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News
The McGill Daily | Monday, January 24, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
3
Work group holds open house VP Abaki optimistic about increasing student consultation; Mendelson absent Mari Galloway
The McGill Daily
C
ommon themes of mistrust and anger over the McGill administration’s lack of transparency and student consultation in decision-making processes and committees surfaced at the open forum hosted by the Student Consultation and Communication Work Group in the McConnell Engineering building last Friday. The lack of student consultation on controversial issues such as the closure of the Architecture Café was likely one of the main motivations for the Work Group. It was created by Deputy Provost Student Life and Learning Morton Mendelson – who was conspicuously absent from the meeting – with a mandate “to broadly consider, and make recommendations about, the methods used to consult and communicate with students.” Engineering Senator Andrew Doyle commented on the nature of existing consultation committees. “Committees deal much more with the how than the what. It is very difficult for a student representative to actually add an agenda item to a committee, and I think part of the frustration of students is that we’re always talking about what the administration wants to
talk about, and not what we want to talk about.” The open forum was organized to allow students to contribute ideas and suggestions to the committee, which will submit its recommendations to Mendelson in February. The atmosphere of the forum remained largely respectful and constructive, though frustration was palpable over what one student referred to as the “kids vs. grownups attitude” with which the administration deals with students in regards to decision making processes. Students repeatedly stressed the difference between consultation and being involved in consensus building. Forum moderator Finn Upham – a graduate student and committee member – said the difference came to whether “students want to be customers or community members in terms of decision making.” Many students referred to the current decision-making process as a system that weighted the power away from students in a way unacceptable for a university. “The University and administration takes pride in the fact that we have some of the smartest students from across the country at this university. We are very capable of taking matters seriously and contributing to the process,” said Arts Senator Tyler Lawson.
Dave Huehn | The McGill Daily
Students posed questions to a senate working group on student consultation Friday. The audience was quick to accede that it was clear that students and administration would not always agree. However, many saw this as irrelevant to the fundamental need to be consulted and have clear access to information about campus issues. In his closing remarks, the chair
of the Committee, Physics professor Paul Wiseman, said that he was “incredibly impressed in terms of the constructive atmosphere.” Joshua Abaki, SSMU VP University Affairs, and the student representative for the committee, thought the forum was effective.
“I felt that this meeting was very, very helpful. We got a lot of really, really good comments, especially on where things have gone wrong. I am looking forward to the next meeting, and looking at how we can integrate the solutions that were suggested,” said Abaki.
Concordia senate calls for resignation of BoG chair Niko Block
The McGill Daily
I
n the wake of the surprise resignation of Concordia’s President Judith Woodsworth last month, the University’s senate passed a unanimous motion Friday calling for the resignation of the chair of the university’s Board of Governors (BoG), Peter Kruyt. The motion came on the heels of a BoG decision earlier that morning to re-appoint Frederick Lowy as interim President while the university attempts to sort out a governance crisis that has sent the campus into turmoil in recent weeks. Though she initially claimed she was stepping down for “personal reasons,” the circumstances of Woodsworth’s resignation remain shrouded in mystery and conjecture. She later confirmed that she was discreetly forced to resign by the BoG itself. The board’s motivations may remain unclear, and students and faculty alike are incensed by the administration’s lack of transparency in this matter. The past two weeks have seen a spate of resolutions from the union’s faculty departments, student groups, and employee unions – all roundly criticizing the BoG’s silence on the matter of Woodsworth’s resignation.
Another serious concern has been the severance packages the university has doled out to the numerous high-level administrators who have resigned in recent months. Woodsworth herself will receive a payout to the tune of $703,500 – the equivalent of two years’ pay – stipulated in her contract. Her predecessor in the university’s presidency resigned under similarly opaque circumstances in 2007, and received over $1 million as part of his severance package. Concordia’s VP Advancement and Alumni Relations Kathy Assayag, and VP Services Michael Di Grappa have also resigned this year – McGill has since hired Di Grappa as its new VP (Administration and Finance). Maria Peluso, the president of the university’s part-time faculty association, has stated that, as a “conservative” estimate, the university has shelled out $10 million in severance packages and early retirement payouts in the past decade. This number remains subject to speculation, however, given the confidential nature of the contracts the university has signed with its upper-level administrators. “They seem to be signing nondisclosure contracts, leaving everyone in the dark,” said Erik Chevrier, one of the graduate students on senate. “This is extremely prob-
lematic to university governance, especially given that the university is a public institution and they seem to be giving out all these golden parachutes.” When pressed for details on Woodsworth’s resignation, Kruyt has emphasized that her contract with the university demands a certain degree of confidentiality, and that those stipulations should be respected. Many of the statements issued by faculty groups call for a full independent audit of “all extra payments made to former senior administrators as well as others still working in the senior administration.” In addition to the motion urging Kruyt’s resignation, the senate – composed of 27 faculty members and 16 students – passed two other motions Friday afternoon demanding reform at the BoG level. All three passed unanimously. One called for the establishment of a Special Governance Commission to investigate the details of Woodsworth’s resignation and make recommendations accordingly. The other demanded that the university strike a hiring committee composed in equal parts of senate members and BoG members to oversee the future appointment of board members chosen to repre-
sent the community at large – a task that has hitherto been undertaken by the board itself. “It’s problematic if they’re appointing themselves, and we’ve seen the results of that,” said Chevrier. Concordia Student Union (CSU) president Heather Lucas acknowledged that several students feel a serious “disconnect” with the BoG, and said she hopes that Friday’s senate meeting will have some sort of meaningful impact on the Board’s operations “It’s a good start for clarifying governance at Concordia,” she said. “This is not a problem that’s going to get solved overnight. ... It takes a whole collective effort to move forward.” Half of the BoG’s 46 members represent the “community-at-large,” meaning they are not on the university’s payroll. The vast majority of these members hold executive positions at large Montreal-based businesses. Many of the public statements made by the faculty departments in recent weeks also express concern that these BoG members intend to further reduce faculty representation on the Board. “We are concerned that the community-at-large members should represent the community-at-large, and not just elite business mem-
bers,” said Chevrier. He added that none of these members attended the Senate meeting in the afternoon, where they could have addressed the concerns being raised by students and faculty. “I think that’s extremely troubling. It seems this is a situation that was made by them, but they’re unwilling to explain anything.” The development speaks to a growing distrust among students and faculty of the external members of the BoG. Many have seen their terms expire, but remain on the BoG. A motion passed by CSU on January 12 called for the immediate resignation of all of these members “as per their own by-laws.” Despite the turmoil and widespread distrust of the BoG, Lucas is confident that Lowy, the incoming interim president, will help solve the crisis of confidence the university’s governance structures seem to be facing. “He seems very genuine about meeting everyone at the table – students, faculty, and staff. All the professors he met with couldn’t say anything negative...so this is a sign of hope for us to get us back on track. … We need to move forward and learn from our mistakes and make sure this never happens again.”
4 News
The McGill Daily | Monday, January 24, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
Dispute arises with local union Farid Rener
News Writer
T
he Mohawk Council of Kahnawake passed a directive on Monday, January 10 to implement the Kahnawake Trades Qualifications Program, which will ensure that ironworkers from the reservation are the first to be picked to work on the construction of the Honoré Mercier bridge. When the bridge was built between the Mohawk Nation of Kahnawake and the Montreal borough of LaSalle in 1932, legislation was put in place to ensure that work on the bridge would be undertaken primarily by Mohawk workers. However, both the Commission de la construction du Québec (CCQ) and the local chapter of the ironworkers union, Local 711, have contested this in the past. Local 711 has tried to kick Mohawk workers off the bridge project if they didn’t have CCQ cards identifying union membership. Joe Delaronde, Kahnawake political press attaché, told The Daily “the first phase of construction was done extremely well. However, not all the workers have Quebec union qualifications.”
Chief Rhonda Kirby, who sits on the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK), explained, “Almost ninety per cent of the workers in Kahnawake are unionized ironworkers, but most of them have their qualifications from the United States.” The Trades Qualification agreement will be a pact between the MCK and the provincial government, and will institute a committee of three people that will declare if workers are qualified. The committee will be composed of two qualified trades workers with over ten years of experience, and one community member from Kahnawake. According to Kirby, this agreement will also allow Mohawk health and safety inspectors to carry out inspections in place of the CCQ. In 2009, soon after the $67-million contract was awarded to the Kahnawake-based Mohawk Bridge Consortium (MBC), Local 711 started making allegations about the working conditions on the bridge, while arguing that MBC workers were not recognized under CCQ. They even went as far as threatening some Mohawk union members with the loss of their union books.
At a 2009 press conference held at the Palais de Justice de Montréal, Jacques Dubois, spokesperson for Local 711, was asked whether the union was looking for a portion of the contract which is the largest of its kind in Canada. “It’s not [wanting] a piece of the pie, the contracts in the past were either chipping the concrete or painting. Local 711 represents its local members of the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, Reinforcing Ironworkers. Our trade jurisdiction was not involved in the past in the work that’s been done there,” said Dubois. The two-phase construction project to replace the entire deck of the Mercier bridge for the first time since its construction in 1934, is slated to prolong the bridge’s life for 75 years. The second phase of construction was contracted out to Pomerleau, a private company from SaintGeorges, Quebec which must honour the Trades Qualification Program. “I heard some grumblings from the union about this agreement,” Kirby told The Daily. “Any contractor is now required to work with qualified Kahnawake
workers.” Delaronde added, “This program will help provide future contractors with a pool of highly qualified workers. ... We are trying to create an atmosphere of trust.” The bridge is a crucial transport artery to and from the south shore – 29.5 million vehicles use the bridge every year – and has recently been showing signs of age. In July a twoby-three foot portion of the road fell into the river, requiring multiple lane closures and re-routing of traffic. In December, there were worries that the guard rails which prevent vehicles from falling into the river were not strong enough. The construction work has employed between thirty and 120 workers from Kahnawake. When asked whether this new program would put Mohawk iron-workers currently employed on the bridge out of work, Kirby said it was out of the question. “This is what these people do. We have some very experienced workers who work on these bridges,” she said. MBC Chairman Wayne Rice and Local 711 spokesperson Jacques Dubois could not be reached for comment specifically for the Daily at publication time.
