The McGill Daily Vol105Iss13 by McGill Daily

Volume 105, Issue 13 Monday, November 23, 2015

McGill THE

DAILY

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Published by The Daily Publications Society, a student society of McGill University. The McGill Daily is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory.

Mourning Beirut: support students affected by violence in the Middle East

page 08

Table of Contents 03

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

NEWS

FEATURES

McGill Bookstore to undergo redesign

From Chile to Quebec: the fight for accessible education

Providing support for women facing Islamophobia and racism

TNC’s production of Blue Heart reviewed

Teachers, public sector workers continue strike

Flower Press Publishing celebrates five years

Town hall discusses intersectionality in sexual assault policy SSMU to create electoral reform ad-hoc committee AUS to support Divest McGill petition Senate reviews policy on whistleblowing

CULTURE

Creators of zine Somali Semantics interviewed Players’ Theatre’s production of Fortinbras reviewed

Principal Fortier’s selective condolences Canada needs proportional representation

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News

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

Sexual assault policy town hall explores intersectionality

Participants discuss consistency and accessibility of policy Cem Ertekin The McGill Daily

he student-run Sexual Assault Policy (SAP) Working Group held a town hall on November 19 to discuss the incorporation of intersectionality in the sexual assault policy it has been drafting since February 2014. The SAP Working Group was created following backlash to the administration’s response to sexual assault allegations against three former R*dmen football players, an incident which became known to the McGill community in the fall of 2013. This, however, was not what first sparked discussion on the need for a sexual assault policy at McGill. Speaking at the town hall, Safina Adatia, advocacy branch member at the Sexual Assault Centre of the McGill Students’ Society (SACOMSS) and member of the SAP Working Group, said, “People have been discussing this issue for a very long time, obviously beyond when [the SAP Working Group was] formed.” Adatia also explained that McGill does have a current Policy on Harassment, Sexual Harassment and Discrimination Prohibited by Law; however, a policy focusing specifically on sexual assault does not exist. Around March 2015, it came to the SAP Working Group’s attention that the policy might not be intersectional

enough. Speaking to this, Adatia said, “As a largely white, able-bodied group, we felt that the policy would inherently reflect our lived experiences and hence centre around our identities.” According to the Facebook event description for the town hall, last spring the SAP Working Group “attempted to incorporate intersectionality into the policy proposal by consulting with different groups committed to anti-oppressive work. However, these groups were presented with a hefty document and short timelines, leading them to express that [the SAP Working Group was] not approaching instituting intersectionality in a genuine and accessible way.” The town hall was part of a larger process of consultation that the SAP Working Group is undertaking in order to address these criticisms. The timeline for the proposal was pushed back, and the group committed to spending the Fall 2015 semester engaging with more anti-oppression groups and incorporating intersectionality into the policy. For instance, the latest version of the policy proposal, dated June 9, includes a description of intersectionality, “an approach which recognizes that individuals may experience oppression differently due to their membership in different social groups.” Additionally, the latest ver-

sion includes the right of people who experienced sexual assault (PWESA) “to have access to resources tailored to their particular experiences and identities, including but not limited to resources specifically for people of colour, disabled people, queer people, and/or trans people who have experienced sexual assault.” At the town hall, participants were divided into groups to discuss these changes more in depth. Following these group discussions, the participants reconvened to discuss their conclusions together. Addressing the group, Angela Yu, a member of the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) Equity and Diversity Committee, brought up the fact that the policy lists various “-isms,” such as racism and sexism, at different points, but that the lists were not consistent. “One of the things that we felt was pretty important is [for] the list of ‘-isms’ [be] standardized or made consistent across the whole document. So that way, it never seems like it’s jargon, but it’s actually very much what the whole document is centred around,” Yu said. Talia Gruber, a member of the SAP Working Group, also brought up the fact that while the policy mentions Indigenous people several times, the word “colonialism” never makes an appearance. Melis Çağan, a member of the

The town hall.

Sonia Ionescu | The McGill Daily

QPIRG-McGill Board of Directors, suggested adding more information pertaining to access to resources for international students, or for those who might need access to resources in other languages. Kai O’Doherty, a member of the QPIRG-McGill Board of Directors who has been involved with the SAP Working Group, told The Daily that the small size of the town hall discussion provided a feedback channel that was more extensive than would be a more crowded session. “I think it would’ve been great to see more people, but I’m happy that the people who came, came. We had a substantive discussion. I think when there are few people, it’s easier to have more in-depth discussion. [...] I think it’ll prompt us to make sure

that we really work with the feedback we got from other people, as well,” O’Doherty said. Speaking to The Daily after the town hall, Yu said, “I was told that so far there hasn’t been very much [graduate] student participation on this project, and I think that partially is due to a disconnect between things at the graduate student level and what’s happening among undergraduates.” “I think the fact that [the SAP Working Group was] able to put things to a stop to give more thought to intersectionality is very encouraging. [...] Obviously, [it] seems like there’s still a lot of work and discussion that needs to happen. [...] It seems to be so collaborative thus far, I think that’s really good,” Yu said.

SSMU to form ad-hoc electoral reform committee Motion passed to prioritize room bookings for Indigenous groups

Janna Bryson The McGill Daily

he Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Legislative Council met on November 19 and passed a motion to institutionalize support for Indigenous communities. Council also discussed and passed a motion to form an ad-hoc electoral reform committee in light of this fall’s contentious referendum and by-election period, and to form another ad-hoc committee to explore improvements to the SSMU health and dental plan.

Motion in support of Indigenous communities Council discussed a motion regarding the institutionalization of support for Indigenous communities. Similar to a motion passed by Council last year, this motion mandates SSMU to adopt a traditional territory acknowledgement. This year’s motion

specified that the acknowledgement is to be “stated at all major SSMU events and addresses made by Executives, including but not limited to SSMU Awards, town halls, Discover McGill, and General Assemblies.” In an effort to improve support and visibility for Indigenous communities, the motion also allows for Indigenous students and groups who organize events to have access to free room bookings through the VP University Affairs, meaning these groups could bypass the restrictions on advance bookings that other student groups are subject to. VP Clubs & Services Kimber Bialik, although in favour of the motion, expressed concern about the feasibility of promising room booking space in the SSMU building when there already isn’t enough bookable space for SSMU clubs and student groups. “In my opinion, it’s a bit of an issue that we keep spreading ourselves more and more thin,” she said.

However, President Kareem Ibrahim noted that similar privileges given to groups that hold events related to mental health have had a negligible impact on the operations of the building, and that the effect of privileges for Indigenous groups would likely be similar. The motion was passed with three abstentions. Ad-hoc electoral reform committee created Council unanimously passed a motion to establish an ad-hoc committee on electoral reform in response to “the unprecedented degree of personal attacks during campaigning” and the “conduct of candidates and voters” throughout the Fall 2015 referendum and by-election period, during which one candidate resigned, citing threats to herself and her family. Arts Representative Adam Templer, one of the movers, said that the motion is also meant to address the

aftermath of similarly controversial SSMU elections in the last few years, and make elections “more functional and sustainable” in general. “I don’t think I’m alone when I say they’ve really been a mess lately,” Templer said. The committee’s investigation into alternative electoral formats will include a review of internal regulations of the Presidential Portfolio – rewritten two years ago – as they pertain to SSMU elections. Arts Senator Erin Sobat expressed skepticism, stating, “I’m very much in favour of this motion, I just want to point out that there were some similar issues around elections before those internal regulations were rewritten two summers ago,” Sobat said. However, Bialik pointed out that the rewritten regulations included no guidelines for online campaigning, one of the major sources of contention in recent SSMU elections. “These are things that are entirely missing from

our regulations right now,” she said. The committee will include an equal number of SSMU councillors and members at large; meetings will be open to a gallery to allow for more student involvement in the process. Health and dental committee Council also unanimously passed a motion from the floor to establish an ad-hoc health and dental committee to look into ways that SSMU health insurance coverage could be improved. According to Templer, one of the movers and co-chair of the new committee, the committee would look into addressing issues such as a lack of legal coverage and of off-campus mental health coverage, and the fact that only 80 per cent of birth control costs are covered by the current SSMU plan. “This committee would look at utility of [changes to the plan], how much it would cost, and whether students would think it’s beneficial,” said Templer.

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

Support for women facing Islamophobia and racism

News

Event provides discussion space for racialized and Muslim women Saima Desai The McGill Daily

n November 20, between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., a “safe discussion space” for Muslim women and allies was held in New Chancellor Day Hall. It was organized by Aishah Nofal and former Daily editor Humera Jabir, two Muslim women at the Faculty of Law. The first hour of discussion was closed for Muslim and racialized women who feel targeted by the recent increase in racism and Islamophobia in the wake of the November 13 Paris terrorist attacks. The second hour was open to

Muslim and racialized men and to other allies. Nofal told The Daily that the first hour was closed to certain identities because “it’s important to create a space for all brown bodies, and women specifically [...] because some of us don’t feel comfortable sharing in front of others.” “Muslim women who, for instance, wear the hijab, they are perhaps the [most visible] targets right now,” Nofal said. However, Nofal noted that all racialized women who feel targeted were encouraged to attend the event. In an interview with The Daily, Jabir said, “We have to recognize

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that Islamophobia doesn’t just target Muslims – a Hindu mandir [was also attacked], and other people are constantly the victims of this as well.” Last week alone, a Peterborough mosque was torched and a Muslim woman in Toronto was physically assaulted. In addition, there have been numerous other reports of threats and harassment targeting Muslim people. Regarding the Islamophobic discourse surrounding the Paris attacks, Jabir said, “The victims in Paris were of all faiths, of all backgrounds. The victims of terrorism include Muslims, not just in France, but in Beirut, in Baghdad, in Nigeria.” When asked how non-racialized people can be better allies during this time, Nofal cited the recent instance of a white British man com-

ing to the aid of a woman in a hijab who was being verbally assaulted on the London Underground. “I was a bit conflicted because it was a white man – and I’m thankful that he did step in – but it sort of perpetuates the ‘white saviour’ discourse,” said Nofal. “But I think it’s more important to recognize the good, because a lot of times [...] women have a heightened sense of fear in those circumstances, and may not be able to stand up for themselves as much as they want, because the repercussions they might face are very real. It is a very real and tangible fear,” Nofal continued. Jabir also talked about the importance of noticing acts of harassment, regardless of their magnitude. “Few people will see someone

verbally or physically assaulted and have the chance, perhaps, to intervene on that person’s behalf – but in general, what people experience is smaller aggressions, in terms of sideways glances, and comments,” Jabir said. Jabir encouraged every person who felt threatened or allies “who want to come and just hear and try to understand” to attend the discussion. “We have to remember that peace and security [...] is something that we extend to others at every single moment of our day. Every person that you pass in the street, you have a chance to make them feel secure, a chance to make them feel welcome,” said Jabir. An earlier version of this article was published online.

