The McGill Daily Vol104Iss24

Volume 104, Issue 24 Monday, March 30, 2015

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Contents 04 NEWS

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

3

Increasing overhead for student services TAs to hold strike vote SSMU VP Internal election not overturned SSMU holds equity conference

27

FEATURES

Plan Nord and feminism Year in Review: Features

SSMU’s student experience survey

The Word turns 40

No more burritos at SNAX

McGill’s sketch comedy team lets us laugh at ourselves

6 hour SSMU Council

Painting the problematic way we see women

Students blockade James Admin Active backstander workshop Student strike timeline AUS’s resignation problem Solidarity and austerity SUS endorses food coalition

39 CULTURE

31

SCI+TECH

Modifying dormant genes Understanding musical pleasure

Fee increase for AUS Barbados field study

Comparing technological and biological evolution

PGSS executive candidates

Preparing for the next Ebola outbreak

SSMU executive reviews

Paving the road for self driving cars

Year in review: News

Making an argument for anonymity Year in review: Sci+Tech

Personal documentary addresses a family’s struggle with mental illness What to check out this summer Year in review: Culture

46

EDITORIAL

No administration without representation

19

COMMENTARY

On anti-oppression and being offended

37

Turning anger into action

Baseball’s war agaist steriods

Modesty as a feminist choice

Year in Review: Sports

SPORTS

Hold SSMU representatives accountable

47

Safe(r) space is more than empty words

Weekly editors go on strike

Year in review: Commentary

An objective critique of The Weekly

SSMU VP External endorsements

A night in the office

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Student Services budget faces threat of depletion

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Lack of transparency frustrates students Emily Saul The McGill Daily

I

ncreased overhead costs paid by Student Services to McGill, in addition to increased cuts in university funding transfers to these services, means that the McGill Student Services budget will see significant and unsustainable strain in the coming years.

Erin Sobat, Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) VP Academic and undergraduate student member of the Senate Committee on Student Services (CSS), explained to The Daily that with the higher overhead payments next year, Student Services will be eating into its $6 million budget surplus more quickly than anticipated.

Originally, CSS had planned to spend the funds over a five-year period, this year drawing down on the surplus by channeling $500,000 into the Innovation Fund, and $500,000 to counteract the operating deficit. However, with the 2.5 per cent overhead fee imposed by the central administration increasing to 3 per cent, Sobat predicts that the surplus could be gone in as little as two years, meaning the only way to continue current levels of service would be through a significant student service fee increase. Particularly given that overhead charged in 2018 is forecasted at 5 per cent.

The overhead paid by Student Services to the central administration has increased drastically since the fee’s implementation in 2008, when then-Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson told CSS that the central administration would begin charging Student Services a flat overhead fee of $15,000. In 2010, an overhead fee of 1.5 per cent was applied to all non-fee revenue. The current rate of 2.5 per cent was established in 2013, meaning about $200,000 of Student Services funding was returning to the central operating budget.

Jim Ghoshdastidar, PhD student and member of CSS, characterizes the increase in overhead charges as “students [...] essentially being levied with a back-door tuition increase.”

Members of CSS are especially concerned about the lack of sustainability surrounding this current model, given the importance, as well as vulnerability, of certain programs under the Student Services umbrella, such as the Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD).

The OSD is one of the many programs that McGill must offer under provincial law, yet its financial burdens have been incorporated into Student Services. Elizabeth CawleyFiset, postgraduate CSS member and Health Commissioner at the Post-

Tamim Sujat | The McGill Daily Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) told The Daily that this is but one example of a pattern in which McGill forces legally mandated programs onto Student Services.

“How can you say that [...] students with mental health issues should have to wait on a five-month waiting list?

Or that, if you have a scholarship, you should pay for the office that disburses it? And then, the worst part is, if you have a disability, you have to pay for your own supportive services,” CawleyFiset said.

CSS has attempted to address concerns by proposing moving certain services, such as OSD, out from under the Student Services umbrella. However, CSS members have been unable to communicate with Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens about this project, as he was unable to attend the March 20 CSS meeting, and will not be at the next one.

Cawley-Fiset noted, “There’s zero regulation, as far as I know, at this point in terms of what they can charge.

So the people that are receiving the overhead fees and benefitting from this are also the people who decide what the percentage is.”

Transparency issues in provincial funding for student services In an email to The Daily, Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP University Affairs Claire StewartKanigan noted that, per her understanding, “money earmarked by the government as for ‘services for students’ that generally goes to Student Services may start going to more units across the university that do not fall under Student Services.”

Student Services is an office run on student fees, but, as Sobat noted, even if CSS does ask for a higher student services fee, it can’t be sure that all this money would be going into Student Services rather than the central administration.

Student Services Executive Director Jana Luker told The Daily that

she acknowledges that many students “feel that services developed due to government regulations should not be paid for by Student Service fees.”

“It’s kind of a grey area, and the way that McGill has decided to do it is the way they’ve decided to do it,” was Luker’s response to these concerns.

While McGill receives money from the provincial government intended for student services, Sobat noted that there remains a lack of transparency regarding the allocation of these funds.

“We’ve never been able to see what the amounts are. [The administration] always refused to give us what the amounts coming from the government to [the] central [administration] have been for student services. […] We don’t know how much is coming into McGill, so we don’t know how much is getting transferred,” he said.

Incoming SSMU VP University Affairs Chloe Rourke cited a broader lack of transparency on the part of the administration.

“It’s been very difficult as a representative to get any clear information, and I think it’s difficult for Student Services to get that information as well. And that’s why you get contradictory reports. The University needs to take on more responsibility [in terms of communicating this information] to the rest of the McGill community at all levels, not just Student Services.”

Rourke noted that she was also concerned that maintaining the status quo for service provision would not suffice under this new model. While all units are taking cuts, she said that “Student Services are critical to student success and are a backbone of our community and our institution.”

Cawley-Fiset shared this sentiment. “The University is in a massive budget crisis, I don’t doubt that. But Student Services, in the grand scheme of McGill University, is like a drop in the bucket, and it has such a profound impact on the student experience.”

News

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

McGill teaching assistants to hold strike vote

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AGSEM members frustrated by McGill’s monetary offer Igor Sadikov The McGill Daily

D

issatisfied with the University’s monetary offer, McGill teaching assistants (TAs) voted at a General Assembly on March 19 to mandate the executive of AGSEM, their union, to hold a strike vote by April 10. Negotiations have been ongoing since the TAs’ collective agreement expired in June 2014, but the University has not been receptive to TAs’ demands.

“I will say, having been at the bargaining table, that we’ve had to argue very strenuously for what seemed to us relatively minor changes to the collective agreement,” AGSEM TA Grievance Officer and Bargaining Committee member (and former Daily Publications Society Chair) Benjamin Elgie told The Daily.

The TAs’ main demands include a wage increase of 5 per cent per year, a partial health insurance and tuition waiver, and a limit on TAto-student ratios. On March 18, the University offered the TAs a yearly wage increase identical to that of the Quebec public service workers – which is currently in negotiations

– with a one-year lag. Unlike some similar unions in Quebec, AGSEM is not affiliated with the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), and is not involved in public service collective agreement negotiations with the government.

“We’re not a public service union, [and] the amount of the increase is currently unknown,” said Elgie. “The government’s offer to the public service has been [...] a 3 per cent raise [in total] over five years with two years of wage freeze, which amounts to a cut [accounting for inflation], and historically, we’ve managed somewhat better than that.”

Speaking to The Daily, AGSEM President Justin Irwin noted that McGill TAs’ working conditions compare very unfavourably to those of TAs at the University of Toronto (U of T), who were on strike until last week, and to those of TAs at York University, who are still on strike. According to AGSEM mobilization material, the hourly wage at York can be almost double that at McGill.

“In terms of the plain numbers it’s pretty straightforward – they have better agreements than we

TAs strike at U of T.

Tamim Sujat | The McGill Daily

do,” said Irwin. “In Toronto they have higher costs of living, that’s true, but the extent to which we’re able to meet our costs of living is still less, in many cases.”

The University’s disappointing offer on wages, as well as its failure to consider the TAs’ other demands, prompted AGSEM mem-

bers to request that the executive hold a strike vote.

“The offer of a wage cut is not acceptable by itself, but the lack of even any attempt to come to a compromise on the other demands regarding tuition and ratios was very surprising to our members, and very disappointing,” said Elgie.

“Our members aren’t satisfied [...] with our quite rational demands [...] being completely rejected out of hand,” added Irwin, noting that the strike vote will likely be held in the week of April 7. Members will decide the duration and parameters of a potential strike at that meeting.

Elgie and Irwin noted that a TA strike may affect exam invigilation as well. The collective agreement for invigilators, who are also members of AGSEM under a different bargaining unit, will expire on April 30.

“Up until the end of April, TAs are the only members of AGSEM that are in a position to strike; however, it’s possible that, if we are striking [...] picket lines will affect invigilation of exams as well,” said Irwin.

“There’s a massive overlap between the membership of the TA unit and the membership of the invigilator unit, and if we have a lot of our members who are on strike as TAs, there’s a good chance they won’t cross picket lines to work as invigilators,” added Elgie. “Any unionized employee at McGill has the right to refuse to cross a picket line.”

Unsuccessful VP Internal candidate seeks election invalidation Johanna Nikoletos appeals Elections SSMU’s decision to J-Board

Jill Bachelder The McGill Daily

O

n March 27, unsuccessful Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP Internal candidate Johanna Nikoletos submitted a petition to the SSMU Judicial Board (J-Board) against Elections SSMU, claiming that it failed to “uphold the electoral bylaws and ensure a fair election,” according to an email from Nikoletos.

The petition was filed the day after Elections SSMU Chief Electoral Officer Rachelle Bastarache announced that an electoral review committee had met to discuss allegations of infractions committed

by VP Internal-elect Lola Baraldi.

The committee “found that there was insufficient grounds to invalidate the election,” Bastarache wrote in her email to the press.

In a report sent by email to the student body on March 27,

Bastarache informed students that while the election had not been invalidated, Baraldi’s campaign expenses would not be reimbursed, and that the email constituted a public censure.

Nikoletos will be appealing the decision of Elections SSMU to JBoard. “We will be asking the Judicial Board to either invalidate the election and call for a re-vote, or to disqualify Lola entirely for the extent of her actions,” Nikoletos told The Daily in an email.

“I am filing this petition to fight for my right to a fair elections process in this endeavour,” she wrote.

The alleged infractions that Nikoletos highlighted centre around events that occurred at New Residence Hall. On March 14, Baraldi was at Lou Lou’s, a cafe located in the lobby of New Residence, helping her friend Louise Smith, who works there. Nikoletos noted that a campaign poster

of Baraldi’s had been set out on the counter, and alleged that this was an infraction of campaigning guidelines, which forbid campaigning within cafeterias.

In its report, Elections SSMU stated that it did not consider the New Residence cafe to be a cafeteria.

In an email to The Daily, Baraldi said that the poster was placed on the counter of the kiosk by an employee, and that she took it down as soon as she noticed it.

In addition, Nikoletos claimed that the fact that Baraldi was seen giving out free food would constitute an infraction, especially since she was in the presence of one of her campaign posters. She also asserted that the fact that Smith was reportedly campaigning for Baraldi, telling people who came up to her kiosk to vote for Lola, is also not allowed by the electoral bylaws because Smith is not a SSMU member, nor a member of Baraldi’s campaign team.

Baraldi noted that she did give out several free cookies, but only “when instructed to by the worker, and with no reference or correlations to me or my campaign.”

Baraldi also claimed that she did not know that Smith had been telling students to vote for Baraldi, and asked Smith to stop as soon as she became aware.

According to the report released by Elections SSMU, Baraldi was indeed in violation of article 3.3 of the regulations for campaigning in residences (incorrectly identified in the report as a bylaw) by allowing her poster to be on the counter for around three hours. Smith was also in violation of article 14.5 of By-law Book I by placing the poster there. According to the report, “testimony reveals that around 12 p.m., Lola overheard Louise telling people to vote for her and intervened directly, and at this time she also took the poster down.”

The committee also concluded that Baraldi was not promoting her campaign in giving away the “one or two” food items that she did.

Nikoletos further alleged that New Residence floor fellows “were using their influence and access to first-year students in order to garner votes for Baraldi.”

Baraldi denied that she was actively campaigning in the New Residence lobby or using floor fellows to campaign for her, saying that while two floor fellows were on her campaign team, they did not campaign in residence.

The report from Elections SSMU contained no reference to the claim that Baraldi had had floor fellows campaigning for her in New Residence Hall.

“I am fully confident that it was a clean campaign and the allegations held against me more than anything result from a frustration with the close margin of votes,” said Baraldi.

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March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

SSMU Equity Committee holds conference on equity and law

News

Students critically explore equity issues within McGill and Canada Michael Ryan Mernin News Writer

L

ast week, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU)’s Equity Committee hosted a two-day Equity Conference in the Shatner building. The two-day conference focusing on equity and law presented a range of student research discussing the problems faced both at McGill and in the broader Canadian legal system.

The speakers – undergraduates as well as law students – presented their own work and research on the topics discussed.

Kat Svikhnushin, a U1 Arts student and the coordinator of the event, said that the purpose of the conference was to make the concept of equity seem less vague and more manageable by addressing issues in individual fields.

“A huge goal for me, and something that I really wanted to see for the conference, is to take it away from this really standard idea of academia,” said Svikhnushin.

“Taking equity out of this realm of the inaccessible, and demonstrating that equity is as important in an HIV [Supreme Court] case, as it is in a multicultural case, as it is in the [McGill] School of Environ-

ment,” Svikhnushin said.

According to Svikhnushin, a great deal of support came from the SSMU Equity Commissioners and from SSMU as well.

The lacklustre attendance on both days of the conference was noteworthy. Monday’s event, which included presentations that critiqued the McGill administration’s academic hiring practices and discussed colonialist ideology present in the School of Environment, garnered the attendance of around ten students. Similarly, on Tuesday, the room was nearly empty apart from the event organizers.

U1 Political Science student Udita Samuel said that she came in large part because of a Canadian Law class that she is taking.

When asked about the poor turnout on both days, Samuel said that considering how well-organized the conference was, “it’s unfortunate that people aren’t reaching out and coming to learn and meet people that have super innovative ideas.”

The second day’s talks did not deal with McGill-related issues, but rather with Canadian legal issues.

SSMU president-elect Kareem Ibrahim spoke on Monday about the legal status of sex workers in Canada.

Warwick Walton, a student in the Faculty of Law, spoke about the role of a judge in a multicultural society, and the importance of communication between a society and its courts. He said that it was an opportunity to practice approaching difficult concepts in comprehensive ways, and to take on the task of promoting knowledge of common law among more people.

Andrew Stuart, a third-year Law student who presented “The Evidence Just Doesn’t Add Up with HIV Non-Disclosure: A study of R. v. Mabior,” agreed with Warwick. “This is an opportunity for people from different fields to come in and hear from each other,” said Stuart.

“I think it’s a really good opportunity to break down some of those really rigid academic barriers,” said Svikhnushin.

Commenting on what she thought the role of administration should be in assisting such events, especially considering the conference’s criticisms of McGill, Samuel said that the school should be involved as a promoter, but that it is important to maintain academic events that are distinctly student-run.

“What we want to see, and

SNAX wraps up burrito sales

O

n March 20, Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) representatives were told by Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens that they had once again violated the terms of their Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the University, this time by selling burritos.

The University alleges that it only recently became aware of the burrito sales, when the Office of the Deputy Provost was sent a picture of the illicit foodstuff.

AUS representatives met with Dyens in his office, where they were told the burritos fall under the same prohibited category as sandwiches: “processed or prepared” food.

Appendix E, the portion of the MOA that dictates what AUS may and may not sell, is one thing that AUS President Ava Liu says AUS is trying to rewrite, as the wording of the appendix is a bit ambiguous. She said that moving forward, AUS would like to make it more clear what is allowed and what is not, and to develop a coherent process for when violations occur.

Liu reiterated that AUS is not trying to set a precedent for any other group, particularly given that it’s “not as if other associations look to our MOA, [...] it’s not going to be standardized, [...] everybody is already on different terms.”

She also noted that AUS no longer intends to work with Vilma Di Renzo-Campbell, who in the past has been the administration’s representative at the bargaining table. Instead, they hope to negotiate with Dyens himself in order to avoid miscommunication.

Liu stands by her past statements, saying she still feels Dyens has been unclear about the bargaining points AUS has presented to the administration.

She told The Daily, “He was just saying what he had said before, he didn’t really seem on the same page as the rest of us.”

Liu added that she feels the attitude Dyens has taken regarding the negotiations has little to do with SNAX or the association of AUS, but “is really a position that the Deputy Provost is taking regarding student services and activities.”

“We are seeing that this is perhaps more representative of his stance rather than our context,” Liu said.

During their meeting, Liu also alleged that Dyens told AUS representatives that if AUS doesn’t want to run a convenience counter, “we can take it off your hands.”

While Liu is hoping to conclude negotiations soon, she assured, “If this doesn’t go well, we will push back.” ­–Emily Saul

O

Courtesy of SSMU Equity. what programming we want at McGill is something that’s important. If it comes from the McGill administration it might not be in tune with what we want to hear and what we want to see,” said Svikhnushin.

Svikhnushin added that she considered the conference to be

an overall success. “Even if it’s not well-attended, the thoughts that it brings out are amongst the highest and the most interesting at McGill.”

Reflecting on the importance of conversation about student research, Stuart said, “We have a lot to say, and we really should be saying more.”

SSMU launches survey on quality of life at McGill

n March 23, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) launched a comprehensive online survey intended to gather data from students about their experiences at McGill. Topics include academics, mental health, social life, student societies, and student priorities.

SSMU VP Clubs & Services Stefan Fong told The Daily, “One of SSMU’s main criticisms is that [it] doesn’t listen, and [it] isn’t relevant [...] we want to combat that and address that.”

The survey is also meant to provide the administration with clear numbers and trends regarding student discontent, and provide stronger supporting arguments for SSMU when pushing for student initiatives and defending community concerns.

“There are some hard truths that will come out of the survey, clear trends are already emerging,” Fong added.

Fong said that the survey will allow SSMU to present an issue and the data behind it, but also to have the resources to extend recommendations.

The survey, which takes about 15 to 20 minutes to complete, is incentivized: the first 500 users to complete the survey were awarded a coupon for a free slice of pizza from Pizza Navona. In addition to this, Fong testified that increased student participation would “unlock prizes,” hinting that once the threshold of 1,000 surveys has been met, more prizes will become available. Additionally, all who complete the survey will be entered in a raffle for prizes that are unkown as of print.

Inspiration for the survey was taken from similar projects on other Canadian campuses, according to Fong. He cited a survey done at the University of British Columbia (UBC) that found that students in the faculty of science were the only ones consistently dissatisfied with student services, leading UBC to restructure science advising.

“We’re not afraid of getting shit on, ourselves,” Fong told The Daily. “That’s what we want to know – what people have to say.” ­–Emily Saul

News

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Council demands reopening of women-only hours negotiations

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Equity, accessible education also discussed at six-hour meeting Marina Cupido The McGill Daily

T

he Legislative Council of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) convened on March 26 for a meeting that lasted more than six hours. Some of the issues addressed included ongoing research into McGill’s equitable hiring practices, SSMU’s stance on the debate over women-only gym hours, anti-austerity mobilization, and opposition to the development of harmful military technology. Council also discussed the results of the recent online referendum on sustainability, and the motion on accessible education that failed to pass at the last General Assembly (GA) due to lack of quorum.

Equitable hiring Carolin Huang, one of McGill’s researchers on equitable hiring, gave a short and in-depth presentation of both SSMU’s and McGill’s hiring practices, which revealed that minorities are troublingly underrepresented, particularly in certain faculties. McGill adopted an equity policy in 2007, Huang explained, but its implementation has so far been “limited in practice.”

“We overviewed the ways in which employment equity is legislated […] and we came up with recommendations and concerns,” said Huang, explaining that the researchers had heard “many concerns raised by students and faculty around feelings of un-belonging and discrimination on campus.”

When asked by Engineering Representative Anikke Rioux what the practical purpose of this report would be, Huang explained that it should provide an impetus for student advocacy.

“A large problem is that McGill’s administration doesn’t see [employment equity] as a big issue,” she said, “so a lot of people we’ve talked to see students having

a huge role in advocating [for this] and putting that public pressure on the administration.”

Women-only gym hours Also on the table was a motion brought forward by VP University Affairs Claire Stewart-Kanigan concerning the recent proposal to institute women-only hours at the university fitness centre. The motion asked McGill to reopen negotiations on this highly contentious issue, and work toward a compromise. Arts and Science Senator Chloe Rourke expressed repeated concern that the portion recommending a compromise would alienate the hundreds of students who had strongly opposed the idea of women-only hours. Her concern was echoed by Rioux and a number of other councillors. Eventually, a motion to divide the question passed, and each part was voted on separately. The first clause for reopening negotiations passed almost unanimously, while the second clause on working toward a compromise passed with four for, three against, and eight abstentions.

Accessible education At the recent SSMU GA, a motion was brought forward calling on SSMU to support the financial accessibility of education and oppose tuition deregulation. After considerable debate, the majority of students present voted to adopt it; because quorum had been lost, however, the motion was brought to Council for approval. StewartKanigan spoke strongly in favour, as did VP External Amina Moustaqim-Barrette, arguing that commitment to financial accessibility is particularly important in light of recent austerity measures from the provincial government. Rioux and VP Internal Daniel Chaim, meanwhile, expressed opposition on the grounds that this motion opposed deregulation without offering tangible solutions, and its wording

Andy Wei | The McGill Daily could be considered ambiguous.

Medicine Senator David Benrimoh advocated leaving the question to a referendum, given its potentially controversial implications. This proposal passed by a significant margin, and a slightly simplified version of the motion will be voted on by SSMU members through an online referendum.

Policies on harmful military research and climate change In accordance with a motion passed at the Fall 2014 GA, Stewart-Kanigan proposed a policy concerning harmful military research on campus.

“SSMU has had many policies in the past supporting transparency in McGill’s development of harmful military technologies on campus,” she said.

“This is essentially a renewal of past policies we’ve had, while adding an additional dimension of mandating the VP [University Af-

fairs] to work with the university to support research initiatives outside of those tied to harmful military technologies, through seeking to incorporate the needs of students.”

The policy will come before Council for approval at a later date.

As a result of another motion from the Fall GA, Moustaqim-Barrette notified councillors that she had developed a climate change policy for SSMU. This motion, which mandates SSMU to advocate for climate justice and support student-run campaigns with this goal, will also be voted on at a later date.

Other business Moustaqim-Barrette brought forward a motion mandating SSMU to send out a special listserv to all its members to explain the impact of provincial austerity measures on McGill and the wider community. Having spearheaded the creation of an anti-austerity mobilization committee within

SSMU, she expressed concern at the fact that many McGill students remain relatively uninformed about these policies and their problematic social consequences.

The motion passed by a relatively close margin, despite strong opposition from Rioux and Chaim.

Also discussed were the results of a recent referendum on sustainability, during which the majority of undergraduates expressed support for the hiring of a full-time Sustainability Coordinator for SSMU. Councillors debated the relative merits of hiring a coordinator and creating a new executive position of VP Sustainability. In support of the latter, some argued that an elected executive would be more in touch with the needs and ideas of students. No decision was reached, although according to a straw poll taken at the end of the discussion, the majority of councillors supported the idea of a fulltime coordinator.

Here for the summer? So are we!

News publishes online content over the summer, and we want you to write it. news@mcgilldaily.com

8

News

March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Demonstrators blockade James Administration building Members of Demilitarize McGill protest austerity

Marina Cupido The McGill Daily

O

n the morning of March 24, a group of roughly twenty students affiliated with Demilitarize McGill blockaded the James Administration building for approximately two and a half hours. Gathering at 7:30 a.m., the masked demonstrators obstructed all five entrances to the building, holding banners and distributing flyers to passers-by.

According to a member of Demilitarize McGill present at the scene who wished to remain anonymous, the group’s main goal was to protest austerity, while also calling attention to the military research carried out at McGill.

“We understand the fight against austerity as intrinsically linked to the fight against military research,” he explained, saying that some “[use] the excuse of education budget cuts as a way of justifying military research contracts.”

Heather, who is also involved with Demilitarize McGill and preferred to be identified only by her first name, spoke to The Daily after the demonstration. This action, she said, had been planned independently of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU)’s antiausterity mobilization committee.

“I think that by having a blockade […] rather than […] a demonstration or a protest, we were actually able to disrupt the functioning and

purpose of a very specific […] building,” Heather noted.

She added that the location was important: “It was also in a highly visual […] place. We were able to give out [information] and flyers to a lot of students.”

Over ten police vehicles and a number of campus security vehicles were stationed at various spots on campus throughout the morning. Officers maintained a constant presence at the building, observing and photographing protesters.

At roughly 8:15 a.m., police approached the protesters to announce that should their action be declared illegal, they would be arrested for covering their faces. Students were also warned against any attempt to damage university property. Neither of these situations occurred, and the demonstration dispersed peacefully shortly after 10 a.m..

“There was some uncertainty as to how it would play out, [but] in terms of safety and police interaction, everything went quite smoothly,” said Heather. “It was successful in its own way, and I think on the whole, people felt pretty good about the environment we created within the blockade, and [about] what was achieved.”

“Also […] we left on our own terms — I think that has […] a lot of power to it. We weren’t forced to disperse or leave so I think that was also empowering in its own way.”

Speaking to The Daily shortly before 10 a.m., two McGill staff

members expressed frustration at the administration’s handling of the blockade. Sandra Gibson and Ester Di Cori, both employed in the Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies office, had gathered with several of their colleagues in the lobby of the McConnell Engineering building.

Both had been unaware of the protest until their arrival at work that morning, and neither had received any concrete instructions on how to deal with the situation.

When asked about their personal views on austerity, Di Cori and Gibson were noncommittal.

“I’m not affected by it, so I don’t know what to think of it, actually,” said Gibson. “I have to look into it a little more.”

Heather responded to these comments, highlighting the importance of solidarity: “A lot of the people working at McGill or in the McGill community don’t feel the effects of austerity, and that’s why McGill in many ways doesn’t care, or hasn’t had the same response that you see across campuses all around Montreal. […] But it’s important to remember that a lot of labourers still are [affected], and employees of James Admin [are] in […] a different tier of [labour].

Because some people aren’t feeling the effects of austerity, it means that a whole other group of people are feeling [them] all the more.”

Other staff members expressed anger at the protesters themselves, with a few attempting to push their

Igor Sadikov | The McGill Daily way through the blockade. Security personnel diffused these confrontations, advising frustrated employees to be patient.

Dean of Students André Costopoulos was present at the scene.

Asked whether or not the students involved would face sanctions, he explained that a disciplinary officer would have to find evidence that university code had been breached.

“Blocking buildings is not something that we accept in our community,” said Costopoulos. “You can express yourself, you can demonstrate, you can pass leaflets, [but] preventing people from going about their activities is not […] a respectful

form of debate.”

Despite the heavy police presence and the negative reactions of some staff members, Heather expressed satisfaction with the event.

“I think that overall, what’s important to remember about antiausterity actions is that it’s not just about […] students making some noise. It’s part of a larger movement [against] austerity which will affect workers all over Quebec, and all […] support employees and students, so it’s very much a movement for people working everywhere.”

A previous version of this article was published online on March 24.

Workshop aims to proactively address sexual violence McGill to provide course credit for becoming an active bystander

Subhanya Sivajothy The McGill Daily

M

cGill’s first bystander program, Becoming an Active Bystander, was launched this March as a collaboration between Healthy McGill, Residence Life, and the Office of the Dean of Students. The program is comprised of a series of sexual violence prevention workshops and is a continuation of the consent campaign launched in fall 2014. The series aims to provide the McGill community with the tools necessary to recognize and address potentially harmful situations on campus that relate to sexual violence.