“It is not because of WikiLeaks”
A local organizer talks about the situation in Tunisia
H
aroun Bouazzi is a member of the group Collectif de solidarité au Canada avec les luttes sociales en Tunisie, and helped organize the thousands-strong rally January 14 in support of the recent revolution in Tunisia, which overthrew fiveterm President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. The Daily interviewed him last Tuesday about the ongoing turmoil in his home country. The McGill Daily: Mohamed Bouazzi set himself on fire in Tunisia in December, an act which helped spark the protests leading to the downfall of President Ben Ali. In the past week self-immolation tactics have spread to Cairo, Algeria, and Mauritania. In your opinion how does this tactic fit into Muslim beliefs and society? Haroun Bouazzi: It is really interesting because suicide is totally against Muslim culture. It is clearly prohibited in Islam and really represents how desperate the people are. You know we have to remember that these people that died are human beings that, you know, committed suicide. Now, what happened in Tunisia is showing the way to a lot of people that feel this oppression and feel that the lack of freedom, and the lack of justice,
social justice. And we will see more and more of that in all of the Arab world. MD: Do you think this is an indication of a more widespread influence of the “Jasmine Revolution” throughout the Muslim world? HB: Oh yes, you know the Arab world has almost exactly the same history for the past 13 centuries. So we have the Ottomans, the Umayyad, the Turkish, and the occupation by the English and the French, and then the English and the French left and we have dictatorships everywhere. And all these events happened at the same time with a couple of years of difference for the past 13 centuries. So if democracy, and we’re not yet there, but if democracy will work in Tunisia through this revolution, this might actually lead the entire Arab world to go on that path. MD: Some claim the revolution is another example of the influence of WikiLeaks on state politics, while others disagree. What is your view? HB: I don’t think WikiLeaks played a big role in that. Though it is very useful to know that, you know, the American intelligence knew that Tunisia was boiling and was going to explode at any
time. But, for sure, this revolution was made by Tunisian people and just because of a struggle for justice, and it is not because of WikiLeaks. MD: What role do you think Tunisians living outside of Tunisia have played in the revolution, and what is your next move? HB: So, the role actually was big because of the fact that we entered the media here was very important – you know Ben Ali maybe wanted to kill Tunisians in the streets, but because the Canadian media, the French media, was watching him closely, he only – if I may use that word, killed 72 persons – which is already, of course, too much. Our next move right now is very hard to tell because the situation in Tunisia is changing every six hours. You know we had two presidents in sixty years and now we had two in 48 hours. People are withdrawing from the government, new faces are coming into the government, and people are still in the streets and we have a new thing, we did this revolution alone. The Tunisian people had no help from any outside power whatsoever, but now there are a lot of powers, especially in the Arab world, dictatorships in the
Arab world, that don’t want this experience to succeed. So now we’ll have new things to deal with, which is that intelligence services are going to try to destroy the experience. MD: How do you feel about the Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD) still holding 161 of the 214 seats in the legislative assembly? Do you trust Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi’s government to implement change? HB: The promises of Mr. Ghannouchi are very promising, though we have to be very careful and the pressure has to still be there in the street, in the national movements, so that he actually does what he has said. You know he said that he was going to create an independent institution for the next election under international supervision, which means basically good steps towards democracy. He said he was going to recognize every political party that hasn’t been recognized so far, which is a good step towards democracy. Now we have to be very careful and pressure has to remain so that we actually have real elections and we get rid of anyone that the people of Tunisia don’t want in the parliament. —Compiled by Nic van Beek
WHAT’S THE HAPS
Mohawk ironworkers assured work on Mercier bridge
Launching McGill’s food sustainability strategy Monday, January 31st, 6 p.m. Leacock, Room 26 Interested in local, sustainable food? Next Monday, come for a presentation from B.C. broadcaster Jon Steinman (host of the nationally acclaimed show “Deconstructing Dinner”), free food, and the opportunity to have input on the launch of McGill’s first sustainability strategy for food.
Sustainability Projects Fund Application deadline: Friday, January 28 The upcoming Sustainability Projects Fund application deadline is next Friday, January 28 and is accepting project proposals to engage the McGill community in working toward sustainability. Proposals could be applied research through course work, collaborations with McGill staff, or projects to engage students in making change. Approximately $800,000 is available for student initiatives. Current projects include Campus Crops, Farmers’ Market, and La Cave Bike Collective. Contact SPF administrator Lilith Wyatt at lilith.wyatt@ mcgill.ca or 514-398-8826 to get involved.
Social Justice Days 2011 Opening Event Monday, January 24th, 5 p.m.-9 p.m. Shatner Ballroom, 3rd Floor Come fight the winter blues with QPIRG McGill, CKUT and the Midnight Kitchen! Always wanted to know how to knit? Make a zine? Create your own radio show? Were you pumped up from Rad Frosh but too busy first semester to get involved? Come join us for a QPIRG McGill social, catered by the Midnight Kitchen and with skill sharing activities organized by CKUT, the Union for Gender Empowerment, Ste. Emilie Skillshare, and more.
SynesthAsia Fashion Show Friday, January 28, 9 p.m. Telus Theatre, 1280 St-Denis SynesthAsia presents feature designers from Montreal including Anomal Couture, Anastasia Lomonova, Valérie Dumaine, and Preloved. The event will help raise money and awareness for the Abhilasha Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to change in India and throughout the developing world. Money raised will go toward building a new, environmentally sustainable school for underprivileged, handicapped children in the province of Rajnandgaon in India.
News
The McGill Daily | Monday, January 24, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
5
McGill seeks “transactions” with more students New enrolment plan set to change recruitment priorities, deregulate international tuition rates
Projected global demand for international education (thousands of international students) Quebec population age 17-29 (number of people)
8,000 7,000
1, 500,000
6,000
1, 420,000
5,000 4,000
1,340,000
3,000
1,260,000
2,000
1,180,000
1,000 0
1991
2000
2005
2010
2015
2020
1997
2025
Year
Henry Gass
The McGill Daily
A
n unprecedented plan to manage McGill’s student enrolment for the next decade is currently circulating through the various forums that create University policy, and will be presented to Senate for approval March 23. The Strategic Enrolment Management (SEM) plan outlines a broad tactical approach to enrolment management for the University – including increased recruitment of graduate and international students – from now up until 2016. Morton Mendelson, Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning), described the plan as something that “aligns our broad objectives with respect to enrolment at McGill, and our goals under each of those objectives.” “An Enrolment Management plan is something that many universities have. We’ve had objectives defined, but not in as much detail and not as coherently as will appear in this plan. So that’s one of the things that was missing,” said Mendelson.
Strategically targeting empty seats One of the “fundamental goals” targeted in the consultation draft of the SEM plan includes “increases targeted in specific programs,” yet Mendelson emphasized that the SEM plan does not strictly focus on enrolment numbers. When asked which programs were targeted for increases in enrolment, Mendelson answered, “It’s not that kind of a plan.” “It’s not just about num-
bers. Enrolment management is essentially about the students’ experience, and it’s about the University’s transaction with students from the time they first visit our website to explore the idea of applying to McGill, through…their transactions with the University when they’re here, and then beyond when they’re alumni,” he said. Mendelson identified programs in the Faculty of Engineering – such as the Department of Mining and Materials – and those at Macdonald Campus as programs that could be targeted for increases. “This kind of thinking is very specific to specific programs here and there across the University,” said Mendelson. Another program that could see increased enrolment is the School of Computer Science. When asked whether Computer Science was targeted for enrolment increases, Gregory Dudek, Director of the School, answered that “it looks like it.” Dudek, however, attributed such forecast increases to exterior influences, as opposed to a specific McGill agenda. Dudek said the dot-com crash around the year 2000 led to a sharp decrease in Computer Science enrolment, so that now, as a result, the department has more room to accommodate increases.
“Threats” The SEM plan identifies various “threats” to McGill’s enrolment aspirations, including escalating competition and McGill’s “Research Profile.” Mendelson described these threats as possible competition from other universities, and that of McGill not fulfilling its own high standards.
2003
2009
2015
2021
2027 2030
1,100,000
Year Source: McGill University Strategic Enrolment Management Plan, 2011 - 2016, Consultation Draft
The SEM plan reads that “we must be mindful of threats to our reputation.” “McGill was the most researchintensive university in Canada, but that’s no longer the case. So that’s a threat to our reputation,” said Mendelson. “We are striving to be as studentcentred as possible, but we’re not there yet, obviously,” continued Mendelson. “The degree to which students evaluate the University – as not providing as positive an undergraduate experience as they would like, for example – is a threat to our reputation.” Mendelson also pointed out that McGill has been putting less effort into the recruitment of American high school students in recent years, saying that “complacency” with this constituted yet another threat to McGill’s reputation. “In a recent survey – recent market research in the U.S. – we’ve learned that most U.S. high school students haven’t heard about McGill,” said Mendelson. “So the quality of the reputation, and just having McGill front-ofmind, is something that we can’t be complacent about. We can’t assume that that’s the case,” he continued. In order to neutralize some of these threats, the draft consultation SEM plan prescribed various solutions, including shifting the University’s recruitment focus to the southern and western United States – where the universityaged population is expected to grow – and to Colorado, where the SEM plan says “the nation’s best students (approximated by SAT scores)” are, as well as developing relations with “the strongest students” by grade ten.
Deregulating diversity A central goal of the SEM plan is increased international student enrolment, particularly from countries like India and China. The consultation draft of the SEM plan describes McGill’s desire to increase the overall international student body to approximately 22 per cent of all McGill students by 2016, possibly to offset an anticipated decline in Quebec student enrolment. According to the consultation draft, “Statistics Canada data suggest that there will be a peak in enrolment in postsecondary institutions in Quebec in 2009-10, which should then be maintained for the following four years, prior to a steep decline, bottoming out in 2025-26.” Total McGill enrolment is projected to decline 6.9 per cent from 2013 to 2022, while enrolment in all Quebec universities is projected to decline 9.2 per cent over roughly the same period. The SEM draft notes that competition for students from these countries will increase due to the “improvement in the educational systems of former ‘sending countries’ (e.g. China).” The SEM plan projects that China and India alone will generate over half the global demand in international higher education by 2025. In order to tap into this swelling reservoir of students, McGill has begun a number of international recruitment schemes. Mendelson said that McGill often participates in joint missions abroad with other Quebec universities as well as with the Quebec and federal governments. “I myself, for example, was in India a number of years ago, on the Quebec mission,” said Mendelson.
