The McGill Daily – Vol104Iss17

Volume 104, Issue 17 Monday, February 2, 2015

Editorial

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News 03

February 2, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Tuition deregulation a concern for councillors

NEWS

SSMU Council discusses tuition PGSS Secretary-General resigns Football player charges dropped

Environment students seek SSMU Council seat

CAMSR plans study to examine responsible investment practices Floor fellows face trouble unionizing A strike in the spring?

SUS approves new fees, again Prison divestment in the U.S. AMURE to fund member counselling Quartier de l’innovation struggles to move from theory to practice

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COMMENTARY

Why white people shouldn’t hijack #BlackLivesMatter McGill should support the movement for a general strike in spring How unpaid internships are both exploitative and classist

13

FEATURES

Mandatory minimum sentences are harmful and unjust

17

SCI+TECH

18

SPORTS

Examining the role of hackathons in the hacker community

Exploring skatebording’s homophobic side The NFL’s racism problem

20 CULTURE

A look at the powerful institution behind the Academy Awards Culture picks for the week Reviewing “Political Poem / I Watch the News” Cinema Politica starts the year with Gulabi Gang Discussing PWRFNK with Producer/DJ Shash’U

23 EDITORIAL Bill C-31 and our complicity in anti-Roma racism

24 COMPENDIUM! Confessions of a white guy White Knights ride on McGall

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Saima Desai News Writer

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t its meeting last Thursday, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Legislative Council saw discussion on tuition deregulation and a proposal to add a seat for an Environment councillor. At the meeting, President Courtney Ayukawa introduced the new SSMU General Manager, Jennifer Varkonyi. Council also passed a motion regarding interim provisions with respect to elections and referenda.

Interim changes to bylaws, decoding McGill’s assessment policy Council passed interim provisions to its bylaws, which will temporarily add General Assembly (GA) ratification provisions to the and delineate unfair campaigning practices, alongside other minor changes to the constitution. The approved changes will be in effect until the end of April, by which point a more comprehensive set of bylaw changes will be presented.

Council also heard from Arts Senator Jacob Greenspon, who is working on creating a website that would summarize and ‘de-jargonize’ McGill’s University Student Assessment Policy for students. “It’s written in very heavy policy language,” he said. “We want to break down that barrier to the policy.”

“We know that in 2008 when the [six] programs were deregulated, for example, doing an MBA went from around $13,000 a year to $30,000.”

Amina Moustaqim-Barrette, VP External The website would help students facing unfair assessment practices instituted by professors by providing them with the information necessary to understand and assert their rights.

Various councillors added examples of unfair assessment practices that students commonly faced.

“Profs can deny students accessibil-

ity requests even after the OSD [Office for Students with Disabilities] has approved them,” noted Arts Senator Kareem Ibrahim.

Arts and Science Senator Chloe Rourke raised the point that if a student is ill or has two conflicting midterms, professors sometimes interpret it as the student “forfeiting” their ability to take the midterm, and implicitly consenting to a final that constitutes 100 per cent of their mark.

Greenspon also noted the potential for the website to be used for advocacy for students who have been subject to unfair assessment practices.

Provost backs total deregulation of international programs Provost Anthony Masi presented an update on the University’s budget and strategic plan. He also voiced his support for the deregulation of tuition for international students.

Since 2008, deregulation has been in effect for Law, Management, Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, and Applied Sciences.

“Deregulation means that the government of Quebec provides zero subsidy for international students studying in those disciplines,” Masi said.

“The concern that some students have expressed is whether or not deregulating would automatically mean a huge increase in tuition,” noted Masi. He addressed this by stating that tuition would be fixed for the four-year period during which a student attends the university.

VP External Amina MoustaqimBarrette told The Daily that, despite Masi’s reassurance, many councilors were unsure how to view the University’s stance on deregulation.

“We know that in 2008 when the [six] programs were deregulated, for example, doing an MBA went from around $13,000 a year to $30,000, so that’s what precedent tells us,” she said.

At the meeting, Masi explained the process of regulation currently in place. “The government of Quebec sets a tuition fee, the University collects that tuition fee, and then remits to the government everything except what a Quebec student would pay,” Masi said. “In exchange, the government gives us a subsidy that is equal to what they would have [given], had they been a Quebec student.”

“International students pay

Tamim Sujat | The McGill Daily more than we get to keep for their tuition,” said Masi. However, under total deregulation of undergraduate and professional graduate programs, the university would only gain about $7 million – approximately 1 per cent of the University’s operating budget.

“I think we have not just a voice that needs saying, but a voice that’s worth saying.”

Benjamin Ger, MESS representative “Additionally, if we were to deregulate all of our other programs, it would be very difficult to raise the tuition rates in the presently deregulated programs because students might not pay $30,000 to come study Arts, but they would pay that to come study Commerce,” he added.

Masi also spoke about McGill’s deficit, citing government cuts as the reason for McGill’s money-saving procedures. Between 2014 and 2016, the Quebec government will have cut a cumulative $45 million from the subsidies provided to McGill.

“But saving can only take you so far,” said Masi. “We have to have alternative sources of revenue.”

Jonathan Bouchard, the president of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) was invited to speak to the councillors about what the organization represents. FEUQ is a federation of

student associations, and represents over 125,000 students.

Bouchard stated that FEUQ opposed the administration’s stance on deregulation, and was concerned about “propositions on the table to deregulate all international student tuitions.” He went on to discuss the ways in which FEUQ had influenced post-secondary education in Canada, including calling strikes in 2005 and 2012, and staging protests against austerity.

Direct representation in Council for Environment students Benjamin Ger, a representative from the McGill Environment Students’ Society (MESS), spoke about an amendment that would add a Council seat for the School of Environment. “Our needs are very specific,” he said. “It’s very hard to get our voices in.”

“I think we have not just a voice that needs saying, but a voice that’s worth saying,” Ger said.

Although most councillors were supportive of the proposal, some were concerned as to whether adding a seat for an Environment councilor would mean the removal of another councillor’s seat. Adding a seat for the School of Environment would necessitate a constitutional amendment, which would involve a referendum.

While the constitution could be amended by a referendum initiated by Council, Ger noted that a student-initiated referendum was already in the works. “It should be coming from the students and it shouldn’t be coming from the Council,” Ayukawa agreed.

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February 2, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

PGSS Secretary-General resigns amid tensions in the executive

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n January 20, Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) Secretary-General Juan Camilo Pinto submitted a letter of resignation to the PGSS executive. If PGSS Council accepts Pinto’s resignation at its next meeting on February 3, a special election for an interim Secretary-General will be held from February 18 to 24.

Pinto, who indicated that his resignation was motivated by personal reasons, will continue to fill the position until February 16. “Working at PGSS is a full-time job,” he told The Daily.

“I had to decide whether I was furthering my research and working on my project or continuing with PGSS so [...] that’s why I’m quitting PGSS, and also there’s a family situation that I have to take care of back in Colombia.”

On November 13, the PGSS Board of Directors passed a motion of censure against Pinto following complaints from PGSS members about his conduct. The PGSS executive later voted “no” during an informal vote of confidence regarding the Secretary-General on December 10.

“I think there were huge communication problems between the [SecretaryGeneral] and the exec,” Member Services Officer Brighita Lungu told The Daily in an interview. “The communication problems [...] made a lot things very complicated, so we hope that with this new resignation and the

next [Secretary-General] things will go more swiftly and more easily.”

Chief Returning Officer Colby Briggs indicated in an interview with The Daily that several people had already expressed interest in the position, though Pinto originally ran unopposed and was elected with 61.3 per cent of the vote last May. “I was actually quite surprised, there’s been a handful of people coming forward [to express interest],” said Briggs. “For the interim elections there’s about three people I already heard about.”

Members of the PGSS executive remain confident that they will be able to integrate the new Secretary-General into the team, and that the change in the position will not interfere with their work.

“The executive committee is committed to making sure that the projects that we started continue,” Financial Affairs Officer Nikki Meadows told The Daily. “I think there are things that may work better.”

“I don’t think it’s a huge challenge [to integrate a new Secretary-General],” added Lungu. “I think we have all the potential to support them.”

The nomination period began January 26 and runs until February 9.

—Igor Sadikov

Football player acquitted of assault charges, free to rejoin team

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reviously dismissed McGill Redmen running back Luis-Andres GuimontMota has been acquitted of charges of assault and uttering threats after his wife withdrew charges on January 29, and will be allowed to return to the team.

Guimont-Mota, a third-year management student, was arrested in September 2014 following a domestic dispute. He was subsequently suspended from the football team, with the administration citing his plea of guilty and a prior conviction for assault in a bar fight in Quebec City in 2010.

Shortly thereafter, Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning) Ollivier Dyens released a statement declaring that “the individual should not have been invited to join our team. That was not in accordance with the values of our community.”

Dyens’ comment led to former Redmen head coach Clint Uttley’s resignation. In a statement released on September 30, Uttley indicated that he favoured rehabilitation, and asserted that McGill’s statement did not “represent my personal morals or values with regards to sport, recruiting, and life in general.”

Uttley criticized McGill’s reaction, saying that at the time of Guimont-Mota’s arrival, “the University tolerated and accepted his presence and then proceeded to

celebrate his accomplishments. For McGill University to now say that this individual should not have been allowed on our team in the first place because of his past deeply troubles me.”

Dyens told The Daily that the University’s current stance in no way contradicts the statement he made in the fall.

“What is different now is that, as far as we know, he has gone through the previous sentence and has done the whole sentence, so he has now paid his debt to society,” said Dyens.

“In general, we don’t think that somebody who’s under serious criminal charges or has pleaded guilty should be recruited by McGill Varsity to play for McGill,” he continued. “We believe that playing varsity sports [...] or doing any of these things where you represent McGill is a privilege, and the University expects a higher standard.”

The McGill Redmen have been without a head coach since the incident, though McGill University Athletics Director Drew Love has said that he expects to announce a replacement for Uttley within the next two weeks.

Guimont-Mota represents McGill’s fourth football player to face criminal charges in the past two years.

—Emily Saul

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February 2, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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McGill seeks funding for study of responsible investment practices Divest McGill questions process and motives of study Ellen Cools News Writer

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n January 6, the Committee to Advise on Matters of Social Responsibility (CAMSR) of McGill’s Board of Governors (BoG) submitted an application to the Sustainability Projects Fund (SPF) for funding to “commission a study on a range of socially responsible investment practices.”

“The study is supposed to compile the best practices of socially responsible investments for similar institutions, like other universities in the world [and] in North America, and other corporations,” Courtney Ayukawa, Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) president and member of CAMSR, told The Daily. This will provide McGill with a basis to proceed with its investments in a more socially responsible way.

Updated last May, CAMSR’s terms of reference now mandate it to proactively meet at least once a year to make recommendations to the BoG on its investments. The first such meeting was held on October 30, where CAMSR made the decision to go ahead with the study.

The application was submitted two months later.

According to McGill’s Secretary-General Stephen Strople, whose office was responsible for spearheading the application process, the committee “did a scope of the study, what it actually was that we wanted the study to do, and then we met with the director of the [Office of Sustainability] to talk about whether the SPF would be open to funding [it].” Afterwards, they compiled the application.

“You could say we are slow, but we are slow because we don’t have the expertise and we have to do a lot of research and figuring things out as we go, because this is new territory for the committee,” Strople said in an interview with The Daily.

Strople was confident that the SPF would fund the project. “If this is not something the SPF can fund, then I would find it quite surprising,” he said.

However, some members of the McGill community questioned the assumption that the study is an appropriate use of SPF funds.

SSMU VP External and Divest McGill member Amina MoustaqimBarrette expressed worry over the impact of the study on the group’s fossil fuel divestment campaign.

“The funds were originally there for the McGill community to use them for sustainability projects,” Moustaqim-Barrette told The Daily. “I don’t think it would be SPF funds put to good use, because who knows what will come out of this research or how it will affect future divestment campaigns.”

Indeed, Strople remarked that divestment is not an “immediate direct outcome of the study.”

Victor Frankel, another Divest McGill member, expressed concern over the unclear scope of the study.

“I think the commissioning of this research report could be an excellent use of SPF funds if its conclusions are applied to McGill’s investment practices, but there is a lack of clarity on the scope of this and the extent to which actionable steps will be taken by the [BoG] from the recommendations of this report,” Frankel told The Daily.

Moustaqim-Barrette also ar-

The James Administration building. gued that the study might be a way to silence the Divest McGill campaign and delay action.

“I am extremely pessimistic about this process. I think it’s just a way to appease campaigns that are fighting for something that is really important to them and to quiet them down,” she said. “The administration needs to revise a lot of the ways it does things.”

For Frankel, a similar study should have been conducted much earlier, when Divest McGill first presented its case for divestment to the BoG in 2013.

“It is a step that could have, and

Tamim Sujat | The McGill Daily

should have, been taken two years ago when Divest McGill first submitted the first research report to the [BoG],” said Frankel.

“We want McGill to manage its endowment responsibly – it is there to fund the university – but when McGill’s investments contradict its mission and abuse human rights, it’s time to invest in something else,” added Frankel. For Divest McGill, the University’s choice to invest in 35 of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies goes against McGill’s mission statement to “provid[e] service to society,” as well as CAMSR’s new terms of reference, which in-

clude grave environmental damage as a criterion for social injury caused by companies.

On February 2, Divest McGill will be re-submitting a divestment petition to CAMSR, two years after its first attempt. The group also plans to “work actively with other social justice and environmental groups to address the drivers of climate change,” according to Frankel.

