in which the origins of shadeism are discussed, is being created and is scheduled for release sometime in 2015. Initiatives such as these are important because they create the space for people who have dealt with shadeism to start the process of collective healing within their communities, beginning with themselves.

Sci+Tech

March 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Nature versus nurture

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Examining racial disparities in medicine

Jasreet Kaur and Jill Bachelder The McGill Daily

T

hroughout history, the topic of race has encroached into many aspects of our lives, and medical research is definitely no exception. In the past, some people falsely believed that certain races were genetically more prone to disease than others, and used this as an excuse to justify the higher rates of health problems in certain races such as Black and Latinx people compared to white people. However, advances in medicine and recent research suggest that discrepancies are unrelated to genetics but rather is a direct result of societal inequality. In order to explain this problem, we must first look at the historical role of race in medical research, and how this has applied to advancements in healthcare.

A history of racism in medical research Medicine in the West has an extremely troubling history where people of colour (POC) are concerned. The past is riddled with medical malpractice on minority groups. Indeed, this was because society saw POC as less valuable than their white counterparts.

POC have been subjugated to serving as test subjects in harmful experiments, which were justified by the fact that this would be beneficial to the majority, white, population at that time.

A typical and sickening example of unethical research performed on POC was the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, conducted in 1932 on 600 Black men, 399 of whom had syphilis. The purpose of the experiment, which was to study the progression of untreated syphilis in Black males in order to identify the best treatment option, was never disclosed to the participants.

In fact, the subjects were told that they were receiving treatment for their illness, though in reality they were receiving no treatment, and their blood was being taken purely for the purpose of performing tests.

Even 13 years later, when penicillin was finally declared the treatment of choice for syphilis, the subjects were left untreated. The experi-

ments continued for forty years, finally ending in 1972. Today, racism within the medical field is much more subtle due to stringent regulations in research methodology by independent review organizations.

Racism in scientific reasoning: nature versus nurture There have also been claims in the past, such as in arguments related to eugenics, that certain groups are genetically superior to others, and that POC might be more susceptible to illnesses than their white counterparts. For example, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2009 reported that before the age of fifty, African Americans were twenty times more likely to have heart failure than their white counterparts.

The study touches on an issue that has been studied throughout history: the question of whether or not a person’s race can play a significant role in their health.

This question is related to the concept of ‘nature versus nurture,’ the idea that certain traits are inherently coded into our genes – nature – while others are learned through experiments and adaptations to the environment – nurture. Recently, research has indicated that social conditions are a better indicator of predisposition to certain health conditions, as opposed to race.

Overall, the presumption that race has an effect on a person’s medical condition is a superficial, outdated analysis of a situation that is significantly more complex.

Even today, some researchers are still exploring the idea that people of different races are more prone to diseases, the claim that racial differences play an important role in determining one’s health, and whether any one

group is more susceptible than another to certain illnesses.

Jay Kaufman, a professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McGill, believes that the environment plays a more central role when accounting for medical disparities across different social group than races. Kaufman suggests inequality in socioeconomic factors, such as access to healthcare, and healthy food, are the root cause of the higher instances of disease in certain populations as compared to others.

“I do think that most of the differences that we observe between social groups in our society in North America and Europe – and we see big disparities between groups, between, say, people of African origin and people of European origin – that it’s much more plausible that those arise from different social conditions than some kind of differing physiological or genetic difference,” Kaufman told The Daily.

“The biomedical presumption is to find some kind of physiological or genetic difference, and that too often excludes much more reasonable social phenomena, like social discrimination, like differences in socioeconomic status and education and living conditions, nutrition, things like that.”

Kaufman also referenced BiDil, a drug for treating congestive heart failure that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. in 2005 and was described as being solely for Black people. Further research concluded, however, that the drug worked for everyone regardless of their race, and that when the drug was tested, the test subjects consisted solely of self-identified African Americans.

“It was really [...] an attempt to protect the patent of the drug by rebranding it as a drug for Black people,” Kaufman told The Daily. “So it’s a story of profits, it’s not really a story about any rational scientific evidence.” It’s also an example of the more subtle and modern form of racism present within medicine.

While he acknowledged that genetic differences could account for a small percentage of disparities, Kaufman believes that “by and large, the vast majority of differences we observe, I think, come from

Jasmine Tacneng | Illustrator these different social environments, and not from any kinds of physiological process.”

Kaufman also spoke to addressing the underlying problem of racism in society in order to focus research efforts.