McGill also carries its own independent missions abroad, according to Mendelson, including having faculty and graduate students pitch the University to potential students while they are either back in their home country or attending conferences. “Our goals and our business is not one hundred per cent aligned necessarily with all the other universities. So it’s a mix of participating, lending our support to efforts that can benefit all universities in Quebec…and at the same time advancing our own interests,” said Mendelson. In the same breath as it advocates for an increase in the international student population, the draft consultation SEM plan aims to “pursue the deregulation of tuition for international undergraduate students.” When the Quebec government set international tuition, that revenue was taken by the government and redistributed throughout all Quebec universities. “The money that international students paid for tuition to come to McGill did not stay in McGill,” said Mendelson. In 2008, Quebec deregulated international tuition for six disciplines, of which McGill has four – Law, Engineering, Management, and Science – and allows McGill to keep all of that tuition money. According to Mendelson, thirty per cent of net revenue derived from tuition is going to student aid. “That is important because it means that our students can get the benefit of the tuition they’re actually paying, and it’s important to the University because we end up having increased revenue,” said Mendelson.
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Commentary
The McGill Daily | Monday, January 24, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
7
Bring the noise Violating admissions criteria can help ensure they are effective The character of community Adrian Kaats
adrian.kaats@mcgilldaily.com
O
ur academic institutions and their programs of study are systems like any other: they accept some kind of input, and transform those inputs into some kind of output. In this case, the inputs are applicants, and the outputs are people who either graduate with some overall grade, drop out, or are kicked out. Admissions criteria pretend to filter out those who are deemed a priori not to have the capacities to complete a program of study. The criteria might seem reasonable on their face, but do they actually select correctly? How did admissions criteria arise? Faced with limited capacity, academic institutions developed criteria to select applicants to whom places in programs of study would be awarded. These criteria, however, are arbitrary. In almost all cases, admission to post-secondary education (PSE) programs depends most heavily on final secondary school grades. However, study after study re-confirms that secondary school grades and standardized testing such as the SATs are little
better than a flip of a coin at predicting PSE success. There are two very important implications, then, of using grades and test scores to regulate admissions. First, students with low test scores might be prejudicially barred access to PSE. Second, given the repeatedly demonstrated fact that better standardized test scores, and to a lesser extent school grades, are correlated to socio-economic status, using these as selection criteria shifts these little better than random selection criteria from the general pool of applicants into the wealthy pool. The same socio-economic status differentiation likely applies to admission criteria such as interviews, where the well coached and “put together” outperform their less polished, “DIY” counterparts. How then might administrators come to sensible and less arbitrary admissions decisions? The answer might be fairly simple: intentionally and systematically violate each admissions criterion for a percentage of admitted applicants. The idea is to see if those that don’t meet a criterion might succeed were they nevertheless admitted. There are two possible outcomes. An admissions criterion might turn out to be virtually useless. Alternatively, we might better quantify how individu-
Roxana Parsa for The McGill Daily
al criteria should factor into admission decisions – that is, how good or bad of a predictor of “success” the criterion is, and what impact it should have on applicant ranking. This idea was tested in the sixties and seventies at Williams College in Massachusetts. Over a ten-year double-blind experiment, ten per cent of admissions were drawn from applicants that failed to meet the college’s grade and test score criteria. The result: 71 per cent of those admitted in flagrante still graduated, down only 14
per cent from the college’s overall average. Seems like they were very much onto something. As it turns out, this principle is used in an engineering field called system identification: when faced with a “black box” – a system whose internal workings you can’t figure out – you can still develop accurate predictions of how it will respond to inputs by injecting it with random inputs (a.k.a. “noise”) and seeing how it responds. In fact, applying this technique to what are thought to be well-characterized
systems sometimes elicits output from a system that theretofore you had no idea was possible. Why not treat our PSE system with similar analytical rigour? One might argue that it isn’t fair to exclude in the name of social experimentation a few people from their “rightful” spot based on current admissions criteria. But if the criteria are flawed, then they may have been unfairly excluding others from a prized gift for decades, and that situation is what the evidence points to. !
Can Korean partition be undone? Red star over Asia Ted Sprague
ted.sprague@mcgilldaily.com
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orth Korea is acting like “a spoiled child,” a highranking Chinese official said in a leaked cable. It is a spoiled child – one with nuclear capabilities, although the extent to which they can be deployed is highly questionable. And if you stop and think about it, almost everything about North Korea is questionable. No one seems to know what’s really happening in this hermit kingdom. There are so many “unknown unknowns,” but this is exactly the “unknown unknown” every ruler needs to maintain a siege mentality over their population. Pyongyang needs the narrative that every
WAIT
country in the world is out to get them. Western democracies need a caricatural form of communism. We have here a mutualistic relationship where the only losers are the regular Joes and Janes and their Korean counterparts. North Korea’s military might is highly exaggerated. If Western powers intended to take North Korea out, they could do so easily. In any war between two countries, the one with higher productive capacity will always be the victor. The brilliance of this or that general might play a role, but only within the confines of what’s possible. With this in mind, then for the longest time, North Korea – a country plagued with famine and dependent on the UN to feed its population – has not been a real threat to the far superior South Korea. Of course, the game changes when the conflict
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on the Korean peninsula becomes a proxy war between different superpowers. In that case, we’re no longer talking merely about the respective military power of the North or the South. However, the Cold War having ended more than twenty years ago, China has less and less interest in defending North Korea. According to a leaked cable, Chun Yung-woo, national security adviser to President Lee Myung-Bak, confided to the U.S. ambassador to South Korea that China “would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the U.S. in a ‘benign alliance’ as long as Korea was not hostile towards China.” Others will argue that the advent of nuclear capabilities has changed the war game; that now, even a small poor country, as long as it possesses a nuclear war-
head, can pose the same threat as a superpower with hundreds of them. However, this view does not take into account the fact that there’s a common understanding that the use of nuclear missiles would mean mutually assured destruction. Since the HiroshimaNagasaki bombings in 1945, many wars have been fought without these horrifying weapons. The stockpiled nuclear warheads have instead become an economic burden, and hence they’re continuously being dismantled. At the end of the day, both sides – the North and the South with their allies – are not looking to duke it out. If anything, North Korean officials are looking forward to opening themselves and even reunification. They look at their Chinese “comrades-in-arms,” many of whom have converted themselves into successful, pros-
perous bureaucrats and tycoons by auctioning off their subjects’ cheap labour – and the North Koreans aspire to that. It’s true that these North Korean officials are already living lavishly compared to millions of their hungry fellow citizens, but their desire knows no bounds. These so-called “communists” seek to reunify with capitalist South Korea and to participate in the global market on their own terms, with their privileges secured – and improved. They have to do so without causing social turmoil because, for decades, they have indoctrinated their people with the concept of Juche, of self-sufficiency, of thewhole-world-is-out-to-get-us. Can the people of North Korea break this spell? Yes, but not by themselves, because their fate is tied to their Southern siblings, and certainly not through secret dealings and diplomacy. !
Brendan Shanahan on the “bastardization” of the U.S. constitution Jacob Kanter on why Sarah Palin won’t run for president
8 Commentary
The McGill Daily | Friday, January 24, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
HYDE PARK
Our campus community McGill groups speak out in QPIRG’s defence
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he Quebec Public Interest Research Group at McGill (QPIRG McGill) is a thirty-year-old organization dedicated to raising student voices through community organizing, social justice activism, and environmental initiatives. Certain groups on campus, including Conservative McGill, have launched a disparaging campaign urging students to opt out of the student fees that finance this vital organization’s work. We, SSMU’s student services, have decided that it’s our turn to raise voices in support of QPIRG: we urge students to opt in. For more information about QPIRG McG ll, go to qpirgmcgill.org.
Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily
The Union for Gender Empowerment (UGE) strongly supports the work of QPIRG McGill. QPIRG is an important resource for a wide range of students and community members providing a much-needed space for student learning, organizing, and action. These studentinitiated campus-community links foster meaningful social and environmental change, creating space for students to actively and continually question and engage with various issues of local, provincial, national, and global importance. The UGE has a long history of invaluable collaboration with QPIRG on a number of successful events. Through current programming such as Rad Frosh, Social Justice Days, and working group initiatives in urban agriculture, migrant justice, grassroots media, and more, QPIRG has proven essential to developing and maintaining dynamic forums for student growth and community involvement. The UGE encourages all students, faculty, and staff to learn more about QPIRG and get involved.
Queer McGill stands firmly in solidarity with QPIRG, a vital organization that advances justice for diverse communities on campus and throughout Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and the world. Through student-directed research, education, and activism, QPIRG makes heard a multitude of voices that institutions, corporate media, and mainstream politics would seek to silence. Like Queer McGill, QPIRG McGill is committed to fighting oppression in all of its intersecting forms. We therefore reject the deceptive “optout” campaign initiated by Conservative McGill, a non-opt-outable student-funded club that semester after semester seeks to falsely frame QPIRG as a fringe group devoted to undermining democratic society. Rad Frosh, Culture Shock, an alternative library, and Campus Crops are among the many popular initiatives that would not exist without the work of QPIRG. Queer McGill urges all students to opt in.
Midnight Kitchen is a non-profit collective that provides affordable vegan food to as many people as possible. We provide free or by-donation vegan lunches five days a week, Monday through Friday, at 12:30 in the SSMU building. Midnight Kitchen has grown substantially, both in the number of meals served weekly and in our volunteer base. In the Spring semester of 2007, we successfully campaigned for a student levy of $2.50 per student each year. This allowed us to serve more people, diversify our food selection, and improve our kitchen. As a service at McGill, we support QPIRG and the work that they do, especially their “Campus Crops” initiative that provides us with wonderful fresh produce. We urge students to opt in. —Midnight Kitchen
The Black Students’ Network is in complete support of QPIRG McGill, an organization “opposed to all forms of discrimination on the basis of: class, gender, race, sexual orientation, and dis/ ability,” and actively strives to make the McGill community a community of safe space. As a service that fully supports and advocates for opportunities for all students regardless of race and ethnicity, we must in good judgment reject the efforts initiated by Conservative McGill that encourage students to optout of QPIRG. A vital organization for the McGill community, QPIRG allows for alternate events that cater to the interests of all students, such as Rad Frosh, Culture Shock, and Campus Crops. This is just one of the many reasons why we, the Black Students’ Network, urge all students to support QPIRG and opt in. —Black Students’ Network
—Queer McGill
—Union for Gender Empowerment
University activism: more style than substance Adam Baginski Hyde Park
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ocated in the centre of the SSMU building are two large banners celebrating SSMU’s history. These banners display various photographs of young people, presumably past McGill students and SSMU members, doing things such as protesting, making announcements, and generally looking fashionable and intelligent in that “university” sort of way. While it’s probably safe to assume that the modern McGill student would approve of whatever the people in those photographs were doing, none of us really know. To the best of our knowledge, the
protestors could have been against American racial integration, the announcer could be calling for mass suicide, and those intelligent looking people could be absolutely fried on some vile combination of barbiturates and alcohol. So why is it that when we look at those posters, we feel kind of warm inside? We feel as if those images are impressive, and we take pride in being a part of a tradition. We don’t know what anyone in any of the pictures is doing or stands for, but just the image of university students who look at once young, fun, rebellious, sophisticated, mature, groundbreaking, and world-changing makes us feel good. Those people are cool: we want to be just like them. Despite their attractiveness,
these images are vague, and that vagueness is what appeals to us the most. In the past, the images mounted on walls of universities were often paintings of great statesmen, scholars, scientists, and other people of action. But to look at their images is to be challenged, because those people actually accomplished something. To be a part of that tradition, to be like those people, you have to work hard, generally have a keen intellect, think in a fresh and different manner, and do something to set yourself apart from the pack. Even if you do all of that, you still run the risk of failure. And that failure isn’t failure as part of a group; it’s your own personal failure. To fit into the modern, vague university image, you just have to
look the part – so really it’s impossible to fail. Just dress right, believe in anti-oppression (because you need to be distinguished from all those pro-oppression people on campus), remember that the administration is always “bad” and anything student-run is always “good” (especially if it’s organic), use meaningless words that nobody can disagree with (empowerment, marginalization), and you too can feel like a wave in the great tides of history! You are great! Unfortunately, for the most part, nobody takes any of this seriously because for accomplishments and ideas to be pondered and valued, they must be concrete. Concrete successes and failures teach us lessons which lead to personal
growth, be it intellectual or emotional. When you never experience success and failure, when you just meander inside your comfort zone, when you maintain the look of the people in the image, you never have an opportunity for personal growth. Just as our muscles require constant challenge to become bigger and stronger, our brains and intellect grow when they are exercised. So next time you do or see something that makes you feel warm inside, ask yourself: Where’s the challenge? Most times you’ll probably find that there isn’t one. Adam Baginski is a U3 Civil Engineering student. Write him at adam.baginski@mail.mcgill.ca.
