Volume 100, Issue 40
March 21, 2011 mcgilldaily.com
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Overcompensating for 100 years
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The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
3
Bachand announces Quebec tuition hikes Students will pay nearly double the amount of current Quebec fees by 2017 Erin Hudson
The McGill Daily
Q
uebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand announced the 2011-12 provincial budget last Thursday, calling for tuition fee increases of $325 per student every year for five years starting in September 2012. “This is the death of the university as we know it in Quebec,” said Joël Pedneault, vice-secretary general of the Quebec Student Roundtable and next year’s SSMU VP External. The total increase will amount to an additional $1,625, raising Quebec tuition to $3,793 when the hikes end in 2017. “Tuition fees will be raised gradually to the level they would have been at today had they been indexed at the rate of inflation since 1968, the year in which they were first frozen,” said Bachand in his speech on Thursday. Pedneault disagreed with the government’s claims to be “catching up,” pointing to costs that university students are required to absorb in addition to tuition fees. “Every university charges thousand of dollars of auxillary fees which are undistinguishable from tuition fees for most students,” he said. “If anything, we’re already past what the 1968 amount of tuition, with indexation, would be.” Bachand further stated that, even with tuition increases, students would be assuming less than 17 per cent of the cost of their studies, and that a third of the funds generated would be returned to students through bursaries. “For us, we didn’t want to see
tuition increase without an increase in student aid and a sustained investment on the part of the government,” said McGill Principal Heather Munroe-Blum to The Daily. “Some governments, when they increase tuition, pull back on their own investments – they haven’t done that. These are all steps in the right direction.” Pedneault, however, said that governments were reducing their contributions to universities’ annual revenues. “If you look at the drop in the financial stake of the government in universities, most of that is being made up for by tuition increases,” he said. In his speech, Bachand maintained that “there is no evidence of a link between university participation and tuition fees.” However, Pedneault pointed to statistics from the 1990s, which document declining enrolment in the Université du Québec system accompanying tuition increases. “The effects of a tuition increase, or projected increase, are felt as soon as it is announced in these universities, not when it comes into effect,” he said. “There are a lot of people who won’t be able to finish their studies.” “It’s very clear to anyone who works in the universities or who works with students on a daily basis, or has to be a student, that these tuition increases have a very heavy effect,” he added. Munroe-Blum was also concerned that the government would take a third of the new tuition revenues for Quebec student aid, because international and out-of-province students will be paying into this pool but will not be eligible to receive it. “We’ve been recommending that [a third] of net new tuition go to stu-
$18,000
Scheduled tuition increases Sources: 2011-2012 National Assembly Budget Speech transcript, Quebec Ministère de l’Éducation, Loisir et du Sport, 2010-2011 McGill University Budget Book
$14,000 International tuition Out-of-province tuition
$10,000
Quebec tuition Average Canadian tuition 2010-11
$6,000
$2,000
2010-11
2011-12
dent aid, but that the universities do it so that they keep it with the students who bring it in,” she said. “Right now we assess student need independent of where the students come from.” Tuition fees for out-of-province non-residents of Quebec is set at $5,668 with international tuition ranging from $11,984 to $14,879 for 201011. The budget states that increases for non-Quebec tuition fees will be determined by the government in coming months. Pedneault explained that the budget necessitates that these tuition fees be competitive in comparison to other provincial and international tuition rates. The budget also outlined its expectations for universities to
2012-13
2013-14
2014-15
“share the effort” of funding. “Universities will have an interest in increasing services offered directly to enterprises: they should reinforce their connections with enterprises in order to obtain supplementary resources,” reads the budget. “The surprising thing in [the budget] is just how the government is just going full speed ahead with the commercialization of universities – making them closer to the needs of businesses,” Pedneault noted. “It’s really written in black and white in this budget.” Pedneault pointed to other clauses that increase promotion of private donorship, an increased focus on university governance, and the stipulation
2015-16
2016-17
that universities must enter into partnership agreements with the government, which last for five years and aim to serve as an instrument of dialogue. However, Pedneault sees the partnerships alleviating the responsibility of bad policies from the hands of both universities and the government. “It’s confirming exactly how a model of higher education is going to be destroyed in Quebec,” said Pedneault, pointing to another clause compiling different sources universities can use to generate revenue. One of the listed recommendations is increasing the price of food services on campus, which to Pedneault amounts to a “hidden tuition increase.”