“We know that there are profound social differences. We can observe in the census, we can observe in the surveys, that there are big differences in education and nutrition and occupation and housing and all kinds of other life exposures, lifestyle, and social exposures,” Kaufman said. “I don’t think that the answer to that is to have different drugs for different groups, or different processes for different groups. I think that the real solution to that is to try to reduce the magnitude of the social disparities

between racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic groups in the society.”

Overall, the presumption that race has an effect on a person’s medical condition is a superficial, outdated analysis of a situation that is significantly more complex. When discussing health discrepancies between races, factors of historical oppression and current socioeconomic barriers must be considered beyond a simple analysis of ‘x-race has this instance of disease’ and ‘y-race has a lower one.’ Recent research is beginning to dispel these racist perspectives on the situation, and may provide more information on what accommodations are necessary to combat the socioeconomic factors that lead to certain groups encountering more medical problems than others.

Last chance to get involved in science writing!

Come to Sci+Tech’s final section meeting of the year!

Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. in Shatner B-24

scitech@mcgilldaily.com

Sports

March 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Not all fun and games

15

Building meaningful community relationships through sport Tiffany Harrington Sports Writer

L

ast year, I lived in Argentina for six months while completing a study abroad semester in Buenos Aires. Several months before arriving in the country, a friend of mine introduced me to the cacique (leader) of a Q’om community, an Indigenous group, located two hours outside the capital city. We sent correspondence back and forth during the weeks leading up to my arrival. He told me about how the community came to be formed through land grants and lucha (struggle) throughout the years. We discussed similarities of the lived experiences of urban Indigenous peoples in our countries, and decided that we had a lot in common.

With my Dalai Lama Fellowship in hand, we set out to devise a project that would be beneficial for everyone involved. I spent many weeks getting to know the rappers, the soccer players, the mothers, and the toddlers. I made it clear from the beginning that I was not there to do a project, but rather to build relationships. Whatever decisions came out of our meetings would be directed by the community and for the community.

In a period of six months, we developed a sport based on a traditional Q’om hand game called Payana. Originally, Payana used small stones or peach pits to engage in a complex set of skilltesting dexterity challenges.

There is a structure of ten steps that are attached to a point system. Whoever reaches a 1,000 points first wins the game. When converting the game into a sport, the kids opted to form groups of five instead of playing individually. It was clear that the objective of transforming Payana into a sport was not strictly for the physical benefits of play. There were many youth in the community who were strong in other fields, such as music, rap, drawing, crafts, etcetera.

With this in mind, we spent many days discussing possible avenues that Payana could take. The children went back to their homes and asked their parents about animals and food found in their territory. One girl came up with the idea of using the Wipala (a multicoloured checkered flag used to represent and unite Indigenous peoples across South America) as the flag for the event. Rappers thought about songs that they had composed that would tie into the themes being brought forward on

Valeria and Eugenia, two girls from the Q’om community in Derqui. social inequities in their community and their traditional territory in Chaco, Argentina. Others talked about how this event could be a way for artisans (who constitute the majority of the community) to sell their work to the masses that would come to observe.

This holistic approach of the myriad of opportunities associated with sporting events created excitement in the community and inspired people to think outside the box regarding how individuals could work together toward a common goal. Whether or not they follow through with the execution of the event is up to them, but the sentiment that arose from this kind of creative collaboration of people formed intergenerational bonds that were tenuous before at best. For many of the older youth, it was the first time that they took leadership within their community as role models, and the outcomes were substantial and postive.

As part of our discussions around the sport, we spoke about the environmental hazards and health inequities that existed in the community. In response, we opted to make our equipment from recycled material we collected from the streets, instead of buying stuff from the store. We modeled our construction of the ball made out of plastic bags following a YouTube video we had found of a boy in Kenya who was making them. As Payana was a

game appropriated by the Argentine gaming industry in the 1990s and 2000s, reclaiming and reinventing the game into a sport was an act of resistance by the youth.

One day, a professor of mine at the university approached me and asked if I could set up a meeting with the community in Derqui, so she could bring a group of tourists to visit. My face flushed and I froze. It wasn’t I that I was nervous how to articulate what I wanted to say grammatically, but I struggled with how to communicate my thoughts from a different worldview. How was I supposed to tell her that it wasn’t my territory to invite people to? Why did she think her request was acceptable? What did she mean by tourism and an ‘authentic experience’ amongst the Q’om? These questions circled in my head and left me feeling numb for the rest of the week.