“The content can be applied to different scenarios,” Liason Officer (Harm Reduction) Bianca Tétrault, one of the main developers

of the workshop, told The Daily.

“It involves recognizing that the tools can be used to interrupt incidents of oppression, racism, [ableism], and sexism, and so on and so forth.”

The program is a series resulting from ongoing action to promote consent on campus, which has occurred in the wake of last year’s Redmen sexual assault case.

Students can sign up on myInvolvement, an online portal, to register for the workshop. Two workshops will be hosted on March 30 and 31 on the downtown campus, and one will be held at MacDonald campus on April 8. Tétrault noted the possibility that there might be more coming up in April, and said the sessions will definitely be resuming in September.

The free workshop lasts three hours, which, once completed,

means that attendants are certified as active bystanders in the community and will receive credits on their co-curricular record – a part of students’ official transcript.

The workshop talks about the importance of language and identifies the need to approach sexual violence intersectionally. It also addresses the ways in which power and privilege play a role in our ability to respond to potentially harmful situations, as well as one’s likelihood to become a target for certain harmful behaviours.

“We address the fact that, due to our culture of silence and secrecy, sexual violence continues to exist and go unchallenged,” said Rebecca Dales, the program’s Logistics Coordinator and one of the facilitators of the workshop.

“Throughout the workshop, we avoid blaming participants for

past decisions, but rather empower them to be more aware of these behaviours so that they can change in the future.”

Amanda Unruh, Health Promotion Officer at Student Health Services and one of the collaborators and developers of the program, said the series aims to look at ways of mitigating violence proactively, addressing it head-on, and providing resources and support after the violence has taken place.

In terms of prevention, Unruh also noted the importance of creating a sex-positive environment that allows for people to express their sexuality in a positive way.

Participants will also learn about what an active bystander is within the McGill community, and will be provided with the tools necessary to intervene safely and consensually. Recent me-

dia coverage of sexual violence will be reviewed and discussed, and participants will watch a video titled “Who Are You” to identify active bystanders in specific scenarios.

“The last hour of our workshop is dedicated to reviewing case scenarios where participants are able to discuss and think about how they will take what we have reviewed and put it into action,” said Dales. “We use scenarios that happen in our everyday lives within our community.”

“We recognize that we can give them all the information, but if they do not have the space to be able to practice [being an active bystander], when they are actually confronted with the situation in real life it is harder to be able to go forward and actually do something,” added Tétrault.

News

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Quebec students on strike

9

Looking back at a first week of mobilization

Escalating the pressure against the provincial Liberal government’s austerity measures and cuts to education, healthcare, and public services, nearly 50,000 students across Quebec, including McGill’s French Language and Literature students, were on strike last week. Many of them will be on strike until at least April 2, and some have already renewed strike mandates that extend even further. Students and supporters have participated in daily protest actions, some of which were met with heavy police repression – especially in Montreal and in Quebec City.

—Compiled by Jill Bachelder and Igor Sadikov

March 21 Braving the snowy weather, Montreal students kick off the strike with a 5,000-strong demonstration.

March 23 At Université Laval, anti-strike students hoping to access their first classes of the week call the police, who arrive on the scene but do not attempt to break the picket lines.

A demonstration in Montreal sees police involvement, and ends in several injuries and 24 arrests.

March 24

Le Devoir reports that, in an unprecedented move, the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) has moved to expel nine students who have participated in strikes and demonstrations over the past two years, prompting a solidarity petition from the student body and an outraged letter from the professors’ union.

In the early afternoon, police violently attack a demonstration of about 200 in downtown Montreal.

A night demonstration in Montreal against austerity and for accessible education draws thousands of people, and continues for over two hours despite clashes with police.

In Quebec City, police swiftly and brutally repress a protest of about 500, making 274 arrests. Two people are bitten by police dogs.

March 26 Demonstrators gather by the Parliament building in Quebec City to protest the presentation of the Liberal government’s budget. Riot police are deployed, and one demonstrator is shot in the face point-blank with a tear gas grenade.

March 27 Thousands of Montrealers take to the streets once more for a night protest. Demonstrators march for over an hour, but are dispersed with sound grenades, and at least 81 people receive fines.

Planned actions in Montreal: March 31 Feminist night demonstration protesting recent instances of anti-feminist intimidation toward activists and austerity’s disproportionate effect on women, as well as the proposed implementation of Bill 20, which could threaten free and open access to abortion.

April 2 The Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ)’s province-wide demonstration, which the student federation has framed as an “ultimatum” to the Quebec government, warning of further escalation.

Student association

Night demo on March 24.

Shane Murphy | The McGill Daily

Strike votes at McGill Strike information

Upcoming strike votes Law Students’ Association (LSA) Campaign period: March 28 to 30, including an open forum at some point.

The strike vote will be determined through online ratification.

Women’s and Sexual Diversity Studies Student Association (WSSA) General Assembly (GA): Tuesday, March 31 at 6 p.m. in the AUS lounge.

Department of English Student Association (DESA) Austerity Consultative Forum: March 31 at 4 p.m. in Leacock 219.

Voting through referendum, Law students will be given the choice of going on strike for one day on April 2, or going on a strike that would be renewable after two weeks on the first business day after the referendum results are released.

Planned motions for the General Assembly (GA) include one to set quorum for a strike vote to 40 members, and one to go on strike from April 1 to 7, with the possibility of the strike being renewable thereafter.

Though not a strike vote, this forum will gauge the desire of students in the Department of English to go on strike, and will serve as an informational session for those who would like to know more about what going on strike would entail.

DESA does not currently have clauses in its constitution for a GA or strike vote, so standing rules would have to be adopted or the constitution would have to be amended.

Passed strike votes Medicine Students’ Society (MSS)

On strike on March 30 in protest of Bill 20.

Association générale des étudiants de langue et littérature françaises (AGELF)

On strike from March 30 to April 3.

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

Free.

Confidential.

Non-Judgmental.

www.sacomss.org

We’re here to listen.

514-398-8500

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March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

News

AUS executives reflect on high turnover Five executive resignations mostly due to “bad luck,” president says

June Jang News Writer

F

ive Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) executives resigned during the 2014-15 academic year, with three citing personal issues, and two citing the working environment at AUS, as reasons for their resignation.

The first resignation came from former VP Finance Kateryn Kim in late August, and was due to personal reasons; the second resignation was submitted by former VP Internal Leila Alfaro at the end of September because she was going on exchange for Winter 2015; the third was former VP Social Kyle Rouhani in November, as a result of duress experienced in the role.

The fourth AUS executive to resign was former VP Internal Roma Nadeem, Alfaro’s replacement, who left at the beginning of the semester due to health problems, and passed away on March 9. The last to leave was former VP Finance Li Xue, who joined to replace Kim, and resigned at the end of February citing the work dynamic within the AUS. “The work dynamic that I experienced within the AUS and the decreasing meaningfulness of the work I found myself having to do was very alienating,” stated Xue in her resignation statement to AUS.

“The work dynamic that I experienced within the AUS and the decreasing meaningfulness of the work I found myself having to do was very alienating.”

Li Xue, former AUS VP Finance “In the end, I could no longer justify such a large time and energy commitment to something that made me unhappy.”

In the email to The Daily, the current VP Academic Erin So-

Andy Wei | The McGill Daily bat mentioned that the unusual number of resignations this year, while rare, was likely exacerbated by external factors.

“I think that it is unfair to phrase the events of this year in the context of a poor working environment at the AUS,” wrote Sobat. He added, “we have had an incredibly difficult year, largely due to circumstances outside of our control, and have done our best to deal with the results of this.”

President Ava Liu concurred, stating that three of the resignations this year were purely bad luck.

“Last year we got two [resignations]. It depends on every year. Three of them are just bad luck and last year we had two,” Liu told The Daily.

When asked to comment on Rouhani and Xue, who did not leave for personal reasons, Liu remarked that Xue resigned because of team dynamics and Rouhani due to his inability to perform the work.

“First, [Rouhani] resigned because of the lack of ability to perform on the job – that was what happened due to personal incapability, and not due to [the] dynamic at AUS,” Liu explained.

“[In the case of Xue], it was because of personal dynamics, I’ll give it that.”

“I think that first of all, the year ends at the end of April.

Term ends at the end of April and not at the beginning of March. So it’s not really acceptable to resign real close to the end of the year [when] there’s not really anything left to do,” she added.

According to Grant Whithan, the executive assistant at AUS, in contrast to Xue’s claim, he found the AUS work environment to be very friendly. “I totally agree with the sense that I don’t know where this hostility [...] is coming from, because I found the environment at AUS to be very supportive.”

Because no one ran for the VP Finance position for next year, the AUS Legislative Council has been empowered to fill the position by appointment.

“The nature of the job is very hard; but the environment, the people and dynamic is not the problem,” Liu noted. “Everyone is very supportive. But because of the job, everyone [works] at their own pace.”

As of press time, Rouhani has yet to respond to requests for comment.

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March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

QPIRG holds workshop on past and present student activism at McGill

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Workshop explores resistance tactics and reasons to resist

Arianee Wang The McGill Daily

A

s a part of the two-day educational series “From Austerity to Solidarity: Communities Fighting Back!” the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) McGill hosted a workshop titled “History of Student Movements at McGill” on March 25. The workshop, held at the ECOLE house, explored the historical context of student strikes and various tactics students could utilize in resistance.

The workshop included a conversation on the various reasons to hold resistance movements at McGill. One reason discussed by participants was ensuring affordable education. One attendee brought up “creating power that is outside the traditional hierarchies of power that exist in our society” as a reason to resist at McGill.

Another in attendance mentioned the need to resist the discourse and mindset that education is a consumer product to be bought, when in reality, students provide a great deal to the university in terms of labour

and research.

The facilitators and attendees explored ways in which students are complicit in McGill’s oppressive actions and also looked at the privileges that are involved in attending the university. Facilitator Becca Yu said, “Quebec has much cheaper tuition, and people will come because of that reason, but they are not committed to fighting for accessible education.”

“They’re not recognizing [the] history that has kept tuition cheaper,” Yu explained, referencing Quebec’s history of student movements against tuition hikes.

Jaime MacLean, another facilitator, added, “While [international students] are here, they bring their money and gentrify neighbourhoods.”

The workshop also explored tactics of resistance besides strikes and how they have been used at McGill in the past. Some of the methods mentioned included teach-ins, blockades, skill-sharing, and occupation.

Yu also cited the creation of student organizations such as Midnight Kitchen and QPIRGMcGill as a form of resistance.

She spoke on the 2010 closing of the Architecture Café, saying that she considered it to be “the last student-run food and hangout space on campus.”

One of the tactics that the workshop focused on specifically was student representation in the university setting. MacLean said, “[At McGill], there

“Quebec has much cheaper tuition, and people will come because of that reason, but they are not committed to fighting for accessible education.”

Becca Yu, workshop facilitator “There are still other student-run things on campus […] but they’re not actual spaces where people can mix and mingle and be,” continued MacLean. “What does it do to society when we don’t have those public spaces?”

The workshop also addressed creative and theatrical disruptions as another form of resistance. Yu referenced the oncampus blood drive disruptions of 2005, in which participants dressed up in drag to combat discriminatory practices against queer people.

are structures that exist like the Senate, the Board of Governors; departments have associations, and all of these bodies have students on them.” Although she questioned the efficacy of the creation of these boards, she recognized that “they all have student seats on them because of an occupation in 1968 of the [James] Administration building.”

Although the workshop focused primarily on the history of student movements at McGill, it also included information on the Sir George Williams Affair, the largest student oc-

cupation in Canadian history, in which close to 200 students occupied a computer lab at Concordia University in opposition to a racist professor.

The workshop ended with a discussion on the limitations of student activism. “Student organizing is not perfect,” said Yu. She added that it was important to look at “the ways that student resistance can link up with other struggles.”

Yu also noted that, in the past, power structures present within strikes and student movements left many feeling conflicted between supporting the cause and escaping “the racist, patria r c h a l bullshit happening within it.”

“There were a lot of interpersonal dynamics that had a lot of problems [in the 2012 Quebec strikes].” She also noted that “the overwhelming whiteness of a lot of the groups who were organizing” was a part of the problem.

“If the way that we organize and work together recreates the systems of oppression that exist that we are trying to fight against, then what are we really accomplishing?”

SUS endorses McGill Food Coalition, AUS approves $500 supplement for updates bylaws Barbados field study

T

he Science Undergraduate Society (SUS) General Council (GC) convened for its biweekly meeting on March 25. Without much debate, the GC endorsed the McGill Food Coalition and passed revisions to SUS electoral and financial bylaws.

Representative to the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Zacheriah Houston and VP External Emily Boytinck presented a motion for SUS to endorse the McGill Food Coalition and sign the group’s charter. The Coalition, created in February following the cease-anddesist order on sandwich sales sent to SNAX, aims to promote food accessibility, student input in campus space allocation, and sustainability.

Boytinck said that, even though SUS does not run a food operation, an endorsement of the Coalition would be an important show of solidarity. “It’s really important to maintain some student power and ability to run our operations,” she said. “It’s really important that [...] all student societies on campus are united in solidarity with each other.”

The motion passed with one abstention.

The GC also passed a set of changes to the SUS electoral bylaws, the most important change being the introduction of an appeals process. Candidates will now be able to appeal sanctions from the Chief Returning Officer (CRO) made during the campaign period as well as election results to the GC. “It was brought to light that we had gaps in the current bylaws that we wanted to address,” said CRO Danielle Toccalino.

She also noted that the 2015 election saw the highest turnout in an SUS election in recent years with 13.4 per cent.

The GC also amended the SUS financial bylaws to reflect the recent introduction of the Student Space Improvement Fee, as well as to require consent from the GC to sign “sponsorship contracts that place restrictions on the departments.” The latter clause was meant to address a problem that arose this year when the SUS executive signed a contract with Kaplan Test Prep granting the company exclusive advertising rights for the Burnside building, thereby restricting advertising revenues for departments located there, such as the Society of Undergraduate Mathematics Students (SUMS).

In the same spirit, Houston and SUMS representative Francois Paul Claverie brought forward a policy recognizing support of departmental organizations as “one of [SUS’s] primary obligations,” which the GC also adopted. ­—Igor Sadikov

M

eeting on March 25, the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) Legislative Council discussed the Association générale des étudiants de langue et littérature françaises (AGELF)’s planned strike against austerity measures and the University’s lack of transparency with regard to the funding of services for students with disabilities.

Council also approved an increase to the Barbados Field Study Semester (BFSS) fee.

Council approved a $50 fee increase and the implementation of an additional $500 supplement per student enrolled in the BFSS program. The supplement would accommodate fluctuations in the exchange rate between Canadian and U.S. dollars, with the excess returned to students.

Council also discussed AGELF’s upcoming strike against the Quebec government’s austerity measures from March 30 to April 3.

“During that week, there will be picket lines in front of every class offered within the department,” explained AGELF representative Sandrine Jaumard in an email to The Daily.

At Council, Jaumard asked students to refrain from breaking the picket lines by entering classrooms. During the discussion, the Department of English Student Association (DESA) representative added that DESA membwwers would meet with faculty members to discuss a possible strike in their department.

Arts Senator Jacob Greenspon discussed the lack of transparency during the Senate meeting regarding the allocation of a government grant for students with disabilities.

According to Greenspon, University officials determined that they had the right to redistribute funds at their discretion, and in fact cut the budget of the Office of Students with Disabilities (OSD).

VP Academic Erin Sobat also brought up concerns regarding the Student Services budget. “Student Services has taken a cut to its annual revenue and is being forced by the University to eat further into its surplus money to account for this deficit,” Sobat explained in an email to The Daily. Surplus reserves, which were planned to be spent over a number of years, are now being depleted at an accelerated rate due to cuts in annual revenues and increasing costs.

—Jasreet Kaur

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March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Who is running for PGSS? An overview of your potential 2015-16 post-grad executive Compiled by Janna Bryson, Emily Saul, Jill Bachelder, and Emmet Livingstone

Secretary-General:

Danielle Toccalino As former Science Undergraduate Society (SUS) President, current SUS Chief Returning Officer, and current representative to PGSS for the Graduate Student Association of Neuroscience, Danielle Toccalino has a wealth of experience with McGill student politics. In addition to sitting on the SUS Constitutional Affairs Committee – where she helped update the Society’s governing documents and reform electoral bylaws – Toccalino has participated in a number of working groups with both McGill Principal Suzanne Fortier and Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens. She noted that her terms in office demonstrate the organizational skills needed for the role of PGSS Secretary-General, which involves sitting on all of the association’s committees and acting as a bridge between graduate students and the University.

The PGSS executive committee suffered from strong internal divisions this year, with former Secretary-General Juan Camilo Pinto eventually resigning in January, citing personal reasons. Toccalino aims to promotes unity within the executive officers by making sure every executive officer has an equal voice. She also indicated that she would prioritize consensus-building on issues that polarize executive officers, aiming to work through proposals as a unit instead of relying on majority voting to make decisions. Divisions are not unique to just the executive, however, and Toccalino stated that she intends to shorten the gap between heavily committed PGSS members and apathetic ones.

As Secretary-General, Toccalino said that she would visit each of the 57 departmental associations meetings at least once a semester in order to solicit broad opinion. She is also advocating improved communication with graduate students by conducting more surveys and organizing more face-to-face events. Mental health and equity are also prominent parts of Toccalino’s platform, and she would mandate each executive officer and commissioner to undergo equity, mental health, and first aid training.

Member Services Officer:

Saturnin Espoir Ntamba Ndandala

Saturnin Espoir Ntamba Ndandala completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Cape Town, where he was president of the undergraduate student society. He has also occupied leadership positions while studying at the University of Sorbonne and the University of Toronto, and has helped in the development of a smartphone application that aims to promote electoral knowledge among minorities. At McGill, Ndandala currently serves as a member of the Policy and Structural Advisory Committee of PGSS and ran for interim Secretary-General following the resignation of Juan Camilo Pinto in February. He lost to Yony Bresler, winning only 29 per cent of the votes. Ndandala argues that his exposure to different cultural values will give him a good standing if elected. Furthermore, he describes himself as a fighter, citing his cancer survival as evidence of his tenacity and strength.

Of the two electoral platforms in the PGSS Secretary-General campaign, Ndandala’s is the more radical. He is proposing to reduce the fees that graduate students pay to their association by eliminating PGSS executive salaries. In support of this, he argued that executive officers are only required to work for 15 hours per week, and that the heads of graduate departmental associations are also unpaid.

Raising awareness of sexual assault is also a key part of Ndandala’s platform. He hopes to make it mandatory for all graduate students to take a course on sexual assault, sexual harassment, and gender equality as part of their degree. True to his international academic experience, Ndandala also wants to ensure that international students have an easier transition into McGill by starting a program that would pair Canadian and foreign students. He envisions the program as a cultural exchange that would promote diversity among the student body.

Jenny Ann Pura

Brighita Lungu

Jenny Ann Pura is currently an Experimental Surgery Graduate Student Society (ESGSS) representative on PGSS Council.

She told The Daily that her experience there sparked an interest in joining the executive committee. She also participated in initiatives to train student volunteers in active listening while an undergraduate at the University of Victoria. Aside from her work for ESGSS – of which she is co-president – Pura indicated her having attended Council meetings as experience that would count in her favour as Member Services Officer. The office is designed to offer guidance to graduate students on accessing McGill services – such as career planning, health services, and mental health services – as well as managing the various services run by PGSS. Pura said that it is difficult to pinpoint what is most crucial to the role, stating that all aspects of the portfolio are equally important. She also had difficulty expressing a clear platform, but emphasized that team building exercises, transparency, and dealing with conflicts in a timely manner were all crucial.

Additionally, she suggested that services for post-grads should be centralized in a single online platform, similar to Minerva. Pura stressed that every person’s voice should be heard. However, she cautioned that she could not guarantee the feasibility of every electoral promise, expressing reluctance to declare what she hoped to achieve if elected.

Brighita Lungu, having completed her first term, is running for re-election to the position of PGSS Member Services Officer (MSO).

Given the year she has spent as MSO and as a member of the Graduate Architecture Students’ Association (GASA), Lungu has built up extensive experience catered to the position. Although she characterized the learning curve of being a PGSS MSO as steep, Lungu said that given her increased familiarity with the terrain, she will be able to accomplish more in the next year if re-elected.

Lungu said that she thought that one of the biggest issues facing student leadership is the turnover that the positions often see.

Therefore, highlighting institutional memory as a crucial factor for success, Lungu asserted that being consistent and running for the same position will give her an edge over her opponent.

With the brunt of the MSO’s responsibility surrounding the proper representation of her constituents, Lungu cited a good working relationship with existing administrative organs as a significant advantage. She also addressed the importance of teamwork, and said that she intends to require all PGSS executives to go through equity training and active bystander training.

Lungu was also very vocal about providing support mechanisms for graduate students, particularly with regard to mental health and counselling. She also noted potential future collaboration with the McGill Office of Religious and Spiritual Life (MORSL) as a way to ensure that graduate students who might not be seeking these services because of perceived stigma are able to access them safely.

Lungu said she believed that one of the challenges facing MSO is that the departmental associations are not centralized in one place, like at the downtown campus – instead, they take the form of eighty small groups around Montreal. She expressed her hope to work on improving the disjointed relationship between these associations if re-elected.

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Like last year, several of the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) executive candidates are running as a slate, namely Danielle Toccalino, Sahil Kumar, Bradley Por, Brighita Lungu, and Behrang Sharif. The slate’s common platform elements mainly consist of increasing the availability of the executive to constituents – in particular by holding consistent, visible office hours – and maintaining a regular presence at Thomson House, Mac Campus, McGillaffiliated hospitals, and PGSS events.

Internal Affairs Officer:

External Affairs Officer:

Academic Affairs Officer:

Financial Affairs Officer:

Sahil Kumar

Bradley Por

Devin Mills

Behrang Sharif

Sahil Kumar gained a sense for the position’s portfolio through his involvement with the Internal Affairs Committee this year as a PGSS representative for the Experimental Medicine Graduate Student Society (EMGSS). He sat on the PGSS Equity Committee this year, and has past experience in student government; he was the Science Undergraduate Society (SUS) VP Internal in 2013-14, a position in which he coordinated orientation week and introduced changes to make Frosh more accessible. He was also the SUS executive administrator in 2012-13, and worked for Campus Life & Engagement.

Kumar highlighted the importance of activities, communications, and committee recruitment to the Internal Affairs portfolio.

He noted that there was room for improvement with orientation options – as a firstyear graduate student, Kumar found orientation activities insufficient, even though a services fair was available. He hopes to create more welcoming orientation activities such as an activities night for committee positions, and to get students involved in committees, clubs, and departmental associations early in the year. Kumar also noted that he wants to provide more family-friendly events for PGSS members with children, and to take proactive action toward a sexual assault and harassment policy for PGSS. Kumar considers mediating internal struggles to be an aspect of the Internal Affairs portfolio, noting that issues this year had detrimental effects on PGSS’s public image, as well as on the atmosphere at Council meetings and Annual General Meetings.

Bradley Por decided to run for External Affairs Officer during the extended nomination period. Por is currently in his third year at McGill, as he has completed a Masters in Law and is just starting his PhD; he was previously the Academic Affairs Officer at the Graduate Law Students’ Association (GLSA).

Por made it clear that he is not afraid to take strong stances, and indicated that resistance to austerity was a priority for him at a time when budget cuts are resulting in reduced funds for education services. In the wake of the possible collapse of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ), Por indicated that it was essential to rebuild a new organization based on open collaboration and communication in order to resist austerity.

Another key element of Por’s platform is increasing communication between the External Affairs Officer and PGSS constituents.

An Annual General Meeting twice a year, he noted, is not enough of a conversation with students. Por emphasized the importance for students to see their students’ society as a tool for advocating for their interests, with regard to both the administration and the government.

Devin Mills served on the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee at Edgewood College in Wisconsin for three years, was an assessment graduate research assistant, and is currently the Education Graduate Students’ Society (EGSS) VP Finance. If elected, communication and transparency will be at the forefront of Mills’ priorities, as he has said that communicating with constituents is something that he would like to see PGSS do more of in the future. He hopes to make the policies that impact student life more clear to students, and thinks that, overall, PGSS could benefit from more transparency in its initiatives. He cites the Society’s recent disaffiliation from the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) as an example – PGSS members were unaware of the disaffiliation vote’s potential effects on their fees.

Mills indicated that he was highly concerned about budget cuts at McGill, and also named increased research funding as an issue that he would prioritize in his advocacy.

He said that filling all the Senate committee seats allocated to PGSS was a priority for him, and that he would seek to improve communication with PGSS members to that end.

After the controversies of this past year that resulted in the removal of SecretaryGeneral Juan Camilo Pinto from his position on the PGSS executive, Mills said he would like to help PGSS regain respect from its constituents and re-establish its credibility. Overall, he says he would like to eliminate doubts that people might have regarding the organization in order to promote engagement.

Behrang Sharif has been involved in various PGSS committees since he began his graduate studies at McGill around three years ago, and was previously treasurer and president at a national association for pharmaceutical students in Iran. He has also worked in a financial capacity at a startup, has taken part in local, national, and international student organizations and federations, and has spent two years as a PGSS representative for the Physiology Graduate Student Association (PGSA).

Transparency and accessibility of the PGSS budget and its overall finances is of great importance for Sharif, especially given that PGSS is struggling financially following its legal dispute with the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS). He suggested seeking increased revenue to avoid hiking fees by encouraging people to hold meetings at Thomson House throughout the day in order to increase sales, for example.

Sharif’s other portfolio-related goals include improving the partnership between PGSS and other campus organizations, and continuing the Thomson House lease negotiations with the University in case they are not completed by the current executive. He noted that there is currently a lack of clarity about the negotiation process on the part of PGSS executives. He also aims to to promote PGSS involvement among constituents.

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News

March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

SSMU executive year-end review

The Daily looks back at the performance of the 2014-15 councillors Compiled by Janna Bryson, Jill Bachelder, and Emily Saul Photos by Tamim Sujat

This year’s executive, currently entering the final days of its time leading the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), has demonstrated leadership in areas such as austerity mobilization and support for student-run services, often going above and beyond to advocate for the University to make student voices a priority when making decisions in these areas.

SSMU made a big effort at its general assembly, which was much more organized that the Fall GA, revised the Equity policy in response to issues raised by students, and hosted many teaching events and forums, thus showing an increased push for student consultation this year. However, there definitely remains room for SSMU to improve in this area. Overall, despite bumps along the way, this was a much better year for SSMU compared to previous years.

President: Courtney Ayukawa For many students, the SSMU General Assembly (GA) is the most visible part of the President’s portfolio. Similar to last semester, the Winter 2015 GA was one of the central events of Ayukawa’s term. Indeed, it was very well-organized compared to the fall – while also the site of multiple controversial motions and with an initial turnout of over 500 students, it did not see the same time and security delays present at the Fall GA, and went much more smoothly. However, like the Fall GA, attendance dropped significantly after the first motion on Palestine solidarity, and quorum was lost for the last motion.

Ayukawa was also behind a number of small sustainability initiatives this year, including the introduction of a SSMU composting program and the broadening of the Green Events Coordinator and Green Buildings Coordinator job descriptions.

Ayukawa also plans to do interviews with the incoming SSMU executive for the 2014-15 Sustainability Assessment, which will take place in May. Additionally, Ayukawa has shown initiative in her negotiations with the administration, as she made an attempt to open Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) negotiations with the University one year early. This attempt, however, was unsuccessful due to a lack of cooperation from the administration. She has also been one of the less vocal members of the student Senate caucus this semester. While the bulk of the Presidential portfolio concerns Human Resources and is thus oftentimes less visible, it is important for the head of a student society such as SSMU to have a visible leadership presence, which has ultimately been inconsistent throughout Ayukawa’s term.