Teachers, public sector workers continue strike

More than 600 attend march in downtown Montreal Cem Ertekin The McGill Daily

n November 17, more than 600 teachers and public sector workers marched through downtown Montreal as part of their two-day strike announced on October 2. The demonstrators at the march hailed from a variety of different sectors, represented provincially by the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) and the Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ). Demonstrators convened at Place du Canada at approximately 10:30 a.m.. From there, they marched east until McGill College, at which point they turned north. Once on Sherbrooke, the demonstrators marched west and eventually made their way back to Place du Canada. The march was organized in part by the Front commun, a coalition of public sector unions. According to a Front commun security volunteer, the itinerary of the demonstration was given beforehand to the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), meaning that it was considered legal under municipal bylaw P-6. Last week’s strike marked the end of a series of rotating strikes that started in the Laurentians on October 26. The Front commun was expected to hold three consecutive days of striking from December 1 to 3 across health and education sectors. However, it decided against these strike days on November 18. Speaking to The Daily at the march, Sara Iatauro, an educational

consultant at the English Montreal School Board, explained that her biggest concern is the decline in the quality of students’ education as a result of the provincial government’s proposed budget cuts. Students with learning disabilities will be those most severely affected, Iatauro said.

“You can’t separate the teacher from the student. If our reality is worsening, then so is theirs.” Jean-Michel Sotiron, professor “[The government is] looking to take away codes. Basically, students, if they have special needs, they’re coded, and it gives them extra services in the classroom,” Iatauro said. “For example, if you have a student who has ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] or ADD [attention deficit disorder], they need extra time, extra services, extra space, where they can get the attention they need, so they can be more successful. [...] They need the resources that will help them, give them better strategies to learn,” Iatauro continued. On November 6, public sector workers rejected the government’s latest contract offer, on the grounds that the improvements offered were negligible. Teachers have been

without a new contract since April. Paul Jones, who has been a teacher in Quebec for more than 40 years, attended the march and told The Daily that his classroom today is very different than it was when he started teaching. “When I was hired as a teacher, I had about 28 students in my classroom. I’m up to now 40. I started the semester with 45. That’s one concrete example of what the government’s idea is – that we can do more with less,” Jones said. “It’s clear that [education has] become a question of dollars and cents. [...] That’s now the bottom line for all public services: health, education, welfare. […] It’s all now based on this mantra, which is a bunch of bullshit [...] that somehow ‘zero-deficit’ is a sacred goal that all society should meet,” Jones continued. Jean-Michel Sotiron, a professor at John Abbott College, said that he was at the march for a “brighter future,” and argued that teachers’ working conditions directly inform the quality of education they can provide. Sotiron explained, “The neoliberal government has been [...] trying to undermine the public sector. [...] I don’t think that’s the proper way of doing things. That will lead to more suffering, greater cleavages in society. [...] Together we can build something better.” “You can’t separate the teacher from the student. If our reality is worsening, then so is theirs,” Sotiron said. An earlier version of this article was published online.

News

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

The McGill Bookstore reaches out to community for feedback Textbook prices major concern for students

Rayleigh Lee The McGill Daily

n November 4, the McGill Bookstore placed “mood boards” around campus: large, blank whiteboards on which students could write comments and feedback on the Bookstore, under prompts such as “My bookstore would be better if…” The boards were placed in the SSMU cafeteria, Leacock, Stewart Biology, the Redpath library, and the Macdonald Campus and McTavish bookstores. Come 2016, the building currently occupied by the McGill Bookstore will house the Desautels Faculty of Management’s MBA program. The Bookstore has not yet found a new location, but has continued to expand its online marketing. Jason Kack, the general manager of the McGill Bookstore, dismissed rumours that the Bookstore will be permanently closing its physical location and moving all sales exclusively online. “There is no thought of closing the physical location of the Bookstore. In fact, we are looking to expand it, and have multiple locations. If anything, it will grow,” said Kack in an interview with The Daily. Seeking community feedback Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) President Kareem Ibrahim told The Daily that he is excited that the Bookstore is “reaching out to students,” considering McGill’s history of forgoing student consultation, such as in the 2010 closure of the Architecture Café. “Consultation is also always something that groups struggle with. [...] We’ve had SSMU struggle with it, and admin also does,” explained Ibrahim. When asked about the success of the mood board initiative, Ibrahim noted that “the boards seem to be pretty full.” “They are covered with feedback. I know it is obviously not the perfect form of consultation, that’s why there has to be multiple avenues. [...] But I think it is good, just to start [getting] out the message to students that the bookstore wants to know what you want.” Evan Vassallo, a U3 Software Engineering student, told The Daily that he thinks the mood boards are “a great way to get [...] feedback from students, to get new ideas from students.” “I feel the whiteboards really

Students give feedback on mood boards. grab attention in a really busy university setting where people are moving around. […] It allows people to take ten seconds out of their day to think about how [McGill’s services] could be improved.” When asked about his own ideas for improvements, Vassallo cited the Bookstore’s inefficienct use of space, saying, “when I was in the space last [time], the upper levels seemed to be sparse. There wasn’t much there.” Kack noted that due to limited real estate in Montreal and on campus, whatever space the Bookstore ends up relocating to will likely be smaller. “This building is 40,000 square feet, [that kind of space] doesn’t exist anywhere else,” he commented. “So we’ll have to be much more efficient when it comes to what our product is, what we’re displaying, and the experience with the customer.” Financial accessibility According to Kack, the Bookstore began renting out textbooks in 2011 and selling online course packs in 2013. Kack explained to The Daily that the Bookstore’s push for online marketing is part of an attempt to make academic material more accessible for students. “Now all of our course packs are available digitally, and are cheaper as a consequence,” said Kack. “Something that is relatively new is the concept of book rentals,” he continued. “That’s been gain-

ing a lot of momentum [... because] you’re getting the guaranteed buyback upfront.” However, the prices of used, rented, and digital textbooks are all contingent on the price of the newest print edition. According to a 2013 report by the U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO), from 2002 to 2012 the cost of buying textbooks increased by 82 per cent, while overall consumer prices grew by just 28 per cent. The exorbitant prices of textbooks make them inaccessible to many students with financial constraints. In response, students have found ways to circumvent these extortionate prices, from scanning and illegally sharing PDFs between friends to torrenting textbooks. While some students do so as a matter of financial necessity, others refuse to pay on principle. Some have complained that professors may require their students to purchase the newest, priciest versions of textbooks, often authored by the professors themselves. The GAO report noted that “used textbook prices are directly linked to new textbook prices in that retailers typically offer used books for about 75 per cent of the new, print price.” “Similarly, digital textbooks and textbook rentals are generally offered at a discount based on the new, print price. Thus, while students may be able to find lowerpriced options, increasing prices for new, print books will likely lead

Sonia Ionescu | The McGill Daily to similar price increases for other related course materials,” the report qualified. “It needs to be understood [that] when it comes to textbooks, we do not determine the price. The price is set by the publisher,” Kack explained. “Being a selffunded part of McGill means that all of our operations, we pay McGill for. Everything down to getting the trash removed, […] we pay a fee back to McGill […] to pay for other programs, including student life and learning.”

“It needs to be understood [that] when it comes to textbooks, we do not determine the price. The price is set by the publisher.” Jason Kack, McGill Bookstore general manager Rebranding the Bookstore In a post published on the McGill University Bookstore Facebook page on November 18, it was announced that the Bookstore will be changing its name in addition to changing its location.

“We also want our name to evoke our legacy and heritage, while describing a contemporary space where our community can find a variety of products and services,” the post stated. “Le James” and “Magasin General Store” were the two options presented for rebranding, and students were encouraged to comment on the post with their preferred name. Former student Guillaume Pilote commented on the post, “‘Let’s see, should we give our bookstore a really boring, generic name or use a slave owner’s name instead? Decisions, decisions...’” Kack admitted that there has been some initial resistance to the rebranding of the Bookstore. “The idea of why we are looking to change the direction of the name and our brand, to some people it’s unthinkable. So we’re going to have to work with all of that,” said Kack. “But the way I see it, if people are emotional about it, it means they care. That to me is a victory far beyond any negative or positive feedback.” Ibrahim said that the Bookstore is only one McGill institution that will be looking for student feedback in coming months. “We want people to know, number one, that the Bookstore wants to talk with them, but we also want to facilitate communication between students and other parts of campus that want to know what their thoughts are,” he said.

News

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

Arts Undergraduate Society supports Divest McGill’s petition Council discusses Arts Lounge renovation

Marina Cupido The McGill Daily

ulty meeting motion, and mandate the student representatives to the meeting to vote in favour of it.

he Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) Legislative Council met on November 18 to discuss divestment from fossil fuels and possible renovations to the Arts Lounge. Fossil fuel divestment Arts Senator Erin Sobat and VP External Becky Goldberg brought forward a motion to support Divest McGill’s latest petition to the Board of Governors (BoG). The petition, calling for McGill to divest from fossil fuels, was submitted to the BoG’s Committee to Advise on Matters of Social Responsibility (CAMSR) in February 2015. According to the Divest McGill website, the group also submitted “a 150-page report outlining the longterm social and environmental harm that has come about as a result of the fossil fuel industry,” but has yet to receive a decision from CAMSR. At the Faculty of Arts Committee meeting on November 24, representatives will be debating a motion that, if passed, would pledge the faculty’s support for Divest McGill’s petition. The motion brought forward by Sobat and Goldberg was to ensure support of AUS for the fac-

“McGill University is [...] committed to fighting climate change. However, that commitment is being undermined by it continuing [to] profit from the fossil fuel industry. Andrew Stein, Divest McGill member “Individual action [against climate change] is great,” said U3 Environment student and Divest McGill member Andrew Stein, speaking in support of the motion at Council. “But what we really need to

AUS Council.