When I made my way back to the community several days later, I sat with Loli, the cacique’s daughter, and told her what my professor had asked me. I delved into the questions that I had been asking myself, and was relieved to hear that she agreed. With a terere (a tea similar to mate but with cold water rather than hot) in hand, we watched as the children ran by. She explained to me that earlier that day, a group of anthropologists from the city had come to work with the youth at the community centre, filming

Tiffany Harrington | Photographer

them as they selected one picture over another. The children I had grown to know and love over these past few months were essentially reduced to lab rats, in an attempt to confirm a theory set by the anthropologist’s objectives.

If you plan on going into a community with the goal of limited time interaction, perhaps you should revaluate why being there really matters to you.

The academy often talks about ethical research amongst Indigenous peoples, but what does being ethical really mean if the standards are coming from a Western perspective and a Western mandate or agenda? Indigenous communities across Canada have been mobilizing their own community ethics boards to set in place objectives and regulations for what kind of research they want conducted in their communities, but this is not the case everywhere. The colonial history of many countries around the world has been characterized by experiments that treated those

involved more as subjects of analysis than humans. This type of research continues today. It occurs every time an academic or government official gets a ‘good idea,’ and goes looking for the ‘right’ group who will ‘demonstrate’ their desired outcome.

It is because of this history that I have always promoted relationship-building and grassroots involvement in community-led initiatives. Despite what many believe, the only community experts in a given situation are the members of the community themselves. This was the attitude I brought to the table each and every time I met with my friends in the community. This is the recipe for how meaningful discussions and innovative solutions happen. At the end of my time there, we still had not ‘finished’ the ‘project,’ although that was never the intention. If you plan on going into a community with the goal of a limited time interaction, perhaps you should revaluate why being there really matters to you.

As mentioned above, there are many times when community work can be intrusive and demeaning due to their roots in racial stereotypes and colonial histories.

In this case, sports acted as the method of bringing a community together and when spaces are created by people coming from similar contexts, however, the results can be exponentially beautiful.

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S

March 23, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

More than just a name

Sports

How the Redmen are a product of institutionalized racism

ince 1926, McGill’s male athletics teams have been known as the Redmen, and since 1926, the University has failed to recognize the racism inherent in the name. McGill continues to defend its team name with the rather flimsy argument that it refers to the school’s colours (and thus, the colours of the game jersey) and to the Scottish heritage of our founder, James McGill. This defence, however, is hard to maintain faced with the fact that, at various points in their histories, McGill sports teams have been called the “Indians” and the “Squaws.” Ultimately, the intent behind the Redmen name doesn’t matter – what matters is the harm the name has caused.

– With files from Chris Gismondi; visuals from the archives of the Old McGill yearbook.

1958

1926

The Redmen name began to be used by various sports teams at McGill.

1950

Men’s junior sports teams were distinguished from the Redmen under a new name – the Indians. The name is undeniably racist, but at the time a large portion of ththe public did no view it as such.

A captioned photo uses a pun on the commonly-understood sense of the Redmen name – and it makes reference to neither sports jersey colour nor Scottish heritage.

1966

Several women’s sports teams are named the Squaws, or occasionally the Super Squaws.

The term “Squaw” comes from the derogatory language of colonizers towards Indigenous women.

1966

A review of the team’s performance over the football season refers to the Indians as a “tribe” and their “rugged ‘Animal’ defense.”

1983

Redmen helmets, decorated with a stylized headdress, point to the true meaning of the team name – an embarassing and dated racial slur.

NOW

“Indians” fell out of use after 1970 and “Squaws” after 1975, but the Redmen name still persists.

Culture

March 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Burning with innovation, drowning in incoherence

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TNC’s new play might be better without Bukowski Daniel Woodhouse The McGill Daily

“

I do not like the human race. I don’t like their heads. I don’t like their faces. I don’t like their feet, I don’t like their conversations.” So speaks Charles Bukowski’s voice from beyond the grave, to open Tuesday Night Café (TNC) Theatre’s latest production, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame. Taking Bukowski’s poems as the starting point, head writer and director Ali Vanderkruyk pulls audience members into a not-too-distant future that could easily be the fate of their own generation.

The first act is set in the year 2045. Four war veterans, Lane (Ruthie Pytka-Jones), Tate (Thoby King), Marty (Nicholas LePage), and Haydée (Jedidah Nabwangu), are sequestered in a care facility, under the influence of a drug called Ephembrium. The drug keeps what looks like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at bay by trapping them in the “perpetual present”; their memories blocked and emotions numbed.

Turning back the clock thirty years, the second act transpires in the bar where they initially enlisted and signed up for the drug.

Their life-defining moments are shared with Lola (Ruby Iacobelli) and Chloe (Claire Morse), members of a resistance group dedicated to making them reconsider their decision to effectively leave the human race behind.