“Addressing this geo-political, economic, engineering, and ecological challenge is a complex and daunting task,” added Frankel.

“We’re in, for life.”

Science undergraduate fees passed in ‘redo’ referendum

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he Science Undergraduate Society (SUS) passed two fee increases in a ‘redo’ referendum after a procedural mishap invalidated the results of a referendum that took place at the end of last semester. The most recent referendum was able to meet quorum, with an 11.6 per cent turnout.

An increase to the Science undergraduate base fee passed with 352 voting “yes,” 179 voting “no,” and 20 abstentions. It will raise the

base fee to $12.50 for full-time Science undergraduate students, $6.25 for part-time Science undergraduate students, $6.25 for full-time Arts and Science students, and $3.13 for parttime Arts and Science students.

When the fee was presented to the General Council (GC), VP External Emily Boytinck said that it would be used for initiatives such as recycling at Burnside, a possible SUS career fair, and other initiatives.

The introduction of a Student

Space Improvement Fee passed with 356 voting “yes,” 161 voting “no,” and 34 abstentions. The motion will add a fee of $7 and $3.50 for full-time and part-time Science undergraduate students respectively, and will add a fee for part-time and full-time Arts and Science students of $3.50 and $1.75 respectively. This fee will be used for a variety of possible projects, such as improvements to the Burnside building.

The results of last semester’s

referendum on the same questions were found to be invalid because the questions were submitted to SUS constituents as part of the Fall 2014 referendum, but only subjected to the standards of online ratification, which normally takes place after a General Assembly (GA) and has lower quorum requirements than a referendum.

The turnout for the vote last semester was 6 per cent, which is sufficient for quorum in an online

ratification process, but not for a referendum, where at least 10 per cent is required. The online ratification was not required since the Fall 2014 SUS GA did not meet quorum, and the referendum questions were sent directly to the GC. However, it was only after the SUS executives had put in an official claim for the fee that the executive realized the procedural mistake. ­—Jill Bachelder

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February 2, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Quebec students set to strike Audio t en cont e! onlin

Concordia to hold anti-austerity teach-in week

Igor Sadikov The McGill Daily

“

This strike is not only possible, it is also necessary precisely in this moment,” proclaimed sociology student Valentin Bellec. “If there is no one to offer a response commensurate with these attacks [...] the government will remember it for a long time.”

Bellec, a student at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), is one of many activists working to mobilize campuses across the province to strike in protest against the Quebec government’s austerity policies. Since its election in April 2014, the Liberal government has enacted a series of severe cuts to public services, with the education sector strongly affected.

In September, UQAM social science students voted to create a Comité Printemps 2015, or “Spring Committee,” with the goal of actively mobilizing students independently of student union federations such as the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ), as well as to liaise with workers and community members affected by the cuts. Since then, a number of similar chapters of Comité Printemps have taken shape throughout the province.

“For the October 31 [anti-austerity] demonstration, there were about 82,000 students on strike on that day,” Bellec told The Daily in French.

“The last time we saw anything comparable was in 2012 [during the student strike], and there’s an enormous amount of work that was done by the Comité Printemps to get there – in Montreal and also in the regions, in Quebec City, in Rimouski.”

The Comité Printemps has recently released a set of mobilization materials aiming to launch a strike on March 21 in the most active cam-

T

puses, with others joining in later as the movement takes off. According to Bellec, a date toward the end of the school year was chosen to diminish the risk of missing too much school during the strikes, as missed classes could prevent participants from completing their semesters – an issue that arose during the strike of 2012. The choice of date also inspired Quebec’s public sector workers – whose collective agreements are set to expire on March 31 – to join the strike.

Although he recognized that mobilizing enough students in a such short period of time will be challenging, Bellec said that organizing is a lot easier than it was during the 2012 student strike, as the lessons of the strike are still fresh in students’ minds.

“The last time we saw anything comparable was in 2012 [during the strike].”

Valentin Bellec, UQAM sociology student “There’s a wealth of logistical knowledge that we’ve already acquired, and that we’re now putting into application, and that’s really a legacy from 2012,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to do – we have to go mobilize all the campuses in Quebec – but the difference is that in 2012 we were working with mobilization committees of six to ten people, whereas today we’re thirty or forty.”

Bellec pointed to the ASSÉ Congress, to take place on February 21 and 22, as a “key moment” to bring ASSÉ’s effective structures into the movement toward the strike.

So far, ASSÉ has focused on demonstrations and other protest actions. Some member unions also plan to bring forward propositions to include non-member unions in ASSÉ’s mobilization campaigns, as was the case during the 2012 strike.

“The ASSÉ Congress will also serve to put ASSÉ back on track and to dismiss people [who have not been effective],” said Bellec.

In an interview with The Daily, ASSÉ spokesperson Camille Godbout indicated that the direction of ASSÉ’s future actions is uncertain. “It’s really up the local student unions to decide what’s going to happen with the organization in the next few months,” she said.

Protest on October 31.

Local mobilization on campuses “The most important thing [...] is to go into the local student unions and mobilize students directly on their campuses,” noted Godbout.

This would allow them to not only participate in province-wide actions, but also resist the budget cuts to their own CEGEPs and universities.

At McGill, where the administration has repeatedly refused to take a stance against cuts to universities, student mobilization nonetheless remains a challenge, according to Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP External Amina Moustaqim-Barrette.

“That culture [of student unions as sites of political action] is not present at McGill yet, and that’s the problem – people see the student unions as being more for events and for clubs,” she said. “That’s what I think needs to be changed, it’s the culture and the political awareness that needs to be reformed.”

To remedy this problem, Moustaqim-Barrette has hired an austerity student researcher, who will create informational materials tailored to McGill undergraduates,

and also act as a mobilization officer working to get students to participate in demonstrations and workshops.

Moustaqim-Barrette said she also aims to reform the External Affairs Committee to make it more focused on mobilization. “The External Affairs Committee [...] did not really have a purpose, but this way it will have a purpose: it will be acting as that support group to mobilize people,” she said.

Moustaqim-Barrette noted that McGill’s Mob Squad, which was a coordination point for campus activists during the 2012 strike, also remains active. “I think SSMU can play a complementary role to Mob Squad.

I think Mob Squad is often not perceived to be as accessible to the general population,” she said. “Side by side, it’ll be really good to have those people on the ground being more aggressive at Mob Squad, and SSMU pushing that along as well.”

At Concordia, meanwhile, a campaign called Solidarity Concordia has formed to organize against austerity measures and in support of a general strike, and will be holding a teach-in week from February 2 to 7.

Floor fellows boycott training as bargaining tactic

he McGill floor fellows’ collective agreement negotiations with the University made “some solid movement” this week after the floor fellows boycotted a staff training session held last Sunday.

Floor fellows – upper-year students who live in residence and provide support to first-year students – were unionized with the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE) last spring, and have been negotiating their first collective agreement with the University since the fall.

According to AMUSE VP Floor Fellows Christina Clemente, the

mobilization took place because the administration had not been receptive to the floor fellows’ demand to formally include their “core values,” which include a harm reduction approach and an anti-oppressive mandate, in the collective agreement itself.

The floor fellows met again for negotiations with the University nearly a week later on January 30; this time, the meeting had a different outcome.

“They came to us with a new proposal and they want to have some time to develop a way to include our values in the collective agreement,”

Clemente told The Daily.

According to Clemente, the University will take the next month to develop a set of guiding principles to include in the collective agreement. They will meet with the floor fellows again in March to discuss this new proposal.

“It did seem like, finally, [the University is] taking us seriously, and they sensed that we weren’t willing to budge on this,” said Clemente. “They proposed something that we could actually see ourselves moving forward with.”

—Janna Bryson

Mert Kimyaci | The McGill Daily “Solidarity Concordia is a movement that was started last October by people who felt concerned about austerity measures,” said Aloyse Muller, Concordia student and Solidarity Concordia organizer, in an interview with The Daily. “We already organized a town hall on austerity in November, and this week of teach-ins [fits into] trying to spread awareness in the universities about austerity measures and social concerns in general.”

Presentation and workshop topics for the week include the history of student movements in Quebec, direct democracy, resistance to capitalism, as well as the relationship between austerity and environment.

“After this week, we will probably regroup and see how we can assist different student groups on campus, who’s become interested in austerity since our teach-in, and where the next step will be,” added Marion Miller, also one of the organizers. “We’ll probably reassess, but we’ll definitely try to keep this momentum going.”

—With files from Peter Zhi

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University students push for prison divestment Audio t en cont e! onlin

Campaigns form against private prison industry in U.S.

Molly Korab The McGill Daily

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nly a few years ago did the growing clout of the U.S.’s forprofit prison industry come into sharp relief. 2011 and 2012 saw a flurry of investigative journalism documenting the industry’s political influence, combined with its steadily increasing prison expansion over the course of several decades.

Less apparent in the media landscape, though, are the financial holdings that keep the system of private incarceration running. The two largest for-profit prison companies in the U.S. – the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group – are publicly traded. Investors range from cities, to investment firms, to mainstream banking institutions and hedge funds.

And perhaps unexpectedly, mixed into the fray of investors in these companies’ portfolios, there are universities. Students at some American universities have found concrete evidence of their schools’ investments in the prison industry, and there are certainly others where the investment portfolios have yet to be revealed.

Divestment push at Columbia A student group at Columbia University discovered in 2013 that the university was not only invested in CCA, but also G4S, a British multinational accused of abuse of prisoners in its South African prisons.

The group’s information was limited: they knew that in June 2013, Columbia held 230,432 shares in CCA, worth a market value of roughly $8 million, but they only have access to 10 per cent of the university’s investment portfolio.

“We outlined three main demands that we delivered to our [university] president in a letter in February,” said Gabriela Pelsinger, a core organizer with Columbia Prison Divest. “We saw that they had these investments, and we didn’t want our tuition, our school – our community – profiting off of what we see as profit from putting bodies in cages.”

The letter demanded that the university divest from its direct holdings in CCA and G4S. It also requested that university fund managers urge other companies the university is invested in to divest from private prison companies, and asked for more transparency in the university’s investments.

Since then, the group has been working within their community and with neighbouring organizations to shed light on the structures of mass incarceration – to, as Pelsinger put it, see how “these structures of incarceration and criminalization and profit work together and how we fit into it. And how us being kind of aloof college students at this university kind of played into these larger structures.”

Columbia Prison Divest has been negotiating with the university’s ethical investments committee, and succeeded in meeting with the university’s president in November 2014. They have also been working with the Responsible Endowments Coalition (REC), a national campaign that focuses on university divestment.

“University investments have become increasingly complex,” Ian Trupin, a national organizer with REC, told The Daily. “In the eighties, most universities had most of their endowments invested directly in the stock market – so it was relatively easy to see what universities were invested in. […] Universities [now] invest in vehicles like hedge funds, commingled funds, whereby they’re all about maximizing returns, but there’s no emphasis whatsoever on transparency or accountability.”

A spreading campaign While current prison divestment campaigns are small in number, there are more on the horizon.

The Daily spoke with student organizers at two separate universities who are spearheading upcoming campaigns. The organizers spoke to the difficulty of obtaining information on university investments, both direct and indirect, and the importance of building a network of support before going public.

“We’ve been trying to get support under a veil at this point,” one organizer at a private university in the northeastern U.S. (who requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the upcoming campaign) said. This support has come from certain deans, administrative units tasked with supporting diversity and students of colour, and other student groups.

Beyond prison divestment, the movement will push against the criminalizing elements of university policy – promoting a “ban the box” campaign for university em-

Alice Shen | The McGill Daily ployees, and lobbying to banish regulations that allow for the revoking of financial aid when students are convicted of drug misdemeanours.

Nancy Uddin, another organizer in a public university in the northeastern U.S., began her school’s campaign after a retreat with groups like Enlace, which runs the most prominent prison divestment campaign in the country, and REC. The fledgling campaign has requested information about its university’s investments under the Freedom of Information Act, and is still waiting on a response before taking further steps.

“We’ve been meeting down low and discussing ways to begin our campaign, and we haven’t been publicized because we don’t want to scare anyone off or tell the administration that we are coming,” she told The Daily.

Is divestment enough?

While G4S did not respond to an email request for comment from The Daily by press time, CCA pushed back against private prison divestment.

“Discussions about important issues such as criminal justice and corrections are only productive when informed by facts and rooted in honest discourse,” Jonathan Burns, Senior Manager of Public Affairs at CCA, told The Daily by email. “These campaigns are yet another unfortunate example of

the lack of seriousness with which political activists approach the very real and practical challenges our nation faces.”

Mariame Kaba, the director of Project NIA in Chicago, which works against youth incarceration, and who tweets and blogs under the handle Prison Culture, noted the limited scope of prison divestment campaigns.

“The concept that prisons are about profit-making [is] putting us in a place where I think it’s comfortable for people who are liberal to latch onto that as the thing,” she told The Daily. “But the focus isn’t on profit-making. It’s on the friggin’ inhumanity of locking people up in the first place. It’s on the root problem, which is that we are actually using prison systems and punishment systems to control, manage, and oppress […] black people, poor people, and people who are trans, LGBTQ.” However, Jamie Trinkle, Campaign Coordinator at Enlace, noted that to a large degree, private prison divestment campaigns do not aim to end the prison-industrial complex as a whole.

“Our objective is to break the lobbying power of the private prison industry,” she said, “so that we can get to a place where criminal justice reform and immigration policy reform are possible in a way that will allow people to live with dignity.”