Marina Cupido | The McGill Daily

see is strong international action, in terms of policies, in terms of changing our energy economy [...] and that’s something that takes place on a much larger scale than any one of us individually can speak to.” “McGill University is [...] committed to fighting climate change. However, that commitment is being undermined by it continuing [to] profit from the fossil fuel industry. Of our $1.3 billion endowment fund, somewhere between 5 and 8 per cent, in the range of $70 million, is invested in fossil fuel and [resource

extraction] companies. This investment practice not only contradicts McGill’s environmental policies, but it also undermines our values,” Stein added. After a very brief question period, the motion passed without opposition, with only a few councillors abstaining from the vote. Arts Lounge renovations President Jacob Greenspon led a brief discussion on potential renovations to the Arts Lounge. “Already, many ideas have been

put forward for doing something with the lounge,” Greenspon told Council. “The Arts Lounge is not as great of a place as it could be, and there are a lot of really good ideas out there: putting water fountains in, painting the walls again, adding some more studyappropriate furniture.” He explained that this year would be a good time to undertake renovations, as AUS currently has both faculty support for the idea and sufficient funds to carry it out. “The most important thing is the real, demonstrated need for this,” he continued. “There was an article in the [McGill Tribune] a month or two ago about the lack of student space on campus [...] and [some people using] the lounge don’t feel entirely satisfied by the lighting and the furniture. [...] This is going to need a lot of student consultation.” Other business Council also voted to support motions approving departmental budgets for the 2015-16 financial year, creating a system whereby councillors and departmental associations will deliver regular reports of their activities, and increasing the fee for the McGill Summer Studies in Greece program from $2,900 to $3,050.

Senate reviews whistleblowing policy International tuition deregulation and budget also discussed

Igor Sadikov The McGill Daily

cGill’s Senate convened for its third meeting of the year on November 18 to discuss the financial state of the university and international tuition deregulation. It also approved revisions to the Policy on Safe Disclosure. International tuition deregulation Arts Senator Erin Sobat and Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP University Affairs Chloe Rourke submitted a question regarding the conflict between the University’s continued push for international tuition deregulation in all programs and its professed commitment to financial accessibility for international students. Sobat expressed skepticism as to how the University could proceed with deregulation without making sacrifices either in terms of educational accessibility or revenue generation. In response, Principal Suzanne Fortier argued that the two are not incompatible, noting that “the funding formula in Quebec is so complicated” that this might not

be obvious at first glance. In regulated programs, international student tuition is redistributed among all Quebec universities; in contrast, deregulation would allow McGill to keep the entirety of its international tuition fees, a portion of which could then be used to enhance bursary programs, Fortier explained. Medicine Senator David Benrimoh noted that studies have shown that an increase in tuition combined with an increase in bursary programs slightly improves accessibility for lower-class applicants, but reduces it for the middle class. “We’ve been working very hard [...] to establish special financing programs [...] through philanthropic donors,” Provost Christopher Manfredi said in response. “That is a perennial problem, I understand that.” Financial situation and budget Reporting on the financial state of the university, Vice-Principal (Administration and Finance) Michael Di Grappa informed senators that the university’s financial deficit went up from $95 million to $98 million in the past year, and

that its provincial operating grant decreased from $353 million in 2013-14 to $341 million in 2014-15. The accumulated costs for the deferred maintenance of McGill’s building and IT infrastructure are estimated at $1.3 billion, Di Grappa said, and the bond McGill plans to issue to cover these costs risks lowering its credit rating. He also noted that enrolment has increased by 1.24 per cent between 2014 and 2015. Arts Faculty Senator Derek Nystrom noted that student enrolment has been increasing even as the number of tenure-track faculty has remained “fairly static.” According to his calculations, between 2011 and 2014, student enrolment has increased at a rate of 32 students per faculty member, while the overall ratio is of 23 to 24 students per faculty member. “We’re adding students at a much higher rate than we’re adding faculty members, which is bad news for all sorts of reasons,” said Nystrom. Speaking to 2016-17 budget planning, Provost Christopher Manfredi said that the Quebec government is planning to shed an additional $200 million in education funding, despite the fact that

“there was the news recently that the province [is] in a surplus situation.” According to Manfredi’s estimate, this cut will likely amount to a reduction of 2 to 2.5 per cent to McGill’s provincial operating grant. Whistleblowing policy and student discipline Senate approved revisions to the Policy on Safe Disclosure, which aims to protect people who disclose academic, financial, and research misconduct at McGill. The policy, which was reviewed by a working group struck for that purpose, now includes additional procedural guarantees for those accused of misconduct, as well as measures to increase the policy’s visibility, such as the addition of a statement of principles and of the word “whistleblowing” to the policy’s title. University Libraries Senator Marc Richard expressed concern that the statement of principles did not commit to protecting the reputation of the accused respondents who are found innocent. Richard moved to amend the sentence reading “All reasonable steps shall be

taken to protect the position, reputation, privacy and confidentiality of the ‘discloser’” to include the respondent as well. Angela Campbell, Associate Provost (Policies, Procedures & Equity) spoke against the amendment, arguing that the policy has provisions to protect the respondent, but that this should not be included in the preamble, since the policy is meant first and foremost to protect the “discloser.” Benrimoh concurred, saying, “It’s an uneven playing field; the point of the statement of principles is to even out the playing field. To present it as if it’s already a level playing field [is misleading].” The amendment was defeated, and the revisions were passed as presented. Presenting the 2014-15 annual report of the Committee on Student Discipline, Associate Dean of Students Glenn Zabowski noted that the year was the fourth in a row with a decline in the overall number of disciplinary cases, and the second consecutive year with a decline in cases of cheating. The total number of cases decreased from 276 in 2013-14 to 240.

Commentary

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

Islamophobia after Paris

Generalizations about Muslims only perpetuate further violence Inori Roy-Khan Minority Report

hen the attacks on Paris took place on November 13, it was as if for a moment part of the world stopped in its tracks. One hundred twentynine lives were stolen and countless more were forever altered by acts of violence so ruthless that people were left wondering how anyone could act with such cruelty. And in the midst of the turmoil that followed the attacks, many Muslims shared the same fearful thought: “Please don’t let the attackers be Muslim.” Within hours, the terrorist group most commonly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attacks. Within this article and on any future occasion I write about ISIS, I will refer to it by the name Daesh – an acronym of the Arabic words for ISIL, ad-Dawlah al-Islamiyah fi ‘l-’Iraq wa-sh-Sham. The name “ISIS” grants the group power it does not deserve; referring to the group as an “Islamic” state allows it to function as a representation of all Islam, which it most certainly is not. On the other hand, Daesh closely resembles the Arabic daes, which means “to crush” or “to tread under foot.” The name is meant to be an insult, reducing the group to what it truly is – a destructive, illegitimate force of chaos. The name has sparked such fury in the hearts of these terrorists that they threaten to cut out the tongues of anyone who use it. With 1.6 billion Muslims currently living on the planet, it seems ridiculous to take the actions of a slim minority of violent extremists to be a representation of the whole religion. And yet, in the aftermath of attacks like the ones that took place in Paris both this month and in January (the Charlie Hebdo attacks), backlash against the Muslim community has been hateful and severe. After news of the Paris attacks spread to the world, many took to Twitter and Facebook to encourage the killing of Muslims and their exile from the Western world. Many blamed Islam as a whole for the attacks, with some advocating for the closing of borders to keep out terrorists “disguised as refugees,” and the banning of mosques. Across France, mosques and predominantly Muslim residential areas have been plagued by death threats and racist vandalism. The

Rahma Wiryomartono | Illustrator Deputy Chief Constable of Police in Scotland has warned that Islamophobic violence in the UK has already spiked in the aftermath of the Paris attacks.

Why are Muslims who are completely unaffiliated with terrorism required to prove their innocence to the Western world, as if their claim to their faith is less valid than the skewed version of a violent few? Here in Montreal, 24-year-old Jesse Pelletier was arrested on November 18 and charged with inciting hatred and uttering threats after he posted a video of himself wearing a mask of the Joker from Batman, holding a fake gun, and promising to kill “one Arab a week” across Quebec. In Toronto, a woman wearing a hijab was attacked on November 16 outside of her son’s school; her hijab was ripped off and she was physically and verbally assaulted by

two men. In Peterborough, Ontario, a mosque was set ablaze on November 14. Authorities are treating both Ontario incidents as hate crimes. These increasing incidents of Islamophobic and racist violence come at a time when the West is already rife with Islamophobia. An FBI report on the subject revealed that since 9/11, Islamophobic attacks have become five times more frequent. 55 per cent of Americans surveyed reported having “somewhat unfavourable” or “very unfavourable” perceptions of Islam as of March this year – no doubt those numbers will have increased postParis. In the UK, a survey of British Muslims indicated that two-thirds of Muslim participants “have been subjected to verbal abuse [...] while 82 per cent said they had witnessed Islamophobia being directed at someone else.” These numbers, along with the rates of racially motivated physical assault against Muslims in the UK, have increased since 2010. Islamophobia has become a normalized, regular occurrence in the West that surges during times of insecurity. The Western assumption that Daesh’s actions are reflective of the Muslim community puts Muslims in a position where they are forced to prove their own innocence and that of their communities. Social movements like #NotInMyName have been created for Muslim individuals to shout to the world that they neither support Daesh, nor are terrorists themselves. One Muslim