Bukowski was one of the uniquely idiosyncratic voices of the twentieth century in the U.S..

The greater portion of his work featured intensely personal accounts of his life as a member of the working-class, detailing his

drinking, unsettling relationships with women, and the intense pain and drudgery of life. In the recordings of his riotous public poetry readings, he always growls down the microphone with a beer in hand, often threatening to jump off the stage and fight those who interrupt. Burning in Water turns Bukowski’s poems into monologues, stripped of the author’s voice and reshaped by Vanderkruyk’s characters.

Those familiar with Bukowski may find it hard or even confusing to reconcile such clearly autobiographical work with its new context. Despite the play’s ambition, the storyline overall fails to cohere, and the inclusion of Bukowski’s poems is confusing at times, coming at the expense of a clear narrative.

The first act also feels devoid of the dramatic development necessary to invest an audience in the action. The former soldiers are a miserable bunch – they complain about their poorly-made sandwiches, argue nonsensically, and recreate toy combat guns. Every jarring and offbeat moment in this act begs the question: what would make these people want to opt-out of being human? But the answer comes too late, making it difficult for the audience to connect to the characters for the whole first half of the show.

While the second act is somewhat more engaging, it also features elements that remain unconvincing, such as the arrival of an anti-war movement in the form of the resistance group.

Still, the set and production create distinct and immersive atmospheres for both settings – first a clinical care facility with its checkered vinyl floors and then a bar lit-

Ruby Iacobelli and Thoby King in TNC’s new play. tered with anti-war posters. There is also no lack of innovation in the production, either – a romantic dialogue plays out between a lonely young recruit and bar staff later in the play, depicted in a series of flirtatious text messages projected against the back of the stage.

The cast is similarly successful throughout. Nabwangu’s monologue as Haydée, in which she recalls the personal pain rooted in her inability to reach out and accept those who loved her, is as powerful as any of Bukowski’s original poems. Pytka-Jones as Lane also stands out with an energetic performance that can swiftly turn the play’s tone on a dime. Effortlessly moving from goofy and awkward extroversion

to a bare vulnerability, her body movements echo these shifts – smooth in execution but jarring in their effect. A desperate attempt at intimacy between Nabwangu and Pytka-Jones’ characters gives the play some much-needed energy in its second act.

The play is clearly seeking to find a contemporary interpretation of Bukowski’s work. Vanderkruyk tells The Daily that the play was “a reappropriation more than anything, which is a thing many artists do nowadays and it is how many people interact with their world.” Moreover, her play projects current concerns onto Bukowski’s poetry. “I think that the preoccupations in that play are the ones he might have dealt

Andy Wei | The McGill Daily with if he were alive currently,” Vanderkruyk says.

Bukowski’s strength as a poet surely lay in the immediacy and authenticity of his voice. Bringing the poems in this new context seems like a strange choice when Vanderkruyk clearly has a strong enough vision and innovative ideas of her own, even if they sometimes feel underdeveloped. Taking a production so far away from the source material, however, is certainly a brave choice; audiences should be prepared for a unique and engaging story that sometimes reaches to find its own voice.

Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame runs March 25 to 28 at TNC Theatre (3485 McTavish) at 8 p.m..

“Inuit Women Artists” and Visions of Montreal Rosie’s Pick: “Inuit Women Artists” at Canadian Guild of Crafts To be perfectly honest, my actual culture pick for this week is to sleep. Everyone should sleep, recover, and wake up when it’s finally spring. It could be a performance art piece (or something).

Just as refreshing, though, is the Canadian Guild of Crafts’ current exhibition, “Inuit Women Artists.”

The works in this exhibit chronicle

Inuit women’s art from three generations of artists. Drawing on personal experiences, environment, and legends, the seventeen artists in this exhibit tell stories of “individual and collective practices of women over the last century.” The exhibit closes this week, so make sure to see it before it goes. Even if you’re not asleep, the expression and creativity in “Inuit Women Artists” might still make you think you’re dreaming.

Niyousha’s Pick: HABITAT: Experimental Visions of Montreal Montreal is a city full of strange adventures waiting to be had – something we too often forget as students in the McGill bubble.

Ideally, we should be venturing beyond this bubble all the time, exploring every bump and corner of this city, expanding our vision of Montreal. But if for whatever reason you can only venture as far as

La Sala Rossa this week, then that might be just enough. Sala is hosting a social event and film screening called HABITAT, featuring films that spotlight the Montreal environment across six decades.

The screening interweaves iconic landmarks like Mont-Royal Park and nameless back alleys, promising to show Montreal from every angle – “at once dystopic and utopic, eerily empty and actively en-

gaged, brutish and brimming with life.” So get ready for a visual adventure in this surreal snowy city we call home.