Private prison companies – CCA

being the most prominent – engage in extensive lobbying, campaign contributions, and political relationships, with their political influence has largely being used in the interest of securing contracts for prisons, detention centres, and other security-related ventures.

According to a Justice Policy Institute report, the three largest private prison companies spent $6,092,331 in gifts for state politicians from 2000 to 2011.

While many of the companies’ lobbying efforts have been focused on securing contracts in both prisons and immigration detention centres, they also benefit from harsher legislation that increases incarceration and criminalization overall.

Within this context, prison divestment campaigns will continue to spring up, with a continuing push for anti-private prison activism, compounded by the as-of-yet unseen investments hidden within university portfolios.

Ultimately, though, prison divestment makes up one piece of the spectrum of prison abolition. “This is not the end-all, be-all,” Kaba said.

“The thing is, this is one way for us to chip at the huge behemoth of an issue that has its roots in the basic fabric in how our societies are operate and how they’re structured.

This is a window for us to use – to try to get people to care about this issue in a very significant way. ”

8

News

February 2, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Research employee union to implement abuse counselling services Labour casualization leaves employees vulnerable, says union Janna Bryson The McGill Daily

T

he Association of McGill Research Employees (AMURE) passed a motion at its January 21 General Assembly (GA) to implement a domestic violence and sexual abuse counselling service for its members.

AMURE President Sean Cory told The Daily that there were two main justifications behind the pilot project: the heightened emphasis on issues of sexual assault – in the context of the student-led development of a sexual assault policy at McGill – and the lack of benefits available to casual employees at the university.

Casual employees, hired on a contractual basis, do not generally have access to employment benefits or assistance. AMURE estimates that nearly 50 per cent of all em-

ployees at McGill are casuals without access to benefits. “We could not sit back and let our members be without anywhere to turn [...] we passed this motion to look at providing counselling to some of our members who would have nowhere else to turn,” said Cory in an email.

The service, which will provide anonymous access to counselling, will undergo a one-year trial period, during which it will be funded

by AMURE’s savings. According to Cory, the project’s future funding source will be determined by how frequently it is used by members.

“It’s hard to say how much it will be used by our members, but we’ll give it a shot,” said Cory. If the service is widely used and presents too large of a financial burden to be sustained through savings, AMURE may ask members to vote on a dues increase to cover it.

According to Cory, the pilot

The AMURE office.

Tamim Sujat | The McGill Daily

project has a lot of support from AMURE members thus far, and the motion passed almost unanimously.

Impact of labour casualization Last November, Provost An-

thony Masi announced that McGill would implement a hiring freeze for administrative and support staff to help mitigate the effects of provincial budget cuts.

However, according to Cory, this

hiring freeze is with respect to ‘regular’ (non-casual) employees, and does not preclude the hiring of casual labour. “[The administration still] call[s] it a hiring freeze, and in some ways this shows what they think of casual labour,” said Cory, who noted that AMURE had seen a member employed for twenty years at McGill through a series of one-year casual contracts.

“There’s a severe gap [in support] when a person could be working forty hours a week for the university on a year-long contract, and McGill does not lift a finger or spend a dime towards their emotional health and well-being. We decided that, at least for these cases, we should try to do something.”

McGill Director of Labour and Employee Relations Robert Comeau did not respond to The Daily’s request for comment.

‘Living laboratory’ seeks community ties Quartier de l’innovation called “theoretical” as project approaches third year Jill Bachelder The McGill Daily

T

he Quartier de l’innovation (QI), a social development project spearheaded by McGill and L’École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), is close to entering its second year since the launch of the program in spring 2013. The project has turned sections of southwest Montreal into a “living laboratory” in which students and professors can conduct research in Montreal communities and then create projects they think will fit the community’s needs.

Roadblocks in providing aid to communities In Little Burgundy, QI has done work in schools and is currently restoring an old church.

In Griffintown, projects include repair to underground infrastructure and the creation of six new green spaces.

Nevertheless, in its time working in these communities, the project has faced some obstacles in its attempts to bring about positive change.

Vicente Perez, coordinator of

the community group Coalition de la Petite Bourgogne, told The Daily that the QI presently operates from a very high-minded, intellectual level.

“It’s not very grassroots. That must be improved,” said Perez. “I think it’s a little bit theoretical. It’s more the theory, not the practice.”

“It’s not very grassroots.

That must be improved.”

Vicente Perez, coalition coordinator However, Perez added that he did not believe QI contributes to the gentrification of the areas in which it works. “The gentrification is more from the private housing market [...], and the fact is that there are not [rules in place] to preserve the community space.”

Chloé Vadot, a member of the QI Student Working Group (SWG), told The Daily in an email that there are sometimes clashes between QI initiatives and for-profit development projects.

“The QI has projects that are focused on creating spaces for the community, spaces that retain the culture and neighbourhood feel of the place.

On the other hand, developer projects have projects geared toward making money, and attracting investment for the city,” stated Vadot.

“Those projects go pretty fast, whereas the redevelopment projects that the QI deals with have a harder time dealing with, say, land zoning and public funding.”

Perez said that the initiative has its benefits, noting that QI gives community organizations access to technologies that they could not otherwise afford, and that the expertise of McGill professors can be helpful.

Asma Manssouri, another member of the SWG, said she appreciated the QI for allowing her to leave the McGill bubble. “QI offers students the opportunity to fully get involved within the broader Montreal community – something perhaps missing at McGill,” Manssouri wrote in an email to The Daily.

A “living laboratory” in Montreal “The main goal is to continue to do our research and teaching,” QI

Jill Bachelder | The McGill Daily Project Director Isabelle Péan told The Daily, “but also to apply it as best we can to community needs.”

Péan explained that the projects of QI are based on the recommendations of a report released by the initiative last April. “We did a kind of mapping of what are the social needs and how McGill, with our different faculties [...] can help and

how students can work on these different projects,” she said.

From these recommendations, students worked with professors to devise ways in which they believed they could meet the communities’ needs. According to Péan, Concordia may join the QI partnership, and other universities in Montreal have also expressed interest in the project.

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Commentary

February 2, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Speak up, not over

10

The appropriation of #BlackLivesMatter

Tamim Sujat | The McGill Daily Margaret Gilligan Commentary Writer

O

ver the past few months, images of multicultural murals of people protesting police violence across the world have flooded the media, followed by the hashtag #AllLivesMatter in the social media world. While at first glance, this could indicate some sort of rainbowsand-butterflies coming together of humanity that transcends contemporary racial divides, it’s really just more racism in the form of erasure of black voices, and the appropriation of black pain for white pleasure.

In her article “What You Mean By #AllLivesMatter,” Arielle Newton, the editor-in-chief of Black Millennial Musings, sums up the main issue: “Yes, all lives matter in ideology. But all lives don’t matter in practice. Should society and history tell us, Black lives don’t matter.

When the murder of an unarmed teenager goes unpunished, and is further justified, all lives don’t matter. When a white man shoots up a movie theater, kills 12 people, terrorizes a nation, and is still alive [...] all lives don’t matter.”

Newton’s observation of social inequities are pretty undeniable, so why is it that there is continued dogmatic rallying around #AllLivesMatter in response to stating that #BlackLivesMatter? The reason is that if the inequities that Newton points out are admitted, the myth of having already obtained an egalitarian and inclusive society free of prejudice would be delegitimized, and revealed to be just that – a myth. So, in order to protect those who benefit from the myth,

some people must respond to #BlackLivesMatter by saying #AllLivesMatter. By doing so, they are asserting that it is politically incorrect to focus our attention on the lives of only one group of people. Once #BlackLivesMatter has been silenced, the myth will be safe and sound.

“Yes, all lives matter in ideology. But all lives don’t matter in practice. Should society and history tell us, Black lives don’t matter.”

Arielle Newton, editor-in-chief Furthermore, when the assertion that ‘black lives matter’ is deemed politically incorrect, this in turn silences discussion about why all lives seem to matter only in theory, and not practice. The absence of history from the discussion of whose lives matter, for what reasons certain lives matter, and how this has led to today’s social inequities allows neoliberalism to go even further and brand the assertion that ‘black lives matter’ as ethnocentrism, or ‘reverse-racism’ (yet another myth). This is an attempt not only to silence ‘black lives matter’ activists, and all other activists raising awareness on other issues faced by black communities, but to

completely destroy the assertion by equating it with the harm that ‘the real racists’ have inflicted upon black people for centuries. Basically, the myth is claiming that when black people assert that their lives matter, they are subjecting others to the same pain as the pain felt in black communities from a history of oppression and from lived injustices. Such a claim is, of course, complete bullshit.

On the other hand, when it comes to public spectacle, we, white people (I say we, since I am also white), are more than willing to throw our hands up in ‘solidarity,’ getting the cheap thrill of putting on a mask to play the threatened black person. We then cavalierly lower our hands, and in doing so, toss away an entire history to the side – a history of black people raising their hands into the air, with no guarantee it will actually do anything to ensure their safety. We do this once we begin to simply feel threatened, even if in reality there is no such threat to our lives or even well being.

Spoken-word poet Mwende Katwiwa argues on her blog FreeQthaMighty: “I understand wanting to show up and support, but white people need to understand that this symbolic act of raising your hands in a position of surrender is meant to illustrate how black people are violently targeted by police because of their race. If you don’t experience that, you should not mimic the gesture in an attempt at ‘solidarity.’”

When we put our hands up, we are appropriating not only a history of suffering under disproportionately exerted police and state-sanc-

tioned violence, but a contemporary reality, a living terror, that endures for humans whose very existence has been branded as a threat, no matter how high they throw their hands in the air.

In this sense, saying “all lives matter” and raising your arms send the same message: we will hold our hands up in solidarity with black people, only until it could actually compromise the safety we have as white people to move about untouched in the majority of society’s spaces. We will say that “black lives matter,” but when we start feeling scared that the spotlight is being taken off our white lives for one second, then we begin to protest that ‘All Lives Matter.’ While we try to hide our intentions behind the perceived neutrality of #AllLivesMatter, streaming the rhetoric toward the idea of ‘all’ or ‘everyone’ will inherently lead to a greater focus on white lives, due to higher value placed on white lives by the media and our society’s institutions. Once again, we are using the advantages granted to us by racial constructs that lean in our favour in order to maintain a state of constant self-preservation at the expense of human lives.

To quote Alicia Garza, one of the co-creators of #BlackLivesMatter, “If you really believe that #AllLivesMatter, you’ll fight like hell for black lives today.” However, when a fight is not your fight, and in fact, your history is the reason this fight exists in the first place, you probably shouldn’t be on the front lines of that fight. As YouTube star chescaleigh says in her video “5 Tips For Being an Ally”: “Speak up, not over. If the

fight for equality were a girl group, the ally wouldn’t be the lead singer, or the second lead singer, they’d be Michelle [from Destiny’s Child].” So, if you go to demonstrations, don’t put your hands in the air, and, if a demonstration or event is labelled as black or people of colour (POC) only, respect that. If this still bothers you, remember that you are not being welcomed with open arms into one space for one time, as opposed to being not only actively excluded, but having your physical and mental wellbeing at risk in multiple spaces over the course of history.

Most people are horrified by anti-black police brutality, and other forms of institutionalized and individualized racism that plague our society. However, horror does not trump terror. Nor does it trump trauma; nor the loss of a brother, a mother, a lover, or a friend, to violence committed by police. Black people, and other people from communities disproportionately affected by police violence, have lived experiences and knowledge of this terror that, chances are, people outside of these communities are not going to experience. Hence, when they speak and act to remedy these wrongs, the place of white people is to do nothing more and nothing less than, first and foremost, to listen, and then to engage with our exclusionary communities in order to make way for the changes that these voices are calling for.

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

Commentary

February 2, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

11

Toward a general strike Printemps 2015: McGill should stand in solidarity Daniel Huang Commentary Writer

Q

uebec’s budget deficit has been the justification for the deep funding cuts and tax hikes implemented by the Couillard government in the past year.

Among its many targets, this austerity program slashes hundreds of millions from education subsidies, public-sector jobs, and the healthcare system, in addition to raising the monthly fee for provincially-subsidized daycare. Austerity is harming the lives of Quebec’s citizens and students, and we need strike action to fight it.

Reductions in education spending have already lowered the quality of Quebec’s schools and universities. Here at McGill, budget constraints have meant delays to much-needed infrastructure repairs, reductions of TA salaries, and hiring and salary freezes for faculty members. This is already affecting the university’s teaching and research capabilities: class sizes have increased, and research opportunities have dried up.

Failing to invest in education (a public good that contributes to society) damages Quebec far more than an unbalanced deficit. Still, while students are affected, austerity measures hit marginalized groups the hardest. Ironically, as our province begins to fail to provide adequate opportunities for its citizens, it will find itself in a devastating race to the bottom.

You only need to look at Greece’s dramatic decline for evidence that austerity doesn’t work.

It punishes the poor in order to protect the interests of the rich.

An anti-austerity protest in Montreal in April 2014.

Many in Quebec realize this, and are demanding a reduction in the cuts. But simply asking the government nicely has not worked.

Petitions, and consultation with various commissions, as well as protests by unions and elected officials have all done nothing to prevent this government from slashing funding. Opinion pieces and editorials in newspapers and media outlets haven’t done anything either.

It’s time, as it was for students in 2012, to strike. More importantly, it’s time for a general strike: for workers and students to unite in fighting back against damaging cuts.