man in Paris blindfolded himself and wore a sign that read, “I am Muslim, and I’m told that I’m a terrorist. I trust you, do you trust me? If yes, hug me.” Last week, outside McGill’s Roddick Gates, a Syrian Muslim did the same. While actions like these do help create solidarity between Muslims and non-Muslims in the aftermath of the devastation in Paris, I cannot comprehend why they should be necessary in the first place. Why are Muslims who are completely unaffiliated with terrorism required to prove their innocence to the Western world, as if their claim to their faith is less valid than the skewed version of a violent few? When KKK members rally in America and carry out vicious attack against people of colour, white Christians are not compelled to prove they are all not in fact KKK members. There is no reason why Muslims should have to make similarly ridiculous declarations. Western leaders often perpetuate this anti-Islam rhetoric which associates Muslims with inherent suspicion. In the wake of Paris, several state governors and Republican leaders in America encouraged Western nations to close their borders to refugees or risk attracting more terrorists; many U.S. states have already voted to shut down their borders to Syrian refugees for the sake of “national security,” while leaders in other countires, such as Poland, have announced intentions to do the same. What these

leaders don’t seem to realize is that part of the problem that has forced Syrians to flee their home country is Daesh itself. Syrian refugees are as vulnerable to Daesh’s terror agenda as Western citizens are – even more so, since Daesh has a larger presence in Syria and has killed more Muslims than non-Muslims to date. Daesh’s efforts have been concentrated on killing Muslims as well as non-Muslims – the insinuation that all Muslims are somehow complicit in this, that they are not also victims, is a dangerous one. In the words of Muslim academic Reza Aslan, “Islam doesn’t promote violence or peace. Islam is just a religion, and like every religion in the world, it depends on what you bring to it. [...] People are violent or peaceful. And that depends on their politics, their social world, the way that they see their communities, the way they see themselves.” Enough analogies and apologies have been made; it’s time for all Westerners to realize that the actions of violently extremist individuals do not represent Islam as a whole. In the wake of terror attacks that affect them as much as they affect anybody else, Muslims in the West should not have to compound their trauma with fear of retaliatory Islamophobic and racist violence. Minority Report is a column that deconstructs racism through an intersectional lens. Inori RoyKhan can be reached at minorityreport@mcgilldaily.com.

Commentary

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

On selective grief

Why some don’t receive Principal Fortier’s condolences Ralph Haddad and Nadine Tahan The McGill Daily

rincipal Fortier,

November 13, 2015 will unfortunately be remembered as a day of atrocities for years to come. This date marked the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris that claimed the lives of 129 innocent civilians and injured 368 more. The same day, we, two Lebanese students, were surprised to receive an email personally sent from you to all McGill students and staff, in which you offered your deepest condolences to the people of France and expressed your sincerest sympathies to French students and staff at McGill who might have been affected by these attacks. While we greatly appreciate this kind gesture in support of our fellow French McGillians, and while we also stand in solidarity with these individuals, we were disappointed that you have continuously failed to express the same kind of support for students affected by similar attacks in the Middle East, including two that occurred just hours before the Paris attacks. The recent surge in xenophobia and Islamophobia around campus and throughout the world following these attack alarms us. Anyone who has been online in recent days can attest to the increase in antiArab and anti-Muslim sentiments, whether within Quebec, the rest of Canada, or the ‘West’ in general. For instance, a post was recently made on the Facebook page Spotted McGill in which an anonymous student stated that Canada should turn Syrian refugees away. A mosque was set ablaze in Peterborough, Ontario, just a few days after the Paris attacks. Muslim women were harassed in the Toronto subway, and a viral video posted on TVA showed a man threatening to kill Arabs across Quebec. Hence, we felt compelled to address a few points you missed in your email. Not acknowledging that innocent deaths do not only happen within a Western context is a tacit and passive approval of this anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment. Forty-three people in Beirut had perished at the hands of suicide bombers just the day before, and 26 others had been murdered in Baghdad in a similar attack just a few hours prior to the ones in Paris. All of these attacks have a common perpetrator and a similar aim: to instill terror. Yet, there was no mention in your email of these Lebanese victims who had their lives violently taken away from them, nor were the murdered Iraqis acknowledged. Perhaps you were not aware of the

Graffiti in Beirut. Beirut and Baghdad attacks at the time your email was sent out, but we doubt this was the case when you gave similarly narrow condolences at the November 18 Senate meeting. While brown and Black lives were claimed in the Paris attacks, France is a Western, predominantly white country, which accounts for the severe discrepancy in media coverage; as such, your email simply echoed the message perpetuated by mainstream media that white lives matter infinitely more than brown lives. White lives get to be acknowledged in emails sent on behalf of principals, while brown lives are merely seen as collateral damage, not worthy of mention. You can imagine our frustration when Facebook came up with a French flag overlay that users could apply to their profile pictures to show solidarity with France. Where were the Lebanese and Iraqi flags? People living in the ‘East’ are dehumanized to such an extent in Western society that their lives are not even seen as deserving of our sympathies. The Facebook “Safety Check” feature, even, was only applied to the French attacks. According to Alex Schultz, Facebook’s Vice President of Growth, “During an ongoing crisis, like [a] war or [an] epidemic, Safety Check in its current form is not that useful for people, because there isn’t a clear start or end point and, unfortunately, it’s impossible to know when someone is truly ‘safe.’” Lebanon is not, infact, at war or undergo-

Ralph Haddad | The McGill Daily ing an epidemic. Clearly, the perception is that in some places, violence is perpetual, and so affording these places the same generosity as that afforded to ‘safer’ places is futile. Apologists try to excuse this mode of thinking by saying that these kind of tragedies happen more often in the Middle East. This orientalist presumption perpetuates the idea that this region is inherently violent, and that Middle Easterners are, by extension, dangerous people; the violence inflicted on them is somehow perversely justified. The desensitization to violence in the Middle East, which is widespread throughout the McGill community, is indicative of the racist and dehumanizing ideas that individuals hold regarding our peoples. Furthermore, even if this type of violence has happened around you before, you do not get used to the fear that your family or friends have been harmed, or to the fact that this does not seem to matter to most of the people around you at McGill. As a university with a considerable number of Lebanese and Iraqi students, both nationals and diaspora members, it’s not too much to ask for a simple sentence acknowledging these deaths that happened within the same 24 hours as the Paris attacks. It is telling that there have been many terrorist attacks in previous years, but not once did we get an email from you, the principal, expressing your condolences for the victims and those affected

– except when it came to France, a ‘developed’ Western country, after both the Charlie Hebdo and November 13 attacks. There are Syrian students at McGill, yet they receive no email when their towns are being shelled every day. There are Iraqi students at McGill, yet they received nothing when their country lost 26 to attacks in Baghdad on the same day as the Paris attacks. There are Turkish students at McGill, yet there was no email when a suicide bomber killed 97 people in Ankara. There were no emails when thousands of Palestinians lost their lives two summers ago in one of the most brutal attacks the Middle East has seen in years. Do we, Lebanese students at McGill, not deserve the same email that you sent out right after the Paris bombings? This lack of sympathy for brown lives sends the message that Middle Easterners are threats to people in the West, and thus do not deserve to be mourned. As much as our colonial university would have us believe, violence is not essential to the Middle East. We are taught politics and development from a Western viewpoint, a viewpoint that essentializes the differences between the Global North and the Global South: the North as a permanent place of peace and prosperity and economic wealth, the South as a place of constant conflict, oppression, and poverty. The fact of the matter is, these things should not be happening in the first place.

Daesh (also known as ISIS) should not be bombing Beirut or funeral processions in Iraq. It should not be killing innocent people in the Levant, or bombing Paris. The difference in perception between the bombings that Daesh took responsibility for in the Middle East and the ones in Paris is that bombings in the Middle East are perceived to happen every day, so when they become frequent it seems to some that it is supposed to be this way. These things are happening because of circumstances that are completely out of our control. That does not mean our lives matter less because the Middle East is a ‘volatile’ area. We are not Shia, we are not from Burj el-Barajneh – the neighbourhood where the attack took place – and we cannot even begin to imagine how horrible people in south Beirut feel, those who are the most impacted. But we are Lebanese, and when an attack on our country is dehumanized in the mainstream media, and the principal of the university we pay tuition to does not even bother acknowledging that another bombing that claimed the lives of some 43 innocent civilians in Beirut happened only hours before the Paris attacks, we are going to get angry and we are going to be loud. Ralph Haddad is a U3 Joint Honours Middle East Studies and Women’s Studies student. Nadine Tahan is a U3 Arts student. To contact them, email commentary@mcgilldaily.com.