“Inuit Women Artists” runs until Saturday, March 28 at the Canadian Guild of Crafts (1460-B Sherbrooke).

HABITAT: Experiemental Visions of Montreal is Thursday, March 26 at La Sala Rossa (4848 St. Laurent) at 8 p.m..

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Culture

March 23, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

For $ale: art

Exhibit questions creative value in capitalist system Marina Cupido The McGill Daily

A

t first glance, “Capitalism in the 21st Century” is a little difficult to take seriously. The exhibit, from Montreal gallery director Jean-Michel Ross, consists of one small room filled almost to the ceiling with an odd collection of carefully stacked furniture and miscellaneous household items.

According to the exhibit brochure, this is “all of [Ross’] family’s physical capital in Montreal.”

Currently doing a residency in China, Ross will return to Montreal in June and move into a new space in Outremont. In the meantime, all the belongings he left behind are on display here, at the Thomas Henry Ross Gallery of Contemporary Art. Interspersed among the mundane objects are the hundred-odd works of art that make up Ross’ personal collection. Swathed in near-opaque layers of bubblewrap and labelled with their artists’ names, most of the pieces are completely hidden from view, or else peek out from behind mattresses and stacks of dining room chairs. A painting by high-profile Montreal-based artist Chris Kline leans incongruously next to a battered cardboard box on which someone has scrawled “extension

plugs, couch feet, stars.” A number of works by General Idea – the Canadian collective who gained international fame as pioneers of conceptual art – sit side-byside with rusting bicycles, broken lamps, and countless more boxes.

The objects are packed tightly together, leaving no space for viewers to circulate. This inaccessibility forces the viewer to take them in all at once, heightening the impact of the exhibit as a whole. The public cannot inspect each of Ross’ possessions, just as they cannot admire his art collection because it is hidden in packaging. Instead, they are confronted with a single, impenetrable heap, in which works of art and furniture alike are reduced to mere forms of capital.

Indeed, according to Ross’s press release, the exhibit was heavily inspired by Thomas Piketty’s acclaimed book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. “Here is a proposal,” it states, “to reflect on capital in terms of art works, art objects and just plain objects, in the context of a private gallery.”

And for all its initial absurdity, the exhibit does raise important questions about both the nature and the value of art.

Like many of the groundbreaking works in Ross’ collection, “Capitalism in the 21st

Art as capital.

Marina Cupido | The McGill Daily

Century” calls into question the boundaries of art itself. Does this collection of miscellaneous items count as a work of art? This ques-

called “Fountain” – awoke a storm of controversy in 1917 New York. Here, though, Ross adds another level of analysis with his bubble-wrapped canvases, obscuring their thought-provoking content while calling attention to their role as capital in the art market. In purely monetary terms, the collective value of the hundred works in this room must be extremely high. Yet to the observer, these stacked white packages with their clinical labels are about as engaging as the box of extension plugs. The exhibit’s lack of aesthetic appeal, however, like the inaccessibility of much of its content, is part of the broader reflection on capitalism.

“Capitalism in the 21st Century” is thought-provoking in its lack of expression, demonstrating capitalism can commodify art, emptying it of its beauty. Here, Ross presents these ‘important’ works as another form of capital to be amassed, inherited, and stacked in vaults. This disquieting suggestion at the heart of the installation begs the final question: when we reduce art to its monetary value, what have we lost – and what is left?

tion is hardly a new one, having preoccupied the conceptual art “Capitalism in the 21st Century” movement since Marcel Duch- runs at the Thomas Henry Ross Galamp’s signed urinal – a piece lery of Contemporary Art until June 15.

Hip Hop Week Montreal fights the power Scholars, artists celebrate the music and movement

Sonia Larbi-Aissa The McGill Daily

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very attendee in Leacock 26 Thursday evening likely left the packed auditorium grappling with difficult questions. The preceding two-hour panel discussion brought six active individuals in hip hop into fierce debate over the role of activism in rap music and the larger hip hop movement.

Entitled “Fight the Power,” the panel was part of the first ever Hip Hop Week Montreal: seven days of events devoted to exploring the intersections of hip hop, culture, and politics. Each of the six panelists, who ranged from academics to activists to artists, brought their personal experiences or formal academic studies into the difficult discussion of hip hop’s role at the local, national, and international levels.