As far back as last summer, or-

ganizations throughout the province, from unions to universities, have called for local strikes. This winter and spring however, a number have banded together under one movement: the Printemps 2015 committees. Together, they are dedicated to mobilizing support, and eventually calling a strike.

This spring will be a crucial moment for this movement. It’s a time when many local unions and organizations, including police officers and social workers, are due for contract renegotiations with the government. Add to this the increasing frustration across the province due to extensive cutbacks. As a target of these cuts, but more importantly, as an

Tamim Sujat | The McGill Daily integral part of Quebec and Montreal society, McGill should also join this growing voice of dissent.

Only through solidarity and unity can a general strike be effective, and only then might the government change tack. McGill joining the strike would be a gesture of unity with the millions of people affected in our province, as well as a necessary and effective move for our university’s future wellbeing.

Most importantly though, strike and protest actions work.

A history of massive mobilization to address social issues or change government policy has existed in Canada since the 1919 general strike in Winnipeg. And they have worked, overwhelmingly so, in

many other cases. With increasing frustration and resentment, the provincial government is particularly vulnerable to work stoppages and protest. There is every reason to believe in the power of a general strike.

Quebec has been hit with hard times. A government bent on austerity has done everything in its power to cut funding where it can: from cities, schools, and unions.

It’s time to reverse the damage being done to our communities, and for McGill to join the rest of the province: to strike.

To contact Daniel Huang, the writer, send an email to commentary@mcgilldaily.com.

let·ter \ˈ le-tər\ noun:

a direct or personal written or printed message addressed to a person or organization.

Dictionary definitions make people happy; so do letters. 300 words or fewer, non-discriminatory. We’ll publish.

letters@mcgilldaily.com

12

Commentary

February 2, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Training for an unfair world On the injustice of internship culture Charlotte O’Neill Commentary Writer

W

hen I think of unpaid internships, images of hazing immediately come to mind. I go back to my days as a shy 14-year-old girl starting at her first co-ed school and being shocked at how accepted, and embedded it was in the school culture to target ninth graders. On a daily basis, whenever heading past the twelfth grade ‘stoop’ on the way to the locker room, freshmen would be subject to various disrespectful taunts from the older kids. This was just part of the culture of my high school and no one ever questioned it. I remember thinking, “This won’t happen when I’m in grade twelve, everyone will remember how humiliating this behaviour is,” but that simply wasn’t the case. By the time my peers were seniors they had put those feelings neatly away at the back of their minds, and were more than eager to pass on the tradition to the unlucky newcomers. Whenever I would try and remind them of their hazing days, they would shrug it off, and say “It’s just something everyone has to go through.” But is it?

Although internships are not quite as aggressively humiliating as hazing, they do serve a similar purpose. They are a way to teach employees the ropes of the company without treating them exactly like an employee. Not being paid to do work is actually a bit humiliating, not to mention unfair. You are showing up day after day to work the same long hours as everyone else, but are not being paid for your efforts. The message sent is that you’re inferior. Interns don’t enjoy essential benefits either. They aren’t, for example, granted the same legal protections against sexual harassment as full-time employees. Not only do you have to do the work for free, but you have no voice and must stay quiet about any mistreatment you experience or risk losing your internship altogether.

You have no safety net, and this can result in being taken advantage of.

In the past, internships took on a very different nature, and the concept of unpaid work was a bit more acceptable. Internships were much more like an apprenticeship, where the individual would only work for free for a brief period of time, and would then eventually be offered a job. However, with the recent economic decline, and an influx of university students and graduates into the job market, an internship no longer guarantees you a paid position. With more and

Jonathan Reid | The McGill Daily more students willing to work for free, companies and non-profit organizations are labelling jobs that used to be salaried as “internships” in order to save a buck.

While some internships are better than others, and employees are treated with more respect, most don’t really serve much of a purpose in teaching you job-specific skills.

Instead, you take on a role similar to a personal assistant for the older staff. Going on coffee runs and doing the menial work that those above you in the hierarchy cannot be bothered with, instead of actually learning, does not prepare you for the future demands of a job. This is probably because the company was never actually planning to hire you full-time, and is instead exploiting young adults looking for job opportunities as free labour. The worst part is that these companies get away with this behaviour because each year there is a fresh batch of graduates waiting to fill these positions so they can add something of ‘substance’ to their resume.

These days the job market is getting increasingly competitive and the standard for college students is getting absurdly high. Students are expected to have had at least one, if not several, internships by the time they graduate. This may not be an issue for students that are lucky enough to come from a privileged background, with parents who can finance their children through various unpaid work ventures, but it’s not a luxury everyone can afford.

Eventually, well-off students will intern long enough to make the necessary connections to break into the white-collar world.

However, not having income of any sort is not an option for most young people from less privileged backgrounds. Especially after already having to pay for a university degree, taking even more time off to invest in your future is simply an impossible reality. While studying, university students have the option to have a part-time job on the side. In a fulltime internship, however, students are working a taxing nine-to-five day and picking up another job is unlikely.

Having to move to another city for intern work is also increasingly likely, and this adds to the financial burden of not having a steady source of income. Many students already have heavy student loans by the time they graduate, and falling even deeper down the rabbit hole of debt without the promise of a job is a frightening prospect. This, of course, perpetuates the unfair advantages for people from wealthy backgrounds to secure the best white-collar jobs.

Despite having a college degree, which used to be enough, this internship culture is systematically excluding a large population of students simply because of their familial assets. Internships have largely destroyed the possibility of breaking into the white-collar world through an entry-level salaried position. It has become yet another source of embedded class division, favouring the privileged

and keeping the less fortunate in the dark. It is a sad fate that an adolescent, no matter how intelligent or hardworking they may be,

With more and more students willing to work for free, companies and non-profit organizations are labelling jobs that used to be salaried as “internships” in order to save a buck. is less able to reach high levels of success simply because they cannot take the time off to undertake an internship, or five.

There has been a lot of talk in the media lately of the supposed ban on unpaid internships in Canada. However, there are exceptions to this law, and it varies from province to province. It is considered illegal in the province of Quebec for an internship to be unpaid unless it falls under one of three categories: the internship is part of a program provided by an approved educational institution, the intern

is a student working for a not-forprofit organization with social or community purposes, or the internship is part of a program of vocational training. Despite this law, unpaid internships are still very much alive. Just a week ago, a close friend of mine was lucky enough to secure an internship in her field of choice after graduation. Her position does not fall under one of the three exceptions listed above, but sure enough, even though her internship is promising and exciting, it does not include a wage.

It will probably be a long while before the “internship culture” dies, if it ever does, as it is part of an ongoing trend to offset costs onto people. It’s incredibly demoralizing to realize that no amount of effort will ever be enough to succeed if you simply don’t have the financial means to get there. I also find it infuriating that employers these days can be ignorant enough to think an internship is a prerequisite to a job when instead they should be focused on a person’s merit and potential. Employers are missing out on a large crop of intelligent young adults that could be future leaders in the world because they weren’t lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family. This is more than ritual school ground hazing, or humiliation. It’s a systemic injustice.

Charlotte O’Neill is a U3 Sociology student. To reach her, send an email to charlotte.oneill@mail. mcgill.ca.

Features

February 2, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

13

MANDATORY MINIMUMS, MAXIMUM HARM The absurdity of mandatory minimum sentences

WRITTEN BY NADIR KHAN | ILLUSTRATED BY ALICE SHEN

14

Features

February 2, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

J

ustice. A variety of images come to mind when one ponders what this word means in Canada. For instance, it may conjure the rosy picture of an intrepid prosecutor who crusades the land, pursuing justice with all the fearlessness of Spaceman Spiff, the adventurous alter-ego of Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes. Or, maybe, the image of a frowning judge, peering over his spectacles, flowing robes and all, while speaking legalese and merrily banging his gavel. Or maybe, just maybe, a much more grotesque image comes to mind. One that shocks the conscience and raises the hairs on the back of your neck. Indeed, take a peek behind the curtain of the Canadian criminal justice system, and you will find a particularly disturbing reality that does exactly that. That reality is mandatory minimum sentencing. This form of sentencing reflects all of the worst elements of our criminal justice system bundled into one, and has destructive social consequences. In addition to being bad public policy, mandatory minimum sentences are also unjust, socially harmful, expensive, and – potentially – unconstitutional.

CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS The ‘tough on crime’ agenda is increasingly becoming a central pillar of governments around the world. Its central aim is to use harsh punishments that put people away for as long as possible, which allegedly functions to deter crime. Governments often deploy this strategy for its political attractiveness.

Pass draconian crime bills, jack up sentences, and voilà, the streets are now magically safe.

Meanwhile, crime prevention, rehabilitation of prisoners, and dealing with the underlying causes of crime are all just funny ideas best left to academics and policy experts.

Mandatory minimum sentencing works in a very simple way. When someone reaches the sentencing process, the law replaces the judge in determining what an appropriate sentence should be. This form of sentencing thus forces a judge’s hand in administering a sentence for a time no less than a minimum amount stipulated by the law – that is even if, according to their judgement and experience, the judge believes that the guilty party deserves less than what is prescribed.

One of three forms of mandatory minimum sentences are typically employed. The first – the one that is employed in Canada – is the most rigid, as it allows no discretion for judges to go above or below the mandatory minimum. The second permits judges to

go above the minimum, and the third – and most flexible – allows judges to go below in exceptional circumstances. In an interview with The Daily, Raji Mangat, a human rights lawyer and the author of a report for the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) called “More Than We Can Afford: The Costs of Mandatory Minimum Sentencing,” explained that, “Among comparable jurisdictions, Canada is the only country that does not provide judges with any residual discretion to sentencing below a minimum sentence. Our minimum sentences are truly mandatory. Judges are forced to either sentence to at least the minimum, or to find the sentencing provision unconstitutional.” The BCCLA also found that the use of this practice is now at an all-time high in our criminal justice system, with “the number of offences attracting a mandatory minimum sentence jumping from 29 to 50 since 1999.”

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AND THOSE WHO STRUGGLE WITH ADDICTION ARE DISPROPORTIONATELY IMPACTED BY MANDATORY MINIMUMS IN WHAT BASICALLY AMOUNTS TO LEGALIZED DISCRIMINATION. In light of all this, one might think that we are in fact living in an unprecedented era of crime. One where danger lurks around every corner and where criminals roam free to wreak all manner of havoc on our unsuspecting and law-abiding citizens. Thankfully, the picture is quite different and not nearly as grim.

BAD PUBLIC POLICY In 2013, the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, a branch of Statistics Canada, reported that the crime rate (i.e., crime reported to police) is in fact at its lowest rate since 1972.

This includes violent crime and a host of of-

fences ranging from armed robbery to youth crime. The report also found that that the Crime Severity Index (CSI), which measures volume and severity of crime, has decreased for the tenth straight year and is 36 per cent lower than a decade ago. Though crime statistics are not always the be-all, end-all of determining the true level of criminality due to underreporting, it does indicate a general trend that crime is falling. Yet, amid the drop in crime rates, mandatory minimum sentencing has been skyrocketing.

Today, Canada is second in the world (surpassed only by the U.S.) for the number of offences that attract mandatory minimum sentences. Most recently, the 2012 passing of the Safe Streets and Communities Act, a sweeping and extensive overhaul of Canadian criminal law, indicates that our criminal justice system is becoming even more punitive. This is a worrying development, particularly in light of the fact that mandatory minimum sentencing is a policy that does not seem to work.

The most basic flaw with mandatory minimum sentences is that they do not achieve their stated purpose of reducing crime. A 2003 review looked at the tired question of whether harsher sentences reduce crime rates in Western populations. It concluded that there is no evidence that sentence severity has an impact on crime rates. Furthermore, there is evidence that long periods of incarceration actually increase the odds of previously sentenced people to commit another crime. After thirty years of academic study on the question, and mountains of evidence, the study also stressed that it must be accepted that the sentence-severity-crime nexus is a mirage, and that it is time to move forward in aggressively challenging its use in justifying bad crime legislation.

LEGALIZED DISCRIMINATION Indigenous people and those who struggle with addiction are disproportionately impacted by mandatory minimums in what basically amounts to legalized discrimination. According to the BCCLA report, as of February 2013, 23 per cent of the federal prison population was Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, or Inuit), despite Indigenous people making up just over 4 per cent of the Canadian population.

This drastic overrepresentation is even more dire for Indigenous women, who represent a full 33 per cent of all female prisoners.

This phenomenon is the result of racist and discriminatory colonial practices as well as ongoing discriminatory policies toward Indigenous people, which have led to low levels of

education, employment, and income, as well as substandard housing and healthcare. Policies such as measures of control and assimilation, which were intended to terminate Indigenous culture, included the theft of land, non-fulfillment of treaties, forced relocation, attacks on traditional culture, systemic neglect and paternalism, the Indian Act, and an abusive residential school policy, which has caused intergenerational trauma. These are just a few acknowledged by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

Mangat explained to The Daily that Indigenous prisoners experience incarceration differently. “Aboriginal [people] experience prison disproportionately adversely than other offenders. An Aboriginal person is more likely to be classified as high risk, to be denied parole, placed in solitary confinement and in maximum security, and to be involved in use of force incidents and incidents of prison selfinjury.” Professor Marie Manikis, who teaches criminal law at McGill’s Faculty of Law, explained to The Daily that “studies on systemic racism and discrimination have found that for similar offences, in similar circumstances, Aboriginal offenders are more likely to be sentenced more harshly by the criminal justice system.” She adds that for Indigenous people, “it was made clear that imprisonment should be the last sentencing option, and that other options needs to be prioritized.”