Commentary

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

Toward democratic reform

Alienated Canadians need proportional representation Louis Warnock Commentary Writer

irst-past-the-post (FPTP) – a plurality electoral system in which the candidate with the most votes wins in their district, regardless of the vote distribution – is the current mode of voting in Canada. It is increasingly being criticized for encouraging strategic voting over voting for one’s own beliefs, and for disincentivizing voting in general. Both the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Liberals made it clear that they would push for electoral reform during this fall’s federal election, but they were rarely pressed on the topic. Rather, in the media and during the debates electoral reform was relegated to the shadows as the conversation

was steered to election fodder – the state of the economy and purposefully vague generalizations about our political process. Most democratic countries have implemented an electoral system that involves some form of proportional representation, and it is reasonable to wonder when Canada will follow suit. To at least some degree, proportional representation must be a component of the new electoral system if a more fair, representative democracy is to be achieved. Proportional representation systems are not universal; the system has been adopted in various formats in different countries. In some proportional representation systems, like Finland’s or Norways’s, each electoral district has multiple seats, with the representatives selected from

ordered lists provided by parties in proportion to the number of votes received. Alternatively, the entire country can be a single electoral district. Sometimes, a portion of seats are allocated through proportional representation, while another is allocated through FPTP; this is known as a mixed-member proportional system. In Canada, a multi-partisan grassroots movement known as Fair Vote Canada has been advocating for proportional representation since 2000 and has gained incredible momentum in the past year. Electoral reform is a complex procedural challenge, but we need to remind ourselves why the issue has surfaced nationwide: Canadians are frustrated that their vote is too often “wasted” in the current FPTP system. This simply adds

2015 federal elections Vote distribution

Seat distribution

insult to injury for all those who are already disenchanted with Canadian politics. It is no secret that voters too often behave strategically in the hope that they can influence the outcome of an election, sacrificing their right to vote for the representation they feel truly reflects their conscience. History shows that proportional representation leads to a more equitable composition for legislative bodies, and it encourages voter turnout by eliminating “wasted” votes. According to accuratedemocracy. com, proportional representation often leads parties to nominate more women candidates – as unbalanced party candidate lists are more obvious than a disproportionate number of male nominees in scattered FPTP districts – which ultimately leads to more women being elected. Further, smaller parties representing other special interest or minority groups are more likely to succeed. For example, one study published in the Journal of Politics in 2004 showed that the introduction of proportional representation in New Zealand drastically improved Maori representation in parliament. The Fair Vote Canada campaign alone is not sufficient to push the current Liberal government to act on its promise to introduce electoral reform legislation. Citizens should be having open discussions – at school,

at work, on social networks, or in town hall meetings – on the way in which we vote in Canada. Political parties are less likely to put their full effort behind issues, like electoral reform, that may not lead to more votes for their party in particular. Indeed, the Liberals were only able to gain a majority government because of the distorting effects of FPTP on the popular vote. However, democracy advances through strong social pressure. A nationwide conversation is needed to encourage the Liberal government to put ‘business-as-usual’ politics aside and to act in good faith on its promise. Democracy was not designed to be a winner-takes-all contest where the ruling party gets to play monarch for four years. Under a proportional representation system, the more diverse group of decision-makers in the House of Commons would need to cooperate and make concessions to enact policies, rather than operate on partisanship. As Swiss political scientist Ernest Naville said in 1865, “In a democratic government, the right of decision belongs to the majority, but the right of representation belongs to all.” Louis Warnock is a U2 Earth and Planetary Sciences student. To reach him, email louis.warnock@ gmail.com.

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The butterfly effect Student struggles for accessible education, from Chile to Quebec Written by Vincent Simboli Visual by Stephanie Ngo

hen those of us from outside Quebec first arrive at McGill, we all hear variations on the same theme from someone who is earnestly trying to welcome us. Do what you can to leave the McGill bubble, they tell us, get involved with the Montreal community – after all, there’s more to the city east of St. Denis! And we try: Our cool Frosh leader with an eyebrow piercing offers to take us bouldering somewhere up in the Mile End. We look for jobs at cafes after perfecting the phrase “bonjour-hi-quelque-chose-à-boiresomething-to-drink?” Maybe we get a ‘job’ promoting a nightclub, because our only marketable talent at 18 is being good at convincing people in rez to go clubbing, and we are so desperate for acceptance and popularity that we are willing to accept alcohol as payment. Then the perfect storm of labs, readings, group projects, and reinventing ourselves during our first year away from home hits, and before you know it, our political energy is more concentrated on removing bike gates from campus than trying to do something about the provincial budget cuts that led to the slashing of more than 100 Arts classes. My point is that it’s disturbingly easy for students, especially international and out-of-province students, to be apolitical at

McGill. It’s easy to ignore the anti-austerity movement, because we’ve got weights to lift, we’ve got papers to write, we’ve got wine-and-cheeses to attend, and we’ve got Management Undergraduate Society (MUS) concerts at which to rage. Many before me have made this point, citing the difficulty of convincing anglophone students to become invested in the confusing political landscape of Quebec, the conservative attitude of the McGill administration, and other systemic challenges. As a world-class university that attracts well-to-do students from outside Quebec (such as myself ), McGill invites a certain degree of conservatism, or at the very least, of tacit complicity with the status quo. The residence system and the fact that many out-of-province and international students tend to hang out together create a feedback loop that makes getting involved in local affairs seem difficult or impossible. Broadly, it can all be chalked up to living inside the proverbial McGill bubble, both physically and mentally. As an American whose decision to come to McGill was heavily influenced by its tuition rates (which, though high for international students, are much lower than those of a comparable American university), when I first got to McGill I held the naive and dismissive belief that Quebe-

cois students were being ridiculous – tuition is already so cheap for them! Why were they rioting over such a small increase in price over a long period of time? They should be grateful they pay so little, while I pay so much. This attitude stems from the normalization of astronomical prices for higher education in the U.S.. There exists a commonly-held belief that, in order to get an education, you have to go into debt. This belief comes from a sinister combination of predatory loan interest rates, bloated salaries for senior administrative staff, and a general misunderstanding of what a university should offer. Today, universities must compete for students and are all expected to have shiny new libraries covered in chrome, and multimillion-dollar athletic centres. Linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky once said that tuition and the debt that accompanies it are a disciplinary technique – “when you trap people in a system of debt, they can’t afford the time to think.” For years, I bought into this idea that in order to go to university, it’s only fair that I go into debt. That view changed dramatically when I befriended people who were quite literally fighting in the streets for a free education. People who risked their lives for the opportunity to

write for a student newspaper. People who held their elected officials and student unions to a high standard and were willing to fight for their beliefs. Though there are plenty of those people here, I didn’t meet them in Montreal. I met them in Valparaíso, Chile, at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV). “Ya viene la fuerza”: A brief economic history of Chile had the incredible opportunity to study at PUCV from February to July this year. In late February, the whispers of an impending strike in Chile began to reach my ears at the same time as the Printemps 2015 movement was building steam back in Montreal. In June 2015, university student unions and professor unions across Chile went on strike, demanding a total shift in the national education policy. I had been loosely following the 2015 anti-austerity movement in Montreal, but it was when I was outside the city, and in a country where neoliberal economics and the legacy of a dictatorship had made the need for action all the more urgent, that the movement and its goals began to make more sense to me. Of course, it was tremendously difficult to be apathetic toward the student movements in Chile when my classes were cancelled for months as the entire nation’s

university system went on strike. Broadly speaking, Chile’s education system can be characterized as “el hermano más feo y weón” (the uglier and dirtier brother) of the U.S. higher education system. Its roots can be traced back to the military coup in 1973 in which General Augusto Pinochet and the Chilean Air Force, backed by former U.S. president Richard Nixon, bombed downtown Santiago and assassinated Salvador Allende, the world’s first democratically elected Marxist. Until 1990, Chile was ruled by Pinochet and a military junta that killed and disappeared thousands of civilians, all the while laying the foundations for a massive shift in economic policy toward a neoliberal model developed at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman and his famous “Chicago Boys.” The Chicago Boys were Chilean students trained in neoliberal economic theory at the University of Chicago who returned to South America amid the military coups in the 1970s. They served as economic advisors to dictators propped up by the U.S. through Operación Cóndor in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and many other countries. One of the most dramatic changes Pinochet made to the Chilean education system at the primary and secondary level was shifting the administration of public schools from the fed-

Features eral government to the municipal governments. Federal funds are still provided to public schools, but they are administered at the municipal level. Chile, much like Canada, is a country where a huge percentage of the country is sparsely inhabited or uninhabited. Due to the changes Pinochet introduced, the responsibility of maintaining and evaluating these schools has been passed from the wealthy federal government to the considerably less wealthy municipal governments, especially those outside the Santiago metropolitan area. Pedro Cárdenas Figueroa, a music student at a Chilean university, explained to me in Spanish that “the only public schools that can compete with wealthy private universities are in Santiago. If you go to a place like Osorno [in the southern Los Lagos Region], the only decent-quality schools are all private – the German school, the French school, Jesuit schools – and they’re all expensive. Public [secondary] schools regularly have forty or more students per classroom, which discourages students and teachers. It’s a form of violence against education.” Because the maintenance of public schools fell by the wayside and the attraction of foreign investment took priority, Cárdenas continued, “private schools were made much wealthier, especially the schools far from Santiago. This process, combined with the centralization of all institutions in Santiago, concentrated the wealth, education, and status in the hands of a very small new elite.” In addition to the classic private/public school split, there is a third model in Chile called the “sector subvencionado,” or the voucher system. In this system, schools are funded by the state based on enrolment rates. Carlos Caceres, a professor at PUCV, explained in an email in Spanish that the voucher system is “financed by the state, but administered privately with the option to demand tuition payments from the family of the student. This is a system created and introduced by the Pinochet dictatorship to encourage private enterprise.” This educational system breeds inequality of income and access to education, which has seeped into the post-secondary system as well. Since Chile transitioned to democracy in 1991, not a single public university has been created. According to Caceres, because public universities and vocational schools were stripped of funding during the dictatorship, the economic deficit was passed on to students and their families. This has led to a disturb-

November 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily ing trend where public universities are financed just as much by student and family contributions as private universities. A bachelor’s degree in Chile takes approximately six years, during which it is extremely uncommon for a student to live anywhere but home, as tuition is simply too expensive for a student to also shoulder living expenses. This means that if you have the misfortune to be born anywhere but in Santiago, you are very unlikely to move hundreds of kilometres away to study. More glaringly, this situation leads to astronomical debt for students. I spoke with a Chilean university student who wished

profit. Although the struggle has been long and violent, the 2011 protests saw considerable success and garnered major media coverage worldwide. A conservative estimate of 1,800 arrests, at least one death, millions of dollars in property damage, and hundreds of injuries were recorded between 2011 and 2013. The student unions that spearheaded the movement used direct occupation of the campuses as their main weapon, taking a nod from the 2006 “Penguins’ Revolution,” in which Chilean secondary school students occupied more than 420 campuses in a successful campaign for reduced transportation fares to and from school.