What was striking about this panel – and the numerous other events organized by Sta Kuzviwanza, Nusra Khan, Katia Fox, and Dina El-baradie for the week

– was the setting. In the same classroom where history, economics, and countless other academic subjects are taught every day, a serious discussion of hip hop’s political potency was taking place. While Concordia already offers courses in the subject, Hip Hop Week Montreal is the McGill community’s first serious engagement with the movement in an academic setting.

In an interview with The Daily, Fox commented on McGill’s lack of interest in examining hip hop, stating, “I think that the support that [Hip Hop Week Montreal] has been getting from Montreal and from McGill students is hopefully going to legitimize hip hop as an art that should be studied.”

She noted that “when we ended up on CBC, McGill posted [the] interview on their official Facebook” – marking the first time the University itself chose to publicize the week.

The subject of the appropriation of hip hop activism into the institution of academia was discussed

at length during Thursday’s panel, running the gamut from skepticism expressed by L.A. MC Bambu as to whether the institution could have any effect other than to co-opt, to optimism from educator Audrey Hudson regarding the potential for “decoloniz[ing]” hip hop by occupying and working within traditionally white, Eurocentric spaces. Hip hop is “protest music” at its core, according to journalist Dalton Higgins, and thus contradictions arise when attempting to analyze and enshrine the hip hop movement in an institutional setting.

While this panel looked at hip hop through the lens of of race and resistance, other events explored less talked about intersections. Co-sponsored by the Union for Gender Empowerment, a panel on Tuesday titled “Big Booty Hos” broadened the discussion to include the intersections of class, gender, and sexuality. Hip hop artists Nantali Indongo and Magassy Mbow, educator Melissa Proietti, and queer MC and activist Marshia Celina rigorously ex-

amined the representation of the female body and frank discourse of sexuality in hip hop.

Instead of focusing solely on the negative representations of women for which hip hop is so often criticized, the panel highlighted ways in which the genre is reshaping common conceptions of sexuality and agency. Celina, for example, urged the audience to recognize the most important moment in Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” video: “the metaphorical chopping of [Drake’s] penis” during the closing scene, in which Minaj begins to give the rapper a lap dance but then abruptly walks away in laughter. She argues that this was the first time since Missy Elliot that “someone demonstrat[ed] artistry in a new way in hip hop culture.”

Beyond bringing stimulating debate and discussion to McGill classrooms, Hip Hop Week was a lesson in politics and culture. Elbaradie opened the week by stating its mission was to “promote music, education, and art.” Bring-

ing a comprehensive and diverse schedule of events to the McGill community entirely of their own volition, the organizers accomplished just that, with a notable conscientiousness and recognition of the systems of oppression surrounding the movement.

While Fox noted that all four organizers would be graduating before next spring, she assured The Daily that infrastructure was in place to ensure the continuity of the week.

McGill offers majors in English literature, theatre, and art history, promoting the critical study of classical art forms, yet remains woefully ignorant of newer artistic and cultural movements.

Even the cultural studies major, which is supposedly devoted to just that, is heavily weighted toward the study of film. Hopefully, the lessons of Hip Hop Week will extend far beyond these panels to encourage a critical examination of the political power of all cultural movements that are ignored in the McGill classroom.

Editorial

volume 104 number 23

editorial board 3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-24 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9

March 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

McGill needs to make accessibility a priority

phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com coordinating editor

Dana Wray

coordinating@mcgilldaily.com coordinating news editor

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Alice Shen | The McGill Daily

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cover design Alice Shen contributors Nadia Boachie, Frances Calingo, Marina Cupido, Mali Foster, Sami Fuller, Katrina Gibbs, Chris Gismondi, Tiffany Harinton, Mathias Heilke, Kazumi Hoshino-Macdonald, Jasreet Kaur, Sonia Larbi-Aïssa, Isabel Lee, Sean Miyaji, Rachel Nam, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Emma Noradounkian, Jonathan Reid, Celia Robinovitch, Chantelle Schultz, Subhanya Sivajothy, Eli Oda Sheiner, Robert Smith, Ceci Steyn, Jasmine Tacneng, Anne-Sophie Tzeuton, Daniel Woodhouse, Alice Zhao

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his year, the Quebec Education Ministry’s budget allocations to universities included a new $7.5 million envelope dedicated to students with disabilities, of which $1.2 million was made available to McGill.

Instead of, for example, increasing the budget of the underfunded Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD), the administration is incorporating this money into its annual budget, claiming it can do so as it already spends more than the new funds on services ultimately benefiting students with disabilities. McGill has long failed to act on issues of disability and accessibility, citing limited resources as an excuse; these new funds could have been an opportunity for the University to openly and strongly support accessibility at McGill. That the University has brazenly ignored this opportunity goes to show that, now more than ever, it is crucial that we foster a culture of accessibility at McGill.