VP External: Amina Moustaqim-Barrette As the member of the executive charged with representing SSMU’s interests outside of McGill, VP External Amina Moustaqim-Barrette has motivated a variety of initiatives this year. Aided by her previous involvement with Divest McGill, Moustaqim-Barrette helped organize SSMU’s involvement with the People’s Climate March, and also initiated SSMU’s affiliation with anti-pipeline group Étudiant(e)s contre les oléoducs (ÉCO), which now represents over 100,000 students across Quebec.

While environmental initiatives at SSMU have quieted down this semester, anti-austerity organizing has picked up. Initiatives such as the recent anti-austerity activities night, actions of the mobilization committee, and the hiring of a mobilization officer are commendable attempts to increase engagement with ongoing issues in Montreal and Quebec. However, the mobilization of McGill students has not been particularly successful – this lack of student interest in the VP External portfolio was highlighted by the fact that no one ran for the position in the first round of SSMU executive elections last week. Although two candidates are now running in by-elections, dwindling student engagement in external issues is a problem that both the current and future VP External should seek to improve.

One of Moustaqim-Barrette’s recent projects has been to explore the possibility of starting a new student federation. In light of SSMU’s disaffiliation from the Table de concertation étudiante du Québec (TaCÉQ) last year, and the possible dissolution of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ), this move to maintain and improve McGill’s connection with other Quebec universities is a necessary step forward.

News VP Finance and Operations: Kathleen Bradley Kathleen Bradley has done well as this year’s SSMU VP Finance and Operations. She succeeded in bringing a more clearly presented budget to Council. A huge change from last year was Bradley’s outreach to the media concerning this year’s budget: when the budget first came out at the beginning of the year, Bradley sat down with campus media and explained it to them in full, demonstrating a clear dedication to transparency and willingness to communicate with students. However, further initiatives to increase the visibility of SSMU’s budget among the student body as a whole, and to make students more aware of where their fees are going, would have been beneficial.

Bradley told The Daily she was glad to help SSMU break even on its budget and see sales rise at student-run cafe The Nest.

She said that the continued expansion of student-run operations is one thing she hopes will be continued by next year’s executive as well. At SSMU Council meetings, Bradley has asserted that she expects the Nest to break even next year.

Bradley has done a great deal of work this year to promote student-run operations beyond the explicit demands of her portfolio, and we commend Bradley on her involvement with the Food Coalition and for leading SSMU in its support of studentrun services, which have been under constant attack from the administration this year. A minor criticism of Bradley, however, is that throughout the year she has been reluctant to give as much time to campus media inquiries as compared to other members of this year’s executive and past holders of Bradley’s current position.

VP Clubs & Services: Stefan Fong During his second year as VP Clubs & Services, Stefan Fong has endeavoured to make clubs more accessible to students and to increase student consultation. Fong told The Daily that he hopes that the Club Hub, a club management portal Fong has been developing since his first year in office, will finally be implemented under next year’s VP Clubs & Services, as the research and consultative phases have been completed.

In working toward achieving the Club Hub, Fong obtained constitutions from clubs that he identified as being active this year, thereby updating the list of functioning clubs. Additionally, Fong told The Daily that he wants to see the development of a co-curricular activities record, wherein participation in SSMU clubs would be recorded on a student’s transcript. While this is a worthwhile endeavor, it is still in developmental phases and is unlikely to be implemented this year.

Fong also showed initiative by rewriting the bylaw book for clubs and services. Overall, Fong has been an active member of Council, taking one of the executive positions often perceived as more mundane and very much making it his own. However, Fong has also faced criticism from various clubs and services for failing to consult with them before SSMU imposed clubs regulations. While this is a near-inevitable side effect of improving the organization of the Clubs & Services portfolio, the future VP Clubs & Services should seek to maintain and improve SSMU’s relationship with its clubs to help facilitate future cooperation.

VP Internal: Daniel Chaim Daniel Chaim has prided himself on amassing larger amounts of revenue than last year’s executive in every social event that he has run as VP Internal, including 4Floors. Although some of the events still ran a deficit, Frosh almost broke even, missing the mark by a margin of only 0.35 per cent.

He also assisted in the restructuring of the Students’ Society Programming Network (SSPN), which increased overall volunteer involvement by delegating more responsibilities to volunteers and giving them more experience with event planning.

Chaim noted that he had worked closely with SSPN this year and said that the committee played an integral role in the running of SSMU’s social events.

Chaim has not had many visible accomplishments this year outside of the standard organizing of these events; his proposed publications fee, for example, has as of yet failed to materialize. He has done little to go beyond the minimum requirements mandated by his portfolio; for example, he has failed to use the listserv as a tool to promote political engagement. This lack of drive to do more than the basic requirements of his portfolio was the most concerning aspect of Chaim’s performance this year.

VP Univversity Affairs: Claire Stewart-Kanigan Claire Stewart-Kanigan has been exceptionally active in student advocacy as VP University Affairs in many ways. On the policy front, she has been heavily involved in the continued development of a sexual assault policy for McGill, has helped update SSMU’s Equity Policy to allow for consultation with relevant student groups, and has worked on formalizing SSMU’s stance in opposition to harmful military research on campus. Stewart-Kanigan has also been central to the successful launch of SSMU’s mental health department.

Stewart-Kanigan has continued work on decolonization by seeking to bring a territory acknowledgement to Senate by the end of the year. Student researchers under her portfolio have also been very active, notably investigating equitable hiring practices at McGill. At Senate, Stewart-Kanigan has continued to provide a strong presence, and has acted as an effective leader for the SSMU Senate caucus.

Student consultation and collaboration have been a priority for Stewart-Kanigan. She has held forums and informational sessions, and has been receptive to concerns brought forward by students such as the women-only gym hours. Overall, Stewart-Kanigan has fulfilled her mandate exceptionally well, and has had a lasting impact on the university.

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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News

March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Year in review Tariq Khan drama The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) saw its fair share of the shortlived SSMU President Tariq Khan this year.

Elections SSMU invalidated Khan’s election as SSMU President on April 1, 2014 – a week after he was elected president by a margin of only 78 votes – due to SSMU bylaw infractions committed during his campaign. The violations included the participation of individuals external to SSMU in his campaign, the sending of unsolicited text messages to the public – for which he had been censured on March 21, the last day of the campaign period – inconsistencies in campaign expenditures, and the impingement of the spirit of a fair campaign and of the voting process.

Following his invalidation, Khan filed an appeal with the SSMU Judicial Board (J-Board), which upheld his invalidation on April 29. Khan later took this issue to the Superior Court of Quebec and filed a request on May 29 for a preliminary injunction to reinstate him as SSMU President until the full hearing for a permanent injunction. The Court dismissed his application on June 3, reasoning that his reinstatement would have incurred additional costs and caused undue inconvenience on the part of SSMU. Khan later withdrew his court case in October before its full hearing due to financial motivations and the decreasing timeliness of the case.

Khan resurfaced on the first day of the 2015-16 SSMU elections when screenshots of a Facebook conversation were released on reddit, revealing recently-elected SSMU President Kareem Ibrahim’s suggestion to hack Khan’s Facebook account last year.

Upon news of the screenshots, he revealed his intentions to update the police report that he filed after his account was allegedly hacked on March 27, 2014.

— Emma Noradounkian

Campus unions get moving Compared with 2011’s McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA) strike, the past few years have been fairly quiet on the union front. This year, however, has seen a flurry of activity at McGill unions.

Floor fellows began a union drive over a year ago in November 2013, driven by the University’s earlier push for a change in residence models. Since then, floor fellows have succeeded at forming a union, and joined the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE) last May. The process, however, has not been without hiccups: this January,collective agreement negotiations between the University and the floor fellows bargaining unit stalled over the exclusion of the “core values” of floor fellows (namely their anti-oppressive mandate and harm reduction approach) from the

proposed agreement. The negotiations have started again and are currently ongoing.

McGill’s Teaching Union, AGSEM, has also been working to unionize undergraduate teaching support staff, which include course graders, note-takers, and teaching assistants (TAs). Despite receiving support from post-grads and undergrads, the process has not been without tensions: McGill challenged AGSEM’s promotion of its own union campaign due to disputing interpretations of the Quebec Labour Code. At the date of publication, the union drive is still ongoing.

This year also saw a merger between AMUSE and MUNACA, despite some internal trepidation over their differing sizes.

Joint bylaws are on the way.

— Molly Korab

“I cannot celebrate the status quo of mental health support at McGill.”

The mental health landscape at McGill for the 2014-15 academic year has been a disappointing one. Though a working group was struck under the purview of Senate in October 2013, most of the recommendations issued by the group in June 2014 have yet to be implemented. Of the 36 initiatives on the roster, only two have been completed, the first being the development of a student services app, and the second publicly presented only as “further [development] of a robust early alert program.”

While both the administration and student government have been pursuing mental health services reform, they do not appear to be working closely. SSMU VP University

Affairs Claire Stewart-Kanigan told The Daily in October, around the time the University announced its intention to create a ‘wellness portal,’ that the relationship between the two was “a consultative arrangement, not a partnership. Given that SSMU is named as a partner on the website, consultation is not enough.”

There have been no updates on the ‘wellness portal,’ projected to be launched in Winter 2015.

Most of the visible events that have taken place this year – in particular, the second annual Students In Mind conference on mental health in October and the Mental Health Awareness Week in November – were largely

student-driven and student-led initiatives. Additionally, the most vocal advocates for mental health reform have been students.

In addition to managing the planning and execution of the Mental Health Awareness Week, Stewart-Kanigan oversaw the successful launch of SSMU’s new mental health department, which involved the hire of a coordinator and the development of a mental health listserv to promote peer and professional support services for students and forward student-led anti-stigma initiatives. ­— Emily Saul

News

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Tense debates at General Assemblies After years of SSMU General Assemblies (GAs) that have failed to reach quorum or present particularly political motions, portions of this year’s GAs saw huge turnout – with over 700 students attending the Fall 2014 GA and over 500 students at the Winter 2015 GA – as well as plenty of controversy.

Most notably, both GAs saw motions that poked at the long-dormant Israel-Palestine divide on campus. At the Fall 2014 GA, a motion to stand in solidarity with the people of the occupied Palestinian territories and condemn Israel’s violence toward Palestine over the summer was postponed indefinitely, with 402 in favour and 337

against, after hours of debate. At the Winter 2015 GA, a motion to divest from companies profiting from the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories garnered the endorsement of many campus groups (including The Daily), but failed by only 64 votes.

Despite the intense attention given to these two motions, a number of other political motions passed, mandating SSMU to take action on diverse issues such as unpaid internships, military research, climate change, and austerity. SSMU also saw a JBoard challenge after the contentious postponement of the Fall 2014 Palestine motion, where the judicial body ruled that simpli-

fied standing rules should be adopted and publicized at GAs to better facilitate debate.

More broadly, this year’s GAs have prompted a campuswide (and still ongoing) dialogue on the political role of the student union – which most notably played itself out in the recent 2015-16 SSMU executive elections – with some students questioning whether SSMU should take stances on ‘divisive’ political issues.

— Dana Wray

Students against austerity This year has seen a whirlwind of opposition against austerity measures and budget cuts set in place by the Liberal provincial government, which have reduced funding to social services, including welfare, healthcare, and education. In the fall, as part of an ongoing push that began even before this academic year, students at UQAM organized a group to allow students and community members to work together to protest these cuts: the Comité Printemps 2015, which helped mobilize around 80,000 students to go on strike on Halloween, and over 80,000 students planned to strike against austerity during March and April. This mobilization has not evaded McGill, as French language and literature students recently voted to go on strike for a week,

and other departments have planned strike votes.

These student initiatives contrast with the stance taken by the McGill administration, which has been accommodating of austerity measures. McGill has been making cuts of its own, after undergoing $45 million in cuts from the provincial government over the last four years. The results of these cuts have been felt by workers at McGill, as the administration has set up a hiring freeze, decreasing the number of jobs available, and increasing the workloads of many employees.

To combat the administration’s decrease in the number of fulltime jobs at McGill, as well as the fact that

Sustainability at McGill Many important initiatives that began in previous years were continued and strengthened over the course of this one.

Divest McGill helped organize a bus to take McGill and Concordia students to the People’s Climate March in New York City, where over 400,000 people marched in the streets of Manhattan to protest the United Nations Climate Summit and raise awareness about global warming. Divest also submitted a new petition for McGill to divest from fossil fuel companies to the Board of Governors (BoG), making a comeback two years after its first petition was presented to, and rejected by, the BoG. In addition, over 100 faculty members signed on to an

open letter submitted to the BoG in support of divestment.

SSMU also continued its efforts to promote sustainability on campus, starting a composting program in the Shatner building, and joining Étudiant(e)s contre les oléoducs (ÉCO), after the a motion passed at the Fall 2014 GA that mandated SSMU to stand alongside groups combatting climate change.

Finally, the McGill Office of Sustainability finally launched its Vision 2020 program, an initiative aiming to create a more sustainable McGill by the year 2020.

– Jill Bachelder

many positions with benefits have been replaced with lower-paid, part-time jobs that do not receive benefits, AMURE recently voted to start a fund for counselling services for its members.

In response to the austerity measures taken by both McGill and the Quebec government SSMU and the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) have taken stances against the government’s measures and asked McGill to oppose these huge cuts. At the SSMU Fall 2014 GA, students voted to add advocating against austerity to the portfolio of the VP External, and SSMU has since hosted an anti-austerity activities night to show students just how wide-reaching the damaging effects of austerity can be.

– Jill Bachelder

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Commentary

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Why I’m not offended

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And why I don’t care if you are

Margaret Gilligan The McGill Daily

I

t would be an understatement to say that there’s currently a lot of tension between anti-oppression organizers (so-called ‘Rad McGill’) and other students on campus. Obviously, there is a lot of negativity, which gets under one’s skin, ferments, and explodes in the form of condescension, ad hominem attacks, and willful discrimination. Admittedly, I have only recently started organizing under anti-oppressive principles, and it took me a while to come around to an anti-oppressive point of view.

With that in mind, I nevertheless firmly stand by the principles of anti-oppressive organizing, and am grateful for the vocabulary and spaces they have created in order to facilitate my own healing from trauma that I’ve experienced.

As such, I stand by anti-oppressive organizers. I would like to offer up some of my own experiences with organizing, in order to shed a little more light on the situation.

A very good starting point for this discussion has to do with realizing that not all activism is organizing, and not all organizing is anti-oppressive organizing. One does not have to subscribe to an antioppressive framework to consider themselves an activist or an organizer, and as such, it’s important to not throw all these groupings under any one label. Additionally, not everyone who works in antioppressive organizing subscribes to radical politics. Lumping miscellaneous campus organizations into this ‘rad’ bubble is inaccurate, subjective, and, at the end of the day, means nothing.

Just as it’s inaccurate to lump all different kinds of organizing together, it’s also inaccurate to assume that we’re all offended at the drop of a hat. First of all, I’d like people to stop assuming offence the moment when I ask someone to not use certain terminology, because the majority of the time, I’m not offended. Assuming so means you do not understand my response at all. There is a huge difference between using terminology that has been deemed insulting by social consensus, and using terminology which is historically and presently used to deprive people of their humanity and equal standing in society. When this terminology is employed in conversation and debates, the effect, regardless of the intent of its usage, is that the word leverages power, which is unacceptable because no one has the right to leverage power. Trying to distract from what’s going on by

Joelle Dahm | The McGill Daily attempting to make the issue about me, implying that I should be embarrassed if someone thinks I’m ‘too serious’ or that I ‘can’t laugh at myself,’ doesn’t work either.

Lumping miscellaneous campus organizations into this ‘rad’ bubble is inaccurate, subjective, and, at the end of the day, means nothing.

So when I ask someone not to use certain words, or am curt when engaging with someone whom I’ve known to employ incorrect language before, it is because I am perplexed by a power play taking place in front of my face, not because I’m offended. I am not just going to stand by and watch someone overtly try to leverage power against others or myself. The negative impact of oppression and discrimination that stems from leveraging power begins somewhere, and it has to end somewhere. So if it’s starting with you, why shouldn’t it end with me?

To be honest though, I’m not sure why people are choosing to

be so reactionary when asked to change their vocabulary just a little.

First and foremost, people have the right to expect people to use the vocabulary by which they choose to identify themselves, as opposed to using the word forced upon them by a random white dude à la Christopher Columbus. Additionally, language evolves on all topics all the time. The only reason we view some evolutions as more difficult than others is because they are not commonly discussed in the mainstream. In short, if it’s not an evolution that rich cis white guys care about, the mainstream is less likely to value it as well.

Not having to inconvenience oneself for others is an unearned comfort and an unfair advantage in today’s world. Inequity persists for this very reason, because someone gains an advantage from it. This mentality trickles down to maintaining the most inane comforts, such as defending one’s alleged ‘right’ to refer to sex workers as ‘prostitutes’ even by mistake.

From this germinates the argument that sex workers should feel grateful that people refer to them as ‘prostitutes’ instead of ‘hookers’ or ‘whores.’ Why should someone be grateful for not having their profession as inappropriately misidentified as it could be? Especially when this is a basic level of common courtesy that the average human enjoys, without even having

to think about it. These changes in vocabulary are not trends, but representations of the evolving needs of different communities.

Speaking of people who organize, we can’t be on call to educate y’all all the time about all the things! That’s not our job. Just like other people at McGill, I have a job where I actually get paid for the things I do, in addition to dealing with school, social commitments, family, and organizing.

Sometimes, when I’m having a really shitty day, it may not bring me extreme pleasure and the utmost joy to put in the emotional labour and time that it can take to have discussions – however wellintentioned – about anti-oppressive framework and theory, let alone to deal with people who ask to be educated but then end up arguing with me and wasting my time.

Due to these experiences, I’m wary of pretty much anyone who’s coming to me on an individual basis to ask for education. There are hundreds of events centred on social justice issues happening on campus. These people can attend any one of these events, and ask their questions there. Better yet, they could get in contact with one of these organizations, via an official channel of communication, to pose their questions and to learn. This is why self-education is so necessary. It’s fun, it shows commitment to social justice,

and it means you don’t have to deal with a potentially tired and cranky anti-o organizer. Personally, I’ve found the blogs Everyday Feminism and Black Girl Dangerous, and the Facebook page End Colonial Mentality, to have amazing educational content about intersectionality and the language different communities are using, among other things.

At the end of the day, if you don’t want to get on board with the work I do, that’s fine. If your allyship for my cause doesn’t come on my terms, then I don’t want it; just as if I’m organizing with other communities, and my allyship doesn’t come on their terms, then they probably don’t want it. We don’t need unwanted allyship, and to imply anything else is condescending. Not having your precious ‘care’ because I’m not doing things your way doesn’t mean my community and others will be marginalized for the rest of time – mostly because we have this little thing called agency. If this is what you’re bringing to the table then I, along with many others, will just balance the scales on our own.

Margaret Gilligan is a U3 Joint Honours student in World Islamic and Middle East Studies, and Hispanic Studies. To contact her, please email margaret.gilligan@ mail.mcgill.ca.

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Commentary

March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Empathy, rage, and resistance A call to arms

Anonymous Commentary Writer

A

s I sit in the library and try to get through the week’s readings, drones hover above remote villages across the Middle East. Reading an article about the physical and psychological effects stemming from this new form of warfare, the reality of this situation hits me like a ton of bricks, and I begin to shake in disgust at my own inaction. This is because, less than 100 metres away from me, there sits a laboratory conducting drone research for the military. My shame moves from my head to my heart to my stomach, becoming a visceral nausea permeated with a violent desire to destroy – to destroy the lab, to destroy their tools, and to destroy the fruits of their labour, which will soon be used to help remotecontrolled machines kill real people halfway across the world.

My motives for opposing military research often become convoluted as they drown in ideological rhetoric fired at people who disagree with me. Such is too often the nature of discussions on current affairs. But this is because ‘current affairs’ are a diluted version of what we really should be talking about: real people’s lives, their lived experiences. And people are experiencing a perpetual assault on their wellbeing through material deprivation, ecological destruction, and the pervasive threat of lethal violence manifested in the constant humming of a fucking robot in the sky.

Though we don’t have a responsibility to help anybody, we are living beings. We have the capacity to think, feel, and care for others. Still, we often don’t exercise these capacities.

I live in a consumer culture that distracts me from the plight of others with images of beautiful bodies wearing beautiful clothes that I am encouraged to buy. I live a life of relative comfort, and I don’t know anyone who’s been killed by a drone or starved to death. But despite having been subject to soul-destroying consumer culture for twenty years, if I saw someone drowning in a pond ten feet away from me, I would not hesitate to help them. Confronted with a fellow being facing imminent death, and having the ability to help, my instincts for empathy and care would spring into action.

There is often a disconnect between understanding the systemic processes that affect people’s lives, and having an actual conception of what people’s lives are like. More

Jonathan Reid | The McGill Daily often than not, our only interaction with material experiences in the Global South are through sensationalized infomercials featuring sickly, skinny children covered in flies to the tune of sentimental violin music. These audio-visual bombardments elicit pity to solicit money for charities with questionable motives. They are sensational

‘Current affairs’ are a diluted version of what we really should be talking about: real people’s lives. to the point of numbing our senses because they are just so hard to watch. What we’re lacking is real empathy for the plight of people whose lives are far removed from ours. Empathy is not sympathy, charity, or pity. Real empathy in this context means both caring and understanding – caring means putting yourself in others’ shoes to the point of discomfort, and understanding means educating yourself

on how the system is responsible for so much human misery.

For the time being, many of us live in relative comfort. This keeps us from feeling the immediacy, the urgency, of the world’s problems.

The fact that people are dying every day is largely confined to the realm of statistics – numbers that fail to penetrate our consciousness and reach our conscience, where they would be much more likely to inspire resistance. Practically speaking, there are millions of people ‘drowning in a pond’ at any given moment. Not just abroad, but here too. So what are we doing? What can we do?

The traditional channels of resistance employed by allies (i.e., those fighting on behalf of a group of people of which they’re not part) have serious limitations. I feel the need to say this for fear that people will read this piece and decide to join charities, NGOs, or professional activist groups who seek to effect change by donating shitty food to mitigate the effects of global land theft and industrial exploitation (thus creating dependency and pacifying local resistance), kindly asking impersonal power structures to

place people over profit (‘speaking truth to power’) – or best of all – using the ‘expertise’ they learned in a classroom to teach all the helpless backward coloured folk how to live their lives better (nourishing the exact same colonial mentality that enabled mass global wealth inequality in the first place). Don’t be an ally – be an accomplice.

Take the time to cultivate empathy. Let your empathy turn into anger, and let your anger turn into rage. Translate this rage to into dedicated, principled, and cunningly strategic resistance. Learn how the same structures that exploit others may benefit you, and rather than feeling guilty, get more angry! Prepare yourself to be stripped of your privileges, and let that guide you to a humbler life.

See how this system destroys all of us – from perpetrators to victims – in different ways: the CEO, who sold his soul to his investors; the grandmother evicted from her ancestral land after it was ‘bought’ by a mining company; the wage-slave, who spent eight years in school so he could spend forty hours a week punching numbers into a spreadsheet;

the American soldier, who will never be able to sleep without thinking of the people he killed to make some oil barons rich; the Palestinian parents, who came home one day to find their children blown to pieces while playing soccer on the beach.

And also you, who is going to have to decide whether or not to bring children into a world on the brink of total collapse; you, who by the end of your lifetime, will likely experience war, famine, or natural disaster; and we, who will spend our lives watching the dust settle as our world lapses into a postapocalyptic nightmare.

We have a few options. We can build comfortable lives for ourselves, praying that catastrophe doesn’t reach us too soon and trying our best not to speed up the process.

We can say ‘fuck it’ and scramble to the side of power, joining the ruthless and increasingly hopeless race to the top. Or we can fight.

Author’s note: If you’re a McGill student who wants to get politically engaged, QPIRG-McGill is the place to go.

The author of this piece wishes to remain anonymous.

Commentary

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Can modesty be a feminist choice?

Overcoming the gaze of the patriarchy

Lily Chapnik Commentary Writer

B

y the time I finally bought my first bikini, I was 16 years old. As a chubby kid who had grown into a young adult with a curvy figure, I had never felt that my body deserved to be seen. I grew into a tendency to hide myself under baggy jeans and shapeless one-piece bathing suits until my body grew into something that I thought society would approve of. Once it did, I felt proud to parade it around in all of its glory. After all, I had made it. I was part of the club.

A year ago, when I began to live my life in a manner that more closely followed Jewish religious observance, I tweaked my dress to appear more modest. I began to scan store aisles for knee-length black skirts and long shirts with a high neckline instead of short shorts and miniskirts. I had mixed feelings about my new, self-imposed dress code. I personally loved the way my body felt in the modest clothing, the way in which the clothes that I chose covered me while simultaneously flattering my figure. I also appreciated the manner in which the dress code acted as a social signifier, sending a message about my religious affiliation to other religious Jews and to society at large.

However, one challenge nagged at me whenever I stepped out in my new manner of dress.

I wish I could say that this issue was based on some lofty feminist ideal that sought to challenge the patriarchal system inherent in Jewish standards of modesty.

I wish it bothered me more that women are perceived to have a responsibility to cover themselves up for the sake of preventing men from exciting their yetzer hara, sexual inclination. I wish I felt more guilty that, by implying that I was somehow more ‘holy’ or ‘worthy’ than girls who choose to wear less, I was implicit in the victim-blaming that is rampant in religious circles.

No. I am embarrassed to say it, but my biggest issue was that I missed the gaze of men. I don’t claim to speak for anyone else, but personally, I have found that however much you might feel good about yourself in a kneelength skirt, no matter how much it may enrich your neshama, soul, you attract significantly fewer car horns and up-and-down stares on the street. In my first few months of dressing modestly, I felt my self-esteem plummet. In the absence of the external validation and day-to-day objectification that I had enjoyed since I began to show myself off, I was at a loss as to how to love myself.

I was convinced that my days of being desirable were over, and I began to make half-sincere jokes about being “past my prime.”

My confusion climaxed one day when I burst into tears and confided in a colleague with training in mental health. He suggested that I write a letter to myself detailing the issues I was facing. I sat down, dried my tears, and titled the letter, “Dear 13 Year-Old Me....” I wrote about how I hadn’t felt so uncomfortable in my own body since I was that age, and how I wished

Jonathan Reid | The McGill Daily to regain the sense of self that I seemed to have lost.

It was at that moment that I realized that for the last seven years, I had let the patriarchy define my self-worth. Instead of valuing myself for my wit, my intelligence, and my charm, I had let the winks and stares of random men boost my spirits. I realized that far from being an obstacle to self-love and finding validation, modest dress was an invaluable gift. Instead of relying on the lust of strangers to define myself as a desirable person worthy of love and attention, I had the power to attract people

through whatever means I chose to do so. Far from robbing me of my sexual power, my choice to dress modestly gave me more autonomy than ever before.

Although Jewish norms of modest dress are indeed based on a patriarchal system, many modern fashion standards are as well, because they are designed to excite the attention of men and thus deem their wearers worthy of sexual attention. This is why I have decided to continue following the norms associated with modest dress – because I now know that I am worthy of attention without the ‘help’ of

eye-catching clothing, and that I shall receive it, with the help of God, from the right person whenever he may come into my life. I will receive love and attention – which I know I deserve – because I believe that I am intelligent, funny, insightful, patient, caring, compassionate, and loving.

Oh yes, and I mustn’t forget… beautiful.

Another version of this article was published in the Torch. Lily Chapnik is a U2 student in Jewish Studies and Music, to reach her, please email lily.chapnik@ mail.mcgill.ca.

“Oh no! No more print issues!”