Letters
The McGill Daily | Monday, January 24, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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Re: “Report reveals student displeasure” | News | January 20
Why the hell isn’t there a whole article about the fact that one third of students of colour have felt uncomfortable about their race or ethnicity at McGill?! Maddie Guerlain B.A. (Honours) 2010, International Development Studies; QPIRG McGill Board Member
A totally consensual society would have perverse consequences Re: “There is an alternative” | Commentary | January 13 I was reminded in reading this article of a set piece in Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story. The U.S. government of the near future has erected signposts at all entrances and exits to and from the country that declare the reader is entering into a legal obligation by virtue of reading the sign: “By Reading This You Are Implying Consent.” Certainly it’s an absurd example, but in taking the logic of implied consent to its culmination, the ridiculous structure that underlies it is made evident. Implied consent is obviously a mechanism of state control/power, but it is also more and less than that, especially when considered in the romantic sphere, for instance. Is a “consensual society” one in which people legalistically request sexual favours from their partners? Doesn’t the perceived need to verbalize desire speak to an original lack of understanding and intimacy (as in, if the lovers were truly close there would be no need to ask) or the weakness of the desire (if you really desired your lover, you would not hesitate by asking)? Another question: isn’t the verbalization itself simply the liberal-left inversion of the totalitarian logic of implied consent? Doesn’t such a declaration in essence say, “By hearing this request you are obliged to make a judgment about my sexual desirability?” One could of course argue that the request need not be made;
Erratum
In “Synagogue snacks” (Culture, January 20), the the man interviewed was mistakenly identified as Adam Winer. His name is in fact Adam Stotland. The Daily regrets the error.
one after all makes it out of choice, and the resulting judgment is one’s lot. But isn’t that exactly the kind of false choice this article derides? Implied consent is not always a means of expressing power relations or state violence. When I assume my partner’s consent in kissing him or her, I assume that “no more need be said.” The action speaks for itself. Of course, excess is an inherent danger. I might make a mistake in my assumption of consent, either by assuming it where it isn’t, or by missing it where it is. The possibility of excess should not, however, lead us to dismiss one of the basic and fundamental structures of human relationships completely. The move implied in the article, of one toward a society of consensual relationships, is severely misleading and obfuscatory, and could only result in a sort of pseudo-Lockean society in which love relationships (between parent and child, individual and community, lover and lover, et cetera) become no more than a “consensual” exchange of goods and services. The mother must “consent” to nurse her child, the individual must “consent” to taxation, et cetera. There are things one must do regardless of one’s consent, and there are things one may do regardless of others’ consent. Though it aims in the right direction, at the critique and limitation of state violence and power, the article ultimately takes part in the obscene obverse of what it criticizes. Mathew Powes U1 Arts Letter received January 13
Renting space to grad students a step in the wrong direction
Keep moving along, no ideology to see here
Colourblindness: Only seeing shades of white?!
Re: “Mmm… delicious stale Aramark food” | Letters | September 20, 2010
Re: “In defence of QPIRG” | Commentary | January 10
Re: “Report reveals student displeasure” | News | January 20
I am glad to see that the administration has taken my advice about charging a study space toll, which was published in a previous edition. As highlighted at the Town Hall and in The Daily, grad students will be charged to rent study space. This is exciting news. I’ve always looked at graduate student offices with envy, thinking to myself, “Boy, these guys have it made!” with their spacious vintage 1970s desks and the close company of six other students in the room. McGill’s spirit of make-moneywherever-you-can has really inspired me, and I plan to follow in the grand footsteps of the administration. During exam period, perhaps I shall sit at a desk in the Cyberthèque with a “for rent” sign on my seat. At the modest price of $1 per hour, a student can rent a window seat from me. Too pricy? We have an affordable option at 25 cents per hour somewhere on the fifth floor. I’ll donate five per cent of my profits to the HMB Relief Fund (a.k.a. “Capital Campaign”). I don’t have a memorandum of agreement (a contract with McGill allowing groups to do anything on campus); I don’t plan on paying taxes on my profits either; and maybe I will call my business “The McGillian McGiller Study Space Rental Program of McGill... McGill McGill.” Seems like a liability issue… I wonder how long it will take until my enterprise gets taken over by Ancillary Services? Back to reality. The rent will be $200 for an eight-month period. There are certainly students paying a monthly rent for about $200. Remember: small steps accumulate. We are moving toward a less accessible educational model and must fight each step along that road, no matter how small.
Dear Editors, I object to Ted Sprague’s characterization of my role in a SSMU debate last November in opposition to a motion supporting AGSEM’s recent unionization drive to include course lecturers. According to Sprague, I “philosophized that better working conditions would result in lower productivity on the part of teachers, since the whip of low wages would be removed.” This is not the case. At the debate, I merely “philosophized” that increased unionization at McGill was not in the interest of McGill students, because it would mean greater job security for underperforming lecturers who would be protected from dismissal by a strengthened union, higher tuition fees to pay for any higher wages for course lecturers, and grad students as a result of union action, and yes, that greater job security means there is less of an incentive for employees to perform. I am sure AGSEM has perfectly legitimate complaints, but as an Arts Councillor elected by my fellow undergraduates, my role at SSMU is to represent their interests, not the interests of a union, and certainly not the ideological interests of Sprague, and several of my co-councillors on SSMU who overlooked students’ interests in favour of ideological sensibilities. Students want more TA accountability, stable tuition, and confidence that their teachers and lecturers will not go on strike, as they did for months at York University in 2008. Increased unionization undermines all of these, and if Sprague would be kind enough to open an economics textbook, instead of ranting about the evils of capitalism and democracy, he would surely come to the same conclusion.
Dear Daily, I am writing in regards to your recent article about the 2009-2010 student survey commissioned by SSMU. The article states “Within the Equity and Diversity section of the report, Shortt also reported that, although only nine per cent of white students felt, ‘or have been made to feel, uncomfortable on campus due to [their] race or ethnicity’ – compared to 36 per cent of non-white students – it is important to focus on their feeling included on campus.” The article then notes that some white students might feel excluded from groups “focused on a specific ethnic group or gender.” What I don’t understand about this section of the article is why the focus is on nine per cent of white students feeling uncomfortable and NOT on the fact that 36 per cent of non-white students feel or have been made to feel uncomfortable. This emphasis is disturbing for a number of reasons. First, it blatantly privileges the comforts of white students over students of colour. What makes this even crazier is that the statistics of the two are vastly different (nine per cent versus 36 per cent), and yet the worry is still about the smaller minority of white students. I am not trying to say we should dismiss their concerns, but why the hell isn’t there a whole article about the fact that one third of students of colour have felt uncomfortable about their race or ethnicity at McGill?! Thanks for hearing me out, Daily!
Guy Lifshitz U4 Computer Science Letter received November 19, 2010
Spencer Burger U3 History and Political Science (Joint Honours) Arts Councillor to SSMU Letter received January 11
Maddie Guerlain B.A. (Honours) 2010, International Development Studies QPIRG McGill Board Member Letter received January 21
The Daily loves to hear your opinions. Send your writings to letters@mcgilldaily. com from your McGill email address, and keep them to 300 words or less. The Daily does not print letters that are ableist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, or otherwise hateful.
10 Features Images courtesy of the McGill University Library digital collection
expo67
Nastasha Sartore uncovers the legacy of Montreal’s International Exposition
The McGill Daily | Monday, January 24, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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n the morning of April, 1967, Expo 67 officially opened to the public. Over 500,000 enthralled visitors – Montrealers and tourists from across Canada and all over the world – lined up to be first to see the gleaming site of the 1967 International and Universal Exposition. The site of Expo was not quite like anything seen before: located on two large artificial islands in the Saint Lawrence, the site was car-free, vibrant, and never without a handful of cultural attractions to experience. The opening of Expo saw the concurrent launch of the metro and other state-of-the-art transportation networks, alongside the installation of 113 pavilions. As is customary with most large international events, however, the government went to great lengths to change the way outsiders saw the city. The tactic of masking social problems with dazzling sights and an idealistic naiveté was in no way unique to Montreal – we saw this not ten years later with the Montreal Olympics in 1976, and more recently at the Vancouver Olympics and the Commonwealth Games in India. Today it seems that Expo’s legacy lies in the crumbling remnants of the Turcot exchange, Montreal’s metro system, and a dim memory of great hopes for a new and thriving city. Clearly both Expo’s innovators and visitors held the highest of hopes for this young and thriving city, but its legacy hasn’t been much more than an emotional one.