Section 718.2(e) of the Canadian Criminal Code, which outlines principles of sentencing, requires judges to give “special attention to Aboriginal offenders.” However, the Canadian mandatory sentence regime prevents judges from giving the special consideration to Aboriginals, that they are required by law to give, during the sentencing process. In an interview with The Daily, University of Toronto law professor Kent Roach explained that “mandatory sentences by definition hurt and do not fit the circumstances of more sympathetic offenders including Aboriginal offenders.” Instead, the link between a history of discrimination and their criminality is conveniently erased, as Indigenous prisoners are quickly whisked away despite their unique circumstances.

Furthermore, mandatory minimum sentencing is increasingly capturing non-violent drug offences. This can have harmful consequences for those who suffer from addiction, such as increasing drug dependency. Brent, an individual who has been in and out of jail for the last decade, explained this concept in a report called “The human and social cost of mandatory minimum sentence” by Pivot, a Canadi-

Features an legal society which attempts to fight poverty and social exclusion. “I’m a little surprised at the whole system. Didn’t they recognize addiction for what it is? Why is there never any intervention? Are they just happy giving them jail sentences and when the time is up, releasing them back to themselves?” He added that, “jail aggravates the situation and it reinforces itself. The addict starts believing they deserve it. After a while they believe they deserve to be jailed and there is no hope. It reinforces the addictive behaviour when there is no mechanism in place to help them with their disease.”

CRIPPLING COSTS Mandatory minimum sentencing carries even larger and more damaging human and social costs – for instance, on children and families. The BCCLA found that “when parents are incarcerated, their children are negatively affected not only in the immediate term due to the loss of a parent in their lives, but also in more complex and long-term ways that influence whether or not they are likely to become offenders themselves.” One can hardly imagine the impact on the 20,000 children whose mothers are torn away from them every year in Canada by the far-reaching hands of incarceration. Research by Shimica Gaskins for the Georgetown University Law Center suggests that these children are more prone to withdrawal symptoms, low self-esteem, depression, substance abuse, and aggressive tendencies.

How do we measure the cost of the harm and pain that is caused? Are we prepared to pay it as a society?

Mandatory minimums have an especially harmful impact on family environments with female heads of household or a single mother.

In their report, Pivot interviewed a woman named Jacqueline who explained that “one reason it is hard to go to jail is, if you are a parent, you get separated from your kids. They go to a social service foster home. So your kids get traumatized by that, it’s a life experience that can’t be reversed.”

In addition to the skyrocketing social costs, the economic cost of mandatory minimum sentencing is prohibitively high. The Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) estimated increased costs of $156 million, of which the federal government will only pay $7.9 million, leaving already-indebted provinces to pay the rest. Due to the overwhelming number of other changes in the bill, in addition to the government refusing to provide the agency with information, the PBO concluded that the final costs of the entire act are difficult to predict.

February 2, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily There is, however, another cost. Not only is money wasted on a policy that doesn’t even reduce crime, but as the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) explains, money is also diverted away from policies that do efficiently diminish crime. The CCPA explains that these funds would more effective if they were spent on investment in employment, education, public housing, addictions treatment, and mental health support services – all social services thathave been proven to reduce crime.

children, unstable housing situations, or precarious job, simply cannot afford the luxury of having a trial and losing. So when they are shoved into a corner by the state, they face the inconceivable choice between admitting guilt to a charge without a trial or taking the risk of defending themselves knowing they could be slapped with a mandatory minimum.

The extreme power imbalance this creates is exactly how the system is designed to work.

Osgoode Hall law professor and leading criminal lawyer Dianne L. Martin explains as much

MANIFESTED INJUSTICE Mandatory minimums also open the door to serious errors in the judicial process. The practice violates long-held Canadian principles of sentencing. The Canadian Criminal Code explains that sentencing and punishment must reflect two components: gravity of the offence and the moral blameworthiness of the offender. The Supreme Court recently clarified this in the case R. v. Ipeelee, explaining that a fair punishment is one that “reflects both perspectives on proportionality and does not elevate one at the expense of the other.”

Mandatory minimums, however, run roughshod over these principles. Manikis explained that “the removal of judicial discretion to the judge can be extremely harmful since it does not provide judges with sufficient latitude to assess the moral blameworthiness of the offender or specific circumstances of the offence and offender. Mitigating factors that are hugely important in sentencing might therefore not be given adequate weight which creates disproportionate and unduly harsh sentences.” Ultimately, what results is a highly punitive system that casts aside the unique individual circumstances of every offender and imposes punishments that rarely fit the crime.

Yet perhaps the vilest element of mandatory minimums is the distortion of the plea bargaining process. Plea bargaining is where the accused and the crown prosecutor reach an agreement for a lesser charge in exchange for an admission of guilt, thereby avoiding a trial. This process is distorted, however, when the accused is induced into pleading guilty to a lesser charge for the sole reason of avoiding the potential risk of receiving a much longer mandatory minimum sentence. The frequent occurrence of this process denies individuals justice and creates an extreme power imbalance between the accused and the state. Justice is denied because the lurking mandatory minimum ratchets up the cost of having their guilt determined in court. Individuals with

ONE CAN HARDLY IMAGINE THE IMPACT ON THE 20,000 CHILDREN WHOSE MOTHERS ARE TORN AWAY FROM THEM EVERY YEAR IN CANADA

BY THE FARREACHING HANDS OF INCARCERATION. in a 2001 article for the Osgoode Law Journal.

She writes that “fewer than 10 to 20 per cent of all cases proceed to a contested trial” and later states that “nothing encourages guilty pleas more than the potential for a mandatory minimum sentence.” Michelle Alexander, author of the seminal book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindless, also confirms this. Her sweeping study reveals that “the pressure to plea-bargain and thereby ‘convict yourself’ in exchange for some kind of leniency is not an accidental by-product of the mandatory sentencing regime.” She cites the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which explains that “the value of a mandatory minimum sentence lies not in its imposition, but in its value as a bargaining chip to be given away in return for the resource-saving plea from the defendant to a more leniently sanctioned charge.”

All the while, this plea bargaining process eliminates the possibility having an individual’s guilt or innocence assessed before a court.

Finally, this process also transfers huge amounts of power from the hands of judges to crown prosecutors. Roach explained to The Daily that “for some offences, mandatory minimums can make the prosecutor the de facto sentencer and increase their leverage in plea bargaining.” Alexander explains that “prosecutors hold all the power as they can force people to plead guilty, and they routinely admit that they charge people with crimes for which they technically have probable cause, but seriously doubt they could win in court.” Moreover, Mangat explains that “this distortion raises the spectre of wrongful conviction, leaves constitutional safeguards in the hands of decision-makers whose conduct is nearly beyond review, and removes the sentencing process from open court to a plea negotiated behind closed doors.”

THE FUTURE OF MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCES The Canadian Constitution can be quite a confusing thing. Understanding it fully is similar to playing Scrabble in a foreign language with a pack of rabid and highly literate talking hyenas: nerve-wracking, to say the least. For the most part, there are written and unwritten

15

elements. For starters, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a central written document that forms part of the Canadian Constitution. Since 1982, it has guaranteed, protected, and limited the political and civil rights of all citizens. The Supreme Court of Canada is charged with enforcing the Charter, and the Court is empowered to overturn and declare unconstitutional Parliament laws.

For the most part, constitutional challenges of mandatory minimums have been rare. Most recently, however, opponents of the mandatory minimum regime have taken to challenging its constitutionality in the courts. Two recent Supreme Court cases, Charles and Nur, argue that these sentences violate section 12 of the Charter, the right not to be subject to cruel and unusual punishment, as well as section 7, the right to life, liberty, and security of the person. The Court has often had an ambiguous and high standard on what constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment,” thus making it hard to successfully argue for the repeal of mandatory minimums under section 12. In this way, the Nur and Charles cases are unique in that they directly ask the court to clearly define and lower the standard for section 12, as well as articulate how section 7 (life, liberty, and security of the person) is affected. Mangat explains that “the Nur and Charles cases provide the Supreme Court of Canada with a long-overdue and very important opportunity to clarify the legal analysis required to test the constitutionality of a mandatory minimum sentence. The Court has an opportunity in these cases to explain the relationship between mandatory sentencing regimes and proportionality in sentencing as the fundamental principle of sentencing.” With an opportunity to pave the way for future legal challenges, or possibly even to categorically strike down mandatory minimum sentencing, the court’s decision could be a watershed moment for criminal justice reform.

Moreover, legal experts seeking criminal justice reform are preparing other court challenges and eyeing other parts of the Charter to challenge this sentencing regime. For example, they argue that it violates equality rights (in section 15) because of its disproportionate impact on people who are already vulnerable and subject to prejudice. With the Conservative majority government in Ottawa, Parliament is increasingly becoming an obsolete arena for bringing about meaningful criminal justice reform. Instead, the battle over the future of mandatory minimum sentencing will take place in the long and slow grind of the court system.

Mandatory minimum sentences are a stark indicator of the crisis we are currently facing in the Canadian criminal justice system.

Rather than build a system based on values of fairness, rehabilitation and compassion we are turning towards a model which calls for more and more punishment. Amidst a time of decreasing crime rates, successive governments have been increasing the use of mandatory minimum punishments. Yet, the evidence and experts have been screaming that this regime is not only bad public policy in that it fails to reduce crime, but also that it is socially harmful, expensive and unjust. All the while, under the guise of ‘law and order,’ our society’s most vulnerable are being rounded up and locked away. Still, the fight to roll back these harmful sentences has already begun. Though it may be a long and difficult one, riddled with obstacles and challenges, it is an important one. And for justice to truly mean something in this country, it is not a fight we can afford to lose.

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Sci+Tech

February 2, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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The case for hackathons

The role of collective hacking in learning and innovating Andrea Horqque Sci+Tech Writer

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ver the past few decades, technology’s importance in our lives has risen exponentially — but one of its greatest impacts, by far, is on the minds of Generation Y. Young adults who grew up with these evolving technologies had the chance of actually living through the changes that made them realize the importance and the potential of technology. Therefore, many of these people took interest in technology, but never truly explored it outside of computer science classes because they didn’t have the resources or mentorship. Fortunately, in the past years, the community of people interested by technology has grown, and it has allowed people who want to learn more to be able to participate and become part of the ‘hacker community.’

Don’t misinterpret the name.

Although many believe a hacker is someone who breaks into computer systems and commits cybercrime, hackers use this term for what they believe to be its true meaning: someone who enjoys the intellectual challenges of building new things, and finds ways to use technology to make life easier or better.

In the same vein are hackathons; a hackathon is an event that brings together hackers from a variety of backgrounds to enjoy a collective session of non-stop hacking. Hackathons tend to make it easier for students to access the needed hardware and software to build projects. This makes hardware hacking significantly more accessible as the hardware components can be very expensive for individual buyers.

Transportation remains one of the biggest barriers to entry when it comes to attending hackathons, as usually accommodations and food are provided. Organizers usually try to provide travel bursaries or send busses to campuses to make it easier. Over the weekend of January 16 MHacks V took place in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Around forty hackers

Jonathan Reid | The McGill Daily from McGill were able to attend the hackathon, as the MHacks organizers were able to arrange a bus.

During the long bus ride, hackers discussed their own projects for the hackathon, past things they had worked on, upcoming technologies, or simply cool hacks they had seen; they shared their knowledge and exchanged ideas.

They sought to improve each other. It was surprising to hear many of them talk about the future of technology, and its ethical and political issues. Many of these conversations revolved around artificial intelligence (AI): whether or not it would be possible, how it could be made, and how to prevent it from surpassing humans.

After registration, hackers went on to mingle with the representatives of different companies (amongst them Bloomberg,

Wolfram|Alpha, Microsoft, and even Google) that sponsored the event. Free stuff, or swag, was distributed amongst the approximately 1,400 students that attended. The companies took this opportunity to present the prizes available for the best use of their API (application program interface, which is, vaguely, a set of prebuilt tools to put into your software) during the hackathon. Hackathons provide companies with the opportunity to meet those with innovative ideas and sometimes offer them an interview or internship. In exchange, hackathons receive hardware and software for hackers to work with, and some financial support.

One of the beautiful aspects of the hacker community is its general willingness to take in anyone interested to learn. Among the teams, there were members who were

very experienced, some in their first hackathon, and some with no programming experience. Both in the online community and at hackathons, more experienced hackers are granted the title of ‘mentors’ and they aim to help others with their projects and answer their questions. At MHacks, teams and their members helped each other out. In essence, anyone around was always happy to share their knowledge. Although there were prizes, the tension that usually comes with a competition was not present. Few attended with the sole purpose of winning; the final result for which they all hoped was learning.

After 36 hours of pure hacking, everyone submitted their projects, and regrouped for the closing ceremonies which would announce the winner. The ten finalists for MHacks presented their project

and, in between each of the presentations, the companies who had offered prizes for the best use of their API announced the winners. Although some teams were disappointed that they didn’t win, they decided to continue developing their ideas after the hackathon, hoping to make the next big app.

More than the actual building of software or hardware, hackathons motivate participants to think outside the box. If these events weren’t offered to university students, few of them would actually get the chance to create projects that they find useful and make them to want to learn more. Hackathons have given many students the unique opportunity to meet and work with experienced people who will help them improve their abilities. Hackathons embody the spirit of the hacker community.