“Private schools were made much wealthier, especially the schools far from Santiago. This process, combined with the centralization of all institutions in Santiago, concentrated the wealth and education and status in the hands of a very small new elite.” Pedro Cárdenas Figueroa to remain anonymous about their financial situation. After six years studying at a private university, they will have incurred a debt of nearly 11,000 USD in student loans, interest not included. Although Chile’s income per capita is listed by the World Bank as approximately 22,000 USD – quite high for South America – this is a deceptive figure because of the large numer of unemployed people, especially youth, and because it is not representative of people outside the Santiago metropolitan area, where the population of Chile is concentrated. This student told me, “Nobody risks their life if it’s not already in danger. People have died here in these protests.” They added that income inequality and the inaccessibility of education breed violence: “Young lads get shot because they were trying to keep their parents from having to pay one arm and several legs for a fucking degree. That’s the funny thing here in this country. It seems like it’d be the best economy in Latin America. And when foreigners come, they seem not to notice [these problems] since poverty is just amazingly well hidden.” “Te amo, Camila”: How the Chilean student movement changed the world n 2011, Chilean university students staged massive protests against the public education system’s increasing emphasis on

The momentum generated by the protests was instrumental in the election of activist leader Camila Vallejo as a Chilean Communist Party member of parliament and of Chilean Socialist Party leader Michelle Bachelet as president in 2013. Bachelet had been vocally supportive of the fight for universal and free access to higher education. According to Caceres, the 2015 wave of strikes focused on forcing Bachelet’s hand. The movement is now shifting to pressuring the National Assembly, as the executive branch (Bachelet in particular) has stood with the students. The movement’s next steps are currently being discussed. Caceres said, “Overall, in 2016, state universities (or public vocational colleges) are expected to ensure that 50 per cent of the poorest students are able to attend for free. The idea is to progressively increase this number until the 2018-19 academic year, when 100 per cent of students in these public universities have full scholarships funded by the state.” The 2011 student movement drove Chile closer to better access to education than it had been at any point since 1970. It also directly contributed to the election of a leftist coalition in 2013. Its 2015 incarnation has become a visible and important reminder to the Bachelet government that Chilean students will not accept a halfway solution to a broken education system.

The students who are currently fighting tooth and nail in Chile are the first generation born after 1990; they are the first generation coming of age in a time when the curfews, media repression, disappearances, and murders of the dictatorship are not a part of daily life. This generation knows how much it has to lose, and its sense of urgency is contagious. “La gente unida jamás será vencida”: the Printemps Érable and the Chilean Winter he relative success of the 2011 Chilean protests had a direct impact on the 2012 protests in Quebec. According to Gabriel Velasco, a student activist at Concordia University, the Quebec movements in 2012 and 2015 were galvanized by the momentum of the similar movements happening in Chile. However, the key difference between the two was the pressure that the student movement in Chile was able to put on during the election that immediately followed, while its Quebec counterpart failed to do so. According to Velasco, “The Quebec provincial election in 2012 stabbed the movement in the heart. When the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) called the election and the Parti Québécois (PQ) won a minority, that was a massive demobilizing force within the movement.” When the PQ came to power, the student movement lost momentum, as the newly elected government demanded that universities cut $140 million from their budgets. However, the PQ was more generous in its social spending than the next PLQ government would be, with its dedication to a zero-deficit budget. Following the Quebec Charter of Values fiasco, which ended with the PLQ being elected again, the activists that had been previously focused on improving access to education found themselves facing an even greater challenge – provincial austerity measures. The PLQ’s proposed cuts to the public sector, especially in health and education, demanded new energy from these activist groups. Velasco explained that one major solution to austerity measures, proposed by activist groups like the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ) student federation, is increasing the number of tax brackets in Quebec from three to ten. According to Velasco, this would ensure a more equitable income tax distribution, lower the tax burden for approximately 90 per cent of the population, and net the provincial government an additional $1 billion annually. However, the 10 per cent

that would see their income tax increase represents the small section of the population that is the most influential politically. Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP External Emily Boytinck shared her opinion on why, despite being a large, competitive, and well-known university in Montreal, McGill remains relatively uninvolved in Montreal politics. Boytinck told me that “McGill students have historically participated much less in the Quebec student movement at large. Last year, there was some mobilization, and it was very much led [...] by the unions. And it was often sort of just a collaboration of existing activist groups on campus.” However, the fight is far from over. “This year there’s been sort of a new group of students that have cropped up, we call ourselves McGill Against Austerity,” Boytinck continued. “Organizing movements at McGill is a very slow and laborious process and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We’re still at baseline mobilization, but I do feel like it’s growing.” Thankfully, Quebec is not heir to the same legacy of violence that the Chilean dictatorship left on its people. Even the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) have nothing on the Carabineros de Chile, the Chilean military police, in terms of access to weaponry and reputation for violence. However, it is critical to realize that just like their Chilean counterparts, Quebec students have a lot to lose if tuition rates increase and austerity measures persist. Even if tuition rates do not increase, the cuts to education enacted by the provincial government will negatively affect both the quality of education and its accessibility. In turn, this causes inequality to grow. My interview with Cárdenas concluded with him saying, “In Chile, it is well known that the state is nothing more than a mafia palace where the left and right join hands to fill their bellies, fill their wallets [...] while fucking us over.” Whether or not this applies to Quebec, Chile’s student movement is a striking example of the power that a united people can wield over its government. No matter where you come from, as a resident of Quebec, you owe it to yourself to learn about and take a stance on its political issues, especially austerity. After all, we are all part of this community, whether we want to be or not.

Y así, la lucha continúa. And so, the battle continues.

Culture

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

Existential dread at the ring of a bell TNC deconstructs narrative and structure in Blue Heart

The feeling of risk in the play draws in the audience as the actors work through delivering dialogue that becomes more [...] nonsensical.

Connor Spencer Culture Writer

estroying conceptions of language, time, and theatre, Caryl Churchill’s double-bill Blue Heart is playing at Tuesday Night Café (TNC) Theatre this week. Directed by Johanna Ring, Heart’s Desire and Blue Kettle, the two anti-play oneacts, explore the human draw toward self-destruction that lies hidden underneath domesticity. Heart’s Desire feels like David Ives’s comic play Sure Thing (where the characters similarly go back in time and make different choices at the ring of a bell). A middle-class family — father (Max Katz), mother (Amalea Ruffett), and aunt (Sasha Blakeley) — waits in its kitchen for the return of the daughter (Natalie Liconti) from Australia. However, every time the buzzer goes off, the family resets, doing the scene or a certain part of the scene over again, with small permutations that gradually become more and more absurd. All of a sudden, the audience finds itself moving from Ives into the more fantastical and farcical absurdity of Arthur Kopit’s Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad. Here, the tech team, headed by José Camargo, steals the show, not missing a single beat on the quick light and sound cues of the first act. The constant repetition induced by the buzzer gives the sensation that the characters are marionettes, helpless against a force larger than themselves. However, as they go further into the scene, it seems as if they may be incapable of deviating

The cast of Blue Heart. from their own inner fears, desires, and internal monologues, attempting to both articulate and escape from self-repression at each ring of the bell. The second one-act, Blue Kettle, continues the theme of a manipulatable narrative as Derek (Martin Seal) goes about convincing women that he is their son. Gradually, more words in the dialogue are replaced with the words “blue” or “kettle,” alienating the audience by forcing them to analyze the fragmented dialogue. Although this second piece does not seem as well-worked as the first, there are some wonderful

Jessica Banner | Photographer moments of character-play, particularly from Anna Lytvynova as Mrs. Vane, Kelly Lopes as Mother, and Maxine Dannatt as Miss Clarence. A sense of incompleteness rings throughout, with the decontextualized narrative, missing words, and Chip Limeburner’s set design, which is scaled down further from the fairly realistic kitchen set of the previous piece. However, this incompleteness is much more engaging than the over-rehearsed quality of the first play. The feeling of risk in the play draws in the audience as the actors work through delivering dialogue that becomes more and

more nonsensical. English language theatre in Montreal has seemed to be obsessed with Caryl Churchill in the past couple of years — there have been at least five productions of Churchill in Montreal within the last three years – ranging from Top Girls at the Segal Centre to Love and Information at Dawson College — and not without reason. The postmodernist, feminist British author has written over thirty plays, and is arguably the only woman who has gained popular recognition alongside big names like Beckett, Pinter, and Chekov, as a playwright who revolutionized the language of theatre.

The language used in the more surrealist plays of the second half of her oeuvre (of which Blue Heart is part) is hard to describe, being an amalgam of Cixous, Ives, and Beckett — a sort of deconstructive, absurd écriture féminine. However, in Heart’s Desire, the focus seems to be on the destruction of time, rather than the normally Churchillian focus on the structures of language. What will strike theatre-goers most about Blue Heart is the thick undercurrent of fear and panic in Heart’s Desire. The constant repetition of a middle-class family giving freedom to their latent anxieties — fears of death, of change, of unhappiness, of entrapment, of “not doing things right” — welds itself into a palpable suburban terror. The permutations of these themes seem endless while watching, and suddenly, the Ives-like silliness of what started as a benign game of forward-reverse, is gone. Blue Heart plays at 8 p.m. from November 25 to 28 in Morrice Hall.

Five years of inclusive publishing Flower Press continues to say yes to new authors

Taylor Mitchell The McGill Daily

he independent printing house Flower Press is not your average publisher. Since November 2011, founder Maryann Hayatian has been signing writers regardless of experience and mentoring them as they explore their craft. Since The Daily last spoke to Hayatian in 2012, Flower Press has continued to treat each manuscript submission equally, and continues to prioritize writers genuinely passionate about developing their craft. Flower Press was created because Hayatian, author and Concordia creative writing graduate, grew frustrated with the bureaucratic workings of the printing business and its high

rejection rate. The publishing business proved to be cold and impersonal to the founder, spurring the creation of a press that rejects just that. “Many [writers] have emailed feeling [that] their writings are not something any publisher [would] want,” Hayatian told The Daily in an email. These concerns reflect the consequences of the big business model in mainstream publishing, prioritizing marketability over talent, and subsuming artistic liberty to mass appeal. Hayatian’s writers-first philosophy has resulted in the continued success of Flower Press’ writers. Jolanta Baczynski, Michael Phillips, and Amadi Arua, to name a few, have put out diverse works ranging from fiction to poetry to children’s books since the press’ establishment.