An Age of Modernism The sixties were a truly unique era, the spirit of which Expo 67 reflects: tradition had been engulfed by modernism and replaced with a deeply-rooted belief in the brilliance of the future. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker proudly declared that Expo 67 “will be an unusually great event in Canadian history.” During the six months that Expo was open, it seemed that Montreal had endless potential. “The modern movement was essentially about rational building, and buildings that would have no reference to other styles of architecture. [Modernist buildings have] no decoration,” said Pieter Sijpkes, associate professor at McGill’s School of Architecture. “The construction itself is the architecture.” The Quebec pavilion embodied this with its concrete floors, steel façade, and exterior glass walls – which doubled as an illuminated display case at night. As described by its designers, the pavilion was meant to “make [Montreal’s] presence felt” as a growing and cutting-edge metropolis. Place Bonaventure, built in the years leading up to Expo, was a practical application of modernist architecture in downtown Montreal. It housed – as it still does – a hotel, exhibition, and office space, comprising the largest building ever built upon its completion in 1967. “It has no front façade, it has no back façade, it has no main floor,” Sijpkes told me. “It’s just a lump of building, like a beehive.”
Innovation: Man the Creator A group of Canadian thinkers were given the task of coming up with the theme of the Expo in 1963. After mulling over possible concepts for three days, the group selected “Man and his World,” a theme based on Antoine de SaintExupéry’s 1939 novel, Terre des Hommes. The theme was meant to encapsulate the world’s progress in industry, science, and culture. Indeed, new technology seemed to confirm that humanity had achieved an unprecedented control of its surroundings. The advent of data storage meant that a new type of building had to be developed to house these massive computers. McGill School of Architecture Professor Emeritus Derek Drummond spoke with me about
his experience in designing the operations control centre on the Expo site: “It wasn’t much, but the whole building was designed to be able to have all the computers.” He explained how the floor had to be built up with special materials in order to have the connections run underneath, which was, like the computers themselves, an entirely new feature. “It would be a joke now. We’re all used to having computers this size,” he laughed, pointing to his laptop, “but they were huge!” Other Expo buildings, including the wooden-framed pavilion, “Man in the Community,” hinted at the new problems connected to population growth and increasing urbanization. But the overall focus overwhelmingly remained on obstacles that humanity had overcome. The American pavilion – a geodesic sphere known today as Montreal’s Biosphere – housed a three-man command module that had been launched into space only a year earlier. After spending a few minutes on the ground floor in the theatre, visitors could ride up the longest escalator ever built at the time. “It was spectacular!” Drummond said. Though on the one hand the pavilion was an ostentatious celebration of American technological ingenuity – the structure itself was built with a bright acrylic skin that automatically responded to changes in sunlight – on the other, its decorative pop art, giant posters of Hollywood starlets, and collection of Raggedy Ann dolls promoted a more wholesome vision of the American Dream. The Soviet Union naturally attempted to upstage their American competitors. Their massive pavilion featured great glass walls, an upswept roof and an enormous bust of Lenin – but most agreed that they fell short. “The U.S. pavilion, without question, won this battle,” said Sijpkes. Despite all the pomp and circumstance, most of the Expo’s buildings – and perhaps even most of its concepts – did not last. “The day Expo finished, the whole concept died with it,” Drummond lamented. “[The American pavilion] was innovative, but not something that was transferable really.” In terms of other innovations, Drummond stated quite assuredly, “virtually everything had been tried before.”
Habitat 67 Habitat 67, a ten-storey apartment complex on the Marc Drouin Quay on the Saint Lawrence, may be the only standing legacy of Expo 67 currently used as a residential space. When I saw Habitat on my first visit to Old Montreal last year, I was beyond confused. I felt as if I was in a dream, staring across the channel at what appeared to be enormous concrete Lego pieces stacked unevenly on top of each other. Hoping to find an efficient and innovative way to house a large number of families as an alternative to the standard apartment complex, Moshe Safdie designed Habitat 67 for his thesis project at McGill’s School of Architecture. With the striking reality of poverty in and around the city, the building was meant to be a creative solution to affordable urban housing, incorporating Safdie’s community ideals. The visionary architect designed external walkways – essentially pedestrian streets – to provide direct access to each of the 158 units of residence. “It was certainly an interesting idea that one house would have a terrace on top of the unit below,” said Sijpkes, but he did not hesitate to mention its structural problems. “The site here…was very cold and windswept, so [the design] was very inappropriate for Canada… because it exposed as much light as [possible].” Since the Expo, Habitat has had to go undergo annual maintenance because its concrete surface is completely exposed to
Montreal’s harsh winter conditions. Although designed to house 1,000 units, shops, and even a school to create a real sense of community dynamics, this objective has proven far too expensive. Now, Habitat is owned by its tenants, who together bought it from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in 1985. Despite all this, however, Sipjkes told me that “as an experiment, and as an attention grabber, [Habitat] really was a big success.”
Transportation: The underground network, metro, and the Turcot Interchange The Metro was built quickly to open in time for Expo 67 and survived well beyond the other transportation networks built for the event. There were many transportation options for visitors, including the ExpoExpress, a rapid transit system; a monorail that allowed visitors to see the pavilions from above; the cable cars at La Ronde (the on-site amusement park); the vaporetto, which navigated across the canal; and even a hovercraft. None of these innovations, ever spread to the mainland after Expo closed. The Turcot Interchange and the Bonaventure and Decarie Expressways all opened on time for the Expo as well. The Turcot, at a cost of $24.5 million, officially opened in 1966, despite opposition in the neighbouring community of St. Henri. Although designed to facilitate Montreal’s growth, the aging and crumbling interchange has not been able to withstand the city’s harsh winters, partly due to poor construction. Today, with talk of reconstructing the Turcot, the controversy surrounding the interchange has again reared its head. Quebec’s Ministry of Transport intends to reconstruct and expand the Turcot starting this year – an endeavour that would encompass the demolition of a loft building with roughly 100 housing units. Meanwhile, those in the community who aren’t facing expropriation are seriously concerned about being exposed to increased levels of pollution. (The neighbourhood has already been found to suffer from unusually high levels of respiratory disease.) While Expo 67 may have left us with a few effective transportation networks, we have still not been able to overcome traffic problems in and around the city. “Simply stated, [there are] way too many cars,” Drummond said. “The experience of being on the site was absolutely marvelous [because] it was car free. It was a pedestrian world.” Simply looking at the influx of pedestrians crowded on the small sidewalks of Ste. Catherine’s, it is clear that the stress-free, car-free environment of the Expo site in no way recreated itself on the mainland.
The man who made it happen Mayor Jean Drapeau is often seen as one of the most influential figures in Montreal at this time. First elected as Montreal’s mayor in 1954, Drapeau lost in 1957, but spent only three years out of office before being reelected in 1960. He initiated, and successfully accomplished, his ambitious pursuit of bringing Expo to Montreal. While sharing with me his personal experience with Drapeau, Drummond told me that “the design and the building [of the operations control centre] had little to do with the mayor because he was a man with grandiose ideas and he was not an engineer, [nor was he] an architect.” Drapeau’s one particularly grandiose idea – to have the site of Expo on an artificial island in the river – was one that required a lot of technical expertise. When I spoke with Dmitri Roussopoulos – publisher, writer, editor, and representative of the Student Union for Peace Action in 1967 – he did not hold such high regard for
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mayor Drapeau. He explained how Drapeau tended to skirt important issues, such as public housing, city planning, and pollution control. “Montreal had a lot of visible poverty [so] there were neighbourhoods that were really slummy,” Roussopoulos said. “When the Drapeau government undertook to do Expo, they went to great lengths to cover up these types [of problems].” In different areas of the city, the government installed fences to hide things they felt should remain unseen. Some people were simply removed from the city for the duration of Expo. (The same thing was done in Vancouver last year, when the government relocated thousands of homeless from the DowntownEastside, Canada’s poorest region, after failing to increase social housing.) Recalling his experience as a prominent member of the youth community, Roussopoulos explained how Expo was isolated from the city – from the real world – in more than one way. “Expo was supposed to be a big bubble, in which everyone was closing their ears and their mouths to anything that was of a critical nature.” What we see here is a great discrepancy between the harsh realities and the idealistic dream world envisioned by Expo’s creators. Montreal, particularly in the southeast and southwest, faced immense poverty and deteriorating housing conditions. Drapeau’s “beautification process,” as Roussopolous called it, concealed these problems temporarily, but others surfaced nonetheless. The city’s bylaw against demonstrations, for instance, did not stop an anti-Vietnam War rally from taking place at the opening of Expo. As a member of the anti-war movement, and an organizer of that very protest, Roussopolous concluded, “It’s all very well to have a universal exposition, but we have to remember at the other end of the planet…people were dying and fighting.” In a similar fashion, Montreal was quick to eject the gay community from downtown in order to “clean up” the city. Drapeau had many of the gay establishments closed down, in both the downtown area between Peel and Atwater, and The Main (or Red Light district), at St. Laurent and Ste. Catherine’s. The slow revival of the gay community in what we now call the Village can essentially be traced back to these police raids on downtown gay bars in the lead up to Expo. Perhaps the most exciting moment in the modern history of Montreal, Expo 67 remains just that: a fleeting event that did not survive after its concluding firework display on October 29, 1967. The city did try to keep the spirit of Expo alive, making the site a permanent exhibition, but it was not successful enough to remain open past 1981. Sijpkes compared the remaining exhibition to a table where the dinner had already finished. “It never had the same number of people, [and there was never] the same budget to maintain [it]…so it started to look ratty.” The American pavilion, after Expo, was given to the city of Montreal by President Lyndon Johnson. In 1976, however, the American pavilion caught on fire, burning the transparent acrylic bubble. After going through a structural appraisal, the city banned access to the site, which lay deserted in Parc Jean-Drapeau for over ten years. The site was purchased by Environment Canada in 1990 and converted into an environmnetal museum now called the Biosphere. The French pavilion was also left abandoned for well over a decade, until it was inaugurated as the Casino de Montreal in 1993. If the Turcot in any way reflects presentday Montreal, it seems that the close of the Expo, and the debt accumulated by Expo 67 and the 1976 Olympics, has placed a serious burden on the city. “The trouble is, after Expo 67, there was a drop in the economy here in the city. You know the party was held, and the hangover was long,” Drummond said.