McGill is not accessible to all, and the services that are available are sporadic and unstandardized. The OSD currently functions with the same number of staff as it did in 2010, even though its user base increased from 450 students to 1,600 during this period. It has been asking for a budget increase for the past four years; instead, this year, its budget has been reduced. Accommodation of learning disabilities is at the discretion of professors, as they choose whether or not to record lectures or upload slides. Additionally, the University

has no resources in place to ensure that those teaching are properly trained to address diverse learning needs.

Similarly, disabled people constitute only 1.3 per cent of McGill’s academic staff. Inaccessibility at McGill is not limited to those with learning disabilities, but also extends to those with physical disabilities and mental health issues. McGill’s inaccessibility is informed by ableism, wherein the needs of disabled people are not acknowledged or treated as a favour.

Campus accessibility is possible, however. There is already a dialogue addressing how to make McGill more accessible, from panels exploring accessible design to groups that are actively promoting awareness of accessibility issues. Organizations like InvisAbilities and Monster Academy are essential resources, but they are just the beginning. Making McGill more accessible requires reaching out to these and other organizations, instead of unilaterally making decisions without transparent consultation.

The allocation of these funds shows that the provincial government recognizes that the number of disabled students in higher education is increasing, and that it takes their inclusion seriously. It’s time that McGill do the same.

—The McGill Daily Editorial Board

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dps board of directors Joseph Boju, Juan Camilo Velásquez Buriticá, Alyssa Favreau, Ralph Haddad, Molly Korab, Rachel Nam, Hillary Pasternak, Dana Wray All contents © 2015 Daily Publications Society. All rights reserved. The content of this newspaper is the responsibility of The McGill Daily and does not necessarily represent the views of McGill University. Products or companies advertised in this newspaper are not necessarily endorsed by Daily staff.

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19

Compendium!

March 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Lies, half-truths, and lapping at the milk saucer of sleaze.

University more accessible than ever!!!

McGall proud to “bend over backward” for students with accessibility needs Mathilda C. Quimms The McGall Weekly

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press conference this past Thursday saw McGall University’s Learning Disability and Mental Illness Liaison Dunwary Behapie, ecstatic to announce his success in making our fair school “friendlier” than it’s ever been.

“It does not escape our notice that the North American higher education system is constructed to cater to one very specific type of mind, housed in one very specific type of body. It is not the goal of my position to change that,” Behapie said with a chuckle. “I mean, could you imagine?

But we feel we’ve made a few useful tweaks to that model, making McGall a veritable wonderland for the neurodetergent. Neurodeterrent. Whatever. The neurow-

hatevers among us. Them.”

“We just feel so lucky that we have a small number of wonderful, incredibly overburdened staff members dedicated to taking care of these students. So convenient.

Takes the onus off of everyone else!

So they can go about their normal business, without having to think about this type of thing too hard.”

Despite the narrow timeframe dedicated to this conference, the reporters present managed to pose plenty of insightful questions, regarding things like the staffing problems in the Office that does nothing for Students with Disabilities, the difficulty of communication within the University’s heavily divided department structure, and even the very nature of McGall’s red-tapeladen bureaucracy and the time and energy necessary to navigate student services. Behapie, serene

Jarfield Korny | The McGall Weekly and cheerful as always, dismissed these concerns with a wave of one pale, spidery hand.

“Learning to navigate within these structures builds character these students might not develop

otherwise. What is this, Tumblr?

We can’t coddle them!”

“Still, in recognition of the difficulties faced by these, ahem, difficult cases, we’ve elected to hire cute, perky yoga teachers-

McGall hires Countess of Downton Abbey New Provost of homogeneity to address equity concerns

Lady Obtuse and Lady Acute The McGall Weekly

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n March 20, the administration at McGall University finally took action to address complaints about a lack of diversity in its academic staff by hiring Countess Can’t-erbury of Downtown Abbey as the new Associate Provost (Homogeneity, Policy and Procedures). Upon her arrival at McGall, the Countess said she was “deeply disturbed” by a recent equity report which shows that the number of white male professors at the university has remained the same over the past 150 years, and in some cases, has even regressed.

The Countess, chosen for her expertise on white privilege and cat-herding, is spearheading a

task force that is currently investigating measures that can be taken to address the dire situation. She is even consulting experts within the field of white privilege, including world renowned expert Dolores Umbridge, the previous headmaster of McGall University. Umbridge, who is the current leader of the McGall Men’s Rights Movement, recently won the case for establishing men-only hours at the university gym.