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Sports

February 2, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

18

Homophobia in skateboarding It’s time to create a more inclusive community

Drew Wolfson Bell The McGill Daily

S

kateboarding is a sport that was born out of a counterculture – one that belongs to people who were incessantly hounded by jocks, people who did not fit in the cafeteria, and countless other cliches that I’m sure people always hear when they start looking into counte cultures. Another common cliche is that skateboarders form a family of outcasts; your local crew of skaters becomes a second family. Personally, I have been skating since I was 12, and this is how it was for me. However, one important critique must be made: although a tight-knit community of outcasts is formed through their shared love for skating, this community is exclusionary, because it is so rampantly homophobic.

Homophobia has been an omnipresent force in skateboarding since the urethane wheel was invented. Some of the most revered pioneers of the sport, such as the late Jay Adams, helped foster this homophobic culture in skateboarding from its inception. Yet despite this, he never faced criticism because of his ‘legend status.’ Here’s a fact most skateboarders don’t know: in 1982, Adams started a fight with a man named Dan Bradbury in an incident that Adams later described to Juiced magazine.

“We went to a place called the Okiedogs and two homosexual guys walked by and I started a fight.

That’s just how every fuckin’ night was for me back then.” Bradbury died that night in the fight. Adams said he left before the man was dead, and only served six months in jail. This year he was honoured at the Transworld Skateboarding Awards, and he has also been called the “spark that started the sport.”

However, individuals are not the problem; it’s bigger than that.

It’s about how the sport reacts toward diverse sexualities. An example of this is Tim Von Werne, who used to be a pro skater. In 1998, his career was cut short after his sponsor pulled an interview where he talked about his sexuality. In most skate interviews you will find sexist, racist, and homophobic remarks, yet it seems there is no room in skateboarding to have a candid discussion about sexuality without the person being ostracized.

Skateboarders latch onto the fact that it is a sport run by skateboarders – we want to have board companies owned by skaters, our media in the hands of skaters. In

Katrina Gibbs | The McGill Daily short, we want to be a community that makes its own choices.

It breaks my heart to see that the community that I have identified with my whole life, the one that helped me through the hardest parts of high school, the one that gave me the inspiration to beat cancer, and the one that I truly love, has such a deep legacy of hate, and holds a hateful man as a legend. It is shameful.

Individuals are not the problem; it’s bigger than that. It’s about how the sport reacts to diverse sexualities.

As skateboarders, we are quick to defend our own. We assume that if someone is a skateboarder, they have endured enough social isolation. This is false. It is true that skateboarders come from all sorts of backgrounds, with a varying range of privileges and opportunities, but none of this is an excuse to engage in hateful behaviour. Period.

Homophobia was not relegated to just a dark chapter in skateboarding history. It would be false to say that we have come to

terms with this history while acknowledging our oppressive behaviour. We should be continuing to practice good allyship by actively working to be a more inclusive sport. Some skaters will say, “Hey, I’m not homophobic, this is not my problem.” Unless you are actively challenging this hateful behaviour, your complicity is part of the problem.

If you go to any skate park, you will hear kids of all ages yelling homophobic remarks at their friends.

It has become so ingrained in skateboarding vernacular that it is not uncommon to be reading an interview and see several homophobic remarks. One skateboarder that is a perfect example of this is Forrest Edwards, who became infamous after participating in a video contest called “Slap’s One In A Million” – comparable to skateboarding’s version of American Idol.

Edwards was filmed repeatedly making unapologetic homophobic remarks about other contestants’ behavior, and even took it as far as their selection of tricks. However, his homophobic behaviour was never called out because he is an incredibly talented skateboarder, who has not only been given a pro model board, but has received a fair amount of media coverage.

Homophobia in the skateboarding community is so normalized and accepted that hateful slurs have no impact on peoples careers.

When you’re a kid and you fall in love with skating, you really do go head over heels. You pick up all the magazines and all the videos and try to imitate your favourite skaters’ behaviors. It is not uncommon to even try to mimic your favourite skater’s diction. When young skaters see this language though skate media, they think it’s okay, and in some cases even add the slurs into their vocabulary because they think it’s cool. This all serves to reinforce this hateful culture.

Since this homophobia is never called out, young skaters grow up thinking it is normal to use homophobic slurs. These young skaters become old skaters and never learn that the language they use is hurtful. The sad truth is that a skate van is no different from a locker room, except instead of Gatorade bottles, there are beer bottles.

Unless you are actively challenging this hateful behaviour, your complicity is part of the problem.

Why do we tolerate this behaviour? If we are as free-willed as we claim to be, shouldn’t we also use this free will to break the mold of sports culture and be progressive?

I truly believe that change can be made. In fact, we have already seen a few people within the industry take a stand against this homophobia. Robert Brink, a skateboard journalist, has taken a stand multiple times against homophobic language and also strives to raise awareness, while Nike SB pro Stefan Janoski released a ‘Be True’ colourway of his pro model shoe, with proceeds going toward the LGBT Sports Coalition to support the goal of ending discrimination in the sport. Another example is Alex Olson, a pro skater, who owns his own board company called Bianca Chandon, and who released a board series called the House of Bianca, which is a tribute to ball culture. The money from the board sales will go to help the Hetrick-Martin Institute to help LGBTQ youth. It is clear that some people in the skateboarding community are starting to call out the behaviour of their peers, and it is through this that the skateboarding community will hopefully shed its homophobic ties.

It is time to change. We as skateboarders are in a unique position, where we actually have a great deal of agency. It is time to end this homophobic culture and become what skateboarding was always meant to be – a culture where no matter who you are, if you love to skate you will be welcomed with open arms.

Sports

February 2, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

19

Running out of excuses The racist hypocrisy of professional football

Tanner Levis The McGill Daily

P

icture yourself going into the fourth quarter of the National Football Conference (NFC) championship game, and your team is down by four points.

Then you come out with force, put ten points up on the board, and you’re suddenly up by a touchdown. Now, the only way for you to win this game is to prevent the San Francisco 49ers completing a touchdown pass, more specifically to deflect a pass from Colin Kaepernick for Michael Crabtree in the endzone. This is exactly what Richard Sherman had to do in order to guarantee his team’s spot in the 2014 Super Bowl. In the postgame interview, Richard Sherman, full of joy and clearly several other emotions, shouted, “I’m the best corner in the game. When you try me with a sorry receiver like Crabtree, that is the result you gonna get. Don’t you ever talk about me.

Don’t you open your mouth about the best or I’m gonna shut it for you real quick.”

The following day, Fox News host Geraldo Rivera responded to Sherman’s excitement by calling him a “thug.” In response, Sherman explained at a press conference that the word thug has become the “accepted way of calling somebody the n-word nowadays.

It’s like everyone else said the nword, and then they say thug and that’s fine. That’s where it kind of takes me back. It’s kind of disappointing because they know.”

In no way was this the first time the issue of race has been seen in sports, but this situation gathered the attention of many people, and has opened the eyes of those who were blind to racial politics in the National Football League (NFL).

Since the Super Bowl XLIX was just yesterday, and the Seattle Seahawks were back in for another battle in the trenches, it seems fitting to speak of the inequality that athletes of colour have experienced, not only from the media, but also from the NFL. Marshawn “Beast Mode” Lynch, one of Sherman’s teammates – and also currently considered one of the most powerful running backs in the NFL – has seen his fair share of discrimination. While signing an NFL contract, there are rules that athletes must obey, one of which requires players to answer questions from the media after games. On November 19, Lynch was fined $100,000 for refusing to speak with the me-

Stephanie Ngo | The McGill Daily dia, despite receiving a warning for the same reason a few weeks before. A couple of days later, after the Seahawks beat the Arizona Cardinals, Lynch was pounded with questions in the changing room. He answered 21 out of a total of 22 questions with one word answers. A month later, he answered nearly every question with, “thank you for asking,” and other answers of the same sort. On January 27, during the NFL’s Super Bowl Media Day, Lynch again avoided questions. He responded to the majority of the questions with the answer, “I’m here just so I won’t get fined.”

With the NFL it doesn’t stop with policing players’ actions: it also polices their clothing choices.

The NFL portrays Lynch as a stubborn athlete who doesn’t want to speak to the media, and the media is quick to thrust racist stereotypes on players of colour.

This is a part of a larger narrative of how the NFL and mainstream

sports commentators treat nonwhite players. As Jamilah King of Colorlines points out, “perhaps his biggest mistake is being unapologetically black and rebellious in a league business that depends on military-like obedience.” In reality, Lynch has the best possible reason not to talk to the media: it makes him anxious. Lynch has been medically diagnosed with anxiety, a fact that he has made clear to the league and one that it refuses to validate. So basically, the NFL is twisting this player’s arm to put him in situations that are harmful to his mental health while using racist stereotypes to place the blame on the player.

However, with the NFL, it doesn’t stop with policing players’ actions: it also polices their clothing choices. Hours before this year’s NFC title game, a photo went viral: a pair of 24-karat gold flake painted cleats, estimated to be worth just over $1,000, that Lynch had custom-made for the game. He was told by the league that if he wore the cleats, he would be violating ‘uniform code’ and wouldn’t be able to take part in the game. He also wore a ‘Beast Mode’ baseball cap to the interview, and the league was not okay with it.

However, the league made no such threats toward the New Eng-

land Patriots, which is under investigation for deflating balls. Why does this matter? Because teams provide their own balls that they will use on the offensive. If the ball is a little deflated, you have an unfair advantage, making it easier to grip, throw, and catch – especially in shitty weather. Sherman replied to this hypocrisy, saying, “You suspend Marshawn for gold shoes, then you’ve got balls being deflated and that’s the issue.” It has become clear that the NFL is quick to chastize a player of colour, but is more hesitant to penalize a franchise where the quarterback, star receiver, star tight end, coach and owner are all white. With the Super Bowl having just being played the issue wasn’t resolved; nobody was penalized, fined, or anything of the sort, and the Patriots competed against the Seattle Seahawks.

Another example of the NFL’s hypocrisy is how differently it has treated Tim Tebow and Husain Abdullah’s touchdown celebrations. Tebow is a devout Christian, who had a short-lived but very hyped career in the NFL, and was known for his post-touchdown celebration, which was quickly trademarked as “Tebowing.” After scoring a touchdown, Tebow would drop to one knee, his elbow on his knee with his

head resting on his hand, and start praying. Not only was this permitted by officiating crews and the NFL, but it was widely accepted by fans, some of whom created a website dedicated to the act of Tebowing. On top of the fame this movement received, Tebowing was also recognized as a word in the English language by Global Language Monitor.

On the contrary, in September, the Kansas City Chiefs played against the New England Patriots.

During the game, Kansas City free safety Abdullah intercepted Patriots quarter back Tom Brady’s pass and took the ball back for a touchdown. Once in the endzone, Abdullah, a devout Muslim, dropped to his knees, placed his head on the turf and came up to yellow flags being thrown around. Both players engaged in a post-touchdown prayer, yet only one was penalized. This is clear discrepancy on how the NFL treats white and non-white players, and only serves to further cement their hypocritical legacy.

The simple fact is that the NFL is still complacent about this institutionalized racism, and change has to come immediately. Until then, one of America’s favorite pastimes will serve as a constant reminder that racism is alive and well in sports.

Culture

February 2, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

And the Oscar goes to...

20

Recognizing the cultural power of the Academy Rochelle Guillou The McGill Daily

L

ast year, the Academy Awards were watched by approximately 43 million people – that’s more than the population of Argentina. It’s been over 80 years since the Oscars first launched – why are people still watching?

What many people will tell you is that they watch the Oscars just for the entertainment of seeing the stars, but that they don’t actually ‘take it seriously.’ Like the very films they celebrate, these award shows are insights into another world: a romanticized world that lures us in with its seeming accessibility (“celebrities – they’re just like us!”) side by side with the out-of-reach dimension of luxury, wealth, and fame. Viewers are not so much interested in the movies themselves as in the lives of the VIPs and most recent looks.

Others will tell you that they don’t watch the red carpet or pay attention to any of the framing frivolity – they watch because they love movies, and the Oscars are the experts’ opinions on the best of the best. The label of excellence that an Oscar gives to a movie or an actor has been so deeply accepted by society that it can singlehandedly make a movie stand the test of time across generations. Once an actor wins an Oscar, their talent will forever be affirmed with the glorious epitaph, “Academy Award winner.”

While these two types of viewers may appear to have different motives on the surface, ultimately, they look to the Oscars for the same reason: cultural capital.

Whether it’s dictating what dress to buy or what film to respect, the Oscars have a uniquely powerful ubiquity within North American

culture and society. As Susan Nathan, Director of Media Research for Universal McCann, puts it, “the bottom line is that Academy Award watchers are active consumers.”

According to Nathan, these consumers “want to be on the leading edge of all things cultural.”

As university students, we are highly active cultural consumers, the target demographic for moviemakers and style setters. As such, it is essential for us to understand the Academy’s impact on our choices – from the movies we watch to the way we perceive cultural value. We often take the label of the Oscars for granted, forgetting the voting process that works behind it. According to the LA Times, out of the 5,765 people who vote for the Oscars, 94 per cent are Caucasian, 77 per cent are male, and the median age is 62. These statistics have recently come to the foreground of Oscar talk, in the wake of outrage over the lack of diversity in this year’s nominations.

Some responses see this lack of diversity as a failure of the Oscars, while others, such as the recent article in the McGill Tribune, don’t think diversity has anything to do with it – the Oscars nominations are subjectively picked by 6,000 people who just didn’t like Selma that much. Though this year’s whitewashed Oscars are disheartening, the situation is nothing new.