Sports
The McGill Daily | Monday, January 24, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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Rolling with the punches Photos by Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily
Mixed Martial Arts skeptic Michael Lee-Murphy goes to UFC 124
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have always been dubious about Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) – also known as Ultimate Fighting – having long been a bigger fan of its older brother, boxing. Despite the obvious political and social dilemmas that bloodsport creates, the discipline and strategy of the sport, and the histories of resistance represented by fighters like Joe Louis and the mighty Muhammad Ali, are immensely appealing. The filmmaker Ken Burns once termed the tendency of the legendary turn-of-the-century prizefighter Jack Johnson to drive nice cars and wear expensive clothing at a time of extreme oppression an “unforgiveable blackness.” It always seemed to me that MMA lacked these kinds of figures – people who fought outside the ring for something greater than themselves, carrying the emotions and reinforcing the feelings of selfworth of entire peoples. In recent years, MMA has exploded in popularity and now there are far more writers in North America focusing on MMA rather than my beloved boxing. I figured it might be time to give the sport a chance, and the hosting of UFC 124 in Montreal’s Bell Centre on December 11 provided the perfect immersive opportunity. The main bout was a welterweight title rematch between hometown hero George St-Pierre – or GSP to his fans – and Californian Josh Koscheck. Ringside seats were going for as much as $600 apiece, but the magic of a press pass allowed me to get as close as I wanted without paying a dime. To call the fight a grudge match would be an understatement. In the months leading up to the fight, the trash talk between the two had been fierce. In pre-fight publicity Koscheck seemed entirely content to play the part of the “heel” (or villain), insulting the French language in the run-up to the fight. Each time Koscheck’s face appeared on the Bell Centre mega-tron (once to say, “This is about pissing off 23,000 French-Canadians”) the entire
crowd would boo as loud as at any Bruins-Habs game. Likewise, St. Pierre’s face would inspire ecstasy and minor sonic booms among the sold-out Bell Centre crowd. For Quebeckers, GSP obviously bears some of the cultural-hero status that I thought alien to MMA – his thick accent and fleur-de-lys tattoo serving as symbols of his pride in being from la belle province in an American dominated sport. If boxing is called the “sweet science,” then MMA would be Thomas Hobbes’s description of the war of all against all: nasty, brutish, and short. Rather than boxing’s typical twelve rounds of two minutes each, MMA fights have three rounds of five minutes each, with devastating knockouts common. The standard MMA glove leaves the fingers and thumb exposed, in order to facilitate the holds and grappling that is as much a part of MMA as standard punching. Indeed, MMA takes boxing, removes all the elements of strategy and patience that slow down a fight, and replaces it with kicks, wrestling, and elbows. The cultures of the different sports break along similar lines. In MMA there are more tattoos, more blood, and skimpier bikinis on the ring girls. In the ten undercard fights, the most exciting by far was a welterweight bout between Matt Riddle and Toronto-based Sean Pierson. Their battle was as furious and gripping as those on ice that the Bell Centre usually hosts. Each time the two exchanged a frenzied flurry of punches, they would high-five before resuming, congratulating each other on putting on a good show for the crowd, and acknowledging each other’s efforts mid-fight. The title bout, which couldn’t have come sooner for the recordbreaking crowd assembled, was fairly one-sided in the end. Title bouts go for five rounds, and thanks to a devastatingly powerful jab from GSP in the first, Koscheck’s right eye was swollen shut for most of the fight. Any time the leather of
GSP’s glove connected with the flesh of Koscheck’s face (often), the crowd would erupt with approval. The cage, splattered with the blood of previous fights, took on an almost holy quality as all 23,000 pairs of eyes watched GSP dance circles around an obviously inferior Koscheck. At the final bell, after the referee had almost stopped the fight numerous times on account of Koscheck’s eye, something incredible happened. The fighters dropped all of the animosity of the previous months, embraced, and congratulated each other for their competition. One would get the sense that the sheer brutality these two men subjected each other to had created a bond between them; one that might be absent from my beloved traditional boxing. Indeed, the differences between MMA and boxing remained plainly evident throughout the night. Perhaps the greatest example of the difference between box-
ing and MMA is thus: where once Muhammad Ali was once an important political ally of Malcolm X and the world’s most famous war-resister, and the humble Manny Pacquiao – currently the greatest fighter of this century – is a Philippine cultural hero of unparalleled magnitude, George St-Pierre is more likely to be spotted at such dignified and demure locales as Club Tokyo on
St. Laurent, cruising for female companionship, according to several accounts. In essence, MMA presents a more marketable and profitable aesthetic than that of boxing. The style and cool aplomb required of boxing no longer captivates an audience the way it once did, and now the spray-tanned glitz and hyper-violence of MMA has taken its place.
Sports
The McGill Daily | Monday, January 24, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
Sacred rules of the outdoor rink Ben Makuch on outdoor hockey’s unwritten etiquette Paging Dr. Gonzo Ben Makuch
benmakuch@mcgilldaily.com
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hen hell literally freezes over (Canadian winter), my one and only refuge, beyond getting needlessly drunk and forgetting how the fucking Seventh-Circle-of-Hell cold weather persists, is outdoor-rink pickup hockey. According to Dante, the Seventh Circle of Hell is so polar that it’s probably located somewhere in Chelyabinsk, Siberia or Churchill, Manitoba. Either way there’s a fifty per cent chance that it’s buried somewhere in the Canadian tundra. As the resident “bro” of the Douchebaga Canadensis species, I flee to the legendary realm of the ODR (outdoor rink) when winter strikes to both prove my manliness and to partake in the time-honoured ritual of overcompensating for my lack of actual real world success by being moderately better than you at hockey. It’s that cracked and splintering public ice, those shitty plywood boards, and the nets that look like they’re made out of depleted uranium from the former Soviet Union that really bring a jingoistic smile to my face. What, you ask, could possibly disrupt this uniquely Canadian and blissful reverie? Another rival fauna, most likely an offshoot of the common Asshole, not yet defined by any sociological research. However, to prevent against their invasion of the rink and in honour of the golden season of pond hockey, I’ve compiled a list of things any potential participant should be aware of, as to avoid the scornful wrath of the faithful knights of sacred hockey tradition. Punishment may involve your shirt being lifted over your head (known colloquially as “jerseying”) in order to inhibit you from manipulating your own limbs, whilst a barrage of punches find their way to your ribs and/or “gibs” (jaw) region.
1. No slapshots allowed Especially your sad impression of one. I know you grew up
watching Brett Hull smash some lumber cheddar and you think, “Wow I should totally disregard the safety of others and try that out.” It’s really not cool at all – it’s is a shitty, selfish thing to do. I’ve seen countless a-peasant who skate like the Tin Man (in other words really terribly) wind up and unleash an abhorrent version of a slap shot, which hits the unsuspecting, unprotected shin of an opponent. You should know that this is practically considered a war crime in most provinces of Canada. Keep the puck no more than an inch above the ice, you reckless donkey.
2. Don’t wear NHL Jerseys. This rule can be overlooked if you’re under the age of fourteen. After that, your dreams should be sufficiently crushed. Come on, we’re all past impersonating our favourite players and skating around the ice with our arms in the air pretending that we just won the Stanley Cup. By now, if you haven’t realized that you’re more likely to work for Staples or the federal government and not the Colorado Avalanche, you have no hope of ever entering reality. Wearing an NHL jersey to the rink says, “Obsessive fan with no life,” more than having three fantasy teams and the third shitty alternate jersey of the Ottawa Senators. Avoid at all costs. Also, you may unknowingly attract the violent attentions of another clown crazier than you, who really hates your team and will thus act as irrationally as his number 87 Crosby jersey. Beware.
3. Proving you should’ve “made it” I know you think that you got cut by the Nepean Raiders House League A team back in ’96 because the coaches didn’t understand your creative genius and it put a real crutch on your bid to become a Hall of Famer, but nobody at Parc Lafontaine gives a shit. Stop stick handling like a lunatic, never passing the puck, and screaming at me to “back-check.” I’m likely hungover and therefore twice as likely to do something violently irrational to your ankles, à la Bobby Clarke in
’72. Honestly, relax a bit. Anyway, I’m fittingly going to refer to this creature as “hotshot” from now on.
4. Stop the political bullshit This is ODR hockey, not fucking Parliament. Maybe it’s just because it’s Montreal, but I cannot tell you how many anglophone versus francophone grudge matches I’ve seen out at the rink. Why? Let it go. I really don’t care if you grew up in “Leafs Nation” or love the Habs – you’re being ridiculous. Aren’t we past ’95? I know I don’t care anymore, and I didn’t then; I was something like five years old and thought the whole fiasco was a boring A&E show my parents wouldn’t shut up about. For the most part, when I hit the ODR I’m just trying to skate around and convince myself I’ve worked off the last week of debauchery. Cultural conflict is definitely last on my to-do list when gliding around the ice nonsensically. So please, this is Canada: we all love each other and unitedly hate hotshots. Remember, they’re the real enemy.
5. Let the kid play When you were a kid, don’t you remember how fun it was to dream? How impressed you were with all the older players at the rink? How you somehow skated and deked them all out? Probably because you were incredible. Not! You weren’t at all. For all intents and purposes you probably sucked (and still do), but it felt good at the time when everyone indulged your naivety. So please, hotshot, don’t barge along and steal the puck when some kid who can barely skate gets the black biscuit and launches himself headlong on a Bobby Orr rush. Humour the kid – let him score and give him some of the hope that adulthood will inevitably deprive him of. If you break this rule you’ve essentially declared to the world “I’m an Asshole: avoid me like the plague.” You literally had to contribute ten seconds to the happiness of a child and you failed miserably. You’re the worst.