Montreal Auditor General victim of espionage operation Municipal opposition leader issues formal complaint to Quebec Municipal Affairs Minister Zach Lewsen
The McGill Daily
A
midst allegations of widespread corruption in Montreal’s City Hall, it has recently become apparent that the Montreal Comptroller General was spying on the city’s Auditor General. In response to this espionage – and a host of other corruption allegations – opposition leader Richard Bergeron wrote a complaint to the Quebec Municipal Affairs Minister Laurent Lessard. Bergeron and his party, Projet Montréal, believe that Mayor Gérald Tremblay was involved in the espionage. In the complaint, Bergeron wrote that the espionage constituted a “complete violation of the principles of independence.”
During Tremblay’s time as mayor of Montreal, there have been numerous City Hall corruption scandals. Montreal Auditor General Jacques Bergeron (not related to Richard Bergeron) was the individual who uncovered many of these incidents. One of these scandals include a city employee taking a holiday on the yacht of a waterworks company who were later awarded a $356-million contract by the City. This contract was then cancelled. Another corruption charge was the link between Comptroller General Pierre Reid – who is in charge of internal spending – and Telus, while the city was negotiating a phone services contract with the company. Some city councillors think the Comptroller General was acting in Tremblay’s interest by spying on the Auditor General, which included
reading Jacques Bergeron’s confidential emails. Alex Norris, a Projet Montréal city councillor for Mile End, described the impact of Jacques Bergeron’s findings. “This is a man who has uncovered irregularities and wrongdoings affecting hundreds of millions of dollars of municipal expenditures by the Tremblay administration,” said Norris. “Mayor Tremblay is trying to get rid of this man, so it’s in that context that we learned that the Comptroller General – who reports directly to the city – authorized an illicit and highly improper espionage operation in which for ten months the Auditor General’s confidential emails were systematically spied on by the administration.” In a February 17 press conference, Tremblay stated that current conditions in City Hall did not lend them-
selves to an informed decision on the allegations. “The decisions that we make must be imbued with a certain serenity. In the current situation it is impossible,” said Tremblay. Norris discussed what Projet Montréal thinks Reid’s goals were in carrying out the espionage attempt. “Pierre Reid’s employees were reading the email,” said Norris. “Reid is one of the most senior civil servants in the city and he has publicly defended Mayor Tremblay personally. He is a highly politicized civil servant and from what we can see he’s acting on behalf of Mayor Tremblay because Mayor Tremblay has refused to denounce this espionage operation in no uncertain terms and has refused to fire Pierre Reid. This leads us to believe that this operation was approved by Mayor Tremblay.”
Norris described what he thought were Reid and Tremblay’s goals. “This [scandal] has consumed a lot of resources from the Auditor General’s offices,” said Norris. “It has forced the Auditor General to divert resources from carrying out investigations into irregularities of the City of Montreal and has diverted resources to uncovering and investigating this highly improper espionage operations.” In an email to The Daily written in French, Bernard Larin, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s office, said, “The administration of Mayor Gerald Tremblay did not comment following the statement by Mr. Bergeron.” “This has all the appearance of a hatchet job that can destroy [Jacques] Bergeron’s reputation so he can be sidelined,” said Norris.
Annual General Meeting The Annual General Meeting of the Daily Publications Society (DPS), publisher of The McGill Daily and Le DĂŠlit, will take place on
Tuesday, March 22 in Leacock 232 at 6pm. Members of the DPS are cordially invited. The presence of candidates to the Board of Directors is mandatory. For more information, please contact
chair@dailypublications.org
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The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
5
Ontario and federal government to appeal sex work ruling New coalition forms to defend decriminalization after September decision Rana Encol
The McGill Daily
I
n September 2010, Ontario Superior Justice Susan Himel struck down three provisions of the Criminal Code that placed sex workers at risk in the now historic case Bedford v. Canada. Both the Ontario and the federal government will be jointly appealing that decision. In an email to The Daily, Kristen Rose, senior coordinator of Media Relations for the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General, wrote that, despite being stricken, laws prohibiting sex work “continue to be in effect and the status quo remains.” The three provisions – communicating to solicit sex, running or working in a brothel, and living off income procured by sex work – were ruled to be in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms when they were challenged in court by Terri Jean Bedford, a dominatrix, and two former sex workers. The Ontario Court of Appeal
stayed the decision of the Superior Court of Justice until April 29, 2011, or until the hearing of the appeal. The appeal is scheduled to be heard over four days by a five-judge panel and will start on June 13. If Bedford v. Canada stands, the sex trade will be legalized in Ontario, setting a precedent for other jurisdictions in Canada. Maria Nengeh Mensah, a professor of Social Work at UQAM, spoke to The Daily about the controversial provisions before moderating a panel discussion at the official launch of the Feminist Alliance in Solidarity for Sex Worker’s Rights (FAS) at the Théâtre Ste. Catherine. FAS is a newly formed Quebec coalition of over 200 “individuals and feminist groups working together to support and defend the rights of people working in all sectors of the sex industry.” Mensah explained that the laws are often applied in a way that creates unsafe working conditions for sex workers. “They are a cause for repression on the street and indoors – negotiations cannot happen in the best