Instead, it’s a reminder of the essence of the institution that is the Academy Awards.

The Oscars influence society on so many levels, and on multiple time frames. Both the red carpet frivolity and the actual awards tell us what is the ‘best,’ and what we should strive to be as a society. In the short run and at the most artificial level, we are influenced by the fashion and hairstyles of the

Victoria Ly | Illustrator elites. Even though most of the fun comes from critiquing certain looks and dresses, what the actors and actresses wear on the red carpet each year partially represents the style of a generation.

If you look back at pictures of the stars at the Oscars ten years ago, you can see how the trends and tastes have evolved. That’s the power of the institution: shaping our cultural memory, our conceptions of ourselves as a society. The Oscars set a certain film or actor in stone for the future generations to refer back to as the representative of past epoques. They function

as a vehicle of inter-generational communication. More immediately, the Oscars decide which movie and which movements and actors commemorate the year. So in a year marked by Ferguson and Eric Garner, a year marked by the feminism of Beyoncé and Emma Watson, it’s almost an act of erasure, as well as a harsh reminder of the status quo, to see a slate of white male nominees.

The Academy is a powerful institution and an authority that constantly shapes and reshapes society, but it’s important to remember that that’s not what it was created

for. For those who love film, let it be a celebration of movies. For those who love dresses, let it be a night for fashion. But if the Academy Awards are supposed to be the best of the best, then they’ve still got a long way to go. So while we listen to the speeches, let’s also pay attention to the narratives they put forward, the narratives that Hollywood puts forward as a privileged institution. We can’t change the Academy overnight, but what we can do is remain critical of it, and acknowledge the limits of its vote as one powerful voice separate from our own.

“Prism” Exhibit and SSMU Art & Expression mixer Niyousha’s Pick: “PRISM” exhibit Ever feel like you’re being watched? Well, chances are, you’re probably right. If you’ve ever wondered about modern surveillance but have been too creeped out to pursue your curiosity, it might be time to face your fears and check out the “PRISM” exhibit this week.

A solo exhibition by Vancouverbased David Spriggs, “PRISM” is a series of works that explore modern surveillance and its uncanny om-

nipresence in our daily lives. The name of the exhibit alludes in part to the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) program, which was exposed

by Edward Snowden in 2009. Looking at different modes of surveillance, from cameras to digital scanners, Spriggs’ large-scale works are bound to inform and probably also intimidate. If you really want to know how closely Big Brother is watching, “PRISM” may offer some creative insight.

Rosie’s Pick: SSMU Art & Expression Mixer McGill definitely has a thriving cultural scene; the campus is always buzzing with artistic events, from a cappella concerts to poetry slams. I’m pretty sure there’s a new journal launched every other week. But sometimes it can be hard to find your way into the various scenes, to work up the courage for that first theatre audition, or to find other aspiring indie

stars to jam with. And once you’ve made it in the McGill community, it’s not always easy to break out of that bubble. The SSMU Art & Expression Mixer allows you to mix and mingle with visual art and performance groups belonging to both McGill and the world beyond the bubble. Groups will be showcasing their work and will be available to chat. This is a perfect, no pressure, no expectations opportunity to step into Montreal’s

cultural life. Who knows – maybe you’re the next Celine Dion or Mac DeMarco. This could be your chance to find out.

PRISM runs at Arsenal Montreal until May 9.

The mixer is Wednesday, February 4, from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the SSMU Ballroom. If you or a group you’re part of would like to showcase your work, email commengagement@ ssmu.mcgill.ca.

Culture

February 2, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

21

Same old news

Perfomance installation deconstructs media tactics Kateryna Gordiychuk Culture Writer

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itting down to watch the news might not be as harmless an activity as we think. In Concordia’s FOFA gallery, Félipe Goulet Letarte presents “Political Poem / I Watch the News,” a performative installation. The showpiece is an ongoing project of the young artist that will be completed by the end of February. The piece illustrates Letarte’s experience with the news by showing how political messages constantly repeat themselves to produce a mind-numbing effect.

The installation plays mind games with the viewer. In the literal repetition of the same word over and over again on a piece of paper, the piece mimics the constant reiteration of obscure concepts in the news. Letarte is a central part of his own game – he comes to the gallery three times a week and stamps the word “Économie” (economics) as many times as possible on an A4 paper and hangs it on the wall against the black background of the room.

Standing on a ladder, Letarte can reach the ceiling so that the whole space is filled with stamped pieces of paper, the walls gradually covered with “the political message.”

The Black Box, the room in which the exhibit is housed, draws

all attention to the sheets of paper as they gradually emerge on black walls. Unless one stays at the gallery all day, it’s hard to notice the development of the paper-posting process. The numbing effect of watching the same word appear over and over echoes how we often fail to realize and acknowledge our mindless consumption of the information that media sources throw at us. Quite possibly, the overuse of abstractions like “economics” serves as a cloak to leave actual facts uncovered, and to avoid the discussions that matter. Talking to The Daily, Letarte revealed that the phenomenon of the word “economics” caught his attention in its use in news coverage as an empty explanatory device. In a world where excessive information constantly grabs at our throats, Letarte’s stamping actions are a bleak analogy for the senseless nature of this empty news stream.

The repetitive nature of the exhibit, while metaphoric, is also hypnotic. Letarte explained that words devoid of meaning can function as comforting answers to shocking events. But this empty comfort can be dangerous. Indeed, staring at the exhibit, one cannot see or think of anything but the pervasive and empty word on display. According to Letarte, once “economic prob-

Tamim sujat | The McGill Daily lems” becomes the staple reply to all political questions, people start to use this phrase as carelessly as the media. Whether or not “economics” has truly become as allencompassing as he paints it to be, Letarte’s work points to the danger in the subconscious imitation of “the political message.”

As bleak as it may be, Letarte’s creative representation of this experience does, however, offer a potential solution to this false consciousness: thoughtful reflection.

The stark simplicity of the exhibit provokes a critical response to our unquestioning acceptance of the media’s obscure explanations. Re-

peatedly stamping the same word on the viewer’s mind in “I Watch the News,” Letarte snaps us out of thoughtless consumption and reminds us to keeps our eyes open.

“Political Poem / I Watch the News” is on display at the FOFA Gallery until February 20.

The gang in pink

Gulabi Gang film sheds light on gender oppression and resistance Jasmine Lee Culture Writer

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inema Politica’s first screening of the year featured the 2012 documentary Gulabi Gang, written and directed by Indian director and producer Nishtha Jain.

Jain is an independent filmmaker working in Bombay, known for her work on social issues through documentaries. In Gulabi Gang, she focuses on the story of the Gulabi Gang, a group of women who travel throughout India demanding gender and caste equality.

The film immediately pulls in the viewer with the investigation of a supposed kitchen accident that burned and killed a young, recently married girl. The camera does not hold back in exposing the horror inside the home: a charred figure lying on the ground, hands thrown back and legs spread apart. All the villagers claim it was an accident or suicide, but the Gulabi Gang’s leader Sampat Pal Devi sees through their lies. The next time she visits,

the scene has been staged to mimic an accidental fire – a stove placed near the body like a prop. With scenes like this, the film incessantly shows us how a woman’s life can be treated as worthless.

From there, the documentary follows the gang on their journey from village to village, as they travel to wherever they are called and needed. Their assistance is sought for a range of issues, from investigating abusive incidents to negotiating how local authorities respond to such incidents. We gradually come to understand how the gang has evolved since its inception in 2006; what started out as a small group fighting against domestic violence has expanded to a women’s revolution that stands against against caste oppression and political corruption.

Beautifully shot, the segues between each scene feature the breathtaking wildlife and landscape of Bundelkhand, starkly contrasting with the themes of brutal violence.

These intervals serve as a repeated

reminder that cruelty and suffering can exist anywhere, even in a place that holds such mesmerizing beauty. In each moment of calm, the viewer holds their breath, waiting for the next hit of harsh reality.

According to the BBC, an incident of domestic violence is reported in India every five minutes.

Through the words of a woman named Husna, the film gives perspective as to why this behaviour is perpetuated and why men defend this abusive conduct. Husna’s sister was killed by her brother for leaving a previous husband to remarry another man she fell in love with.

In a one-on-one interview, Husna explains to Jain, who is behind the camera, that if a man feels a woman has done wrong, he is entitled to do as he wishes with her, as tradition dictates that women should not be free to do as they wish. Husna explains that she would defend her male relatives for doing what they can to protect her family’s honour.

Jain highlighted this part of the movie in a Q&A session that

followed the screening at McGill.

She stressed the importance of understanding this mindset in order to change the very roots of India’s patriarchal system. Jain further emphasized that people should watch Gulabi Gang, for while it may not relate to everybody, it raises awareness about the extent of gender inequality in India.

While awareness is certainly important, the film does in fact relate to the society we live in half a world away. The failure to question misogynistic beliefs and actions embedded in daily life is a universal quality that allows for oppression to flourish everywhere. One only has to look at the recent case in Montreal, where, according to the Montreal Gazette, the police’s response to cases of sexual assault by taxi drivers was to advise women to “limit their alcohol consumption and stay in control.” Instead of acting to ensure the safety of taxi passengers, the police have put the responsibility on women. The incident mirrors Husna’s message that if women act

as they wish, the abuse they may face is their own fault. Misogynistic norms are a transnational problem that needs to be addressed and reflected on critically.

Gulabi Gang ends on a train platform, brightened with the pink saris of the gang. A bystander asks a member of the gang, “Do you get anything from all this in return?”

She shakes her head in response.

This subtle ending is one of the only snippets we get of the gang’s exhaustion from their often thankless work. But their courage has not gone without reward. According to Jain, regional policing authorities now recognize the gang as an influential force, and are more likely to respond to their requests.

Both the implicit and explicit messages this documentary carries are powerfully thought-provoking.

Though the context of the film is upsetting, the awe-inspiring work of the Gulabi Gang, and its brutally honest portrayal by Jain, become a source of inspiration both for women in India and the rest of the world.

22

Culture

February 2, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

The prince of PWRFNK

Shash’U chats about his unique style and upcoming EP Zoë Vnak Culture Writer

I

n an age where everyone seems to be a DJ on the side, it’s a treat to meet one of the few who stand out from the masses in both skill and style. Montreal-based producer/DJ Shash’U has taken the scene by storm over the past few years with the introduction of a fresh new sound he calls “PWRFNK” (i.e., power funk).

This past Tuesday, Shash’U sat down to talk with The Daily about his influences and experiences.

Despite the freezing winter winds, his effortlessly chill and amiable demeanour shed a little sunlight on the day – reminding us that concert-going is the perfect way to keep warm.

McGill Daily (MD): Are you from Montreal?

Shash’U (S): Yeah, born and raised. Both of my parents are Haitian.

MD: Planning on staying here?

Or do you hope to move eventually?

S: If I had the resources to have many residences, then yeah, sure – I’d want to have a pad in another city, but Montreal is always going to be some kind of base.

MD: I mean it is a great, culturally thriving community.

S: Well, yes it is, but at the same time there’s so many things going on in so many other cities I think it’s just proper for me to absorb everything, you know.

MD: How and when did you start DJing? You call yourself a “DJ,” right? That’s what you go by?

S: It’s one of the many things I am, yeah.

MD: What else would you call yourself?

S: Producer, that’s the number one thing. That’s what I started with when I was 17. Then I started street dancing (locking, popping, and stuff ) when I was maybe twenty years old. And a year later, I got my first turntables.

MD: What made you decide to start doing this?

S: I guess it was the curiosity of expanding the music production, the whole element of it. Because I was so involved with the culture of hip hop itself, I think it just happened on its own. When I was a kid, my dad had turntables, and I would play records and stuff like that – I guess it just never fell off.

MD: So you definitely have a solid base in the music world.

Your sound has been referred to as “power funk” – how would you define that?

S: PWRFNK... it’s a mix of many things. If I were to give you,

like, a very direct example, it’s basically a mix of the sounds and the music that influenced me growing up. So the eighties and early nineties sounds – hip hop and more – mixed with the whole realm of video games, action figures, and cartoons. So all of that mixed together in a very cinematic and nostalgic way. How can I say… packaged, that’s PWRFNK. MD: So you kind of have your own genre going on then.

S: I guess, we’ll see if people dig it, and if more and more will follow.

I define it as a style.

MD: Okay, so who are some of your influences or inspirations?

S: Ooh, a heavy question…

MD: I know, it’s really difficult.

S: My main influence… I’d have to say my dad. Definitely, because if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have this whole musical [inclination] that I have today. [...] There are so many different kinds of rhythms and styles of music in Haiti, and also there’s a very deep connection between Haiti and other countries, like Venezuela. So often you would have musicians who would play in different countries and different cities, with different bands and different kinds of music, and my dad introduced me to that. He’d play me the records of [some] guy who also played in this Cuban band, but he’s also Haitian.

MD: Cool, so [he was] making all the connections for you, to give you background. Do you have any specific artists or musicians you can think of who have influenced your style?

S: J. Dilla, Travis Scott, Just Blaze…

MD: Funk is in the title of your style of PWRFNK. Do you have any specific funk artists from way back when who have influenced you?

S: Zapp & Roger, Prince, George Clinton – MD: Prince! I’m from Minnesota, which is where Prince is from.

S: Straight up, I played in his club! I went there to spin for a dance battle and the after-party was at his club and I was like, say whaaat?

MD: Prince is definitely up there as a number-one icon.

S: I want to meet him one time.