Bring the ruckus Write for Sports sports@mcgilldaily.com
Nicole Stradiotto for The McGill Daily
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Science+Technology
The McGill Daily | Monday, January 24, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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Dashed hope or deferred dream? Examining the effect of the Human Genome Project ten years after its completion Hariyanto Darmawan Sci+Tech Writer
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? —Langston Hughes
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e entered the third millennium with so much expectation. We beat the apocalyptic Y2K bug that was prophesied to crash computers worldwide and send nuclear missiles firing. The world witnessed the digital revolution, with the United States breaking the fifty per cent population mark of personal computer ownership, while at the same time the dot-com bubble peaked – though it would later come crashing down. The first cloned pig – Millie, Christa, Alexis, Carrel, and Dotcom – were born, ushering in hope for millions of patients in need of organ transplants. But if there is one moment that was singled out as momentous for science and humanity at the turn of the third millennium, it was the completion of the first working draft of the human genome, announced on June 26, 2000. “Without doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by human kind,” commented President Bill Clinton in a White House press conference – in the same room where Lewis and Clark once unfurled the map of the Pacific Northwest for Thomas Jefferson 200 years ago. Clinton added that the genome map had the potential to “revolutionize the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of most, if not all, human diseases.” With the deciphered sequence, it was expected that the era of personalized medicine, custom genetic therapy tailored for each individual’s disease, would become a reality. Three billion base pairs, a $3-billion budget, 13 years of research. The quest to decipher the sequence of our genetic material was one of the most ambitious international projects, involving twenty research centers from around the world. Has the sequencing of the human genome fulfilled its promise? Ten years later, both leaders of the public and private efforts, Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project and Craig Venter of the Celera Genomic, say not really. A 2010 poll of more than 1,000 scientists conducted by the journal Nature showed that almost
Stacey Wilson | The McGill Daily
half of the respondents said that the benefits of the human genome were over-hyped. The complexity of the human genome dashed the early hope of personalized medicine becoming a common feature in treating patients. Most of the poll respondents don’t anticipate this to materialize for decades to come. Tomi Pastinen, Canada Research Chair in Human Genomics from McGill, agrees: “I think there was a lot of hype. The expectation of personalized medicine may have not been fully met.” The idea behind personalized medicine seemed simple at that time: If you know the genomic sequence of a healthy individual and compare it with that of the diseased one, you could then trace the differences in the sequence that cause the problem. This would allow doctors to anticipate diseases – especially cancer – before they manifest. The onset of the disease could be prevented or treated early. It turns out that it is not that simple. Our genome is far more dynamic than ever imagined,
and the link between disease and genome is not as direct and linear as we once thought it was. If there is one agreement on what has been achieved by the human genome, it is that it has helped reshape the way biologists see their field: a complex non-linear system that cannot be understood solely by studying it in parts and later attempting to assemble those parts into a whole. Biology has to be studied – as a dynamic system, as an infinitely complex system. In the past, the study of biology as disconnected parts – as a simple cataloguing of observations of different components of an organism – has undoubtedly increased our knowledge. Each biologist concerns themselves only with one part, one gene, one organ, and churns out a wealth of detailed observations. However, the task now is to take all those disconnected parts and establish their connectivity, their interdependence, and the emerging physical characteristics that come out of their connections to each other.
Roy Amara, engineer and former president of the Silicon Valley’s Institute for the Future, is well known for having once said, “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” Fifteen years ago, the dot-com era was overblown and came crashing down in 2001. Now, every facet of life relies on the web. Likewise, the human genome project, despite some disappointment over its unfulfilled short term goals, has laid down the basis for the next breakthrough in human biology and medicine. Today, you cannot be a biologist without in one way or another employing genomic science. As the first decade comes to a close, we ask ourselves again: what does this second decade hold for us? Pastinen is optimistic. He projects that with the human genome and the development of technology in the next five years we will have almost a full catalogue of all rare mutations that cause severe diseases. By the end of the second decade, he is confident that we’ll start to
have a systematic understanding of the relationship between genetic variation and environment, and how individual genetic makeup leads into disease. In the realm of physics, the hunt for the elusive dark matter is expected to yield result this year. Fusion power – the source of the sun’s energy – is also inching toward becoming a real possibility as scientists in California’s National Ignition Facility seek to use the world’s most powerful laser to ignite the fusion reactor. The possibilities are endless. We like to charge into the unknown and make bold predictions. We dream. We hope. And that’s what makes us human. That’s what propels us to the future. After all, dashed hope is just a deferred dream. It will only “fester like a sore and then run” if we give up on it. Hariyanto Darmawan holds a MSc in Chemistry and he is a MEng II student in Chemical Engineering. He can be reached at hariyanto. darmawan@yahoo.com
Science+Technology
The McGill Daily | Monday, January 24, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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SCI+TECH ESSAY
Prom dates, perfect hair, and polynomials Danica McKellar encourages girls’ love of math by reinventing their textbooks Jenny Lu
Sci+Tech Writer
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hat does one get when Paul Erd!s, Kevin Bacon, The Wonder Years, math books, and pre-teen girls are combined? Surprisingly, the result of the collision of these elements is not that of antimatter and matter (which would result in the release of gamma rays), but instead an actress-turned-mathematicianturned-author: Danica McKellar. Her three math books are all directed toward pre-teen girls. They contain little nuggets of wisdom from McKellar regarding boys, success, self-confidence, and the like. They are packaged more like fashion magazines than math textbooks, with covers featuring phrases such as “What Guys Really Think About Smart Girls” and “Boy Crazy Confessionals.” For me, learning math started long before my pre-teen years. My father allegedly began cultivating mathematical seeds in my mind when I was still in my mother’s womb. As much as I resented this in my youth, I now
appreciate the importance of understanding fundamental mathematics from a young age. However, for many parents battling their young and angst-filled children, teaching them math might not be the easiest task. With this in mind, I think it might be useful to talk about crushes in math textbooks. Let’s face it: for many heterosexual pre-teen girls, if asked to choose between boys or math, they would probably pick the former. Although these books talk about boys, friends, and clothes, they are still math textbooks: they contain all the standard algebra information on how to solve for x, and whatnot. The seemingly superfluous tidbits may in fact be instructive to the overall learning process – beyond their mathematical applications. Although I have never experienced gender inequality when trying to do my differential equations, many girls may be intimidated by what
seems like a male-dominated world. McKellar writes in the books that learning math is not just about tricky algebra and solving for x, but can be a parallel about overcoming life’s obstacles in moving toward your own goals.
Should all textbooks take a leaf from McKellar’s book? Should our math books include encouraging life stories? Should organic chemistry textbooks put a little “Good Job!” note after every tenth problem? Should the publishers of textbooks put a little more effort into making their books a little more enjoyable rather than churning out a new edition every few years? Although some textbooks are slightly less visually offensive than others, due to the inclusion of nicely spaced bodies of text and coloured pictures, in general I cannot say that I have met anyone who loves to read them, save for those who love the subject. Why aren’t textbooks written with the social context – or entertainment – of the students in mind? We view learning at the post-secondary level as a prestigious act. After all, it is “higher education.” Many of the subjects we study all have a sense of importance. They have
Lorraine Chuen for The McGill Daily
existed for generations and it would be daunting to approach academic subjects and “vandalize” them with irrelevant information. I believe that there is an element of elitism and exclusiveness to education. The more people who can do calculus, master kinematics, or understand mechanisms for chemical reactions, the less special it becomes. This is not to say that textbooks are purposely trying to be difficult to understand. In fact, the contrary is true: textbooks are competing to be the most easily understood. But not many textbooks will actually try to sell the subject itself. Unlike McKellar’s books – which seem to try to sell math itself to teen girls – many textbooks are aimed at those people who are probably already a part of academia. We can’t know whether textbooks will change, and for now I must resign myself to the rather sleep-inducing ones I have. But I cannot help but wish that the author of my book would put a little box in the side column telling me about the time he had acne as a teen and the girl he loved cruelly rejected him.
Culture
The McGill Daily | Monday, January 24, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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Education gets jazzed up Schulich’s jazz program represents a growing trend in musical teaching
Matthew Kassel
The McGill Daily
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n 1974, Whitney Balliett, the late, prolific New Yorker jazz critic, wrote that, “The number of jazz musicians…who piece out their lives in the shadows and shoals of show business has always been surprising.” Balliett’s comment still resonates today. So many jazz musicians find work in the business’s back corners: hotel lobbies, restaurants, weddings, street corners. But perhaps more surprising is the number of jazz musicians who make do in the halls and classrooms of the university as teachers of their craft. Since the 1970s there has been a great boom in jazz education at the university level. The beginning of that boom coincided with a creatively dry and nebulous period in jazz. Shadowed by the death of John Coltrane in 1967 and the rising popularity of jazz-fusion, a controversial new sub-genre, the identity of jazz was in question. The emergence of jazz programs, one might say, saved jazz. Founded in 1981, the undergraduate program in jazz at McGill, the first degree-granting jazz program in Canada, offers its students a variety of classes in composition, arranging, and improvisation. While this program has produced more qualified jazz musicians than ever before, qualification is tricky. A degree does not guarantee a job, as most students know all too well. In the past year or so, on jazz blogs and magazines like Downbeat and JazzTimes, there has been a spate of discussions and articles – some probing, some frustrated, some bad – on the nature of jazz education: What’s good about it? What’s not? How could it be better? There is really no way to prepare any student for entering the job market. School might be a necessary step to getting a job, but what you learn in school is not final. In an interview with Josh Rager, a Montreal pianist who teaches jazz performance at McGill’s Schulich School of Music, he explained, “Jazz
education and becoming a jazz musician are two different things, in a way. They’re related, but one doesn’t necessarily guarantee the other.” Jazz used to be more of a vernacular art, unmediated by formal institutions. If you wanted to be a jazz musician, say, in 1945 at the height of the bebop era, you didn’t go to school for it. You learned on the bandstand through ad hoc apprenticeship. That still happens, but now those modes of apprenticeship seem split between school and the professional world. Schulich offers its jazz students the opportunity to bridge this gap. Students perform in small jazz combos at one of Montreal’s finest jazz clubs, Upstairs. This lets students work in a professional context, make connections, and have an audience. Jazz is really a performance art. “It’s a great opportunity because it allows us to listen to the up and coming musicians,” said Joel Giberovitch, owner of Upstairs. “The professional guys who are gigging right now, many of them came through McGill, and many of them we heard on our stage,” he added. Jarryd Torff, a fourth-year studying jazz saxophone at Schulich, thinks performing at Upstairs is a vital stepping stone in the jazz program. But this is not an end, it’s an education. Torff performs regularly in Montreal in The Ruckus Fo’tet, a jazz hip-hop group that evolved from a McGill jazz combo. “Every jazz musician wants to be a college teacher because they actually pay and then you can do your gigs on the side,” said Torff. “Music is a competitive market, but so is teaching,” he said, “and I’d rather go into something that I feel more passionately about.” Rager, who graduated in 1998 from Schulich with a degree in Jazz Performance, also returned a few years later to get his master’s degree. The reason? So that could be qualified to teach. “I wanted to make it work so I could enjoy a fairly decent standard of living,” he said. Most jazz musicians who opt to teach jazz performance are those who could not support themselves
Edna Chan | The McGill Daily
working solely as performing musicians. But that is not unique to jazz. In Montreal, many classical musicians, despite having full-time jobs with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra or the Orchestre Métropolitain, have opted to teach in institutions like Schulich. Fulltime positions, however, are rare or practically non-existent in jazz performance. “In terms of jazz musicians, it’s not like you’re a dentist where you get your degree, you go out, set up your shop, and now you’re a dentist,” said Gordon Foote, interim Dean at Schulich. “Jazz musicians are very creative people, and they’re creative in the way they make their living,” he said. “They have to be.” While speaking with Torff, he seemed eager to graduate, to start working, and to move to New York
City – still the jazz hub of the world. His ambitions are common among jazz performance undergraduates, but they run against tough odds. Getting publicity and an audience requires intuition, luck, talent, and hard work; all of which are things a degree in music – or any degree, for that matter – probably can’t offer. But jazz education certainly provides a foundation, a safety net. “Without jazz programs there would not be nearly the number of people who are knowledgeable about and interested in pursuing or listening to jazz,” said Foote. There are many ways to pursue this interest. Jazz musicians are artists, but they still have to eat. Stability can be balanced with creativity. When Rager began teaching, it didn’t interfere with his touring schedule. Then he had a son
and didn’t feel comfortable leaving his wife alone for weeks at a time. However, he could still teach and play locally. “That just wouldn’t have occurred to me when I was twenty, and I was just willing to put it all on the line for my art,” said Rager. “And now that I’m in my thirties, what putting it all on the line means is a little bit different than what it was ten years ago.” Rager encourages his students to follow their dreams, but tells them that they should allow their dreams to change. That’s the most worthwhile kind of advice any good teacher can offer. Jazz education is, after all, a lifelong process and jazz programs are only as cloistered as jazz teachers allow them to be. The classroom and the bandstand are not mutually exclusive.