Get on with the times. It’s 2015 – all the cool kids are publishing online now.

Your ideas matter. Keep writing for The Daily over the summer. commentary@mcgilldaily.com

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March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

End your apathy

Commentary

Hold SSMU representatives accountable Lauria Galbraith The McGill Daily

E

very time that the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) ends up on my Facebook feed, there seems to be another scandal or controversy concerning the elusive group that runs our student government and their ‘esoteric leftist liberal agenda.’ This just means that students on this campus are focusing on all the wrong issues. Students’ reactions seem to be stuck within the binary of ‘not caring’ and ‘complaining.’ With that sort of attitude, we can never make SSMU into the ally we need.

Like many, I’m not an active member of the SSMU community – aside from voting, I don’t take part in student governance, and I have no real stake in painting a positive or negative picture of SSMU. But I covered SSMU’s Legislative Council for The Daily for three semesters, sitting in the back of the Lev Bukhman room and hearing firsthand the conversations that later get twisted and simplified in Facebook statuses and comments on articles. With that in mind, I have a few words to say about the state of student politics at McGill.

One of the most commonly used words associated with SSMU over the past few weeks was ‘esoteric,’ especially with regard to its activism. The irony of calling SSMU ‘esoteric’ is that every time there is an online referendum to increase or create fees for ‘esoteric’ activist groups or services, they pass by overwhelming majorities. QPIRGMcGill’s recent fee increase passed with 62.9 per cent of the vote, and last year Midnight Kitchen got a huge fee increase (from $2.25 up to $3.28), with 72.5 per cent in favour.

This past fall, motions to support action on climate change, solidarity against austerity, and a campus free from harmful military technology all passed by 80.79 per cent, 78.7 per cent, and 55 per cent, respectively.

With such numbers, it’s hard to believe that these issues are supported by only a small minority. So if these aren’t the ‘esoteric’ issues that critics complain about, what are?

Someone might (and rightfully should) point out that most of these referendums only had between 2,000 to 4,000 of more than 20,000 undergraduate students actually vote in them. My response: why get mad at the people who show up, rather than those who don’t? Instead of getting upset that people who don’t share your opinion are more likely to vote, we should be angry with the students who are too apathetic to open an email and spend a few minutes contributing to

SSMU Legislative Council meeting. our community.

Another accusation frequently thrown at SSMU is the insidergroup conspiracy, which became much more popular with last year’s invalidation of Tariq Khan’s presidential win. Courtney Ayukawa, allegedly a member of this SSMU in-group, became president instead. This year, another member of the in-group, Kareem Ibrahim, won the presidential election over outsider Alexei Simakov.

Similarly, VP Internal Lola Baraldi narrowly won over outsider Johanna Nikoletos. Elections aside, however, there is an inherent bias among SSMU representatives that favours the political opinions of this in-group.

This SSMU Council is completely dominated by a group of like-minded students who speak three times as often as the rest of the Council, are movers on practically all the motions, and often have the majority vote. Either Ibrahim or Baraldi were movers on 14 of 36 motions so far this year; the majority of the other motions were put forward by the executive team.

But this bias doesn’t exist because of the in-group of councillors and executives overpowering the other representatives. It’s because your representatives don’t speak up, and more importantly, don’t vote. In the motion to ban “Blurred Lines” from the Shatner building, there were seven votes in favour, eight against, and eleven abstentions. In a motion to support AGSEM: McGill’s Teaching Union’s attempt to unionize undergraduate teaching assistants, nine

Andy Wei | The McGill Daily

of 30 councillors abstained. While there are definitely appropriate times to abstain from a vote, e.g. in cases of personal or professional conflicts of interest, these councillors and senators are abstaining from important votes that, as representatives, they should be taking a stance on.

The bias in SSMU Council exists precisely because of these apathetic councillors, who do not speak up and properly represent their constituents. Ibrahim and Baraldi represent a body of students who deserve to have their voices heard – just like anyone else. Except, unlike many on Council, Ibrahim and Baraldi actualize their representative power. Without enough voices or votes to argue

that to your councillors. Get mad at them when they abstain from a vote. Remind them that they should be informed on the situation, and that they should amend the motion in a way that represents your opinions. The least they can do is be prepared to pick a side.

I don’t want to paint a horribly negative picture of all the SSMU representatives who aren’t in the in-group, just as much as I don’t want to put Ibrahim and Baraldi on a pedestal they don’t deserve. Ibrahim and Baraldi, along with the rest of the new executive team, are now representing all of us. If you find them unfairly pushing personal or minority group biases at SSMU, it’s within your rights to call them out.

The irony of calling SSMU ‘esoteric’ is that every time there is an online referendum to increase or create fees for ‘esoteric’ activist groups or services, they pass by overwhelming majorities. against them, almost every motion they bring to council gets passed.

Even if you agree with their opinions and actions, this one-sided debate isn’t fair to the rest of the campus, whose input gets overlooked.

Blaming the vocal minority for the motions that get passed at Council will not ‘fix’ SSMU. Instead, we have to stop letting a minority group have the power of a majority. If you are not okay with a motion that is being discussed, tell

But it’s not up to you to say that the rights of the minority should be completely ignored. Think you’re representative of a larger group of disgruntled people? Organize yourselves and bring your own motion to SSMU or your representative. They can’t and won’t shut you down.

By staying within binary of ‘not caring’ and ‘complaining,’ we’re letting the vocal minority take control of every situation, because they take the initiative to do so.

Complaining and calling SSMU names isn’t going to make them change their ways. Tensions will run high in the upcoming academic year as austerity measures become reality and more students begin to strike. SSMU will be the most powerful voice McGill students will have, and it’s up to us to speak out and let them know how we want to be represented.

In light of the recent circus that was the SSMU executive elections, I have to say that I respect Simakov’s campaign, because he wanted to bring students outside of the SSMU sphere into the debate.

But now, it’s time to stop slandering SSMU and to start actualizing its potential. SSMU doesn’t only function during times of controversy and scandalous elections; it functions all year round as an institution you can use for your own benefit to create change on campus. At the very least, you could bother to vote.

No matter what you think of it, SSMU is an institution run by the students and for the students. Every move that SSMU makes, every scandal and flubbed decision, comes down to the students, both the ones who were there and the ones who didn’t show up. Let’s all just take a step back from our reactions on Facebook, and instead take a positive, active step toward making SSMU our ally instead of our enemy.

Lauria Galbraith is a U1 Classical and Religious Studies student.

To reach her, please email lauria. joan@gmail.com.

Commentary

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

When safe(r) space hurts

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Building these spaces is a process, not empty rhetoric Dana Wray The McGill Daily

O

ut of all the phrases thrown around in day-to-day conversation, in campus media, and elsewhere, ‘safe space’ seems to be the one that riles people up the most. We’ve seen it this year again and again, from the outrage against Queer McGill’s closed meeting for people of colour, to the backlash against the proposal for women-only gym hours. It was even loosely touched on by a widely-read feature in The Daily earlier this year, titled “Everything is problematic” (November 24, Features, page 21). But what happens when so-called safe(r) space is actually just lip service for the sake of patting yourself on the back?

Groups and individuals, especially in self-described ‘radical’ or ‘anti-oppressive’ spaces – and I includeThe Daily in this – need to stop co-opting a powerful tool for fighting against oppression, and turning it into empty words and rhetoric.

As with most terms that deal with sensitive topics, there is no agreed-upon definition of safe(r) space. The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Equity Policy sums up this concept as recognizing and proactively challenging the systemic disadvantage and discrimination from which certain groups benefit. Essentially, safe(r) space is for those who face marginalization and oppression – such as racism, sexism, transphobia, ableism, and so on – based on assigned or asserted identities, which often intersect and compound. It is a place where privilege, or the unearned relative benefit that some groups and individuals enjoy as a result of discrimination or oppression of marginalized groups, must be recognized and dismantled.

Safe(r) space is not merely an adjective, a designation, or a static characterization: it is an active process that requires constant vigilance and unlearning of problematic behaviours and thoughts. As my friend and former colleague Hannah Besseau wrote in “The case for safe(r) space” (November 24, Commentary, page 18), “Experiencing safe[r] space is an individualized experience [... it] is – more than anything – a goal.”

Unfortunately, this very real and valuable goal is often used simply as empty rhetoric – whether wellintentioned or not. Too often have I seen people like myself – white, educated, middle-class, cis, and privileged in other ways – use the term safe(r) space (or safe space) as a kind of declaration that they are morally superior to and smarter than everyone else. It’s kind of like allyship, the process of standing in solidarity with

an oppressed group and challenging one’s own unearned privilege. People run around labelling themselves proudly as allies, or as proponents of safe(r) space, and then do nothing to actually back up their words.

When the time comes for action – to call out privilege, to stop violence – these same people are suddenly not there. Like allyship, safe(r) space is twisted into a label or a belief system that is used by people to prove how ‘different’ they are from the rest of the privileged group in question. Or, more concerningly, very privileged people misunderstand safe(r) space to mean a comfortable space. If you have privilege, you will probably be uncomfortable in these spaces, because they fundamentally challenge the very systems of institutional oppression in which you are complicit.

And often, if you have privilege that others in the space do not, your mere presence will create an unsafe space – sometimes, part of creating a safe(r) space is removing yourself entirely.

Obviously, I can’t speak to every case. There are many groups and people at McGill who are dedicated to creating safe(r) spaces for themselves and people they interact with, who understand that this is a difficult and constant process that will never be totally ‘right.’ But these are not

Like allyship, safe(r) space is twisted into a label or a belief system that is used by people to prove how ‘different’ they are from the rest of the privileged group in question. the people or the groups that I am addressing. Instead, this is directed toward those who hold a significant amount of privilege in society, and pay only lip service to the concept of safe(r) space. Even good intentions can’t erase how harmful this can be.

Often, people who adhere to this concept, or respect spaces that proudly promote this concept, can feel better about themselves, as if they are above the kind of violence enacted by systems of oppression. Let me be the first to tell you: you’re not. We’re not.

We are complicit in these systems of oppression, and merely agreeing that safe(r) space is necessary is not enough. We have grown up in a society governed by oppressive struc-

Alice Shen | The McGill Daily tures and institutions, and have been socialized into them. You can’t undo your own socialization in one night, or even in one year. And no, saying out loud to a room, ‘I recognize that I am complicit in these systems’ does not actually make you any less complicit in them, nor does it stop such violence. This is only a small part of a lifetime process of constantly fucking up and re-educating yourself, over and over again.

Nor is it helpful to focus solely on the micro: as an editor and a writer, I subscribe completely to the idea that words are intensely powerful, and that we need to change our language to reflect our ideals and values. But I also believe that people can get distracted by issues of language and fail to look at their own actions, and the more insidious actions of the people around them.

The Daily does not escape this criticism, and as an editor for the last two years, I am fully complicit in this. It’s all well and good that we can point to words on the page and say ‘that’s ableist,’ but if we have group meetings in an inaccessible building, are we actually doing much? I don’t mean to say that changing language should be left behind in the dust, but rather that it needs to be paired with the active acknowledgement and condemnation of actions and systems. Otherwise, the people for whom you are trying to create a safe(r) space will realize very quickly that it’s all about assuaging your own guilt and about looking good in front of

everybody – it’s about proudly announcing that you are anti-oppressive, rather than actually tearing down oppressive structures. The betrayal that comes with realizing a supposed safe(r) space is actually just an empty label is extremely harmful; people can begin to think that the microaggressions they experience or the very real ostracization they feel is all in their head.

Most important for creating a real safe(r) space as a person with privilege is challenging oppression from fellow privileged people. For example, I, as a white person, have a responsibility to call out instances of racism from fellow white people.

Instead of simply saying, ‘that’s not safe(r) space,’ and subsuming specific instances of violence under a blanket term, those with privilege should call the problem what it is.

Otherwise, dialogue is shut down, and all that is proffered is guilt, rather than an opportunity for change and re-education. I want to emphasize when I talk about calling people out and giving them resources, I speak specifically to people with privilege. The burden of education should never fall to those who are already marginalized.

Despite all these criticisms, safe(r) space is a process and a goal that I strongly believe in. The argument that the outside world isn’t ‘safe’ and so safe(r) space is a waste of time is truly a crock of shit – safe(r) space is a deliberate creation, where groups and individuals strive to combat these systems of oppression. At its

most basic, the goal of safe(r) space is to offer a refuge from the storm of the so-called ‘real world’; it is meant to give people a place where they can feel comfortable, have their opinions validated, and not have to face (as many) disempowering and harmful incidents. University is probably the place where we, as students, have the most agency to build our own spaces and create our own rules. And to those who say that safe(r) space is too complicated, that we’ll never get it right: you’re absolutely correct, we’ll never get it ‘right,’ because it isn’t possible to completely leave behind systems of oppression that have governed our lives for centuries. But giving up on something because it’s difficult isn’t the answer. The most important things in life are complex and require a lot of effort, not just words slapped onto pages or uttered without a second thought – and building safe(r) space is one of them.

Author’s note: I am indebted to all the people who have talked about safe(r) space with me, and to all the resources offered by anti-oppression activists and people who dedicate their lives to making this world a bit less violent every day. My opinions are constantly shaped and informed by the work and the experiences of other people, and I can by no means take credit for them.

Dana Wray is the Coordinating editor at The Daily, but the opinions expressed here are her own. To contact her, please email danawr4@gmail.com.

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Commentary

March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Year in review Environment, prisons, education, gender, sexuality, left-wing politics, and activism...

Events that took place over the last year provided ample grounds for critique. Consider, for instance, the Charlie Hebdo shootings that took place in Paris, France, or the 43 students that went missing in the Iguala, Mexico. These events caused such large-scale tremors that we felt their aftershocks here in Montreal.

Everything is inherently political and all power relations are interconnected. In that regard, while one could categorize the content in the Commentary section thematically, it is also important to emphasize a more intersectional approach. An article about migrant rights can also be a critique of Canada’s educational system. Another article about

the environmental impacts of Plan Nord can also be a warning against the provincial Liberal government’s austerity measures.

So we chose to look at this year in terms of space. At times we can focus on our small McGill microcosm – there is always something going on with student politics or with McGill’s policies. Beyond Roddick Gates, however, is a whole other world of which McGill students are most definitely a part.

Provincial and federal politics affect us all.

Lastly, we have to recognize that social justice knows no spatial limits. Far and wide, all around the globe, injustices suppress certain voices. We must listen to these voices, no matter where they are from.

— Cem Ertekin

Student politics and apathy We as a student body have no obligation to blindly follow rules that undermine our freedom of expression.

Nadir Khan, “Organizing against free speech”

Student politics is one of the most intriguing aspects of our life on campus. Every undergraduate student at McGill’s downtown campus is a member of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), which is not without flaws. Last year, a referendum question to increase the building failed, and all hope was lost. The real problem, though, was that last year’s SSMU executive shifted the burdens of a failed lease negotiations onto students. As such, Laurent Bastien Corbeil argued in “It’s not too late to cancel the lease” (September 29, Commentary, page 9), it was the lease that was wrong, not our vote.

We later had the infamous Fall 2014 General Assembly (GA), where a group of students chose to shut down conversation

rather than taking a stance, by indefinitely postponing a motion to stand in solidarity with the people of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Staying silent in the face of blatant injustices does nothing but perpetuate harm. Such conversations must take place on our campus, and SSMU is precisely the forum in which we can have the dialogue we need. If not SSMU, then where? Injustices do not simply go away if we ignore them.

The problem with student politics at McGill is apathy. Turnout at elections has not surpassed 31 per cent in the past five years.

Yet still, people blame SSMU for focusing solely on ‘esoteric activism.’ If you do not vote, you do not get to complain. Even student representatives tend to be apathetic – but it is the constituents’ responsibility to make their representatives aware of their interests. As Lauria Galbraith argues in “End your apathy” (March 30, Commentary, page 22) student politics are in students’ hands, and they are our responsibility.

— Cem Ertekin

McGill and lack of representation McGill has always had trouble seeing itself in the context of a larger Montreal society, and this year has posed particular barriers to establishing a relationship with it.

The responsibility for reaching out falls into the hands of students and university administrators alike. Regardless of the reason, students have difficulty bursting through the metaphorical ‘McGill bubble.’

On the other hand, the administration, despite spouting rhetoric of ‘community involvement’ and ‘helping others,’ has done little to listen to student interests. Take, for instance, the massive student push for sustainability in the form of divestment from fossil fuels. As Ella Belfer wrote in “Sustain-

able for whom?” (January 12, Commentary, page 11), often the University provides nothing but empty words, and co-opts the successful grassroots efforts of its students.

In Belfer’s words, “dedicated students do the labourintensive research, campaigning, and legwork, often mobilizing student funds in the process, at which point the University green-lights a less ambitious incarnation of the project.”

The University’s detachment from the rest of Quebec is also discernible by its complicity in the provincial government’s austerity cuts. In their article, Rachel Avery and Mona Luxion explored how these cuts relate to military research, and have found that austerity increases the University’s ties to military contractors (“Austerity and the

war machine,” January 12, Commentary, page 10). Yet, the University ignores the harmful nature of its actions. Similarly, Jasreet Kaur brought up the issue (“Decolonize McGill,” March 16, Commentary, page 10) of the University failing to acknowledge its own colonial history. McGill is a privileged institution in that its inaction in addressing these issues directly makes it complicit in social injustices. We must, thus, hold ourselves accountable, and take steps to improve.

— Jill Bachelder

Even when student voices are heard, and their initiatives are considered, the administration is very reluctant to implement them fully.

Ella Belfer, “Sustainable for whom?”

Commentary

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

It’s time for a general strike: for workers and students to unite in fighting back against damaging cuts.

Quebec and austerity Last October, thousands took to the streets to protest against the austerity measures announced by the newly-elected provincial Liberal government led by Philippe Couillard. The determination of those who oppose these measures has not faded; antiausterity mobilization has picked back up in early 2015, paving the way for a general strike. In February, Daniel Huang asked for McGill students’ solidarity in “Toward a general strike” (February 2, Commentary, page 11). Now spring has finally come, and CEGEPs, other Quebec universities, and even some McGill student associations have joined the fight against austerity.

Unlike the 2012 student strikes, the main stakes of this year’s battle are no longer bound solely to the Quebec student body – the government’s planned austerity measures will reach all the vulnerable parts of our society, from students and marginalized

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communities to the dwindling middle class.

George Ghabrial wrote about Plan Nord, which is inextricably tied to the Liberal government’s austerity measures (“Exploitation in disguise,” March 16, Commentary, page 11. Presented as “an exemplary sustainable development project” by Couillard, Plan Nord completely disregards Indigenous rights and makes environmental commitments that are really promises of destruction in disguise.

The far reach of austerity measures also manifests itself through deep cuts in the social safety net – healthcare,

It is critical that the current government rethinks its priorities and strives to be consistent with its historical role as a humanitarian country.

Alice Escande, “Two steps backward, one step forward”

In some nightmare scenarios, children have been told that they would be reported to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada if their parents did not pay the fees demanded.

education, and other social services – that took us decades to acquire. No one is safe from the devastating effects. Despite this, the usual opponents of anti-austerity demonstrators – the police – are fighting the exact same system, since the government’s Bill 10 on pension plans is an outcome of austerity. Yet, they choose to side with the government that is enforcing said system. Igor Sadikov highlighted this extreme hypocrisy (“No solidarity for the police,” February 9, Commentary, page 11) and urged us to ask ourselves why the enforcers continue to enforce when they’re quickly joining the victims’ ranks. In his words, “we cannot allow police to play both sides of the field.”

Daniel Huang, “Toward a general strike”

There comes a time when civil disobedience is not only acceptable, but necessary. That time is now.

Fatima Boulmalf, “Resistance as justice”

— Marc Cataford

Canada & conservatives Canada is a nation that prides itself on its multiculturalism. However, while all those who live in Canada deserve equal treatment, few actually receive it – The Daily’s coverage has attempted to bring to light the injustice and inequality suffered by marginalized people in Canada at the national level.

As exemplified by its heavy promotion of the Enbridge pipeline, the Conservative government has continued to support corporate interests over the demands of the public. In doing so, it has entirely disregarded environmental concerns and Indigenous rights, ignoring the plight of the most marginalized in Canada. That is what Fatima Boulmalf had in mind when she wrote “Resistance as justice” (October 20, Commentary, page 11).

Migrants, too, especially refugees, are targeted by Conservative legislation, which has targeted their access to education and healthcare, and made Canada a far less friendly

home for those in need of one. Amtullah Reage, writing under a pseudonym, exposed the abhorrent injustices faced by migrant students by sharing the their own experiences in this system (“Reading, writing and rights,” September 8, Commentary, page 8).

This year, the Conservative government has put forward a number of bills that seemed to align with its own private interests over those of the public. Among them is the controversial and unabashedly Islamophobic “Anti-terrorism act,” Bill C-51, which was called out as hypocritical, and fearmongering (“Who watches the watchers?,” March 23, Commentary, page 11). Similarly, Bill S-7, the “Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act,” sought to institutionalize xenophobia, as explained by Gavin Boutroy (“X is for xenophobia,” January 22, Commentary).

— Katherine Brenders

Atmullah Reage, “Reading, writing, and rights”

We can, and should, attempt to be as sex work-positive as we can, but after centuries of shaming and degradation, sex workers can’t help but internalize some of that shame.

Social justice without spatial limits Issues of social justice cannot be constrained by spatial limitations. McGill students come from all walks of life and from all over the world. As such, we talked about issues from all over the globe. Our authors wrote pieces that spoke to their own experiences of issues distorted by so-called authorities.

The Conservative government criminalized buying the services of sex workers this year by passing Bill C-36. A student sex

worker writing under a pseudonym, David V, argued that the bill effectively pushed their work underground, ultimately making it unsafe (“Toward (in)visibilty,” November 17, Commentary, page 9). They also pointed out that to combat the centuries-old ‘shame’ associated with the profession, people should become sex work-positive. This includes supporting the clients of sex workers.

Further afield, the world was rocked by the brutal murder of Charlie Hebdo cartoon-

David V, “Toward (in)visibility” ists in France, and Muslims were painted with the same brush as the murderers in the wake. In a beautifully-written piece, Omar Eidabat made clear that violent crimes are against everything for which Islam stands (“An ignorance that misinforms,” January 22, Commentary). He also argued that Charlie Hebdo’s racist cartoons incited the Islamophobic attacks that followed the murders.

While the Charlie Hebdo murders shook people to their core, many overlooked the 43

students disappeared by the police and the Guerreros Unidos, a drug cartel, in Mexico. Writing under a pseudonym, V explained how the disappearance was triggering country-wide mobilization against narco-politics (“Against the dying of the light,” November 24, Commentary, page 15).

Crucially, V also called out the U.S. and Canada for their role in sustaining the drug war.

— Cem Ertekin

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Editorial

March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

SSMU VP External endorsement

On March 20, members of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) elected all but one of the society’s executives for 2015-16. No candidates ran for the VP External position initially; now, two candidates are running in a by-election with a voting period from April 1 to 3.

The VP External represents the members of SSMU in the wider Montreal and Quebec community. They are in charge of keeping students aware of campaigns to improve post secondary education and of communication with other institutions, maintaining relations with McGill’s labour unions, and lobbying relevant governments on behalf of SSMU.

Emily Boytinck.

Courtesy of Emily Boytinck.

Emily Boytinck has been the Science Undergraduate Society (SUS) VP External for the past two years, and was previously a Clubs & Services Representative to SSMU in 2012-13. She has emphasized sustainability and equity in her work at SUS, and has also acted as a live-in facilitator for the ECOLE project and as an organizer with Divest McGill. Although her knowledge of French is rudimentary, which could be a drawback for inter university collaboration, Boytinck indicated to The Daily that she plans to take intensive classes.

Boytinck’s platform focuses on community engagement, transparency, and action on climate change. She noted that she wants to use SSMU’s resources to facilitate student involvement with community organizations and to empower students to bring forward political campaigns. She hopes to increase student engagement by making this process more transparent and accessible by publicizing current campaigns and providing help to students who want to start new ones. She did not emphasize anti-austerity mobilization in her platform, but told The Daily that she wants to continue educational initiatives on the topic and allow students who might be intimidated by activism to engage in a variety of ways. Boytinck noted that it was unclear whether joining a student federation would be beneficial to SSMU, and highlighted cooperation on action on climate change as a way to build relationships with other universities.

Boytinck acknowledged SSMU’s role as a political actor, considering it essential to take stances on issues that affect students like the accessibility of education. In addition to her platform points, she noted cultivating a better relationship with faculty associations as a way to foster engagement with SSMU.

Joanna Schacter.

Andy Wei | The McGill Daily

Joanna Schacter does not have a great deal of experience in campus politics, but she has been involved with campus publications at McGill and during her year at Harvard. She acted as the student liaison for the History Students’ Association Library Committee in 2012-13, and was a frosh marketing coordinator in 2013 and 2014. As a Montreal native, Schacter speaks conversational French.

Schacter emphasized that her main goal would be to accurately inform students about ongoing issues such as austerity or any issue brought to a General Assembly, taking care to present both sides of the issue at hand adequately. She believes that this will help address the problem of student apathy by helping students develop informed opinions. Schacter recognized that SSMU has been given an anti-austerity mandate, and suggested giving constituents the option to vote for SSMU-organized faculty strikes to implement it; she did not make clear how this would be an improvement over the current faculty-level procedures. Bilingualism is a central component of Schacter’s platform – she considers it important that both SSMU’s documents and communications be available in French, and that other universities with which SSMU partners make relevant documents available in English. Regarding representation at the provincial level, Schacter said that McGill’s isolation had to be addressed, and indicated that she would continue efforts to examine the possibility of joining a student federation.

Speaking to SSMU’s role as a political actor, Schacter said that SSMU has a responsibility to educate students on issues that affect them, in order to be able to meaningfully represent students. For Schacter, educating constituents is the way for SSMU to show political leadership.

Endorsement: Emily Boytinck The Daily endorses a “yes” vote for Emily Boytinck, as her relevant experience and concrete platform offer solid grounds for the position. She not only has experience in the bureaucratic world of student politics, but also with organizing in a community-campus context, mostly with environmental movements. One drawback is that she has not worked directly under the VP External portfolio, meaning that the learning curve might be steeper, but we do not find that this consideration will substantially impact her leadership abilities.

In addition, as the most political and active position on the SSMU executive, it is refreshing to see Boytinck committing to both educating and mobilizing on important issues, as well as engaging more with students. Her stance on austerity is not as emphatic as we would hope, especially in a time of strikes around that very issue, but her answers to constituents’ questions have shown that she has a solid understanding and vision of this issue.

In addition to mobilizing the student body, the VP External is responsible for liaising with other Quebec universities and the provincial government. Boytinck’s lack of bilingualism poses a potential problem, especially with the eventual creation of a student federation on the horizon, but she has strongly stated her commitment to improving her French – which is more than many other VP Externals have done in the past.

Features

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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MINE YOUR OWN BUSINESS WRITTEN BY JASREET KAUR VISUALS BY ALICE SHEN

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Features

March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Plan Nord’s disastrous consequences W ith recent austerity measures affecting many economic sectors within Quebec, the provincial government is desperately looking for new sources of income. The precious metal industry is still profitable, and mining developments such as Plan Nord could bring investors to the province, acting as a safety net to protect people from the ongoing cuts. However, this would not come without a cost that would be shouldered by current and future generations. The benefits of invasive projects such as Plan Nord are often only measured by their immediate value, leaving out negative externalities. Plan Nord is expected to cause substantial environmental damage to the region, due both to the resource extraction the project would entail, as well as its magnitude. In addition to the environmental damage, however, the project will have significant negative impacts on the local communities in the North, particularly with regard to women.