Even if he blasts me for remixing his songs. I have a friend who did choreography for one of his songs and it was on YouTube, but it got removed. The people who work for his label and his branding really enforce his [copyright] rules.

MD: Well he has such a strong image too [...] If one little thing is off, the whole world is wrong.

S: I guess that’s different with me – PWRFNK is open for every-

Zoë Vnak | Photographer one, everyone can enjoy it.

MD: What has it been like as a rising star in Montreal today? How do you feel about the overall music community in Montreal?

S: I feel like the community is quite receptive when you present them content. I’m lucky enough to have a good, supportive team. It’s been good, you know – skills pay the bills, that’s what I say. Hard work, and you get what you want.

MD: Tell me about your new EP, Thru Da Night.

S: Thru Da Night is a project, five tracks – fun tracks to listen to. And it’s just like a little picture/snapshot/trailer of the whole sphere of PWRFNK that I want to present.

MD: What inspired you to make this EP? S: I don’t know, it’s a strange combination of many different influences […] but it just happened within me. And, for some reason, I noticed that there was kind of a current happening almost at the

same time, so I felt like it was proper for me to put it out as a whole project, and then have the PWRFNK following.

MD: So you worked with Mimo LaFunk for one of the songs? How was that? Who else have you enjoyed collaborating with?

S: That was great! It’s an interesting thing… we have so many projects coming up together. And she’s a dancer too – I’ve known her since I started dancing, way back. Other people I’ve worked with have been Sam I Am, Karma Atchykah, Chromeo, and a lot of other people too.

Not just people from Montreal, but also people that I’ve met when touring in Europe and in the [U.S.] also.

MD: Interesting, you’re kind of picking up the pieces from all over the place.

S: Yeah, the right pieces for the right piece.

MD: Where have been some of your favourite places to play, outside of Montreal?

S: Europe has been really cool.

Zurich was fun. Rotterdam… everywhere. Everywhere I go is fun.

Paris! Whether it be like in an old, thrashy looking type of club where it’s packed with 200 to 300, or it could be like a big thing with thousands of people…

MD: So just a different vibe everywhere you go.

S: Well there’s a lot of gigs with different vibes but I’m happy to do them all because I still find a way to create a spark within all of them, and people have a good time regardless – so I’m happy.

– This interview has been edited for clarity and space.

Thru Da Night is available for listening at foolsgoldrecs.com/ shashu. Shash’U has another release, his PWRFNK album, set to come out March 31. Catch Shash’U live at his next gig on March 7 at the Phi Centre.

Editorial

volume 104 number 17

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

February 2, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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cover design Tamim Sujat contributors Marc Cataford, Karen Chiang, Ellen Cools, Saima Desai, Katrina Gibbs, Maggie Gilligan, Kateryna Gordiychuk, Rochelle Guillou, Fiona Higgins, Daniel Huang, Nadir Khan, Jasmine Lee, Tanner Levis, Victoria Ly, Stephanie Ngo, Charlotte O’Neill, Jonathan Reid, Tamim Sujat, Zoë Vnak.

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ISSN 1192-4608.

O

n January 28, four out of six members of a Roma family were deported from Canada after the Federal Court of Canada failed to stay their deportation order. Contrary to the position taken by the Canadian government, which places Hungary on a list of safe “designated countries of origin,” Anasztazia Szilagyi, her husband Dezso Nemeth, and children Mercedesz and Mark will once again be threatened by racial violence upon their return. Canada’s refugee policy, defined by Bill C-31, is discriminatory against those who experience systemic racism around the world. In failing to oppose these deportations, Canadians are complicit in perpetuating systemic racism at home and abroad.

The plight of Roma people goes mostly unnoticed in Canada; however, discrimination against them in Europe has a long history, such as when hundreds of thousands of Roma people were murdered during the Second World War. Given renewed xenophobia in Europe, Roma people are facing an increased threat of racial violence. For example, far-right political groups have recently organized anti-Roma rallies in the Czech Republic, and even pogroms in Greece. Ironically, Bill C-31 designates these countries, as well as Hungary, as ‘safe.’ Since the application of Bill C-31 in 2012, the acceptance rate for Roma refugees has been around 8 per cent. In 1998, it was about 98 per cent. Racist attitudes and passive disinterest allow these changes to occur.

This is evidenced by rhetoric like that of former Immigration and Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney, who

called Roma asylum seekers “queue-jumpers” out to game the system. Bill C-31 is not the cause of discrimination against Roma people, but rather the product of a society complicit in racist discourses and practices.

Canada often paints itself as a multicultural safe haven for refugees, and cities like Toronto and Montreal promote themselves as diverse metropolises. These narratives obscure Canada’s history of discriminatory immigration policy, as well as the systemic racism that pervades its past and present. As students at a privileged institution like McGill, it is all too easy to fall into the trap of idealizing Montreal’s multiculturalism, thus ignoring the racism that occurs in our very own community – such as the deportation of the Nemeth family.

Until we recognize that Canada’s rhetoric of multiculturalism and inclusiveness is just myth, the stories of these families will continue to go unheard, and Canada’s immigration policy will remain discriminatory. We must pay attention to what is happening in our city and country, and we must be allies in these fights for justice. You can sign a petition, write a letter to your MP or MNA, attend a protest, or get involved with groups like Solidarity Across Borders, who work tirelessly to raise awareness of these issues. It’s our responsibility to call out discrimination in our society. If not, we become part of the systems that perpetuate it.

—The McGill Daily Editorial Board

Errata

The article “Over a year later, Bill 35 remains unimplemented” (January 12, page 5) incorrectly stated that prior to Bill 35, legislation required a person who wanted to change the gender markers on their official documents to publish their old name, new name, and civic address in a local newspaper and the official Gazette of Quebec. In fact, that was a requirement for a name change.

The article “Arts councillors press admin on sandwich sale ban” (January 19, page 5) incorrectly attributed the argument that a lack of surplus is indicative of the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) better serving the needs of its constituents to AUS VP Finance Li Xue. In fact, the argument was made by AUS President Ava Liu. The article “Mac campus students fight rent and fee increases” (January 26, page 3) incorrectly stated that the Macdonald Campus Students’ Society’s Memorandum of Agreement was set to expire on March 31. In fact, it is set to expire on May 31.

The article “Head & Hands reinstates Street Work program” (January 26, page 7) incorrectly stated that the Public Health Agency of Canada Montreal faced a near 13 per cent cut to its budget in 2011. In fact, it was a near 30 per cent cut.

The Daily regrets the errors.

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23

Compendium!

February 2, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

24

Lies, half-truths, and funny over business all day err’day.

Pretty fly for a white guy if I do say so myself Leading the charge toward a world free of hate

Rand Trillby The McGall Weekly

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s I was completing my third re-watch of The Wire this past weekend, a thought struck me: I really am in an incredibly lucky position. Both because of my refined Scandinavian-Canadian features and the social privilege that accompanies them, and because I have a humble, astute nature that allows me to realize this fact.

I like to think of myself as an open-minded type of man, capable of self-analysis and evolution. Currently a recovering misogynist, I feel I’ve demonstrated this capacity consistently, trading my violent pornography addiction for an aesthetic fixation on tasteful black-and-white nudes of skinny white women. Not unlike a reverse Warren Farrell, if I may

be so bold. While I wouldn’t be so bold as to call myself a ‘feminist,’ now when I go to a gay bar to pick up girls who came to a gay bar to not get picked up, I make sure they are aware of this, so they know that they are safe with me. Their appreciation for this is evident on their faces, or at least I believe it would be in better lighting.

I can confidently cast an eye back at the history of North American civil rights and count myself as the ultimate product of this illustrious history: the selfaware white male. This is something I have discussed frequently (at least twice) with the carefully-curated coterie of non-white and LGBT chums I hang out with when my secondary school friends are too busy complaining about the Dragon Age: Inquisition love interests on Twitter. I really believe they’re coming around to

my point of view.

Despite all of this, in light of recent events (including but not limited to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the criminal censorship of Rogan and Franco’s masterpiece The Interview, and probably something else that’s happened since then (I don’t know, I wasn’t paying attention), I feel the need to abandon progressive orthodoxy to align myself with the side of Justice. While I am an important part of the continuing legacy of progress in racial relations, I also consider myself heir to an older tradition – that of the free thinker, in the vein of great men such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the American Founding Fathers, Louis CK, and Julian Assange.

The same intellectually untethered nature that has allowed me to free myself from the shackles of white privilege is what allows me

to rise above popular discourse and see the limitations of such constructs as critical race theory.

It is now that I declare we must set race aside, and defend the fundamental right to Free Speech. I call for the sleeping legions of Social Justice Warriors (and Mages, and Paladins) to log out of their Tumblr accounts and join me, hand in hand, as we defend the rights of established media institutions dominated by the voice of privileged people to criticize whatever they see fit. It is the job of comedy, after all, to critique the world indiscriminately, allowing humor that punches up, down, or whichever direction is necessary to make me laugh. Because in reality, there is no “up” or “down,” there is only humor that punches laterally. Are we not all equals as (wo)Men? Without luminaries such as Dane Cook,

Carlos Mencia, and Jeff Dunham, where would we be? Really, who better to comment on the oppressive North Korean regime than the man who managed to bring lighthearted humour to the darkness that is accidentally impregnating a beautiful woman? And while certain aspects of Charlie Hebdo’s content might hurt the feelings of Muslims and French people of colour, it really reflects poorly on them to bring this up in discussions of the freedom of the press following the mourning of the massacre’s victims. Have they no thought for solidarity?

All I really want is to make a better, more rational world for the 2-to-3 adorable, mixed-race moppets I plan to sire at some point in my mid-thirties, providing I can find an appropriately sexy halfThai, half-black Art History grad student to be their mother.

Whites Templar ride to the rescue Challenge made to reverse racism at McGall goes wrong

Lucy Peaseblossom The McGall Weekly

O

n January 18, Queer McGall, a student-run service for queer people and allies, faced unprecedented criticism for limiting attendance at workshops during its Rad Sex Week event series. One event, entitled “Desires: A QT*POC Exploration,” was closed to queer and trans people of colour. Do-gooders the campus over erupted in principled fury over such overt reverse racism, and called on both students and the administration to adopt a strict anti-oppression program — in part because of the nice symmetry this would create with the already existing austerity program.

“You know, I never gave any serious thought to this anti-o shit until now,” said Whitey McCracker, a U1 Patriarchy Administration student in an interview with The

Weekly. “This is a chance for me to intrude on something that doesn’t involve me, and to put my degree to practice. So I think it’s great!”

Although Queer McGall’s event excited a strange joy in students of Patriarchy Administration, others were genuinely insulted. A group of self-satisfied students, dressed in suits in an awkward attempt at showing authority, convened a closed meeting to discuss resistance tactics.

“This is actually quite a tricky situation,” explained Pomp N’sercumsdance, a Brain Thinky Science student and anti-reverse racism activist, after the meeting.

“This attack is an example of unacceptable and oppressive exclusion — but we can’t pass a motion to postpone indefinitely this time. No… this requires a new type of witchcraft.”

“Rest assured we’re taking decisive action to reassert our position,” he continued in an annoy-

Political animals: answers Across 1.

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Pig Human Cow Sheep Elephant Mouse Horse Dog

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ingly conspiratorial tone.

Quickly afterward, the Weekly interviewer decided they had had enough of N’sercumsdance’s sensationalist bullshit and bribed him with candy stolen from the SHMU nursery in order to reveal his secrets. N’sercumsdance went on to reveal that anti-reverse racism activists were pooling resources to summon the ancient order of the Whites Templar, historically tasked with protecting crusaders from reverse racism in Holy Land.

“Wow. Much interesting development,” commented Professor Doge Sanscomic, who reads popular histories when lonely. “So history. So protection from reverse racism. Much excite,” they continued.

The Whites Templar mysteriously disappeared from Palestine during the thirteenth century, though rumours persisted for centuries that they had gone underground in order to hide the pre-

cious Ark of the Covenant from queer people of colour. The shock reemergence of the medieval order on January 30 thus caused a stir; dozens of heavily armoured Whites Templar rode up McTavish, chanting their battle cry: “protect the silent majority.”

Huddled in fear, it transpired that the ‘silent majority’ who had turned out to greet the knights turned were actually an angry gaggle of around ten bros. Manic but inspired cries for help went up as they rushed down the steps of the Shtaneer building, like lost sheep joining the flock.

Sir Robert de Douche, noted leader of the Whites Templar, stepped from his horse and addressed the assembled bros. “Never fear, good carriers of the flame. We will reckon with the queer people of colour, who coveteth not your excellent presence.”

“Too long have righteous

brethren wallowed in fear of the QTPOC. Too often have brethren been cast aside. Resist, brethren, lest you be banished from all of Rad Sex Week merriment.”

“The fuck bro? Wanna speak English or something?” demanded N’sercumsdance.

“You’re in Quebec! This is an Englishspeaking country!”

Weekly journalists witnessed members of the resistance group as they became increasingly agitated, torn between their hatred for exclusion in general, and their love for exclusion of immigrants.

The logical impossibility of the competing positions was such that it created a rift in the fabric of space-time in front of the Shtaneer building. The Whites Templar and the reverse racism resistance group were sucked in.

“Wow. Much divide by zero,” commented Sanscomic after witnessing the event.

AREN’T THINGS HORRIBLE? WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO JUST YELL “FUCK THIS?” WELL YOU CAN. WRITE A RANT.

fuckthis@mcgilldaily.com