Culture
The McGill Daily | Monday, January 24, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
When market becomes museum
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The St. Michel Flea Market offers more than just vintage goods The McGill Daily
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ritics of contemporary consumer culture often claim that there is little intellectual stimulation to be found in shopping. What this perspective fails to take into account, however, is those few unique places where a shopping trip can lead to something decidedly different. The St. Michel Flea Market is such a place. Entering the market is like creeping up the cobweb-ridden stairs of a grandparent’s attic, into a world that is somewhat foreign and utterly fascinating. The two-storey warehouse is packed with intriguing merchandise, which you can discover by strolling through the labyrinthine passages that snake their way between various vendors. The St. Michel Flea Market isn’t just about shopping, it’s about discovering. Everything for sale is vintage and secondhand, spanning an incredible range from vintage clothing and old books, to antique art and furniture, in a variety of price ranges. “You never know what you’re going to find,” said one shopper,
who was browsing the aisles, keeping an eye out for vintage games. The thrill of the unexpected seems to be one of the things that surprises first-time visitors, and undoubtedly keeps them coming back. The market attracts a range of people as wide as its stock, from thrifty students – “a lot of people like you!” laughed one vendor – to middle-aged couples on weekend dates, and even to industry professionals. Frances, who runs the market with her partner Steve, pointed out that people from the film industry “rent all kinds of stuff [that they] would not be able to find in stores.” Perhaps even more charming than the treasures for sale are the people doing the selling, most of whom are exceedingly friendly and more than willing to indulge in conversation with a curious shopper. The overarching attitude of the vendors was that selling at the St. Michel Flea Market is much more than a mere business venture. “It started out as a hobby, and it turned into a job,” one vendor remembered, speaking from within a stall crammed with a startling selection of vinyl records, as well as vintage audio equipment.
After speaking with several vendors, it also became clear that there was no single path that led them to the market. One vendor attributed it to sheer necessity – “I have all this stuff, and I have to get rid of it.” Another described his entry into the flea market world as “an accident,” which turned out to be so much fun, he kept on going. Encountering people with such enthusiasm for the idiosyncrasies of vintage goods is one of the many things that makes a trip to St. Michel far more of a cultural experience than a commercial one. Originally, while under different management, the market sold only new merchandise. This strategy was less than successful; the market started with over one hundred kiosks, but “within three months, the whole thing went down to almost zero,” Frances explained over the phone. “That’s when Steve and I took over” she continued, “and we built it on antique, collectible, and used merchandise, and we’ve been working on it for twenty years.” With overheads significantly lower than those on permanent stores, commercial space comes at an attainable cost. This notion permeates the
Naomi Endicott | The McGill Daily
market, where it is apparent that creativity and curiosity oust commerce as the go-to business model. This is not a place to quickly pick up a needed item, but rather one to while away the hours poring over
peculiar knick-knacks that evoke a time and a place all their own. St. Michel Flea Market can be found at 3250 Crémazie E., corner St. Michel, metro St. Michel.
mcgilldaily.com/culture
Fabien Maltais-Bayda
Compendium!
The McGill Daily | Monday, January 24, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
Lies, half-truths, and hahahahahahahahahahahahaha lolzzzzzz
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Fuckin’ don’t objectify me (or follow me)
H
EY YOU.
YEAH, YOU. The three gorillas passing yourselves off as human males. You know what I don’t need? I don’t need you, as I’m walking down the street, minding my own damn business, to look me up and down and call out “not bad.” I don’t need your attention, I don’t need your opinions, and I certainly don’t need to be followed for a block by three giggling imbeciles who aren’t fit to look me in the eye, let alone judge my physical appearance. You could have told me I was gorgeous and I’d still be fucking pissed. I have better things to do than listen to you. Fuck you. Fuck this! is an occasional anonymous rant column. Send your rants to fuckthis@mcgilldaily.com.
You can find more of Dan’s work at your corpus christi. blog spot. com.
Miss Nomer
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lright! Somebody has some fucking sense south of the border. Peter Shumlin, governor of Vermont, is proposing that his state establish single-payer health care. And the legislature seems welldisposed! Of course, the insurance industry is probably going to fuck things up – Blue Cross apparently is saying they should be the single payer – but maybe, just maybe, somewhere in the United States, sense will prevail. And not fascistic corporate welfare.
Fuck yeah! is an occasional rave column. Send your rants to fuckthis@ mcgilldaily.com.
Daniel Hawkins for The McGill Daily
Cheers!
Way to go Vermont!
Across
1. Totally absorbed 5. Mixture of 20- and 39-Across 9. Component of 57-Across 14. Hip bones 15. Biblical twin 16. Main artery 17. Pig sound 18. Ore deposit 19. Stable female 20. Component of 5-Across 23. Examine 24. Large soup dishes 28. That is, in Latin 32. Landing locale 33. Get done 37. Hindu deity 38. Freudian concept 39. Component in 5-Across 42. Black goo 43. Something you fill out 45. Sternly 47. Group of three 50. Anagram of a reptile 51. Strappy shoes 53. Breaks up with 57. Mixture of 9- and 69-Across, and 48-Down 61. Categorize 64. Above 65. Golden rule preposition 66. Something to bid 67. Annoyed state 68. PC brand 69. Component in 57-Across
70. Angel’s headwear 71. For fear that
Down
1. Spanish wine 2. Assumed name 3. Engine sounds 4. Prepare to shoot 5. Salve 6. Double-reed instrument 7. Lead-in to care 8. Made holy 9. Paparazzi instrument 10. Lions 11. Mess up 12. Consumed 13. More, in Spanish 21. Actress Winona 22. Famous king 25. Gives off 26. Branch of the armed forces 27. Daunting 29. Before, poetically 30. Lays down the lawn 31. Down the _____ 33. Tests by lifting 34. Ancient assembly area 35. Fool 36. Istanbul native
40. Deception 41. A heap 44. Wednesday 46. Weird 48. Component of 57-Across 49. “Aladdin” prince 52. Hide 54. Cut into bites 55. Spreads 56. Another pig sound 58. Sicilian volcano 59. Aggravate 60. Until 61. W.C. 62. “Much ___ About Nothing” 63. Auction action
Solution to “Back 2 School”
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The McGill Daily | Monday, January 24, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
volume 100 number 27
editorial 3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-24 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9 phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com coordinating editor
Emilio Comay del Junco coordinating@mcgilldaily.com coordinating news editor
Michael Lee-Murphy news editors
Rana Encol Henry Gass features editor
Niko Block
commentary&compendium! editor
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EDITORIAL
McKinsey consulting bodes ill for McGill community This past November, McGill’s principal Heather Munroe-Blum announced that the management-consulting firm McKinsey & Co. would provide their services to McGill senior administrators for free. Considered the most high-profile company of their kind, McKinsey has worked for entities ranging from Enron to the British Cabinet Office, and has produced more CEOs than any other company. McKinsey’s offer also coincides with the appointment of Claude Généreux, currently a senior associate director at McKinsey, to McGill’s Board of Governors (BoG). The BoG is the University’s highest governing body; it makes most of McGill’s business and administrative decisions – behind closed doors. McKinsey has a track record of imposing harmful measures on its clients, and their presence on our campus does not bode well for staff and students. Working for Minneapolis public schools, the firm proposed funding cuts for teachers’ health care and converting the 25 per cent of schools with the lowest scores on standardized tests into privatized charter schools. The firm’s results in the private sector are not much better: for example, the company advised Walmart to convince its employees that its notoriously low wages and negligible benefits are “better than perceived.” McKinsey’s austerity tactics have recently influenced the massive cuts to higher education and planned tuition increases in the U.K. These came on the heels of recommendations from the Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance – whose members include Michael Barber, the head of the firm’s Global Education Practice. American schools are also turning to this example to address low levels of performance in public schools in New York and Ohio. The McKinsey consultants will aid in Munroe-Blum’s Strategic Reframing Initiative, which will establish working groups headed by senior administrators meant to address the University’s performance anxieties in an increasingly competitive international market. Key initiatives run the gamut from the euphemistic “Cost Efficiencies” and “Performance Management,” to the more concrete issues of student enrolment, fundraising, and research. In a November 18 interview with the McGill Reporter, the principal made her anxieties clear: “For decades McGill was a front-runner with respect to overshooting our market share of competitively allocated research funding and academic research and scholarly awards,” she said. “We’re now being squeezed not just by bigger universities like Toronto and UBC...but more recently by smaller universities...in recruiting and retaining top talent.” While attracting research funding and talent is certainly a part of the University’s mandate as a public institution, it cannot come at the cost of overlooking any of the employees – academic or otherwise – who keep the organization running, especially in the face of a steadily growing cadre of middle management: administrative and support staff numbers have risen by over 14 per cent since 2004 at McGill, according to this year’s University budget report. McKinsey has a reputation for prioritizing profits over people, and for doing so opaquely and without public accountability. The quality of our university should not be sacrificed in the name of efficiency. The very presence of McKinsey consultants caused the Seattle Education Association to develop an organized resistance in 2008. McKinsey was even a defendant in Hurricane Katrina litigations for faulty advising to the insurance industry, in which the Louisiana Attorney General characterized their service, “Deny, delay, defund” to home insurers taking claims from New Orleans residents. While the case has since been dismissed, McKinsey’s attitude is clear. As we await the outcomes of the Strategic Reframing Initiative, students and staff should question the role McKinsey plays on our campus, as others have done elsewhere, and be prepared to organize against the firm’s suggestions when their intentions become clear.
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