Max Dean | Illustrator One challenge Flower Press Publishing has faced in the past five years has been writers who expect quick financial success. Hayatian challenges this idea,

attempting to help writers earn money while still enjoying developing their craft; in some unfortunate circumstances, Hayatian explained, writers see celebrity-

written memoirs with great financial success and expect the same outcome. However, Hayatian wants to instill first and foremost a dedication to writing. Hayatian’s emphasis on the emotional journey that writing can bring to others — as opposed to the sales it can bring to a big corporation — displays a refreshingly optimistic stance that not only has allowed her to achieve success, but also to gain the respect of her writers. It is these mentorships sustained over these past five years that she considers to be the most valuable outcome of her endeavours. To all writers looking toward the future with uncertainty, Hayatian offers advice as how to stick to their passion: “You have the talent. Show your writings. Listen to yourself.”

Culture

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

Not your sad East African girls

Somali Semantics zine reclaims narratives, changes the conversation Sepehr Razavi Culture Writer

his past summer, McGill students Sumaya Ugas and Y. Abdulqadir started making art that is revolutionary in its aims to foster transformative discussion. The zine Somali Semantics is an edifying form of empowerment that shifts the authors from object to subject in discourse as Black, Muslim, Somali women. Somali Semantics is first and foremost a set of personal narratives that stem from the traditional oral art of storytelling. Their art is also a rumination and dissection of a violent, racist, islamophobic, misogynistic reality. Throughout this zine, they reject the relentless gaze of a world that constantly seeks to reduce and constrain them. If you were looking forward to reading Somali Semantics in the hopes of finding the often repeated narrative of sad East African girls, you would realize your mistake through seeing them talk, as their faces are almost constantly lit up by a contagious laughter. Their work gives an insight into key places and spaces that have helped shape their multifaceted identity. McGill Daily (MD): You are very upfront about whom you consider the target audience for this zine: how do you see the importance of Somali girls making art for Somali girls? Sumaya Ugas (SU): Well this zine was born out of a strong desire to see ourselves represented in ways that went beyond the typical sad diasporic narratives; beyond the nostalgia of an ocean many of us second generation kids have never really seen, and especially beyond being used as “visible minorities” by a country so bent on proving its “tolerance” through its “multicultural” social fabric. Y. Abdulqadir (YA): Yeah, exactly. Also, most Somali girls exist at a really complicated intersection of Muslim-ness and Blackness that we really wanted to explore. MD: Throughout your art, you use varied media to convey intent and a variety of topics and tones – these touch on the tragic natures of xenophobia, sexual assault, family tragedies, and the more lighthearted music playlists. How did the use of media help you convey these emotions ? YA: For me, the use of different forms of media really helped us capture the full complexity of our identities – especially as Black women. So often, we are put into a box and are only allowed to be one thing – happy Black girl; sad Black girl, et cetera – and we really

wanted to use media to deconstruct that idea. The reality is, as living ,breathing human beings, our lives are tinged by an array of emotions – and we wanted to honor that truth through our work. MD: The Soomaali language’s

I would define home as this weird gray space between Toronto and Mogadisho: classic diasporakid floating... I’ve come to realize the beauty of existing in this gray space. Y. Abdulqadir recurrence throughout the zine seems to tie the various narratives together. How are your thoughts formulated in Soomaali versus English or French? Both: This is actually a recurring conversation between the two of us. Whatever language you are speaking, I think it’s always informed by all the different languages you are thinking in, or know. Often, I find myself trying to say something in English, but being stuck because my entire thought process in that moment is happening in French. This is why

we chose to keep Soomaali in our zine. Because so much can be lost in translation, and because our main audience (we assume) has a minimal understanding of the language in ways that enabled them to get the references we make throughout the zine. MD: Are you reading, or have read, anything in particular that has inspired you in your writing? SU: I’ve recently gone back to reading Diriye Osman’s short story collection, Fairytales for Lost Children. He’s easily become a writer whom I admire on so many levels, and his words often feel like he is writing into existence so many realities – on being young, queer, Muslim, Somali, displaced, et cetera – that have been denied. YA: Last year, I read Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism (edited by Bushra Rehman and Daisy Hernandez) and it really inspired the hell out of me. More than anything, it drove home the fact that women of colour should take autonomy of their voices and their narratives. MD: There’s a very purposeful focus on place and space in Somali Semantics. How do you define “home?” YA: I would define home as this weird gray space between Toronto and Mogadishy: classic diasporakid floating. As time has passed, I’ve come to realize the beauty of existing in this gray space, and the power that lies in the ability to mix and borrow aspects from different cultures. MD: Sumaya, there’s a sentence that you use that seems to brilliantly summarize what this zine is really about; “I am tired of

talking about identity for the sake of talking about identity, it’s exhausting.” Where do you see the role of lived experiences in artistic creation and where do you see academia in this picture?

We are born out of the lived experiences of our parents. We are hybrids and aliens in this Canadian space that is either constructed as white or as ‘multicultural’ and devoid of any real meaning. Sumaya Ugas

SU: That line you quote came from a place of refusing to write about our identities in ways that are devoid of feeling and of reality. I wrote this during a semester where I was increasingly alienated by all the discussions that were happening around me when it came to identity – how everything felt so dry and compartmentalized, even conversations about intersectionality. Audre Lorde once spoke on fear, visibility, and silence, saying she was a “Black woman warrior doing [her] work” and that

“your silences won’t protect you.” I think the need to write those words down came from a place of refusing to give in to the fear and exhaustion. Academia is useful in so many ways, but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how it gives voice. Academia and knowledge production have always been sites where certain experiences, realities, et cetera, are given importance. Basically what scholars choose to study [and] write about [...] is not objective and us deciding to write our own lived experiences in this way is us reclaiming that voice. MD: Both of you put great emphasis on parental narratives and how, as first generation Canadians, your sense of identity is necessarily formed differently than your parents’. Are those narratives worth reclaiming, and what emotions stem from this process? YA: I love this question. As children of the diaspora, I think parental narratives are so important to reclaim. Despite the fact that our identities are conceptualized differently, our parents’ movement and migration stories are directly linked to why we were born in North America, why we speak English and French. That being said, it’s impossible not to reclaim these narratives, because they are intertwined with our own. Also, so many of our parents have also experienced incredible trauma in the process of migration and resettlement – and I believe it is valuable and necessary to honour those lived experiences. SU: Yes! I mean, we are born out of the lived experiences of our parents. We are hybrids and aliens in this Canadian space that is either constructed as white or as “multicultural” and devoid of any real meaning. We, as children of immigrants, often inherit this reality of parents who’ve abandoned everything to build a better tomorrow for us. At the same time, for many of us born and raised here, Canada is all we know. These realities are in constant communication with one another. My father is the best storyteller I know, and I wouldn’t have this love for words and stories if it weren’t for him and how he talks about Somalia. So in terms of reclaiming our parents’ narratives, for children of immigrants trying to make sense of who they are and where they come from, while figuring out how they fit into this “new” space, I think nothing is more important than being aware of how the realities of our parents influence how we exist in this world.

Culture

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

The hilarity after Hamlet’s storm

Players’ Theatre’s Fortinbras mashes humour and the macabre Jasreet Kaur The McGill Daily

hile Shakespeare’s Hamlet concludes tragically with all of the main characters dying in the final act, Players’ Theatre’s production of Fortinbras launches into a raucous comedy, picking up from where Hamlet left off. The play, written by Lee Blessing, opens in the final scene of Hamlet, with the lifeless bodies of Claudius (Ben Mayer-Goodman), Gertrude (Tamara Lam), Polonius (Clay Walsh), Laertes (Alex Grasic) and Ophelia (Ki-eun Peck) strewn across the floor. Ostric (Alex Friesen), the courtier, is frozen in shock, while Horatio (Maka Ngwenya) is seen leaning over Hamlet’s (Seb Mattey) body, exchanging a few last words with Hamlet before he finally dies. This dark beginning is a pointed choice made by director Claire Hill in order to create continuity between both plays. “I wanted the audience just to feel surrounded by this darkness,” Hill told The Daily in an interview. “I wanted the whole death and darkness and despair of Hamlet’s ending to really come through in the beginning before the comedy of Fortinbras came through.” One of the unique directorial decisions of the production is that unlike traditional depictions of Horatio, Players’ Theatre casted a woman. This choice adds a fresh layer to the character’s later interactions with Fortinbras (Oscar Lecuyer), who at one point makes advances toward her in the hopes of convincing her to sup-

port his new reign. Following the initial scene, Fortinbras enters, impulsive and assumptive, with a flair for the dramatic. Horatio, the play’s moral compass, tries desperately to explain to him the true story behind all the dead bodies on the floor. Unbelieving of Horatio’s account of Hamlet being haunted by his father’s ghost, Fortinbras comes up with his own absurd version of events – involving a Polish spy – which he deems more believable for the public. The chemistry between the actors is evident – the quick repartees, especially between Fortinbras and Horatio, is paced to perfection by both actors, supported by eye rolls and exasperated sighs from Horatio and melodramatic exclamations from Fortinbras.