Plan Nord was initially proposed by the Liberal government led by Jean Charest in 2011, but was shut down by Pauline Marois after the Parti Québécois (PQ) came into power in 2012. The PQ has traditionally held an antagonistic position toward the mining sector. Recently, however, with the comeback of the Liberals, a revised version of the project has started to gain steam once again. This version, which encompasses 72 per cent of the land area of Quebec, an area twice the size of France, is expected to create significant economic benefits for the province, including the creation of 20,000 jobs.

These jobs, however, would come at the expense of severe environmental damages and a high potential for changes in social structures in surrounding communities, many of which are Indigenous. Additionally, despite the government’s promise that 50 per cent of the mineral rich areas would remain untouched with regard to Plan Nord resource extraction and would be preserved, the other 50 per cent, or 36 per cent of Quebec, is left to be exploited by private mining companies. Environmental agencies and people living in the region have raised questions about the intentions for this half of the plan since its announcement, but have not been able to receive concrete answers.

MINING CONSEQUENCES Mining activities often cause changes in the environment that directly affect communities living in the area – including risks such as airborne chemicals and chemicals leaking into underground aquifers. Currently, little research exists on the location of Quebec’s (and Canada’s) groundwater and aquifer deposits, making it difficult, if not impossible, to account for the quality of these water sources as mining operations expand the Northern territory. Furthermore, Quebec has about 3 per cent of the world’s freshwater, which would make potential leaks and pollution detrimental. Roussos Dimitrakopoulos, a professor in the depart-

ment of mining and materials engineering at McGill, spoke to these risks in an interview with The Daily. “I think the questions of toxins in the air is quite a minimal thing – I don’t think that there’s a major issue if we operate properly. The question of materials seeping into the ground – yes, it does happen, it can always happen. The question is, do we invest in studying the groundwater and the aquifers?” When mining companies begin new projects, they generally set up environmental and health safety guidelines to follow, or use one provided by their auditors. While this does not eliminate the environmental destruction caused, it mitigates damages,

“We’re not against development.

We just want it to be done in a way that is respectful of our way of life and the environment.”

Gilbert Dominique, Innu Chief and ensures the safety of both mine workers and those in the surrounding communities. It is important to note, however, that these safety measures are not always completely safety-proof, and in the case a dam breaks, major pollution of the surrounding water sources will occur. Such was the case at the Mount Polley mine in B.C. in August, when 25 million cubic metres of contaminated water and mine waste were flooded into the land and contaminated fresh water supplies.

Despite this, Dimitrakopoulos explained that the success of these guidelines is heavily dependent on the size of the company. He distinguished between three types of mining companies: large, medium, and small. According to him, while the larger ones were more likely to adhere to the guidelines and thereby reduce the environmental impact and safety hazards, medium-sized and smaller mining companies were generally less financially capable of complying with guidelines. “The question of accidents – if something goes wrong, then that varies not because we don’t know what to do, it varies because of mismanagement, in a sense.” So now, in addition to the environmental destruction

that would be caused regardless by mining activities, there is now a separate dimension regarding the severity of the damage that will be inflicted on both the environment and local communities.

INDIGENOUS VOICES Northern Quebec – the land covered under the Plan Nord project – is comprised of territory belonging to various groups of First Nations and Inuit communities, including the Innu, the Cree, the Naskapi, the Algonquins, and the Atikamekw. Various Indigenous groups and individuals have voiced concerns regarding the project, while others actively support it. Some concerns lie with not being fully informed or involved in the process. Last October, Jobie Tukkiapik, president of Makivik Corp., met with Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, where Tukkiapik said that an openness in discussion, as well as the government playing an active role in preserving Indigenous culture, were his primary concerns. “We’re not opposed to development, but we feel like we need to be fully involved,” Tukkiapik said in the article from Nunatsiaq Online. “There needs to be a sense of belonging.” He continued, “We know what people’s priorities are now. Our culture and language cannot be lost.”

Chief Gilbert Dominique of the Innu First Nation echoed these sentiments in an article in the Montreal Gazette last October. “We’ve said it many times: we’re not against development. We just want it to be done in a way that is respectful of our way of life and the environment, and that there be economic benefits for First Nations,” Dominique believes that Plan Nord would be a way for his community to combat social problems that are systemically faced by many Indigenous communities, including higher levels of unemployment than the general population and unequal access to medical services.

Denise Jourdain, an Innu elder and anti-Plan Nord activist, spoke to The Daily about the negative impacts the project would have both on the environment and on the culture of Innu communities living in the North. “[Plan Nord] is very personal for me – in my perspective, I wonder if

ing up our traditional practices, our customs, our lifestyles [that] the mining will take, that we will give up our rights.”

Virginia Wabano, president of the Cree Women of Eeyou Istchee Association, agreed with Jourdain’s sentiments, noting the preservation of culture was also important. “I know there’s a lot of job creation and all that, but money doesn’t buy what the foundation is, which is our land, the basis of our culture and values,” Wabano told The Daily.

“If there’s going to be a detrimental effect to our traditional cultures and values, then I will stand up to that and say no to development. You know, money is not everything when you have your identity as a person.”

CHANGES IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE Contrary to Dominique’s point, Wabano believed that instead of reducing social ills, large development projects serve to augment them even more. “There’s increases in negative behaviour as well, in regard to large-scale development like camps, prostitution, sexually-transmitted diseases, alcoholism, drug abuse, and violence – [these] are seen as the negative side of the development,” Wabano told The Daily. “These are impacts that are worrisome for women [who are] concerned about the safety of children and [younger] women. Also [there is the] fear [of ] the breakdown of family values – so there are a lot of measures that need to be taken to avoid some of the conflicts.”

The project will have massive impacts on the surrounding communities, specifically with regard to social structures in the region. It is important to recognize that every movement seeking equity is the same at its core – we all are propelled by the same desire for equity, justice, and protection of all people in spite of our differences. This is where environmentalism and feminism converge in their efforts against a capitalist-driven project that, while it claims to create immense economic benefits for the province, will actually result not only in the destruction of the environment, but also in the disruption of the communities living in the affected areas.

“It’s like we are giving up our traditional practices, our customs, our lifestyles [that] the mining will take, that we will give up our rights.”

Denise Jourdain, Innu elder and anti-Plan Nord activist it’s a trick of the provincial government to get us to sign treaties that Plan Nord is a natural resource development project on our ancestral territories,” Jourdain told The Daily in French. “It’s like we are giv-

Industrial projects have long been producing societal disruption, which often leads to the victimization of women.

A student from Stanford University wrote an article in 2012 about her experience in

Features

the Peruvian Amazon, where illegal mining was rampant. She noted how casually the locals interacted with mercury, a poisonous metal that is produced in abundance as a result of gold mining, which can have disastrous impacts on those who come in contact with it. She also described how girls under the age of 18 were already part of brothels – many of them were forced into child prostitution between the ages of 12 and 17.

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

financially and are unable to take the culpable companies to court. These cases are not exceptions, but rather a systemic problem produced by the Canadian mining industry abroad as well as at home.

Oftentimes these fallacies are hidden by corporate social responsibility programs that encourage companies to engage in the buildup of infrastructure and community programs, such as roads and schools.

They do so, however, to create an “ethical

“If there’s going to be a detrimental effect to our traditional cultures and values, then I will stand up to that and say no to development. You know, money is not everything when you have your identity as a person.”

Virginia Wabano, president of the Cree Women Eeyou Istchee Association In a case hitting closer to home, Canadian mining company Hudbay was charged in 2013 with lawsuits from Guatemala, where the company had existing mining operations. The lawsuits included a case where 11 women were gang-raped.

Yet another lawsuit against Hudbay charged the company with criminalizing Indigenous activists in Guatemala who protested against mining activities. The lack of respect for and the destruction of communities impacted by mining projects is apparent in these examples of what happens when mining companies with a strong financial backing intrude on the land of those who are already suffering

facade for unethical mining practices, as some have argued,” as Rex Brynen, a professor of political science at McGill, told The Daily in a previous article called “The problem with development organizations” (November 5, 2013, News, online) .

IMPACT ON WOMEN With regards to Quebec specifically, Plan Nord has already started impacting the women in communities predicted to be affected by the project. A Huffington Post article focused on the region of North Shore specifically, explaining that after the first announcement of the plan by the Charest government, the promise

of 20,000 jobs lured many investors and workers to communities there. When the PQ dismissed the plan, however, many found themselves out of work and having to cope with higher costs of living.

For women, this often meant a step back to society’s traditional patriarchal roles, where men would work long hours while women took care of the household on what meagre income they received. In cases of divorce or separation, women were often left with nothing. These taxing living conditions often caused heightened stress between couples and lead to an increase inincidents of domestic abuse.

Many cases were not officially reported, however, because women feared that going to women’s shelters or seeking help would result in their ostracization.

Wabano said that part of not speaking up could be attributed to the fact that many were never asked how they felt in the first place. “We know that women often feel left out of the consultation processes that are conducted in communities.

These consultation processes are usually geared to reach leaders of the community, and there’s also some exclusion of some groups, such as women and youth. Even though the invitation [to speak] is there […] women [may still not attend] because there is no childcare provided, or maybe they’re afraid to speak up, to express their concerns in public,” Wabano told The Daily.

“So maybe having a focus group for women only would be more convenient for them to discuss their thoughts on the impacts.”

Work for women in the mining industry is limited and only a restricted number of women were able to find a job in the community. Unfortunately, they make up only 1.3 per cent on average of the construction workforce – not counting for jobs in cleaning or food services – resulting in unsafe spaces where they often faced racism and sexism from their male counterparts.

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Wabano said that the way to combat these issues is to foster stronger communication between the government and the local communities impacted by mining. “It’s always essential to establish good relationships between governments and largescale companies in the early stages of these development projects because [the local communities] need to be involved in the decision-making, ongoing community engagement, ongoing dialogue, and information-sharing throughout the whole process,” Wabano told The Daily. “In order to protect women, there’s always these measures that should be considered, and some of them could be hiring additional female security officers, or having cameras in sensitive areas within the camps, because we all know that there are challenges that women face, not only within mines but overall. It does not only happen to Aboriginal women, it happens to everyone, to every woman,” she continued. “It could be like [providing] training on human rights to police, or could be developing a conflict resolution or negotiating training program which includes everyone – leaders, women, everyone.”

Despite her request for increased information for the affected communities, Wabano does not think that Plan Nord should be carried through, seeing as it would result in disastrous environmental impacts. “Take uranium mining for example. There was a big stand against uranium mining in the Cree nation territory because of its detrimental environmental impact. So of course we are going to say no to that,” she said. “In order to say, ‘Okay, we’re coming into your community and we’re going to build a mine in your backyard’ – how are you going to protect us? How are you going to protect our community? How are you going to protect our land? For the present, and for future generations?”

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Features

March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Year in review

Compiled by Joelle Dahm, Margaret Gilligan, Ralph Haddad, and Yasmine Mosimann

“I will not forget the moment when they called us to the flight on [May 29, 2014]. It opened up a lot of doors for the family, especially for the children’s education.”

“The situation is so difficult. Continuous airstrikes target houses round the clock. So far over 580 houses were destroyed, some of them after the alleged ceasefire. In some of these house targeting raids, whole families were obliterated, at one instance a family of 18 was killed at once.”

Belal Dabour, medical doctor living in Gaza

Jassem Al Dandashi, Syrian refugee Since the feature on Syrian refugees in Canada was published, the Harper government has unsurprisingly failed to deliver on its promise of resettling 1,300 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of 2014.

There have been major problems with the private sponsorship agreement holder system, which allows Syrian Canadians to bring loved ones to Canada. According to this agreement, community groups, com-

munity centres, and religious establishments are responsible to a large extent for the resettlement of many Syrians. This has resulted in certain organizations turning away Syrian families because they didn’t meet the self-imposed sectarian or ethnic criteria of these organizations.

number. Basic building materials are blocked from entering the strip due to the continued illegal Israeli blockade of the strip, and Oxfam has warned that – due to the combination of these factors – reconstructing Gaza could take up to 100 years.

“Stifled voices on the War of Gaza” – Ralph Haddad

“Not part of this lost generation” – Yasmine Mosimann

“I distanced myself from engineering for a long time because it made me feel unwanted, or like I didn’t really fit in it.”

Chemical Engineering student at McGill

Women in the faculty of science at McGill shared their personal experiences with gender-based discrimination in their fields, such as sexist comments, harassment, and being underestimated. This does not come as a surprise when compared to a recent study from the 10 and 3 showing that women are underrepresented within science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. McGill has made some progress this year: in November, the Computer Science Undergraduate Society (CSUS) created a VP

Last summer’s attack on Gaza was one of the most devastating since Israel pulled out of the strip in 2005. It caused widespread devastation, over 2,000 deaths, and irreversible psychological damage. Since the feature was published, Egypt has refused to open the border crossing into Gaza, and all tunnels leading in and out of Gaza are now at their lowest

Diversity position. Small steps like these are important, but it is clear that McGill and the rest of the country have a long way to go.

“Sy(STEM)ic misogyny” – Jill Bachelder

“There are hardly any fresh fruits and vegetables here. [...] By the time they get up North, they are frozen [and spoiled], and still they are so expensive.”

Claire*, Inuit mother of two from Nunavut (*name has been changed) Food insecurity is a big problem in Canada’s northern communities, where it affects a large part of the Inuit population.

Growing food in the harsh climate is difficult, and hunting is not an option due to the expensive hunting gear and the large size of the communities that were put together by Canadian colonizers. While the government is subsidizing food in the North, the subsidy program, called “Nutrition North,” is largely ineffective, as the money goes into the pockets of store owners and large companies.

Many Inuit started protesting this system in

2012, and on January 31, the group Feeding my Family called for a one-day boycott of the North West Company, one of the companies profiting off of these subsidies. The boycott was a major symbolic step in bringing attention to an issue that is often ignored.

“Food for the North” – Joelle Dahm

“[We] can’t pretend that the first relationship that settler colonials on [Canadian] soil had with black bodies wasn’t that of enslavement. You can’t run away from that fact.”

Kai Thomas, McGill student The murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson had a profound ripple effect, sparking dialogue and action in Black communities across the U.S. and Canada. It also brought these dialogues and actions into the mainstream, amplifying them, and forcing people to listen. While people continue to bring light to the police brutality and to the systemic and life-threatening racism experienced by Black folks in the U.S. and Canada, we still have a long way to

go before tangible changes are made. Just because there isn’t Ferguson-level media coverage of every Black life that is stolen, doesn’t mean the reasons behind their deaths have been eliminated. To those who may have the privilege of forgetting, never let it slip from your consciousness that #BlackLivesMatter.

“Ferguson, mon amour” – Margaret Gilligan

Sci+Tech

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Goading your code

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How the environment can affect gene expression Leanne Louie The McGill Daily

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magine a single gene that could dial your height up and down, like a dimmer switch on a lamp. This may sound far-fetched, but McGill scientists have found a gene like this in the Florida carpenter ant.

By modifying the epidermal growth factor receptor gene (EGFR), which encodes a cell-surface receptor protein that regulates cell growth, the scientists, led by Ehab Abouheif and Moshe Szyf, were able to generate a spectrum of ant sizes varying from 1.6 to 2.5 millimetres in length. Through a process called methylation, they altered the amounts of chemical coating on this gene, changing its accessibility to proteins and leading to differing levels of gene expression among the ants. Interestingly, the ants with the lowest level of gene expression were the largest in size.

“The gene sits at the top of some sort of cascade,” Abouheif told The Daily in an interview. Modifying EGFR affected other genes involved in growth, leading to the correlation observed between ant size and methylation.

These results have implications that extend far beyond the dimensions of insects. If size can have a single, all-controlling gene, it’s possible that other traits could as well, from obesity to cancer proclivity. “If you could find those genes, you could dial things up or down, no matter the trait,” said Abouheif. Indeed, the EGFR gene itself is known to be involved in many types of cancers, and it’s observed throughout the animal kingdom. “We’re just at the beginning,” said Abouheif.

This breakthrough wasn’t the beginning for Abouheif, though. In 2012, he led a team that was able to environmentally induce the development of ‘supersoldier’ ants, unlocking genes that had laid dormant for millions of years. With giant heads and huge mandibles, the oversized ant ‘supersoldiers’ are appropriately named. This rare phenotype occurs naturally in some species, but the scientists were able to create it in species that normally lack the phenotype by applying hormones to the ants at crucial developmental stages.

“You’ll find [natural] anomalies where whales will have hind legs and birds will have teeth,” Rajee Rajakumar, a former PhD student at McGill and the lead researcher in the study, told the Daily. The scientists believe that these types of irregular body plans represent phenotypes that are locked within the genome, remnants of a time when they were necessary. They remain accessible in the presence of the right triggers, allowing for the release of new (or perhaps, old), potentially adaptive characteristics in the event of drastic environmental changes.

“They’re a throwback to ancient traits basal to the group,” explained Rajakumar. According to him, this research could potentially be used as a means to evolve novel traits, or variations on the themes of these traits.

Right now, Rajakumar is working on postdoctoral research at the University of Florida, hoping to extend his PhD research on ants to vertebrates.

Although he’s working with sharks and chickens now, he still thinks ants are an incredible model organism.

“Studying them can lead to fundamental insight into all animals.”

Erica Jewell | The McGill Daily At first glance, the significance of ants as a model organism may not be obvious, but their unique sex determination system actually makes them an excellent model for the study of genetic mechanisms. Female ants are diploid, with two sets of chromosomes, whereas males are haploid, with only one set. Thus, when ants reproduce, female offspring receive half of their mother’s chromosomes and the entirety of their father’s genome. The half that’s passed on from

the mother varies from daughter to daughter, but each daughter receives the same genes from their father, so on average, sister ants are genetically 75 per cent similar. Thus, variation among sister ants is harder to attribute to genetic differences, which makes them an excellent model for the study of epigenetics, or the effect of the environment on genes.

As the research from the Abouheif lab shows, the environment is key in regulating genetics. “The environ-

ment and genes contribute equally and you can’t tease them apart,” Abouheif explained. Everything from our early childhood experiences to the food we eat for breakfast can potentially alter the way our genetic code manifests. As research into the field of epigenetics continues to advance, scientists are coming closer to harnessing this potential, which could lead to innovative treatments for epigenetic diseases such as cancer, and perhaps even a slow aging in the future.

Understanding what makes music pleasurable Nadia Boachie The McGill Daily

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s we walk to class, study at the library, socialize at parties, or join tens of thousands at soldout music venues, we choose to immerse ourselves in the richness of music. But what is it that makes music so pleasurable?

Music does not provide any obvious evolutionary benefit like sex or food do, but most can say it is a necessity to life as we know it. Across all cultures, music –complex sound streams with hierarchical rules of temporal organization – is a universal source of entertainment.

In an interview with The Daily, David Sears ­– a PhD candidate studying Music Theory at McGill’s Music Perception and Cognition Lab – explained, “the experience of pleasure during music listening — or any other aesthetic experience for that mat-

ter — is dependent upon the listener reaching an optimum level of physiological arousal.” If a new musical context is too complex or surprising, we might feel fear, confusion, or disgust, and possibly conclude that we dislike the song. If the song is too simple or familiar, on the other hand, we might feel bored and dislike the song.

According to Sears, “to elicit pleasure, musical works we fall in love with tend to be somewhere in the middle” of this balance between familiarity and complexity. This might explain why we tend to dislike a tune when we hear it for the first time, but then grow to appreciate it after listening to it repeatedly. So one theory, as Sears puts it, might be that “humans seek out aesthetic experiences that optimally challenge us, where attaining a sense of understanding for a new song across repeated listenings is neither too easy nor too difficult.”

Robert Zatorre, James McGillPro-

fessor of Neuroscience, and Alain Dagher professor of Neurology & Neurosurgery and Psychology at McGill, in collaboration with other researchers, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) scans to investigate the neural processes involved when listening to music. Their research paper was published in Science Magazine in April 2013. The study showed that music triggers the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is also released during sex and when eating food, to several areas of the brain, including the ventral striatum, which contains the nucleus accumbens.

The scientists used PET scans to determine how much dopamine was released and used the fMRI scans to track the areas that received the dopamine. In terms of pleasure, the study concluded that activity in the ventral striatum region of the brain, which is believed to be responsible

for memory and movement, is the best predictor of how much pleasure is derived from a song. The study offers a biological explanation for the processes involved in gaining pleasure from listening to music.

However, why people are able to obtain pleasure from music, remains uncertain. A study published in 2011 in Nature Neuroscience by Zatorre and Dagher, and others suggests listening to music evokes certain emotions through “expectations, delay, tension, resolution, prediction, surprise, and anticipation.” The study concluded “that a sense of emotional expectation, prediction and anticipation in response to abstract pleasure can also result in dopamine release,” resulting in pleasure.

Neuroscientist Jeff Hawkins and New York Times science writer Sandra Blakeslee offer a similar explanation, in their book On Intelligence suggesting that the brain’s main function is in

predicting the future. When the brain is able to successfully predict an event, it rewards itself via neural circuitry, and dopamine is released. If this is in fact true, it should be no surprise that music encourages listeners to make predictions, and this fulfillment leads to the kinds of pleasurable experiences that draw listeners back repeatedly.

Music is part of almost all facets of life and can evoke a wide range of emotions and memories. It can have profound effects on our behaviour and, at times, even physically move us. Yet, little is known about how it is able to do that, and even less on why we respond to it the way we do. Scientific inquiry into the neurochemical effects of music is slowly breaking out of its infancy as technology and noninvasive brain imaging techniques advance. Perhaps in the future, scientists will be able to offer more concrete insights into the complex relationship between music and the brain.

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March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

What technology wants

Sci+Tech

Deciphering the forces that drive technology’s evolution Trent Eady Sci+Tech Writer

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ost of the people who have lived on this planet have never seen anything new invented from the time they were born to the time they died. Technology, for them, was just part of the static background of life, as unchanging as the mountains or the sea. The most dramatic example is the Acheulean hand axe, a stone tool invented by our ancestors Homo erectus and later taken up by our own species, Homo sapiens. It was continually used for 1.3 million years, passing through the hands of 65,000 generations, and hardly changed during that time.

Today, technology no longer gives the appearance of standing still. It changes before our eyes. In the same way that its stillness made it as inscrutable as the sea, its movement makes it exciting and strange.

After millennia of quiet and dutiful service, technology has finally caught our attention. Now we are led to wonder what technology really is and what it all might mean.

These are the questions Kevin Kelly hopes to answer in his unique and tantalizing book What Technology Wants published in 2010. Kelly’s arrival at these questions was unexpected — in his youth, he eschewed all material possessions except for his

When the human brain evolved, biological evolution produced a new medium for information flow. It in fact produced a new evolutionary process. bicycle and sleeping bag. Kelly spent his time visiting Amish communities and editing the Whole Earth Catalog, a resource for those seeking to build self-sufficient communes. He was uncomfortable with cars and television, which to him exerted an unseemly level of control over people.

But a revelation occurred when Kelly tapped into an early version of the internet. “There was something unexpectedly organic about these ecosystems of people and wires,” Kelly writes in his book. “Online networks unleashed passions, compounded creativity, amplified generosity. […]

Karen Chiang | The McGill Daily Cold silicon chips, long metal wires, and complicated high-voltage gear were nurturing our best efforts as humans. […] For me, this gave a very different face to technology.” In 1992, prior to the publication of his book, Kelly went on to become the founding editor of Wired magazine and has sought a deeper understanding of technology ever since.

Even though technology affects every aspect of human life, there hasn’t been any major effort to develop general theories about how it operates, in the way that biologists have for living organisms or that economists have tried to do for national economies. There is not even a word for Kelly’s area of study – the study of technology as a general phenomenon. Kelly writes that until recent history, technology was “virtually invisible” to us. It “could be found everywhere […] except in the minds of humans.” The word ‘technology’ itself only appeared for the first time in 1802, in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. Until that point, the closest thing to the contemporary concept of technology had been the concept of craft – skilled manual work like carpentry, weaving, or metalworking.

What Technology Wants revolves around a central theme: the way we currently think about technology is too narrow. When we think about technology, we tend to think of individual – and typically recently invented – technologies like computers. Kelly hopes to persuade us to instead imagine technology as a cosmic phenomenon like biological

life, and as one that shares a common basis with life. “Both life and technology,” Kelly writes, “seem to be based on immaterial flows of information.”

The information flows of biological evolution occur in the genes of organisms that undergo natural selection. The process moves along slowly, requiring many cycles of birth and death before even an incremental change can occur. Not all of the products of biological evolution can be found within organisms. Beehives, birds’ nests, and beaver dams – artifacts whose blueprints are encoded in those species’ genes – are as much products of evolution as the creatures they belong to. Human technology is also a product of biological evolution, but in a more indirect sense. When the human brain evolved, biological

years studying how biological evolution works, but little is known about what general principles might drive technological evolution. To use Kelly’s metaphor, little is known about what technology ‘wants.’ There are two notable similarities between the two evolutionary processes: a trend toward greater diversity and a trend toward greater complexity. The trend toward greater diversity has the same cause in both processes. The evolution of new species – of life or technology – occurs within the context of an ecosystem, and the diversity of the ecosystem leads to greater diversity over time. Kelly writes, “Each new invention requires the viability of previous inventions to keep going.

There is no communication between machines without extruded copper

The characteristics we associate with living things — such as flexibility, hardiness, self-repair, and complexity — can be integrated into technology, making it as ‘organic’ as life. evolution produced a new medium for information flow. It in fact produced a new evolutionary process.

Now information flows could occur in the more nimble medium of ideas in human brains undergoing an intelligent selection process, allowing for much more rapid change. Thus, technological evolution is a product of biological evolution.

Biologists have spent over 150

nerves of electricity. There is no electricity without mining veins of coal or uranium, or damming rivers, or even mining precious metals to make solar panels. There is no metabolism of factories without the circulation of vehicles. No hammers without saws to cut the handles; no handles without hammers to pound the saw blades. This global-scale, circular, interconnected network of systems,

subsystems, machines, pipes, roads, wires, conveyor belts, automobiles, servers and routers, codes, calculators, sensors, archives, activators, collective memory, and power generators —this whole grand contraption of interrelated and interdependent pieces forms a single system.”

As just mentioned, the second similarity between the two evolutionary processes is the trend toward greater complexity – specifically maximum complexity, the complexity of the most complex species. In biological evolution, the increase in maximum complexity is due to a tiny minority of species that grow more complex over time. Since most species on Earth remain simple singlecelled organisms, the overall complexity of life doesn’t change much.

With technology, this doesn’t seem to be the case. The overall complexity of technology seems to rise over time.

In both evolutionary processes, however, maximum complexity increases.

If these trends continue, technology – which evolves at a much faster rate – will eventually surpass life in diversity and complexity. Life will cease to be the most interesting thing in the universe, just as inanimate matter ceased to be the most interesting thing in the universe when life evolved. The characteristics we associate with living things – such as flexibility, hardiness, selfrepair, and complexity – can be integrated into technology, making it as ‘organic’ as life. This perspective puts us not at the end of natural history, as most people imagine, but right in the middle.

Sci+Tech

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Ebola: symptom of a larger problem Epidemic driven by socioeconomic discrimination

Sonia Larbi-Aissa The McGill Daily

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he Ebola outbreak plaguing West Africa exposed the inability of the current market system to act in a socially responsible manner. It made abundantly clear the reluctance of unaffected states to intervene in the crisis, and the lack of tools to effectively curb the outbreak once they do.

At the onset, medical personnel working in West Africa had no means of rapidly diagnosing patients with Ebola. This explains the World Health Organization’s (WHO) delineation between ‘suspected cases’ and ‘confirmed cases’ in its data. That in and of itself posed a huge risk to patients who presented with Ebola-like symptoms, such as fever and headaches, who did not ultimately have Ebola. Because local hospitals closed en-masse at the onset of the epidemic due to their inability to meet the acute need of Ebola patients, pregnant women and those with the flu were forced into quarantine with highly infectious Ebola patients for weeks pending results. That field test does not exist merely because those who need it, i.e. the West African population, do not constitute enough of an attractive market for the private sector to justify production.