Despite limited funding, the Countess has already taken proactive measures by increasing expenditures by 69.45 per cent. The majority of funds have been spent on acquiring shredders, which the Countess believes is an essential tool to combatting the issue of employment equity at McGall, for reasons as yet unknown to The Weekly.

When asked by The Weekly about the recent scandal revolving around hundreds of missing tenured applications submitted by professors of colour since 1995, the Countess explained that “an IT backlog since that time was still preventing further investigations.” Yet she also explained “that this is not a huge problem, as many of those applicants probably did not possess the proper qualifications in terms of entitlement.”

Numerous senior administrators have already expressed great delight at the Countess’ early success. “This issue of diversity is deeply rooted in the history of McGall. Our people have been falsely demonized for hundreds of years, and we are glad someone is finally taking action against reverse discrimination,” said John

White, just a regular McGall senior administrator, in an interview with The Weekly.

White’s colleague, Jane Snow, echoed similar sentiments. “My recent experience at McGall has been very hard on me without the guidance of strong white male role models in senior positions, especially after my experience teaching at the prestigious Camford University in the UK.” She cited “a culture of diversity that silences dialogue about the importance of homogeneity on campus” as the main crux of the problem that she hopes can be overcome.

As her next move, the Countess will be hosting a white people only closed meeting in order to provide a safer space for McGall faculty members like Snow to express their concerns.

Kang’s Facebook hacked by Forte, Weekly learns

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orque Kang’s Facebook account was hacked by McGall principal Suzie Forte, The Weekly has learned.

In a full disclosure, Forte explained in an email that she had hacked his account because she wanted to stalk the pictures of him that he had hidden from his profile.

“I never wanted any of this brouhaha, or to ruin what was a lovely and cordial SHMU election,” said Forte, “but he’s such a #hottie.”

Asked by The Weekly what she

found attractive about Kang, Forte stated she had a particular fondness for his “amusing forays into wild exaggeration,” as well as his “pert buttocks.”

Kang retracted his criminal charge against SHMU Presidentelect, Cream Overhim, after hearing of Forte’s admission.

“I’m in shock,” said Kang. “The only reason I ran for president last year was for the chance to occasionally sit at the same table as Forte.”

Kang said he “wasn’t quite sure

how to proceed,” and asked Weekly reporter Dan A. Ray to look over a text he was about to send to check it wasn’t “too needy.”

Weekly journalists comforted a distressed Kang, who, after sending his text message, fretted that it had been “read” but not responded to.

“Heeyyy sorry, sorry, bin rly busy with this McGall Principal shit, Bitumens was being a pain again – wanna hang soon do?” responded Forte.

Kang and Forte were later

overheard, in campus favourite Bar des Pins, awkwardly switching between conversation topics a little bit too quickly.

Elections SHMU estimates the success of the relationship at 50 per cent.

“Some of our analysts think it’s sweet, but others think Kang will harp on about SHMU conspiracies too much, jeopardizing the relationship,” said a source, who wished to remain anonymous.

—Lucy Peaseblossom

in-training to sit at strategic points throughout the campus, ready at any moment to suggest meditation as a cure for depression, or a juice cleanse to combat anxiety. But listening to these brave new employees is the responsibility of the students! If they would just take the good advice that’s offered, their lives could be so much easier!” With this, Behapie crossed his arms, leaned comfortably back on the podium, and nodded to himself contentedly, looking not unlike a farmer surveying a particularly fruitful harvest.

“We just want to do everything we can to help these students decide to be normal and stop bothering everyone. It’s not easy, Lord knows they don’t make it easy for us, but we’re doing our best. And that’s what’s important, isn’t it?”

Top five stress-handling tips for the upcoming exam period!

Having trouble getting yourself to focus? Can’t write your paper, as you’re too distracted by an intractable feeling of dread concerning your future? Here are a few tips for anxiety management from one of our most illustrious experts!

1. Plan a vacation to Iceland.

Everyone should go at some point, right? Cost is no object, because you’ll probably never be able to pay for it, you’re just planning the trip to kill time until you go take that test you’re gonna bomb anyway!

2. Consider learning to hotwire a Toyota, so you can steal one and drive to Mexico where your family can never find you and ask when you are graduating!

3. Lounge on your sofa and practice your Bond villain voice.

University is your supervillain origin story anyway, best be prepared for the requisite theatrics!

4. Try shrooms! You’ve been meaning to since high school, and I know a guy who can get them for cheap. Come on, it’ll take the edge off!

5. Tweet at that cute guy you met in October of first year, who you really wanted to hook up with but never managed to, and haven’t seen in like two years. He’ll be thrilled to hear from you!