Lecuyer masterfully depicts the shift in Fortinbras’ character from blatant confidence to a state of indecision and self-doubt. Fortinbras’ ridicule toward ghosts soon comes back to haunt him, quite literally, as the ghosts of all the dead reappear and torment him in varying ways. Claudius and Gertrude, who were buried in sacred ground despite their wicked actions (in order to corroborate Fortinbras’ version of the story) return as cheery phantoms who spend their time asking Fortinbras to

From left to right: Lecuyer, Mayer-Goodman, and Lam. re-bury their bodies elsewhere. Ophelia returns as a seductive ghost, concerned with keeping the true sequence of events hidden from the public. Her father, Polonius, returns as well, only to keep silent for most of the play before finally warning Fortinbras to speak the truth and to stay away from his dead daughter. Hamlet, too, arrives as a ghost and demands that the truth be told about his story. Throughout the play, the audience witnesses Fortinbras’ struggle to balance pressure from ghosts and his own plans for ruling the kingdom successfully. Lecuyer master-

fully depicts the shift in Fortinbras’ character from blatant confidence to a state of indecision and self-doubt. Speaking with The Daily, Hill noted that the play purposefully contrasts Hamlet’s deliberate decisionmaking process with Fortinbras’ impulsive nature when it comes to ruling a kingdom. “In [Shakespeare’s] Hamlet, Hamlet thinks a lot and he doesn’t act, and in Fortinbras, [Fortinbras] acts a lot but doesn’t think very much, and I want people to see the consequences of both of those things and find a balance in between,” Hill said. “They have very similar begin-

Pam Austin | Photographer nings, because Hamlet’s father was killed and his uncle took the throne, and the same thing happened to Fortinbras – his father was killed by Hamlet’s father, and his uncle took the throne instead of Fortinbras. [...] So I want people to see how similar beginnings [can] lead to very different paths.” With an incredible cast that prioritizes the laughs in the dark context of Hamlet’s bloodshed and subsequent hauntings, Players’ Theatre’s production of Fortinbras entertains greatly. Fortinbras runs this week from November 25 to 28 at Players’ Theatre.

The Vibrator Play charged with Victorian thrills Sexuality electrified in DESA’s production of the classic comedy

Virginia Shram The McGill Daily

responding stage direction marries the constant layering of innuendos and petticoats.

arah Ruhl’s In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play, presented by the Department of English Studies Association (DESA), is a comedic foray into the invention of the vibrator and the seductive effects borne from its use. Doctor Givings (Anurag “Anni” Choudhury), a medical practitioner obsessed with the development of electricity and its many uses, has invented a device to cure that misogynystic, pesky feminine malady — “hysteria.” Much to his nosy wife Catherine’s (Sophia Metcalf ) chagrin, Givings invites female patients into the “next room,” where he stimulates them to orgasm with a comically large device reminiscent of a sci-fi ray gun about the size of a femur. Sabrina Daldry (Clara Nizard) is one such afflicted woman, suffering from sensitivities to light, cold, and other ‘feminine ailings.’ Although the cast’s acting at times strayed toward being superflu-

After all, sexual politics tend to relax a little when there is a three-foot dildo in the next room. Vibrator and corset.

Sonia Ionescu | The McGill Daily

ously dramatic, the flow of dialogue and physical movement was diligently rehearsed, making the interactions with the set (two rooms divided by a thin wall) pleasingly complicated. Characters set up moments of sexual tension and of great dramatic irony simply by streamlining their movements on set between the two rooms. Comedic moments occurred mostly due to the brilliance of the writing,

but the stage direction by director Myrna Wyatt Selkirk particularly highlighted the pun-centred wordplay and the parallelism present within the text as characters moved within each room in synchrony. Particular praise is owed to the collaboration between costume designer Catherine Bradley and Wyatt Selkirk; attention to Victorianera undergarment detailing and cor-

Themes of sex, innovation, desire, lesbianism, and motherhood are dealt with a sometimes slightly heavy hand, as they develop strong and early. From the first scene, themes of technology (shown in a soliloquy on candlelight) and matriarchal desperation (heard in a whispered prayer to a hungry child) shoot out the gate, leaving little room to develop delicately. Throughout the show, interactions between Mr. and Mrs. Givings

are deliberately mismatched in emotional intimacy, leaving room for the growth of the latter’s sexual appetite to motivate her actions, perhaps too eagerly. The sexism inherent in heteronormative Victorian sexual morals is dealt with deftly by the crew, as dialogue surrounding the assumed lack of sexuality of all women draws laughs and not scorn. After all, sexual politics tend to relax a little when there is a three-foot dildo in the next room. Nonetheless, misogyny is undercut, and therefore critiqued, by presenting the women as the primary agents of sexual discovery in contrast to backwards male hegemonic thought. Irrespective of their forced introductions, the thematic vibrations throughout the play are heard as clearly as the ecstasy in Sabrina Daldry’s moans. In the Next Room is sure to be a delightful romp. In The Next Room runs this week from November 26 to 28 in Moyse Hall.

Editorial

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his month, both SSMU Council and AUS Council passed motions in support of a fall reading break. A Senate working group has made a proposal for such a break, but it is currently being delayed in a Senate subcommittee. McGill students are strongly in favour of a fall reading break, with 71.5 per cent of 5,112 student respondents indicating their support in an April survey conducted by Enrolment Services. In a high-pressure environment like McGill, a fall reading break is a much-needed step toward alleviating these elevated levels of stress and prioritizing students’ mental health. As the fall reading break proposal stalls in Senate, it is students who suffer. An increasing number of students at McGill and other universities face mental health issues while in school, where they are often encouraged to work themselves to the bone in hypercompetitive environments. A break would give students the chance to catch up on work or deal with concerns that they might not otherwise have time for, such as medical appointments. It may also make it easier for some students to visit home, allowing them to connect with family and friends who provide crucial support. As such, reading breaks aren’t about extra vacation time – for many students, this is a matter of keeping their heads above water. Though there are resources on campus that aim to help struggling students, they are often inadequate, such as McGill’s Mental Health Service, whose waitlist is dangerously long. In response to criticisms of these resources, the administration has argued that it wants to act preemptively to decrease their demand. Though by no means a substitute for adequate mental health services, a

fall reading break would be a perfect example of one such preemptive initiative – and yet, the Senate proposal remains stalled. Many other Canadian universities already have, or will soon implement, fall reading breaks. Significant resistance to a fall break on the Senate subcommittee has come from professors who are worried about losing teaching days. However, the number of teaching days at McGill is already higher than many other large Canadian universities, with 66 in the fall semester and 65 in the winter semester. The University of British Columbia, for example, has 61 teaching days in the fall semester and 62 in the winter semester, and the University of Western Ontario has 62 each semester; it’s reasonable to expect McGill professors to be able to adjust their syllabi by a few days and still deliver effective courses. Further, even if professors are absolutely convinced that McGill needs 66 teaching days in the fall semester instead of 64 (as the current proposal suggests), these days could be made up by beginning the semester earlier or by altering the final exam schedule. A fall reading break is a straightforward, reasonable way to boost student wellbeing that has already been successfully implemented at other universities. McGill has a particularly weak track record for supporting its students, and any and all credible methods to improve on this should be welcomed with open arms. Students have clearly indicated their support for a fall break, and there is no good excuse not to implement one. We’ve spoken up, McGill, give us a break. —The McGill Daily editorial board

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

Lies, half-truths, and things that can’t be predated.

Construction scaffolding gains historic landmark status Arts building renovation efforts hit unexpected roadblock

Daniel Galef The McGall Weekly

ajor renovations on the McGall Arts building have been halted once again, as the Landmark Upholding, Maintenance, and Preservation Society (LUMPS) declared the scaffolding a historic landmark, and thus legally protected from being moved or altered in any way. The Arts building, so named for prominent benefactor Sir Arthur Arts, has already had its renovation, a “portico stabilization project,” delayed several times. The temporary support structure includes plywood and metal pipe scaffolding, as well as a collection of plastic weatherproof tarps imprinted to seamlessly mimic the majestic stone face of the historic building. The support structure was originally intended merely to shield the Arts building physically and cosmetically during repairs. However, it has become an enduring symbol, more familiar to McGall students than the underlying edifice itself. “I love that place,” said Jen Eric, a U1 Experimental Philosophy and Undeclared double major. “I think my morning class is in that building, but I’m not sure, because I haven’t gone yet. Someone told me that there’s another building behind it, but no way, right?”

Other students outright prefer the structure to the Arts building. “Most of the windows on campus just reflect the cold, depressing landscape outside,” said U2 Comedy student me, the writer of this column, “but the windows on the Renovation Project Tarp always reflect spring. I think it’s an artistic commentary on how we look at the passage of time, or something.” The landmark status has been conferred despite the true age of the structure remaining unknown, its construction predating even the earliest of historical records. “We’re not quite sure how, but city records and the university’s own architectural archives indicate that the tarp and scaffolding are significantly older than the building they’re attached to, and may even predate the city itself,” said Derrick Garrison, a professor in the Department of Crumbling Infrastructure Planning. Indeed, the oldest woodcuts from Mount Royal and the surrounding countryside, which are housed in the special collections of the Sadpath Library, have been deciphered as reading “main entryway closed – please use temporary entrance through the D’aw Son building (to be constructed in 400 years).” To McGall preservationists and architecture buffs, what is an inconvenience to others is really a victory. “McGall has a ton of great

Ionia Sonescu | The McGall Weekly

The majestic scaffolding. old buildings, but almost none of them have the legal recognition they deserve,” said Archie Trave, a PhD student at the School of Building-building who is currently working on a revolutionary gas station design. “The Arts building scaffolding is by far the best example, and I’m glad it will now stand

proudly for the foreseeable future.” According to Trave, this victory is especially redeeming as it comes after a long streak of failures to obtain landmark status for other structures, McGall having had a falling-out with LUMPS a few years ago. “For a really long time, we couldn’t get anything preserved.

A tasty, crispy, golden crossword

Across 1. A blanket for your beautiful crispy babies. 4. The bottomless fountain from which boxes upon boxes of fried goodness spring forth. 8. A term most derogatory, popularized in a new Facebook group. 10. The tweeting pathfinder, since 2011. 12. The paper that wraps your lunch (2 words). 13. Perfection, fried. 14. A funnel for “that chut.” 15. Feast central.

Down 2. The green ingredient (plural). 3. A triangle pocket of holy mush. 5. A golden nugget of pure wonder and joy. 6. The means of production of the sacred food (2 words). 7. The starchy heart of the matter (plural). 9. The fairest of pricing schemes (3 words). 11. The sweet nectar that graces the meals of the gods.

Heck, we accidentally demolished a lot of buildings,” they said. “The problem really started when we applied to have the Peacock building registered as a protected historic building; the application was denied because the review board could not determine whether or not it was a building at all.”

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