According to Heather Culbert, president of the board of Médecins Sans Frontières Canada, the outbreak claimed over 500 local medical professionals, decimating the health infrastructure of already fragile countries. Culbert spoke on February 18, along with Gary Gottlieb, CEO of Partners in Health, and Srinivas Murthy, an infectious disease specialist working with the WHO, at “McGill Students Fight Ebola,” a conference organized by the McGill Global Health Network.

The current market system also failed West Africans when desperately-needed protective gear was put up for auction, instead of donated to NGOs on the ground. Even in the midst of a then-exponentially increasing death rate and an almost uncontrollable infection rate, the profits this auctioning brought to companies outweighed the number of human lives that could have been saved if the preventative materials were donated. This conscious decision to prioritize profits over human lives on the part of the healthcare industry raises the question: if the speed and severity of the Ebola outbreak did not merit corporate al-

truism, what will?

However, what was truly needed at the peak of the outbreak was a vaccine. The absence of an available Ebola vaccine is symptomatic of a market that allocates research and development for essential medicine through a profit-maximizing framework.

Because Ebola is primarily a disease of poverty, a vaccine simply does not exist. Those in the ‘developed’ world who enjoy the comprehensive infrastructure and quality of life that renders Ebola benign constitute the bulk of the pharmaceutical market.

Pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to bring drugs to market that lack demand from their customer base, even if large groups of people outside their primary market are suffering from a disease they could prevent. Companies essentially turn a blind eye to those who cannot pay. Because of the lack of an attractive market, it is interesting to examine the motives behind the limited Ebola research that had taken place before the outbreak.

Ebola vaccine research initially emerged purely to serve American interests. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) lept to fund hemorrhagic vaccine research after whispers of an impending Soviet bioterrorist attack surfaced during the Cold War. Eventually, researchers deemed Ebola not significant enough of a threat to justify continuing research. The progress made was left to gather dust until Dick Cheney gained a public platform as former President George W. Bush’s running mate. Cheney’s fearmongering succeeded in funding a vaccine for clinical testing, but the tepid political will and equally tepid market incentive left the VSV-ZEBOV variant, initially developed at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, to stall in the backwaters of Phase I clinical trials after being licensed to NewLink Genetics, a private corporation whose primary focus is curing cancer. However, NewLink did not acquire the vaccine’s license straight from the DoD. The Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory took up where the DoD left off with a substantially smaller budget before selling it to NewLink. This intermediary research was funded entirely by a Master’s student’s research grant.

The fact that one of the few Ebola vaccines in the pipeline has such strong ties to American military interests comes at no surprise after examining the trend

Tanbin Rafee | The McGill Daily of complete and utter neglect of diseases of poverty. 90 per cent of the global burden of disease is targeted by only 10 per cent of total research. This 10/90 ratio shrinks to 1/99 when updated to reflect the amount of research allocated to the number of people suffering from neglected tropical diseases, such as Ebola.

There is no question that the healthcare industry in the developed world is unable and, more abhorrently, unwilling to allocate research and development to better the lives of those suffering from preventable diseases simply because they cannot pay. A few different approaches to change this, ranging from principled to pragmatic, already exist and await implementation.

The most basic change needed to reverse the divergence of global health research from global health problems is one of principle. Medicine should be a public good. Incentive to develop should never come from an individual’s willingness to pay, but from a governmental or global prioritization of the basic human right to good health. This drastic paradigm shift will not occur anytime soon. Pharmaceutical companies and entities reliant on industry profits – including universities patenting and licensing discoveries – all have a stake in continuing the status quo profit-maximizing framework.

This ‘business as usual’ mindset

comes at the cost of millions living with and dying of preventable and treatable diseases of poverty.

More practically, a change to an open-access paradigm in terms of drug discovery and development should be made. Because science builds on itself, innovations in one field can be applied to drug development in the pharmaceutical industry. Currently, prohibitive paywalls protect the academic literature surrounding medical experiments and discoveries. Entire countries are barred access due to these expensive institutional subscriptions. Perhaps if the DoD had not classified its Ebola research or if NewLink had not been able to purchase exclusive ownership of the data, a vaccine could have been developed in time. Current steps to insert open-access clauses in the Ebola vaccines being brought to clinical trial, and the creation of hemorrhagic fever research centres with the same aim, come too little, too late.

Because the development of essential medicines responds exclusively to market signals, those same market signals could be used to incentivize production of medicine for neglected tropical diseases. The promise of cash prizes allocated in proportion to the degree of impact of a newly developed drug can incentivize the market just as effectively as a patent monopoly – with an important caveat. In exchange for

accepting the payout, the developer must allow for generic versions of their intellectual property to be sold at affordable prices, ensuring the interests of the developing world are protected.

This works in theory, but would never be accepted by firms seeking to make grotesque profits from marketing pharmaceuticals.

Another market-augmenting strategy is amassing willing buyers from different locations around the world to increase their purchasing power. Nonprofits like GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance artificially manufacture attractive markets by pooling interested parties – typically small nations in Africa – to incentivize production and ensure equitable pricing. However, GAVI relies exclusively on funds from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to operate, which is neither sustainable nor sufficient to tackle this structural issue.

The Ebola outbreak confirmed that we need a massive overhaul of the healthcare industry at the risk of allowing toxic apathy on the part of those with the power to persist. Some semblance of morality needs to re-enter the economic arena or else future outbreaks, similar to or worse than Ebola, are inevitable. Murthy ended the “McGill Students Fight Ebola” conference by stating, “Hopefully we’ve learned a lot from the outbreak for the next one, because there will be a next one.”

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Sci+Tech

March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

On the road with a robot One day, your car might drive you

Peter zhi and Zapaer Alip

The McGill Daily

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utomated vehicles (AV), also known as self-driving cars, are currently being developed, and a new report has concluded that Canada must step up its game to catch up with this exciting and disruptive technology.

The Conference Board of Canada, a not-for-profit applied research group, warned in a report released on January 21 that if Canada does not prepare for the inevitable implementation of AV technology, it will face economic consequences and ultimately lag behind in benefiting from the technology.

Current status The report declared, “We see the widespread adoption of AVs as being a matter of ‘when,’ not ‘if.’” It predicted that AV technology will sweep across the world in as little as five years – in fact, the first generation of AV technology is already upon us. Two-seater vehicles are on the streets of California by way of Google’s ‘Chauffeur Project,’ and in Alberta, Suncor is already using autonomous large dump trucks on private properties for work in the oil sands.

The state of Nevada has passed legislation to allow AVs on highways, while the governments of Singapore, the European Union, and the U.K. are actively promoting the testing of AV technology.

Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Nissan, and Tesla are all developing AVs that can rival a human-driven car in all functions and capabilities.

Semi-automated cars, such as the Mercedes Benz S-class, are already commercially available.

Car manufacturers plan to add Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) to familiar vehicle models, rather than create fully autonomous vehicles from scratch. Current ADAS technology includes lane-keeping, intel-

Xuan Hu | Illustrator ligent cruise control with braking, and automated parking. ADAS systems will first appear in higher-end models, with the goal of being universally implemented in all models in the near future.

AVs can be considered as one of the first classes of autonomous robots that can be owned by the masses.

The current research behind AV technology is keen to keep it a modifying technology rather than a replacement technology, for easier integration socially, economically, and infrastructure-wise, and for legal purposes. For example, the current technology favours retaining a driver for purposes of private ownership of vehicles.

However, legislation is predicted to move toward giving greater

freedom and scope of AV technology, and thus full automation amongst other vehicles remains an eventual possibility.

The potential benefits There are a host of benefits, the most significant one being safety. AVs are expected to eliminate traffic accidents caused by human error, which account for 93 per cent of all traffic accidents, and could save up to 1,600 lives in Canada every year.

AVs can be considered as one of the first classes of autonomous robots that can be owned by the masses. They could replace conventional cars in the taxi industry. Barrie Kirk, co-founder of the consulting company Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence and one of the authors of the report, told The Daily that “if you have your own car, for most people that car sits idle for 95 per cent of the time.

It’s very inefficient.”

Kirk believes AVs could generate interest in the transportationas-a-service model, where cars

are rented rather than owned.

The overall effect would be to reduce the number of conventional cars on the road, meaning decreased space needed for parking, a smaller ecological footprint due to the reliance on electricity rather than oil, and reduced traffic.

AVs can also free up time spent at the wheel, as people will be able to perform other tasks while travelling; according to Statistics Canada in 2011, Canadians spent on average 32 days in traffic.

Kirk notes AVs would reduce the cost of transportation by introducing a shared ownership model for cars through transportationas-a-service. Instead of a conventional car, people would use driverless taxis and pay a monthly or daily rate, and since the cost would be distributed over many different customers, it would be cheaper than owning a car.

Concerns with the new technology Wajeeh Syed, mechatronics engineer intern at Tesla, noted some challenges facing AV technology, such as “detecting con-

struction areas […] reading the speed limit, if signs are dirty [the AV] wouldn’t pick up the right speed. Heavy weather conditions are also proving to be difficult.”

Kirk, however, is confident that with time the challenges will be overcome. “The technology is moving ahead very well.”

If AVs were to be fully implemented, the job losses would be monumental. It could severely affect the livelihood of more than 500,000 Canadians who rely on conventional cars to earn a living. There are also concerns regarding the security of AVs; as the technology becomes more complex, it also becomes more vulnerable to bugs and being compromised by third parties.

Finally, there is also the risk of future generations becoming too dependent on the technology and thus being unable to function without it. It is evident that AVs will become a reality within the decade, this is all the more reason to start considering the implications and possible ethical issues now.

School’s out, but Sci +Tech is sticking around. We’ll be publishing online throughout the break. Write for us over the summer!

Email scitech@mcgilldaily.com to get involved!

Sci+Tech

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Behind the screen

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The case for online anonymity

Andrea Horqque Sci+Tech Writer

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nonymity allows people to express themselves without the fear of repercussion for their ideas. It allows for an unbiased audience and forms a critical part of our privacy in a digital age.

The concept of anonymity and pseudonymity predate the advent of the internet, which is a recent phenomenon dating back only 25 years.

However, thanks to the internet, it has never been easier to publicly share ideas and messages anonymously in a matter of seconds.

One of the larger groups of people for whom anonymity is the most beneficial is activists. In many cases, anonymity is a must in order for people to stand up for their cause without having to fear for their lives. A very popular group that utilizes this concept is Anonymous, an international network of activists and hacktivists.

Gabriella Coleman, who holds the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill, has done extensive research on Anonymous. The group criticizes various aspects of society, all while keeping their identities hidden and evading authorities.

Coleman in an interview with The Daily explained that anonymity is more than just tradition in this community. “[Anonymous] is critical of celebrity culture […] it critiques fame-seeking.” This is another reason they rely on anonymity – without it, fighting for a cause may turn into a popularity contest of ‘who’s the best activist.’

The Anonymous community is completely dependent on the concept of online anonymity. Via a CBC radio show, an ‘anon’ explains: “We just happen to be a group of people on the internet who need — just kind of an outlet to do as we wish, that we wouldn’t be able to do in regular society. […]

That’s more or less the point of it.

Do as you wish.”

People use private chat rooms, blogs, and forums simply because of the fact that there, they are able to obtain or share information without being exposed. Whether it be talking about personal matters that would be embarrassing to discuss in person, or exposing corrupt government or corporate practices, anonymity is embedded into the internet as we know it.

Anonymity allows people to discuss ideas they wouldn’t bring up if their identity was revealed simply due to the fear of ridicule, rejection, or in some cases prosecution.

It helps for information to flow freely. When people are

Melissa Olsen | The McGill Daily aware that they are being heard, they are more careful with what they say. In the words of Michel Foucault, “If the prisoner is never sure when he is being observed, he becomes his own guardian.”

Unfortunately, anonymity is a two-way street. Just as it lets people express themselves freely

to the question of whether or not the student would have posted the comment if there was a degree of accountability involved, as the university would definitely have taken disciplinary action. A similar case developed at Stanford University, where earlier this year a student was accused of

“Protecting anonymous free speech does not work unless you have anonymous protection.”

Gabriella Coleman, Wolfe Chair of Scientific and Technological Literacy in a positive manner, it can also be abused for nefarious purposes. For example, one of the larger problems with online anonymity that several campuses have experienced has been the spread of misogynistic and racist ideas through the use of YikYak, an anonymous social media app.

Last week, at the University of Georgia, a student was found dead in her room. On the very same night her body was found, a student posted a profoundly racist comment on YikYak. This led

sexual assault. Once again, taking advantage of the anonymity that YikYak provides, a student posted a Yak promoting rape culture.

According to The Guardian students at Stanford, said the Yaks were “collective horror, tasteless victim-blaming, and outright misogyny.” Again, no one was held accountable and most of the evidence vanished into thin air, as Yaks are periodically deleted.

Students are aware that once you put something online, it is there forever, and will most likely

come back to affect future job prospects, which is why they would hesitate to post sexist, racist, or insensitive comments with their name on it, as it would be documented forever. YikYak offers the opportunity for them to say whatever they desire to their community without any accountability for their statements whatsoever.

In Canada, the government is attempting to regulate online anonymity. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper revealed the government’s intention to pass a bill that would allow “the removal [of ] terrorist propaganda” from the internet. It would further allow the government to imprison anyone who “knowingly advocates or promotes the commission of terrorism offences.” What the government considers “terrorist” propaganda and “promoting” terrorism is not clear. Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien explained in a statement to the press that Bill C-51, or the AntiTerrorism Act, “would seemingly allow departments and agencies to share the personal information of all individuals, including ordi-

nary Canadians who may not be suspected of terrorist activities, for the purpose of detecting and identifying new security threats.”

While some people argue that they ‘have nothing to hide,’ the fact is that Bill C-51 is simply a threat to freedom of speech. It threatens the online anonymity that allows activists to move forward with their ideas. It limits freedom of speech by removing content which the government deems a threat, and could imprison innocent critics. “Protecting anonymous free speech does not work unless you have anonymous protection,” explains Coleman.

Canadians can think for themselves – for the government to think otherwise is insulting.

Online anonymity is clearly a double-edged sword; nonetheless, its consequences depend a lot on the milieu under which anonymity is used. Although it can clearly lead to sexist, racist, or otherwise harmful ideas to spread quickly, it is important to consider the many benefits it offers. Anonymity cannot be lost without risking the loss of freedom of speech.

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Sci+Tech

March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Year in review “There is no health without mental health.”

Michael Meaney, Associate Director of the Douglas Mental Health University Institute It has been an interesting year for neuroscience, with several breakthrough moments in research – from the discovery of a protein that could increase your long-term memory, to advancements in brain scanning that could potentially change what it means to be human. This year also marked the thirtieth anniversary of the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre. We looked at the importance of our brain in relation to our wellbeing, how

to supply it with healthy nutrients (whether vegetables or insects), and highlighted the interconnectedness between mental health and our overall health.

Even with a busy lifestyle, eating a nutritious diet should be high on your list of priorities, though researchers found this to be more difficult than expected with current Canadian nutrition labels. We also learned more about ourselves as humans and the role

of empathy when it comes to pain. Despite advancements in neuroscience, it is evident there is still a strong need for more interdisciplinary research and collaboration when it comes to understanding mental health, since psychiatric disorders are still poorly understood and the traditional treatment of chemical cocktails is no longer enough.

– Zapaer Alip

Despite overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccines are safe and effective, there continues to be a prevalent and dangerous public distrust in them.

Rackeb Tesfaye “A dose of reality”

From vaccines to climate change, scientific knowledge continues to be misrepresented in the media. Confusion over the Ebola virus was far more rampant in Canada and the U.S. than instances of the disease itself, though this was not true in West Africa, where Ebola had been a problem long before the fearmongering of the corporate media. The anti-vaccination movement returned to the media spotlight with the outbreak of measles and controversy with Queen’s University instructor who was teaching anti-vaccine rhetoric as real

One of the beautiful aspects of the hacker community is its general willingness to take in anyone interested to learn.

Andrea Horqque “The case for hackathons”

science. As a result, some communities (mostly upper middle class) have decided that their suspicions of vaccines are more valid than decades of scientific research that clearly debunks the myths of their supposedly harmful ‘side effects.’

The public mistrust of scientists was compounded by a Harper government campaign to silence the voices of government scientists doing research on climate change, retracting funding and otherwise preventing them from sharing freely their work with the public they supposedly serve.

Overall, the general misrepresentation

of science in the media and the oppression of scientific knowledge continues to be a problem. However, this year has also seen renewed engagement by scientists in novel ways, including a local radio initiative named Science Faction that aims to share science research using only the 1,000 mostused words. This year’s events have been a stark reminder to scientists that effectively communicating their research is often as important as the results themselves.

Technological literacy has been a trending topic this year, highlighted by U.S. President Barack Obama writing his first line of code during an Hour of Code event as part of the 2014 Computer Science Education Week. Whether in the form of large-scale hackathons – like MHacks, McHacks, or PennApps – or local initiatives led by smaller groups such as HackMcGill’s Hack101, the efforts of the hacker community to communicate their knowledge to people and get them involved, have not gone unnoticed.

Knowing even a modicum about technology can have a real impact on your life. The information security and domestic espionage scandals that have popped up throughout the year

are a reminder that it’s preferable to understand some of the inner workings of the gadgets we use every day as they often serve as channels for very sensitive information.

While the way private information is handled needs to be much more transparent, especially with respect to corporations and government entities handling large databases of private information about individuals, we have to be proactive about protecting ourselves, and stop relying entirely on other people to keep our confidential data from prying eyes. In November, McGill’s IT security was put on the hot seat for storing passwords in insecure ways, and throughout the year, the Snowden leaks have revealed more

– Jill Bachelder

and more of the NSA’s dark plans to keep a close eye on everyone’s private information. To top all this, the debates over net neutrality, a key concept that could make or break the internet’s future, are far from over, and the risk of having corporate interests and conservative groups obtain vast power over the internet as we know it is very real. To be able to understand these issues, avoid pitfalls, and take the right decisions for ourselves and for the next generations, we’ll need to be tech-savvy, we’ll need to cease to be simple consumers, and we’ll need to be interested in learning and embracing technology, ultimately becoming hackers ourselves.

– Marc Cataford

Sports

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Pinning and pitching

37

The MLB’s moral panic over PED’s

Madison Smith The McGill Daily

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aseball spring training started this month, bringing Alex Rodriguez back into the minds of those who care about men hitting balls with sticks. For those who don’t follow America’s favourite pastime, Mr. Rodriguez is currently coming off an unprecedented season-long suspension for using performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). Specifically, ARod (as he is known to fans and the impatient) admitted to using steroids and human growth hormone (HGH). A-Rod, with the assistance of these chemicals, became perhaps the greatest home run hitter that baseball has ever known. Unfortunately, the guard-

ians of baseball’s precious morality frown upon the use of PEDs, and have waged an apparently successful war to rid baseball of steroids and HGH in recent years.

A-Rod is perhaps the most highprofile casualty of this inquisition.

The great PED purge is also having an effect on the most tangible manifestation of the morals of people in baseball – the Hall of Fame ballots. So far, no ex-player whose name has been tainted by allegations of steroid or HGH use has ever been voted into the Hall.

This is awkward, because almost all of the superstars now eligible for entrance into the Hall have used PEDs at some point. Thus far, this has resulted in one year in which no players were elected, and others in which only secondtier players were elected, leaving big names like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens conspicuously mouldering on the ballot.

This is a problem first and foremost because, by keeping recent superstars out of the Hall of Fame, the Baseball Writers’ Association is holding them to a higher standard of ‘cleanliness’ than it did their predecesessors.

While steroid and HGH use is a comparatively recent development in baseball’s history, the use of other performance enhancers has been widespread for almost the entire history of the sport. Amphetamines were the most prominent pre-steroid era PED, and they seem to have been common almost to the point of ubiquity for a time.

They were only banned by Major League baseball (MLB) in 2006, after players had been using them for decades. By denying steroidera players the honour of being in the Hall of Fame, the Writers’ Association is implying that those players violated the code of a game that is supposed to be played ‘clean.’ The Hall of Fame voters are trying to clean up the history, a sport that has always been played by cheaters and drug abusers, and played gloriously.

Many of the greatest baseball players of all time were famous for cheating. Ty Cobb, a player from the 1930s widely considered to be one of the greatest pure hitters in baseball’s history, infamously

sharpened his metal cleats so that people would be afraid to tag him as he slid into bases. Another Hall of Famer, Gaylord Perry, wrote a

I’m not necessarily advocating for the reinstatement of drug-fuelled baseball, but I will say that MLB’s moral panic over PEDs is ridiculous, and is ultimately harmful to the legacy of the sport.

whole book about his success with an illegal pitch called the spitball.

Substance use has also been a constant part of the grand tradition.

Babe Ruth was infamous for drinking too much, and he’s in the Hall, alongside countless players from the amphetamine era. Dock Ellis infamously pitched a no-hitter while tripping on acid. The idea that steroid users somehow ‘tainted’ a prevlously pure game with their substance abuse is absurd.

Another problem with MLB’s anti-PED crusade is that drug use has had no negative effect on the game from an entertainment standpoint. In fact, the steroid era was perhaps the most exciting time in MLB history. The steroid era saw the single-season home run record broken twice in less than a decade, and saw Hank Aaron’s record for career home runs shattered. Since baseball’s PED crusade started, both total home runs and total scoring have declined. Anyone even remotely in-

Alice Shen | The McGill Daily terested in baseball knows that it is a sport that involves long periods of waiting between exciting moments, and the decline in offence caused by the end of the steroid era is doing nothing for the sport’s popularity or viability.

I’m not necessarily advocating for the reinstatement of drug-fuelled baseball, but I will say that MLB’s moral panic over PEDs is ridiculous, and is ultimately harmful to the legacy of the sport.

The steroid-era stars deserve to be in the Hall of Fame because they succeeded in an era where steroids were as ubiquitous as am-

phetamines used to be. Drugs only provide a little assistance. Players like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were clearly the greatest of their eras, and arguably some of the greatest players of all time.

I have little sympathy for arguments that drugs ‘cheapen’ the game in some way. Baseball has always been played on drugs, and the steroid era was exhilarating to watch from a fan’s perspective.

Baseball needs to come to terms with its coloulful history and realize that it has never been a bastion of moral righteousness. It’s a hell of a lot more fun that way.

The end is here, but never fear!

You can keep up with us online over the summer months at mcgilldaily.com.

Want to contribute? You still can! Just email sports@mcgilldaily.com!

Sports

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

38

Year in review McGill’s athletic successes For McGill Athletics, the 2014-15 year was one for the books. From the resignation of Clint Uttley, the football team’s head coach, to the success of both the men’s and women’s basketball teams, the past year has been eventful, to say the least.

Although neither of McGill’s basketball teams brought home the gold trophy, there was no lack of success for either program.

The men’s basketball team finished with a final record of 18-12, losing their shot to compete at the national level with a loss to the Bishop Gaiters in the championship game of the Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec (RSEQ). Three athletes from the team (Francois Bourque, Dele Ogundokun and Vincent Dufort) earned all star honours and earned spots on the conference All-Star teams. Bourque was also named the RSEQ player of the year, and earned e Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) All-Canadian Honours, while Ogundokun was named the defensive player of the year. Of course, some

of this success can be credited to head coach David DeAveiro, who was also named the coach of the year by the RESQ. For the first time in school history, McGill’s women’s basketball team earned a spot at th CIS championship game. Despite losing the game to the Windsor Lancers, the team finished with an overall record of 265, and placed second in the country at the CIS Final 8 Tournament–their best finish in history. Gabriela Herbert earned all-tournament honours with 34 points and 29 rebounds, while Myriam Sylla was voted player of the year in the RSEQ conference, finishing fith among scoring leaders with 12.4 points per game.

Sylla also earned CIS All-Canadian Honours for the second time in her career, after being named the CIS Rookie of the Year in 2013.

The McGill women’s hockey team finished with a record of 15-4, earning gold in the RSEQ Championship, and ranking as the number one team in the CIS after the regular season. The team advanced to the CIS

championships, where they were shut out 5-0 by the Western Mustangs, finally taking silver. Forward Gabrielle Davidson and defenceman Kelsie Moffatt were named CIS All-Canadians.

The men’s hockey team finished with an impressive record of 21-5, finishing first in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) east and fourth in the playoffs after losing the bronze medal game to the Windsor Lancers. Defenceman Sam Labrecque, goalie Jacob Gervais-Chouinard, and Centre Cedric McNicoll were named to the OUA Athletics All-Star teams. McNicoll also earned CIS All-Canadian second team merit.

McGill’s athletics were well represented by the hockey and basketball teams in their respective conferences with one first place finish, two second place finishes, and a fourth–place finish. We will see if these teams are able to generate a little more success next year and bring home the gold.

– Tanner Levis

It’s time to change sports culture To nobody’s surprise, there was no shortage of topics to write about this year. From domestic violence in the NFL, to the lack of accountability seen in McGill Athletics, or even the way in which sports commentators use racial stereotypes to describe athletes’ performance, it is clear that sports culture has a lot of problems, many of which escape criticism. The sheer variety of issues shows that sports are inherently political. While they can be tools for empowerment and community building, sports can also perpetuate racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and more forms of oppression.

Take, for example, the way McGill Athletics chose not to make consent training mandatory for athletes, despite the allegations of sexual assault against three McGill football players last year. True or false, these allegations prove the existence of a system-

atic problem that McGill, through its complacency, is unavoidably a part of. Another example of this complacency is the failure of McGill Athletics to change the name of their men’s varsity teams, despite wide spread criticism. This name is a racial slur rooted in colonial violence, and by refusing to address and change the name, McGill is failing to take a stand against this racism.

We see the same trends in professional sports. The NFL still does not have a concrete sexual assault policy, consequently classifying instances of sexual assuult as isolated incidents, and refusing to acknowledge it as a systemic issue. The rhetoric surrounding athletes of colour, such as Marshawn Lynch and Richard Sherman, shows that sports writers and commenters can spew racist and sexist language, including, among other things, describing such players as ‘thugs,’ and escape without much criticism from mainstream media and are coppled by a lack of

concrete action afterwards.

Sports’ problems need to be recognized, and the culture needs to change. It’s not all feel-good stories and shiny trophies – the level of apathy surrounding these issues in the world of sports is part of the problem.

These injustices are real, and they need our attention. In order to make a difference, we need to wake up and start challenging these problems, instead of running away and burying our heads in a pile of our favorite team’s memorabilia. So, before cheering on your favorite team, whatever sport it may be, take a second to think about what you can do to actively combat this problem – whether it is speaking up on a blog or boycotting certain teams or figures within the sports community. Make your voice heard. If you’re not part of the solution, you are definitely a part of the problem.

– Drew Wolfson Bell

Note: In order to bring attention to the racist and colonial history of the McGill men’s varsity team’s name, the Sports section of The McGill Daily has chosen to no longer use the R*dmen name in the section.

Culture

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Turning the page on forty years

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The Word celebrates its birthday with the Milton-Parc community Kateryna Gordiychuk The McGill Daily

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s more and more people turn to e-books for their reading pleasure, the argument is often made that the experience of reading in print is more effective than reading online.

While this may be true, these arguments leave out an important dimension – the bookstore.

Those who read online miss out on the actual bookstore experience: being there, communicating with other customers, and getting advice on what to buy.

One only had to go as far as Milton last weekend to see this spirit in action, as The Word Bookstore celebrated its fortieth anniversary in the heart of the Milton-Parc community. The family-run business was filled to the brim with some 200 friends and customers who came to celebrate. Between the cake-cutting that took place in the middle of the room (baked by a friend of the shop) and the coming and going of the large crowd there to congratulate the family, there was hardly a spot for a book-lover to enjoy the collection.

The Word has been working to develop this community bookstore space for the four decades it’s been around. Opened in 1975 by a young couple, Adrian KingEdwards and Lucille Friesen, the store is now run by their son, Brendan King-Edwards.

The bookstore was a labour of love for the couple, who wished to share their infatuation with books with Montrealers.

Before opening The Word in its current location, the couple ran an ‘underground’ bookstore in their living room on Milton, with a picture of George Bernard Shaw taped tellingly to the window.

In a video interview with the Montreal Gazette, the older King-Edwards remembered that The Word’s current location was previously a laundromat. Halfjoking, half-concerned, he pointed out that for a good six months after the store opened, people would come in with their laundry and be very disappointed to see books there instead. This didn’t last long, however, and soon The Word was winning community awards for enriching the local literary landscape. “[The idea] came out of a very grassroots community type of atmosphere, with my dad and my mom having people over to buy books in their apartment,” Brendan told The Daily. The initial

aim of the shop was to provide a literary space for young poets, especially for anglophones in a largely francophone community.

In its first years, the store amassed its customers by hosting poetry readings, book launches, and storytelling evenings, community gatherings that The Word still host today.

Now, forty years later, one would guess that not all that much has changed. The bookstore maintains an antiquated aesthetic, cozy and mysterious.

While the main floor overflows with books, an attic upstairs contains some very rare specimens that truly appreciative collectors can select.

The shop also has a strict policy of paying in cash only, in part because electronic payment “does not really go with the whole aesthetic of the store.” It also allows the owners to avoid dealing with the increasing prices associated with bank transactions, even if it means using “ancient accounting methods,” as Adrian puts it. The owners are not fond of corporate competition, and they try to keep the experience exclusively about the books, with no intermediaries like banks involved.

In this way, The Word creates a feeling of being ‘frozen in time’ when you shop there. With neither music nor advertising distracting you, it’s a place for musing and discovering. And those who are unsure of anything can always chat at the checkout desk with Scott Moodie, a book connoisseur who has been working there for 25 years and has read more books than all of The Word’s owners combined.

Unlike the other bookshops around McGill, The Word is not focused on serving university students. Although it does provide a shelf of academic material for students, it prefers to attract customers with its rare, carefully selected collection of secondhand books and treasures.

“More than anything, we [...] attract a certain kind of individual – whether they are younger students or older customers – and they are really serious readers. [...] Often they do not have a lot of money and they want to build their libraries, and it’s a good place to do it,” Brendan explained. It’s not surprising that a store that focuses so much on quality over quantity is frequently lauded as the best secondhand store in the city.

Indeed, many hours go into

Adrian King-Edwards & Lucille Friessen.

Courtesy of Althea Mamaril

Adrian King-Edwards at The Word. fostering the store’s sense of community. The Word’s intimate atmosphere and limited space encourage this kind of friendly setting, where people get to know each other and share the latest reads while they browse. The owners encourage all passers-by to spend some free time browsing, just to see what they like.

Stating that the shop prompts visitors to choose print over downloading simply overlooks The Word’s purpose altogether.

It’s not even about coming and

getting a book, Brendan noted, but rather, “about the experience of being in the store, shopping [there], and not so much about [buying] the product.”

This welcoming attitude was reflected in the openness and warmth that characterized The Word’s birthday. The event more closely resembled a friendly gettogether than a party for a profitable business, encouraging all to stay and enjoy the wine.

With great enthusiasm and a bit of shyness, Adrian thanked ev-

Courtesy of Mary Elam eryone for allowing the bookstore to thrive for so many years, especially the store’s devoted friends.

As the years have gone by and print has lost its popularity, The Word has cultivated its unique image and purpose in the Milton Parc community, remaining a staple for local book-lovers admist all other changes. In a world of internet book reviews, The Word instead focuses on doing what it does best, making it a landmark in Montreal and a safe haven for all sorts of passionate readers.

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Culture

March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Bring Your Own Juice brings all the laughs

McGill’s sketch comedy collective pokes fun at student stereotypes

Courtesy of Courtney Kassel Lauria Galbraith The McGill Daily

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ring Your Own Juice (BYOJ), McGill’s sketch comedy troupe, describes itself as a “collective comprised of McGill’s funniest improvisers, stand-up comedians, writers, and humour theorists.” Whether or not humour theorists actually exist, BYOJ’s annual sketch comedy show last weekend certainly gave the McGill community a lesson in all things funny. Written, produced, and directed entirely by the team’s 15 members in just one short month, the show was a laugh-out-loud, spit-out-yourjuice spectacle of hilarity.

The sketches were fun, fastpaced, and in your face. There was hardly time for the audience to take a breath as the comedians unabashedly doled out punchlines with perfect timing. They were unafraid to throw a wink and a nod to pop culture – their up-and-coming boy band, “True Infinity,” should be passing One Direction on the music charts soon – but didn’t fall into any bland parodies, choosing to stay near and dear to their own creative voice.

The team jabbed at many familiar stereotypes, poking fun at the high tensions of university life. One sketch about a group of frat bros in a book club ended with the boys on the ground sobbing about the beauty of literature. Suddenly, two girls burst

in to watch sports, and, upon seeing the emotional bros, they bemoaned that “this happens every month!” While satirizing McGill’s ‘bro culture,’ this sketch also made fun of those of us who place too much value on stereotypes and experience shock when a so-called ‘bro’ says something intelligent in conference.

Another sketch took these student stereotypes to the point of absurdity, cramming every typical ‘new kid at school,’ coming-of-age movie into one whirlwind scene. In the space of five minutes, the new kid was swept into the lunchroom drama (think the iconic Mean Girls cafeteria scene), faced off against the head cheerleader, won a dance battle

game, and made out with the pretty-boy jock. Not too bad for a first day at school. It was hilarious to see all the tropes from movies like Grease and Ferris Bueller mashed together into one long “Save the school! Win the game! Go to prom!” narrative, pointing out just how strangely Hollywood represents young people – and how readily we accept these representations.

Anyone who has ever had to deal with an arrogant musician would have appreciated the sketch that featured a pretentious punk boy telling a girl that he knows all about “feminism and equality and meninism.” He then asked whether she was on “her period day,” insisting that she didn’t understand the true meaning of his songwriting artistry. After she pushed him out of her apartment, the girl, in an empowering moment, picked up his guitar and echoed the thoughts of every feminist in the audience, singing that she’s “tired of these garbage punk boys, circle-jerking to their garbage punk noise.”

In addition to scrutinizing student tropes, BYOJ also turned the lens on their own practices, doing an entire bit where the stagehands continuously came on and off stage to either quickly change the set or simply lie on the ground. The team did a superb job in this scene of twisting the awkward theatrical divide between stage and audience into a joke, using their space to its full potential without ever breaking out of their comedic role.

However, while the show was still accessible for a broader Montreal community, the themes were definitely targeted at a student audience, as much of the

humour relied on parodying various aspects of university culture.

Though these in-jokes made the show more enjoyable for McGill students, a few of the punchlines would have gone over the head of anyone outside the bubble.

In an interview with The Daily, BYOJ members Harry Turner and Matt Bobkin explained that upcoming plans for the collective include becoming “an official SSMU club,” followed by world domination. On a more serious note, they confided that the secret to a good sketch is “trusting your troop members.”

If that is indeed the case, then the members of BYOJ must trust each other completely. McGill doesn’t have a big comedy scene, but BYOJ filled that void with dynamic writing and hilarious actors. With the upcoming term paper and final exam season, it’s nice to relax and giggle for a few hours. BYOJ selflessly provided the opportunity to step back and laugh at the stereotypes we experience every day, giving us some perspective on our own ridiculous cultural norms. The collective reminded McGill students that it’s good to laugh at yourself every now and then.

Check out Bring Your Own Juice’s sketches from last year online at TVMcGill’s YouTube channel.

BYOJ members Harry Turner and Matt Bobkin explained that their upcoming plans for the collective include becoming “an official SSMU club,” followed by world domination. for her crew, briefly dated the school rebel, took the final shot of the championship basketball

Courtesy of Courtney Kassel

Culture

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Not a girl, not your idea of a woman

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Exhibit critiques standards of beauty and sexuality Audrey Carleton The McGill Daily

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eminism has made great strides in the past hundred years, but women today are still criticized for owning their own bodies and controlling their sexuality. Montreal artist Gabrielle Lajoie-Bergeron questions the arbitrary limits imposed on women’s sexual autonomy in her new exhibit “LOVE ME, Love My Doll” at La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse.

Lajoie-Bergeron, who studied at both Université Laval and Universite du Quebec à Montreal (UQAM), explores modern definitions of femininity in Western society in her work, as well as the binding effect these expectations can have on women as they grow up.

Upon entering the gallery, one is greeted by a young woman who stands in a fountain, sharing the water with a slew of flamingos and flower bushes. The large painting nearly spans from the floor to the ceiling in height. Naked, except for a pair of bright magenta lace underwear, the girl wears a nonchalant expression on her face – eyes dimmed, accompanied by dark circles underneath.

Her arms are folded across her stomach, and in one hand, a cigarette is perched between two fingers. Carelessly smoking and making bold eye contact with the viewer, she exemplifies what it means for a woman to own her body without shame.

Yet another layer to this painting is the question of sexualization and objectification of women’s bodies. A girl who is simply standing naked in a fountain is not necessarily doing so

sexually. But the fact that her chest is bare would likely be perceived as such and deemed inappropriate by many audiences. Women’s bodies are endlessly sexualized by society and in turn by the media, making topless women universally taboo, sexual objects, while topless men are not.

The girl in this painting is unphased by her own nudity, her nonchalance a rebellion against these gendered double standards of sexual autonomy.

Many other works, of various smaller sizes, echo similar themes. In one painting, a young girl straddles a gymnastics vault, wearing a pink and white leotard with a pink bow in her hair to match. Between her legs, protruding out of her vagina, is a yellow rose, symbolic of popular perceptions of virginity and ‘sexual innocence.’

Flowers are frequently associated with the so-called loss (or taking) of sexual innocence, as reflected by the term ‘de-flowering.’ Virginity is often accepted in Western society as the only barrier between childhood and womanhood, despite the heteronormative implications. The flower protruding from the young girl’s open legs in a particularly suggestive manner is jarring; it vividly criticizes the pressure to maintain a flower-like delicacy and a ‘youthful innocence’ while also feeling pressure to gain sexual experience.

Beyond treading this supposed line between girlhood and womanhood, Lajoie-Bergeron also questions the beauty standards placed on women of all ages. A rectangular poster is depicted within one painting, creating a ‘picture-within-a-picture’ ef-

Lucie Rocher | Photographer

Girl in the Fountain fect. The poster within the painting presents an intricate drawing of two statuesque women casually leaning against a wall. Their faces and bodies are drawn ornately – with high cheekbones, piercing eyes, large breasts, and very long, thin legs – and represent the arbitrary and harmful beauty standards that box in women and girls. In the same painting, a girl who is drawn to appear less ornate and less conventionally ‘attractive’ looks at the poster girls, suggesting the powerful role the media plays in perpetuating standards of beauty

and femininity. The girl and her gaze exemplify the dichotomy between the arbitrary standards of beauty to which women are compared, and the diverse reality of women’s figures.

A nearby painting expands on this theme, depicting eight blonde Barbie dolls in identical striped bathing suits. They each wear high ponytails and similar makeup – pink cheeks painted on fair white skin, dark eyeshadow, and red lipstick.

The scariest part about the harmful beauty standards that these Barbie dolls promote is that they are direct-

ed at young girls.

Through every piece in the exhibit, Lajoie-Bergeron puts forward her own stance on sexuality and female autonomy. She critiques these socially normative definitions of beauty and femininity by playing on experience, showing viewers what it feels like to be trapped within the dichotomy of girl and woman, and in doing so, empowers audiences to break free.

“LOVE ME, Love My Doll” runs until April 10 at La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse.

“A tool for understanding”

Autobiographical documentary revisits family struggles with mental illness Ali Dutrut The McGill Daily

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n Juanicas, Montreal-based filmmaker Karina Garcia Casanova invites us to be a fly on the wall of her family home. An autobiographical documentary ten years in the making, the film follows Casanova’s mother and brother – Victoria and Juan – and their respective struggles with bipolar disorder. The result is an intimate and harrowing exploration of mental illness.

The film begins when Juan returns to Quebec to live with Victoria after spending time in Mexico, where the family is originally from. Not long after his arrival, Juan spirals into deep depression and paranoia, locking himself in his room for months at a time.

Casanova and her mother are unable

to control the situation, and during a particularly rough episode, Juan attacks his mother and completely destroys their home.

Juan’s condition is reminiscent of Victoria’s struggles, and forces the family to revisit their past. In an early scene, the siblings joke about their eccentric childhood under the care of their (at the time) undiagnosed mother, who dragged them to outlet shopping malls on the weekends to shop the sales and eat cheeseburgers, while other kids in their class were off fishing.

But as Juan’s condition worsens, discussions of the past become much more grave. We learn that because of their mother’s illness, the siblings were neglected and often left to their own devices, leaving Casanova to be psychologically tormented at the

hands of her brother.

In an interview with The Daily, Casanova explains that the film is a “testimony and a tool for understanding.” Speaking of her mother’s diagnosis, she says, “It forced me to revisit my past and look at it from the perspective of mental illness.”

The strength of the film comes from the deep introspection of its filmmaker, who bravely delves into the pain of her childhood. In dreamlike references to the past, Casanova weaves home movies and photographs from her childhood into the narrative.

That said, this is no home movie, but rather a carefully compiled, painstaking timeline of her family’s struggle.

The film also offers an eye-opening counternarrative to the clichéd Canadian tale of immigration. While

immigration stories in popular culture often focus exclusively on families who leave their home countries to find a better life, Juanicas provides a more nuanced representation, full of uncertainty and resentment. Karina and Juan struggle to understand why their mother left Mexico, where she had a family and a support system.

“To us, it feels like a very absurd decision on my mother’s part to stay here and live a life of isolation and relative poverty when she didn’t have to,” Casanova says. “You can’t simplify immigration stories, and I wanted to be truthful to that.”

Casanova goes on to explain that while she understands that mental illness is caused by physiological factors, it’s also important to consider environmental aspects. “Many differ-

ent factors were at play in creating this very dysfunctional situation,” she says.

“Had we not immigrated to Canada, had we had family around us and a more stable family pattern, had my parents not had a divorce, things may have been different.”

A refreshing departure from the investigative documentary style, Casanova uses her personal experience to showcase these nuances and complicate the narrative of mental illness. Watching similar personal films helped Casanova come to terms with her own experience, and this is what she hopes to pass on: “With such a personal story, you never know if you’re going to reach people, and I think I have, because a lot of people come up to me [after screenings], and I find that very rewarding.”

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Culture

March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

s t o p S r e m m Su

First Fridays and farmers’ markets

Laurier Park and Parc Belmont

Kem CoBa and La Diperie Summer isn’t complete without the perfect ice cream cone, and Montreal provides one-of-a-kind options. If you go for a walk in the Mile End this summer, you won’t miss the line up outside Kem CoBa. A neighbourhood favorite, Kem CoBa is beloved for its homemade, soft-serve ice cream and sorbet combo, featuring an original recipe every few weeks. Combos like almond milk and sour cherry, or Quebec blueberry and honey, are inspired by the two chefs’ own rebellious natures, as they both left the traditional pastry industry in search of more creative freedom.

Less well-known, but no less delicious, is La Diperie, a pop-up ice cream shop that graces the Lower Plateau throughout the summer and early fall. La Diperie serves up soft-serve ice cream with more options for chocolate dippings than you knew existed – everything from Baileys to fleur de sel.

Dip into the shop this summer and taste the goodness for yourself.

After the winter we’ve had, don’t miss any opportunity to spend time outside this summer and soak up some sun. In the Plateau, Laurier Park is a perfect picnic spot.

There’s an outdoor pool, endless green grass for lounging and reading, and even ping pong tables, if that’s your thing. It’s also just a good place to sit back and take in the vibrancy of summer in the city.

If you’re looking for a quieter day in the sun, check out Parc Belmont. A buzzing amusement park from 1923 to 1983, today it’s one of the lesser-known green spots in the city. Though it’s no longer home to candy apples, a ferris wheel, or a roller skating rink, it’s still a worthwhile spot for a quiet day of reminiscing, located right on the edge of Rivière-des-prairies.

First Fridays are the largest gatherings of food trucks in Montreal. Held on the first Friday of every month from May to October, they draws together mouth-watering street food in a festive atmosphere at the Parc Olympique with live music and DJs, so you can sway to some beats while munching down on your choice of treats.

If street food has you feeling guilty, then you can also indulge in fresh fruits, veggies, and more at the local farmers’ markets popping up around the city. In the Lower Plateau, Santropol Roulant sells baskets of urban garden-grown veggies. If you’re up for a short trip outside of the city, you can head to Arundel to pick up summer fruits from Runaway Creek Farm. Bask in 200 acres of lake, picnic areas, and hiking trails – a natural paradise if there ever was one.

Verdun Greenhouses Feel like busting some moves with friends and family? Venture out to Verdun for some outdoor community dancing. The Verdun Greenhouses are only open in the summer and function as the neighbourhood’s outdoor social dancing hotspot, free of charge, and equipped with 511 square meters of a rubbercoated cement dance floor. The dance schedule for 2015 has not been announced yet, but judging by last year’s schedule, the afternoons and evenings will feature many styles – ranging from the likes of tango, salsa, and Zumba to line dancing. The dancing usually goes on for three to four hours, so wear comfy shoes, and come ready to sweat.

: y t i c e h t n i r e m m u S a guide Fantasia International Film Festival Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival is one of the largest events dedicated to genre film in Canada and the U.S... Founded in 1996 as an event dedicated to Asian films, today the festival screens genre films from all across the world. Placing pop and alternative culture side by side, the festival defines genre films as “a challenging and elegant stream of cinema.”

Its audience is known to be very passionate and enthusiastic, and they seem to appreciate the so-called challenging elegance, as the festival is gaining in success every year. According to Variety magazine, “the event received a record 129,000 attendees [in 2014], up 30 per cent from the 2013 festival.” Tickets are already starting to sell out for some of the screenings, so hurry up and save your seat.

The Fantasia International Film Festival will screen shows from July 16 to August 4 at various locations. Tickets can be purchased at fantasiafestival.com

Festivals

Compiled by Niyousha Bastani, Christian Favreau, Lauria Galbraith, Rochelle Guillou, Sonia Larbi-Aissa, Rosie Long Decter, and Sabrina Mach

St. Ambroise Fringe Festival Montreal Sketchfest Sick of scripted theatre? Switch things up a bit this May with Sketchfest, Montreal’s annual festival dedicated to sketch comedy and improv. Featuring over forty sketch troupes from around the continent, the tenday event includes workshops as well as performances, a perfect learning opportunity for any Montrealer seeking to tap into their funny bone. For its 2015 edition, the festival is branching out, hosting a solo character sketch evening, and partnering with Women in Comedy Montreal to celebrate “the ladies of comedy.” This year also marks the festival’s tenth anniversary – hopefully that means ten times the laughs.

Montreal Sketchfest runs May 21 to 30 at Théâtre Ste. Catherine and the Montreal Improv Theatre. Festival passes can be purchased at theatrestecatherine.com.

The sole principles of Montreal’s annual fringe festival are no artistic direction, no censorship, and no one gets left out. Because participants are selected by lottery, they have the freedom to do whatever they want. The festival strongly believes in accessibility for both performers and audiences – ticket prices are kept low, and whatever cost there is goes directly back to the artists. The result is a wild and crazy festival that brings out some of the most innovative theatre you are ever likely to see on stage, from a diverse and eclectic group of performers. Last year, the bilingual festival brought us such shows as Roller Derby Saved My Soul and Talking Cock.

There is no telling what’s in store for 2015, but it won’t be a year to miss.

The St. Ambroise Fringe Festival runs June 1 to 21. Head to montrealfringe.ca for details.

Montreal Jazz Fest Montreal Jazz Fest is an internationally acclaimed event, jam-packed with the best of the best in the genre, and perfect for a long, hot late June evening. If you feel like some day drinks to go with the tunes, try House of Jazz, as their patio has no cover charge and a great drink menu. It doesn’t hurt that it’s also a historic jazz venue with famously beautiful decor, hosting stars on its stage since 1968. Recommended artists to check out include Jamie Cullum, a jazz vocalist/pianist with a young flair who covers Rihanna and Jimi Hendrix when he isn’t charming the crowd with his original material, as well as Valerie June, an up-and-coming bluegrass-folk artist with a dreamy voice reminiscent of a gospel choir.

The 36th Montreal Jazz Festival runs from June 26 to July 5. Presale tickets can be purchased at montrealjazzfest.com.

Culture

Kindred

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Music

Three albums in, frontman Michael Angelakos is still planted firmly within his signature synth palette. But underneath the sugary sweet pop hooks are more frank discussions of mental illness, childhood, and family. You’ll probably hear half the album on the radio this summer, but Kindred might also hold up as the perfect soundtrack for a pensive bike ride around Mont Royal.

Passion Pit’s third studio album, expected release on April 21.

All Things to the Sea After opening for The National at NXNE, the post-punk fuzz-pop band got themselves into Montreal’s Breakglass Studios and recorded All Things to the Sea in ten days. With only 816 likes on Facebook, this is a band you’ll want to get into before the rest of the world notices how good they are.

Montreal trio CTZNSHP’s sophomore album, expected release on April 24.

Fly International Luxurious Art The Chef has had a new album on the burner since before New Year’s 2013. No one knows what’s taken him so long, but this sixth studio album from the Wu-Tang Clan veteran is sure to deliver on the extended hype.

Raekwon’s sixth studio album, expected release on April 28.

Deep in the Iris Montreal-based art rock band Braids has produced some of Canada’s most innovative music of the past ten years. This summer, Calgary natives and former McGill students Raphaelle Standell-Preston, Austin Tufts, and Taylor Smith are releasing Deep in the Iris. If “Taste,” the first single released on the album, is any indication, this new release will be an atmospheric and poignant effort that lands somewhere between Animal Collective and Björk.

Braids’ third studio album, expected release on April 28.

Books Kate Beaton – The Princess and the Pony Kate Beacon, beloved cartoonist of Hark!

A Vagrant is back this summer with The Princess and the Pony. This picture book for kids and adult pony-enthusiasts features a strong warrior princess and one of Beaton’s most enduring characters, the “roly-poly” pony from Hark! that has also made a cameo appearance on Adventure Time.

Available July 2015.

Boring Girls, a “deadly coming of age” story, follows the rise of high-schooler Rachel’s amateur metal band. She forms the band in the hopes of escaping the misogynist world she lives in, but is then ironically forced to fight misogyny in “the dark heart of the music industry.”

Rad American Women A-Z: Rebels, Trailblazers, and Visionaries who Shaped Our History... and Our Future! – Kate Schatz

While We’re Young Indie darling Noah Baumbach follows up his 2012 hit Frances Ha with this comedic take on growing old in the 21st century.

The film stars Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts as middle-aged partners who befriend a much younger and happier couple, played by Amanda Seyfried and Adam Driver. Quirky identity crises ensue.

While We’re Young opened March 27, but will be showing at local theatre Cinema Du Parc starting April 10.

Straight Outta Compton This biographical drama tells the story of the rise and fall of N.W.A, one of hip hop’s most legendary groups. The film chronicles how rappers like Dr. Dre and Ice Cube turned their childhood experiences of racism and violence into powerful music that rebelled against the authorities. Produced by Dre and Ice Cube themselves, the film also stars Paul Giamatti – and you can never go wrong with Paul Giamatti.

Straight Outta Compton opens in theatres August 14.

Inside Out Pixar’s first film in two years tells the story of a young girl who moves to a new home, and has to deal with the five competing emotions inside her head. Sounds a little more like a psychological thriller than a kid’s movie, but given that Pixar is the company that brought us Up and Monsters, Inc., we can probably have full faith. With Amy Poehler lending her voice to the project, this film could be a poignant and funny look at girlhood.

Inside Out opens in theatres June 19.

Highway of Tears This documentary chronicles the disappearances of young, predominantly Indigenous women along Highway 16 in B.C.. Of the dozens of disappearances and murders, only one has been solved, revealing the systemic racism of a federal government that chooses to ignore these deaths. Part personal, part investigative, the documentary tells a heart breaking story that must be heard.

TV

Grace and Frankie

From Marta Kauffman, one of the creators of Friends, comes this new comedy that tells the story of two women whose husbands have left them and declared their love for each other. With the talented and funny Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda in the title roles, this series has the potential to be the next big hit for Netflix.

Grace and Frankie premieres May 8.

Boring Girls – Sara Taylor

Available April 2015.

Movies

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Calling this book a celebration of American women would be an understatement. A shout out to bold women who fought for everyone, the book is a spin-off of A-Z books that all children (and adults) need on their bookshelves – because A is not for apples, it’s for Angela Davis.

Available April 2015.

Laws & Locks – Chad Campbell Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, Laws & Locks traces one family’s encounters with depression and mental illness.

Chad Campbell’s first book of verse weaves in and out of confessional poetry and explores the way our ancestors can influence our choices today.

Available April 2015.

Orphan Black Orphan Black arguably has the best representation politics on TV, passing not only the Bechdel test (at least two women who converse about something other than a man), but pretty much every other test out there for representations that are not white/male/cis dominated or heteronormative. Most of these representations are portrayed by the amazingly versatile Tatiana Maslany, who plays a collection of characters who figure out they’re identical clones with a price on their heads.

It’s intriguing, it’s badass, and it’s Canadian – what more do you need?

Orphan Black returns Saturday April 18.

Bessie This HBO made-for-TV movie is a biopic of Bessie Smith, iconic blues singer of the 20s and 30s. Written and directed by Dee Rees, the film will feature Queen Latifah as the Empress of Blues. While Latifah has in the past proven her singing and comedic chops, it remains to be seen whether she will be able to bring the dramatic power needed to carry the film.

Bessie premieres May 16.

Call the Midwife For those currently experiencing Downton denial, you really must check out Call the Midwife which just kicked off its fourth season.

This British period drama chronicles the life and times of midwives in the 1950s and 1960s, narrated by the inimitable Vanessa Redgrave.

Yes, my mom loves it, but my mom also loves Friday Night Lights and The Sopranos, so stop your TV-genre stereotyping and settle in for some classic drama.

Call the Midwife returned March 29.

Highway of Tears has its Montreal premiere April 10 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. There will be a Q&A with the director afterward.

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Culture

March 30, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Year in review Students in art

Gender in art This was a year of breaking barriers for women and trans people in art, both on campus and off. Women in Montreal actively claimed traditionally gendered roles, creating spaces to speak up about their experiences in art and life. Beyond representation, gender was also addressed thematically in creative work.

At McGill, women took control of the stage, as Tuesday Night Café (TNC) Theatre’s entire season of shows featured only women directors. In Montreal, the creation of an all-women DJ collective, FéMTL, again promoted the work of amazing women in a field where they remain largely invisible. As singer-songwriter Lowell pointed out to The Daily, it is too easy to assume that music production is only done by men. “I’m guilty of it too,” she explained, “And I know people

have done the same thing to me.”

Art exhibits such as “Trans Time” – Montreal’s first ever trans collective art exhibit – and Galerie Donald Browne’s “Testosterone,” as well as the novel he, used art to de-naturalize gender binaries. Similarly, the women of LadyCab, a new Montreal-based web series, demonstrated the performativity of gender identities by dressing up as stereotypical ladies to critique patriarchal notions of femininity.

We may not have smashed the patriarchy this year, but we certainly did some heavy damage.

Community and culture in Montreal A city of 1.6 million people, Montreal is known for its cool vibes, its party life, and its poutine. The city is also, however, a metropolis of arts and culture, home to thriving music, theatre, art, and experimental scenes all characterized by their sense of community.

A short trip up to the Mile End will take you to the Drawn & Quarterly bookstore, whose monthly Graphic Novel Book Club brings together an assortment of Montreal folks with little in common but their love of graphic novels.

Beer in hand, the attendees discuss a different book each month, analyzing and assessing the designs in a comfortable atmosphere.

For those less interested in graphic novels, the Confabulation storytelling series at MainLine Theatre offers a different kind of community. At these monthly events, all are in-

vited to get up on stage and share a personal experience or spin a yarn. In breaking down the fourth wall, these evenings add a layer of intimacy and authenticity that can sometimes be lost in theatre.

Even the events that only take place once a year offer a glimpse into the love and passion that comes with Montreal culture. This year, POP Montreal provided an opportunity for members of the local music community to come together and take over the city, while its exhibits and panels chronicled the lives of these musicians. Just a few weeks after POP, Montrealers were dressing up and dressing down to celebrate the community of freaks and lovers that is Rocky Horror.

The important thing to remember is that the McGill community isn’t the only one out there – and when you’re feeling isolated on campus, there’s always more to explore.

Culture picks of 2014-15 2014-15 was a year to be proud of local art, as Montreal continued to prove itself as a hub of creativity in Canada. This year’s performances and exhibits shared marginalized stories, called out mainstream media, and mused on the meaning of the digital age. Here are a few of our favourites: Best album: COIN COIN Chapter Three: River Run Thee The new album from Roberts, saxophonist and stalwart of the Montreal scene, is the artist’s most experimental endeavour.

Through sax drones and electronic pulses, Roberts creates eerie soundscapes for her vocal performances to weave through, as she tells surreal stories of Black history. As Grace Bill put it in her article in The Daily, “the result is abstract yet beautiful, evoking a powerful dread or unreality.”

Best play: Dear Elizabeth Based on hundreds of letters sent between the two, Tuesday Night Café (TNC) Theatre’s production chronicled the almost-love of poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Delving deep into their psyches, it depicted adoration, depression, and, above all, loneliness. Julia Borsellino and Max Katz were beautiful in their portrayals of Bishop and Lowell, while director Marina Miller deftly staged their separation as its own kind of poetry.

Juggling academic and creative pursuits no doubt poses unique challenges, but this has never stopped Montreal’s student artists from delving into the city’s art scenes. This year was no exception as student artists took the city by storm, fearlessly tackling taboo topics like intimacy in the Concordia student exhibit “(Intimacy) Limits and Consequences,” to granting old operas new life in Opera McGill’s production of Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.”

Student communities fostered creative energy, support, and collaboration throughout the year. The annual MainLine Gala for Student Drama created space for three talented women to stage their original plays.

McGill’s resident house collective Our House Music (OHM) brought together a tight-knit community of EDM lovers.

At McGill, students debunked the stereotype of an apathetic generation by bridging art and activism. The inaugural Hip Hop Week Montreal taught the university its first lessons about hip hop – a cultural movement that is often ignored in classroom settings despite (or perhaps because of ) its political power. The Arab Students’ Association (ASA) spotlighted the social and political power of theatre by staging the Theatre of the Oppressed, inviting spectators to resist everyday oppressions on stage. Student theatre companies across McGill delved into sensitive topics this year, impressing their audiences with taboo stories and with their theatrical innovation. Daring in their approaches, Montreal’s student artists left few stones unturned this year.

Saving the earth with art Saving planet earth from destruction has become a central concern for our generation, and this year, many Montrealers turned to artistic and cultural mediums to address these concerns. Cinema Politica Concordia kicked off its season with the 2014 documentary Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, which points to animal agriculture as the primary cause of environmental damage today. The film cast the spotlight on an ugly and overlooked culture of overconsumption.

Literally taking matters into their own hands, the employees at Montreal cafe and skills-sharing co-op Le Milieu provided some

answers to this trend by hosting “Dumpster Dining,” a culinary workshop. The event served up a mouth-watering reminder that “we can actually make delicious food from food that is otherwise thrown in the trash,” as facilitator Rachel Chainey put it. Multimedia art project Alchemy of Waste also challenged popular perceptions of trash, repackaging landfill-destined goods as artistic mediums.

Using art as direct action, Montreal’s annual PARK(ing) Day kicked out over 200 cars in Montreal from parking lots around the city, reimagining them as creative spaces.

From education to creation to action, these environmental artists demonstrated the variety of innovative ways in which everyone can promote sustainability.

Critiquing oppressive narratives Art has historically been used both to oppress and to liberate. This year in Montreal, certain art exhibits tended toward the former. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts sadly but shamelessly enshrined racist and misogynistic tropes of orientalism in its “Marvels and Mirages of Orientalism” exhibit. In an attempt to defy authority, Galerie UQAM’s exhibit, “The Disorderliness of Things,” ironically upheld certain oppressive narratives. By critiquing the corporatized workplace, suburban parenthood, and the like, the exhibit thus only addressing the narratives that oppress more privileged members of society.

Critiquing oppression was much more successful outside of formal gallery spaces.

The last weeks of summer saw wheatpastes

around the city declaring “Decolonize Turtle Island,” a powerful mark left by the Anticolonial Street Artists Convergence. At McGill, art/activist duo DarkMatter took on the racial hierarchies that dominate queer movements, shutting down the false promise that ‘it gets better’ with poignant pieces like “It Gets Bourgi.” Also using spoken word, Remi Kanazi smashed rhetorics of neutrality that silence the Palestinian struggle. It was overall a year of critical thinking, with both artists and critics holding us accountable.

Best book: Something You Were, Might Have Been, or Have Come to Represent Written by Jay Winston Ritchie, editorin-chief of The Void magazine, Something You Were, Might Have Been, or Have Come to Represent is the perfect picture of the awkward existence of young musicians in Montreal. A book of short stories, it chronicles the lives of aspiring artists as they struggle to make time for songwriting in between lecture halls and call centre jobs. Ritchie paints a beautiful and familiar portrait of the city, creating a world that will resonate with any student, musician or not.

Art to keep your eye on: Underwater City Disability activist Aimee Louw launched her new multimedia endeavour, the Underwater City Project, this year. The first part of the project is a zine that chronicles her search for “the most accessible city in Canada,” as Louw assesses the accessibility of five major Canadian cities. Louw uses the idea of the underwater city as a metaphor for an accessible utopia – if urban life were underwater, there would be no transit barriers. The project will eventually be a full documentary, but for now the zine has got our attention.

Contributors

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Thank you to all our contributors this year!

Adam Albarghouthi, Cécile Amiot, Muhammad Anani, Kai Ariac, Rachel Avery, Vita Azaro, Ella Belfer, Grace Bill, Nadia Boachie, Joseph Boctor, Fatima Boulmalf, Gavin Boutroy, Katherine Brenders, Thomas Burgess, Frances Calingo, Audrey Carleton, Marc Cataford, Christopher Cayen-Cyr, Hera Chan, Lily Chapnik, Yahong Chi, Karen Chiang, Benjamin Cohen-Murison, The Termite Collective, Ellen Cools, Laurent Bastien Corbeil, Marina Cupido, Christopher Cayen Cyr, Joelle Dahm, Julie David, Ben Demers, Evan Dent, Saima Desai, Listuguj Education Directorate, William Doan, Gabrielle Du Perron, Nancy Duan, Inès Dubois, Trent Eady, Omar Edaibat, Lia Elbaz, Dahlia Eldaly, Benjamin Elgie, Jonathan Emile, Naomi Endicott, Christian Favreau, Carmen Fenech, Marcello Ferrara, Simon Fiala, Sarah Fortin, Mali Foster, Jacob Frackson, Sami Fuller, Lauria Galbraith, Daniel Galef, Manuela Galindo-Carvajal, Fernanda Pérez Gay, George Ghabrial, Ishani Ghosh, Katrina Gibbs, Nicole Gileadi, Margaret Gilligan, Chris Gismondi, Zoë Goldstein, Kateryna Gordiychuk, Isabelle Grégoire, Daniel Griffin, Nancy Gu, Christian Gualtieri, Rochelle Guillou, Dominic Gunewardena, Ralph Haddad, Erin Hale, rosalind hampton, Tiffany Harrington, Mathias Heilke, Fiona Higgins, Andrea Horqque, Kazumi Hoshino-Macdonald, Xuan Hu, Daniel Huang, Keiko Ivinson, Line Jaber, June Jang, Nadia JavaheriCabrera, Denise Pinar Jenkins, Selin Jessa, Erica Jewell, Sinthusha Kandiah, Jasreet Kaur, Daniel Kent, Nadir Khan, Mert Kimyaci, Elizabeth Kwan, Clara Lagacé, Mohamed Laila, Sonia Larbi-Aïssa, Yiu-Sing Lau, Isabel Lee, Jasmine Lee, Pauline Lee, Rayleigh Lee, Nicolas Lénart, Aviva Leshaw, Tanner Levis, Elena Lin, Megan Lindy, Teddy Liptay, Tony Liu, Lira Loloçi, Leanne Louie, Mona Luxion, Victoria Ly, Sabrina Mach, Graham MacVannel, Nina Maness, William Manning, Matthieu Marin, Emily Martin, William Mazurek, SPHR McGill, Emma Meldrum, Eleanor Milman, Sean Miyaji, Victor Mihai Mocanu, Fateme Mollaei, Yasmine Mosimann, Shane Murphy, Sivakami Mylvaganam, Nour Nahhas, Rachel Nam, Stephanie Ngo, Siting Ni, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Emma Noradounkian, Kofi Norsah, Siobhan O’Connell, Melissa Olsen Charlotte O’Neill, Laila Omar, Ayman Oweida, Hillary Pasternak, Mark Phillips, Kristian Picon, Nicholas Pullen, Sam Quigley, Tanbin Rafee, Mallory Rappaport, Amtullah Reage, Jonathan Reid, Samer Richani, Celia Robinovitch, Lucie Rocher, Sason Ross, Annie Rubin, Thomas Saleh, Adam Salmond, Emily Saul, Antonina Scheer, Chantelle Schultz, Eli Oda Sheiner, Sevrenne Sheppard, Matt Shi, Vivian Weijia Shi, Maliz Shinz, Srijan Shukla, Thomas Simonneau, Subhanya Sivajothy, Myra Sivaloganathan, Madison Smith, Robert Smith, Scarlet Solidarity, Shahriar Soltani, Kharoll-Ann Souffrant, Connor Spencer, Claire Stewart-Kanigan, Ceci Steyn, Tamim Sujat, Jasmine Tacneng, Rackeb Tesfaye, Martin Tremblay, Anna Tyshkov, Anne-Sophie Tzeuton, V., Arielle VanIderstine, Zoë Vnak, Daniel Vosberg, Vivienne Walz, Arianee Wang, Jasmine Wang, Andy Wei, Sandy Wong, Daniel Woodhouse, Jehane Yazami, Jon Yu, Michele Zampa, Stephanie Zazzera, Alice Zhao, Lunan Zhao, Peter Zhi.

We couldn’t have done it without you!

45

Editorial

volume 104 number 24

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

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

No administration without representation

phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com coordinating editor

Dana Wray

coordinating@mcgilldaily.com coordinating news editor

Janna Bryson news editors

Jill Bachelder Igor Sadikov Emily Saul commentary & compendium! editor

Cem Ertekin

features editor

Joelle Dahm

science+technology editor

Zapaer Alip

sports editor

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Niyousha Bastani Rosie Long Decter multimedia editor

Alice Dutrut photo editor

Andy Wei

illustrations editor

Alice Shen copy editor

Molly Korab design & production editor

Katherine Brenders web editor

Marc Cataford community editor

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Joseph Boju

rec@delitfrancais.com

cover design Alice Shen contributors Anonymous, Nadia Boachie, Audrey Carleton, Lily Chapnik, Karen Chiang, Marina Cupido, Trent Eady, Lauria Galbraith, Margaret Gilligan, Kateryna Gordiychuk, Andrea Horqque, Xuan Hu, Erica Jewell, Jasreet Kaur, Elizabeth Kwan, Sonia Larbi-Aïssa, Leanne Louie, Ithea Marmaril, Michael Ryan Mernin, Sean Miyaji, Shane Murphy, Rachel Nam, Melissa Olsen, Kristian Picon, Tanbin Rafee, Jonathan Reid, Lucie Rocher, Chantelle Schultz, Subhanya Sivajothy, Madison Smith, Tamim Sujat, Peter Zhi

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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.

Printed by Imprimerie Transcontinental Transmag. Anjou, Quebec.

ISSN 1192-4608.

Alice Shen | The McGill Daily

I

n the past several months, two student initiatives – SNAX and the request for women-only gym hours – have faced the heavy hand of the administration.

Concerningly, the administrator in question is Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens, whose very role is to liaise between students and the administration to improve the quality of student life and the learning environment. McGill’s own website states that “students [sic] concerns and interests [are] the driving force” behind this advocacy. It is extremely disheartening that such an important position is being used to actively hinder students rather than help them, and that student voices are being disregarded in an authoritarian decision-making process. It is imperative that Dyens, in his role as Deputy Provost, prioritize student voices in his decision-making and fulfill his mandate of advocating for student concerns.

In a slightly absurd turn of events, the administration sent SNAX, with a cease-and-desist order to stop its popular and affordable sandwiches. While these sales are in contravention of SNAX’s Memorandum of Agreement (MoA), the student-run snack booth had been selling them for years with no issues. Despite significant backlash from students, including a sit-in and petitions, Dyens has taken a hardline stance with the cease-and-desist order, and has so far refused to compromise. At a SSMU Council meeting, Dyens even denied having ever claimed to support student-run food services, telling student leaders that the McGill administration was “not for these things.” In other situations, Dyens has responded to questioning or negotiations by deflecting responsibility to colleagues. For example, in correspondance with AUS, he has repeatedly presented himself as unaware of AUS negotiating points because of a failure of Vilma Campbell, the administrative negotiater, to keep him up to date.

An even more contentious example of Dyens’ seeming inability to adequately represent student interests comes from the recent unilateral cessation of negotiations for women-only gym hours. McGill Athletics and the students who requested these hours were in the

middle of negotiations, and had essentially reached a compromise that would cause no disturbance to users of the main McGill gym. However, in an egregious show of authoritarianism, Dyens shut down the negotiations, telling student representatives that no compromise would be acceptable to the administration. His arguments relied on blatant mischaracterizations of the issue as “segregation,” and the more sexist proclamation that there was no “reasonable need for modesty” at the gym as opposed to the existing women-only hours at the swimming pool – a decision one would think the students would make, not him. It is the Deputy Provost’s responsibility to facilitate these kinds of negotiations around student requests, not squash them.

The outrage over Dyens’ false advocacy is not limited just to these examples; numerous student representatives and groups have spoken both on and off the record about their dissatisfaction. More concerningly, this problem also has institutional roots: Dyens’predecessor Morton Mendelson was roundly criticized for failing to present student considerations in the administration’s decisions, and the second-last year of his term was marked by the occupation of his office in the James Administration building during #6party.

It is unclear how Dyens intends to fulfill his mandate when he has consistently devalued student voices and collaboration on projects, as shown above. We are not naive: we know that the Deputy Provost is still part of the administration; however, the mandate of the job is clear, and that is to advocate for student interests in the matters of student life and learning at the administrative level. If you feel, as we do, that this mandate is going wholly unfulfilled, you can email ollivier.dyens@ mcgill.ca to add your voice to a growing chorus of frustration. Frankly, it is shameful that such a high-ranking and highly-paid administrator is so blatantly neglecting half of his portfolio – which, as we would like to remind Dyens one last time, is “Student Life.”

—The McGill Daily Editorial Board

Errata The article “AUS executive candidates debate” (March 23, News, page 7) incorrectly stated that the VP Finance position would not be an elected position as of this year. In fact, because no candidates ran this year, the AUS Legislative Council was entitled to fill the position by appointment.

The Daily regrets the error.

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Compendium!

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

47

Lies, half-truths, and strike, strike, strike!

Weekly editors on strike!

Mice ‘scabs’ take over newspaper production

Djemme Arikan The McGall Weekly

L

ast week, the editorial board of The McGall Weekly voted to go on a strike, to protest the really horrible working conditions in the office.

“Oh my god the smell,” said one Last-Week’s-News editor, who wished to remain anonymous. “It’s the smell of pad thai, pizza boxes, bleach-like coffee, and our collective hopes and dreams,” they explained.

Jane “Airblade” Dyson, another Last-Week’s-News editor, said that she really missed the sunlight.

The working conditions at The Weekly’s office are said to be “less than ideal.” The editors are asked to work under extreme fluorescent light, and constantly fed coffee to keep them awake for more than 23 hours a day. They are forced to look into computer screens and spew out words until no more words can come.

“There’s just so much negativity in the air,” said Jen Cemertek, TotallyOne-Hundred-Per-Cent-Objective Opinions editor at The Weekly. “It makes me sad. I’ll go on strike.”

Gore Semantikov, Last-Week’sNews editor, echoed Cemertek’s sentiments. “There’s just so much negativity in the air-air-air. It makes me sad-sadsad. I’ll go on strike-strike-strike.”

“We work in terrible, terrible conditions. Like, for instance, all

the computers in the office are four years old! We can’t play music on YouTube and use our l software at the same time,” said Kitty ‘Hellfire’ Brandhel, resident demonologist turned Aesthetics editor.

In an editorial published earlier, The Weekly’s editors declared that the strike would be in effect until the working conditions became “slightly better” than “less than ideal.” This would include allowing the editors to leave the office every now and then so that they could at least take a shower.

“I am extremely disappointed.”

John Galt

The editors also declared that the office would be picketed, and no one would be allowed in. Speaking to The Weekly in an interview, John Galt, U3 Liberty Objectivism and Libertarianism Studies (LOLS) student, expressed their disapprovavl of this development.

“I am extremely disappointed.

How dare the editors go on strike, thinking they are so high and mighty!

People should be striking against other things. Like there is a growing antiausterity movement happening somewhere in Quebec. Those socialist bastards! We should go on a strike against that. Maybe we could all go away into the mountains, and go back to us-

Weitogo | The McGall Weekly

Striking editors. ing nuggets of gold as currency,” Galt said before droning on for another 150 pages of rambling about the benefits of capitalism and individualism.

“Who is John Galt?” asked one anonymous passerby, who wished to be referred to as Dagny. “This is very problematic.”

However on Monday, another issue of The Weekly managed to hit the stands. When asked how this could happen, The Weekly’s prime news reporter Dan A. Ray said that

it was the mice.

“We all knew that the mice were observing us. We heard about their plans of burning the building down.

But all along, they just wanted to produce the paper,” Ray explained.

“And boy is the quality of their paper better than ours,” they blurted out, off the record.

Speaking on behalf of the mice, Squeak Squakle said nothing, because mice cannot speak.

“We are proud, and our strike

shall go on,” said Jill Spellbinder, Last-Week’s-News editor at The Weekly. “Those mice think that they can outsmart us, but we’re like cats. And cats eat mice.”

“I am not that concerned with the mice, actually,” expressed Marx Catapult, Cybernetics editor at The Weekly. “And we should not be violent [toward] mice. Some of my best friends are mice.”

The rest of the student body wasn’t around to comment.

An honest critique of The Weekly Objectively assessing the state of the paper

Anathema Roberts The McGall Weekly

I

t is a truth universally acknowledged that The Weekly has many sections. Notable examples include Compendium!, Features, Design, Compendium!, Illustrations, and Compendium!. And yet it is a fact no less true than it is ignored that not all sections perform at a comparable level. In fact, one need look no further than the closest newspaper stand to discover stark disparities in quality between the sections, one of them standing out as a notable exception, a clear outlier, a lone statistical anomaly, a rare gem, a daring dissidence; in sum, a miracle truly one of its kind.

My astute readers will no doubt have realized – and this clarification is superfluous – that I speak of the Compendium! section. Yet, the dishearteningly insufficient attention accorded to the existence of this primus inter pares (to which I dare so refer only euphemistically)

is a state of affairs most unfortunate, which the present exposition seeks to rectify.

Lest we cause offence, it is imperative to recognize the other sections’ sizeable contributions to the paper.

There can be not a shade of doubt that our dearest Weekly would find itself in a position most undesirable were it to be deprived of the News section’s platitudinous event coverage and egregious errata; of the Culture section’s little-read reviews of poorly staged theatrical productions; of the Photos section’s unoriginal building photographs; of the Sports section’s incoherent rants; or of the numerous copy errors that permeate each issue. Even more significantly, however, The Weekly simply could not do without the motivation behind the editors’ efforts, the driving force that unflinchingly leads them toward a better and brighter future for their section; namely their unfaltering desire to render it as similar as possible to Compendium!. However futile, this aspiration is truly the

guiding star that illuminates the otherwise soul-shattering emptiness of Shtaneer B-24.

Boldly leading the way, daring to explore intellectual depths never before considered, the Compendium! section has proven to be a beacon of pure creativity and a paragon of the art of satire. As the section editors only deign to publish the most exquisite writing specimens from the most refined spirits among their myriad prospective contributors, it comes as no surprise that reading a Compendium! piece is a mind-altering experience. As would a sword, the sharp sarcastic wit pierces through the reader’s fallacious preconceptions to produce a most phenomenal epiphany, each sentence another ray of unadulterated wisdom enlightening the mind. One cannot know, not having read a Compendium! article, what it means to have truly mastered the comedic form.

Broad in scope as in reach is the influence of the Compendium! section. Recognizing the unmatched

incisiveness of its political satire, policy makers far and wide look to The Weekly’s Compendium! section for guidance and inspiration.

Many a world leader was carried to election on a platform no more extensive than simply full allegiance to the opinions published in The Weekly’s Compendium! section.

Yet, true to its principles, Compendium! retains its subversive edge, exercising its power in the most noble fashion, and helping to bring about social justice worldwide. Humanity’s ever-accelerating moral progress is due in no small part (forgive the understatement) to The Weekly’s Compendium! editors; as such, they have to come to form an integral part of our planet’s sociopolitical and comedic landscape.

Weekly editors are of course profoundly marked by their continued coexistence with the Compendium! section. Occasionally, gathered in an arrangement of a circular nature, editors will ceremonially bask in the glory of Compendium!,

immensely grateful and forever indebted to the Compendium! editors for the life-defining experience of sharing pages every week with the most insightful collection of words to have ever graced this Earth. Thus assembled, Weekly editors will enter a trance of great spiritual power and begin to utter unrepeatable sounds endowed with profound meaning, which to an untrained ear might appear eerily unsettling.

As the choir thus produced builds in force, a luminous cloud will form above the Shtaneer building, its magnetic attraction prompting uncontrollable cries from Weekly editors. “O Compendium!,” you will hear sung, “blessed are we with thy presence, but oh how cursed with thine unattainable excellence!

Why,” they will cry, their jealous anguish finally showing, “must we be daily reminded of our own inferiority! Misery! Shame! It is but hopeless to – ”[The rest of the article is a series of incomprehensible words, letters, punctuation marks, and numbers.]

Compendium!

March 30, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

48

Lies, half-truths, and bad metaphors.

All work and no play

In which a man in a trenchcoat enters the office Herald of the Dark One The McGall Weekly

I

was sitting in the office one night when a man wearing a trenchcoat entered. I was shocked. The man looked at me with the determination of a thousand red stars, and pierced me with his gaze like a hundred daggers. In his eyes, I could see the weight of a million souls weighing upon his own soul. And at that moment, I felt like I was burdened with the responsibility of helping him.

He reached out to me, and called me by name. I was shocked. How did the man know my name? What was his secret?

Where did he come from, where would he go? Why had he come here? I was a journalist, so all these questions passed through my head like thirty NASCAR cars going around in a loop.

“Today is the day,” said the man, in a voice so cold that I felt like I was a thousand miles up north, amidst snow, and ice, and sleet. I was shocked. How could his voice be so cold? Could voices even be cold? “I must investigate,” I said to myself, as if I was talking to an old lover from days long gone.

“Yes,” I responded, like a student answering a question about a reading he did not read. I was clueless as to what he was talking about. What day was he talking about? What did he want from me? I felt a sudden urge to ask him these questions – an urge welling up in me like a thousand volcanos around the Pacific where the tectonic plates are ever-so-active.

He reached out to me and called me by my name. I was shocked.

“Who are you?” I asked, like a student who asks rhetorical questions to hide the fact that he did not do the week’s readings. He was shocked. I could sense the kinds of questions he must have had in his head. I felt like a psychic, burdened with the opinions of a hundred million unsolicited comments. Did I bother him? But why should I care? He entered my office, like an intruder intruding upon my private property.

“Does it really matter?” he

asked, as nonchalant as an editor at a student newspaper at 4 a.m..

“I am here to take you to the location,” he declared, as triumphant as a recently-elected student politician. “Today is the day.”

Where would he take me? I did not expect to travel. I would stay in the office until later that night, like a child who refuses to leave the side of their mother unless provided with a rational reason. What could be so important?

“Where will we go?” I asked the man in the trenchcoat, who looked tired, as if he had been walking for a thousand miles in really uncomfortable shoes. He was shocked. He looked back at me with his eyes, like a little puppy who gets confused when you try to take a picture of it with your phone’s camera.

“Do you really not know?” he asked me, in a tone that made me wonder whether or not I ever really knew anything. Maybe he never existed in the first place.

Maybe I was just hallucinating, like a man who does not know whether or not what he sees is real. A man in a trenchcoat, entering the office, and asking me to leave with him. I was shocked.

Something was unnatural about this man, as unnatural as the skeletons in the closet of a thousand student politicians.

“I really do not know,” I answered, as honestly as Abraham Lincoln, who could not tell lies.

I was shocked. Why did this man question my integrity? I was a good journalist, as objective as a thousand bowls of soup. In my heart burnt the passion of truth, a fire as bright as a thousand lighters at a Bob Dylan concert.

“Tell me.”

“I cannot tell you,” said the man, who had started to get on my nerves, like a bad metaphor.

He looked at me, disgusted, like a reader forced to follow the lines on a page of a story that is constructed in such a way that each sentence is purposefully made longer, and longer, until such a point that the reader is so distracted that they stops caring about what the author does with the rest of the sentence.

“Why?” I asked the man in the trenchcoat, who, I realized, was drenched in rainwater. It must have been raining outside, a downpour so strong, that the waters had seeped into his very essence, dousing his fiery demeanour, and making him calm, like a cat lying under the sun on a

Jo El-Dawn | The McGall Weekly Tuesday evening.

“You must ask that of yourself,” he demanded, like John F. Kennedy asking his fellow citizens to give back to their country. I was shocked. All along, it was me who had all the answers.

Our paths had come together here, in this very time, in this very space, in this very moment, and in this very location; because it was meant to be.

“The location,” I said, as hesitant as that one government official from Florida in uttering the words ‘climate change.’ “The location is here.”

The man in the trenchcoat

nodded, smiling as if he was staring into the heart of the sun itself; happy, despite the terrifying agony of losing his eyes forever. I was shocked. It was then that I realized that the office was where I was supposed to be.

The office was the convergence point of lost souls, spirits cast into nothingness, like editors at a campus newspaper.

“I will never leave here,” I whispered to myself, suddenly drowning in a sea of emotions, like a child thrown into the pool by his mother so that he could learn how to swim. My hands started shaking like a thousand

email notifications. My eyes grew heavy, like two bricks thrown at my face.

“No,” said the man in the trenchcoat. “The die is cast. You asked for this.”

I was shocked. But at that point, I realized that the man in the trenchcoat was telling the truth, like a man testifying against a federal student federation under oath. I did not get to complain. My soul was forever bound to the office, like that last bits of blue tack that simply refuse to come off the wall.

I would forever be lost in this office.