way. And this is the main reason why we want to decriminalize [sex work]. These laws are under the guise of ‘protecting,’ but, in reality, they limit options for police. For instance, it’s hard for sex workers to report theft when explaining the circumstances would criminalize the worker,” she said. “The laws take aim at the most vulnerable sex workers, those who work off of a street base,” Mensah added. Rose refrained from providing opinion as to why the Ontario government was appealing the decision, as the matter remains before court. “We can say, however, that Ontario’s position at the Superior Court was that these provisions of the Criminal Code are designed to prevent individuals, particularly young people, from being drawn into prostitution, to protect our communities from the negative impacts of street prostitution and to ensure that those who control, coerce or abuse prostitutes are held accountable for their actions,” she said. “Thus, in our view, they are consistent with the core
Charter values of human dignity and equality.” According to Mensah, the current laws target and criminalize sex workers, not sex work abusers. “Criminalization of some things is redundant, particularly when used to intervene when there is assault, gangsterism, exploitation, or the violation or exploitation of children, since laws prohibiting these already exist,” she said. Mensah also disagreed with the government’s stance on youth. “Behind the idea of ‘preventing youth’ is the moral idea that sex work is bad, but the law is not meant to reflect particular morals – to paraphrase Pierre Trudeau – the law has no business in the bedroom,” she said. Seven civil and social groups have intervener status in the upcoming appeal case, including the Canadian HIV/AIDS Network and the Canadian Liberties Association. Maggie’s, a Toronto-based government-funded sex workers’ agency, also applied for intervener status in order to argue that the legislation further discriminates against
women on the basis of gender and occupation. The Montreal Gazette reported that Ontario Justice Dennis O’Connor denied their application Wednesday as it was too late to address this “significant new ground on which to challenge the legislation.” Mensah added that in Montreal there are municipal bylaws in place that are meant to remove marginalized workers – especially street-based ones or youth – from the streets. “For example, it is illegal to communicate with a moving vehicle or throw a cigarette on the ground. More and more the criminal code is being used to target these workers. But with the municipal bylaws, if you don’t pay your fine, it begins a cycle of being judicialized,” she said. “The bottom line is that sex work involves feminist issues of gender and sex, so we ask for close solidarity, not to impose a particular view or meaning onto the work, but to support each other in their rights.”
Former Cree chief discusses Alberta Tar Sands “There’s a lot of pessimism” in Fort Chipewyan, says George Poitras
G
eorge Poitras, indigenous rights activist and former chief of the Mikisew Cree First Nation in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, spoke at the event “Tar Sands: Life and Death Downstream,” organized by Climate Justice Montreal, QPIRG McGill, and the McGill First Peoples’ House. Poitras sat down with The Daily after the event.
The McGill Daily: What impact has the tar sands had on your community and on your life? George Poitras: Since about four years ago when the Tar Sands first began to operate in the region where we live, which we call our traditional homeland, our people our hunters our trappers – anyone who uses the land have observed a number of different impacts on our water…water quality, water quantity, impacts to the fish, impacts to the animals – we’ve observed all of those, but much more so in the past 15 years or so. Our doctor has been concerned about many of the cancers he was observing in our community, cancers which are considered very
rare and aggressive, and statistically have been linked to petroleum products. These kinds of cancers, called cholangiocarcinoma or bile duct cancers or soft-tissue cancers…recently its been proven by the Alberta Cancer board – who we forced to do a cancer study – there are at least 30 per cent elevated levels of these cancers in our community. MD: How has the Alberta government responded to the Tar Sands, and how has that response changed over the last five years as awareness about the Tar Sands grows? GP: The Alberta government is slowly being forced to be more accountable in the way they manage the Tar Sands. It’s not because they’re being…it’s not because of their free will, it’s not because of that. It’s because a lot of pressure has been applied upon the Alberta government because they’re doing such a bad job at managing the Tar Sands, and have been for forty years. More recently they’ve been made more accountable to establish a more responsible more comprehensive monitoring system, and
Only 2 issues left!
its because of work by…environmental organizations that are telling the truth about [the Tar Sands] bad impacts on the environment, on the water and so on. But also because of some efforts from my community – fishermen who are exposing, showcasing to the world some of the problem fish. MD: How would you compare the response of Alberta’s provincial government with that of the federal government? GP: Up until just a couple months ago they were one and the same in terms of relinquishing their responsibility in managing and regulating the industry. Alberta has a very high senior representative in Washington, D.C. who many people would consider like an ambassador from Alberta. Their sole responsibility there is to promote investment in the tar sands, to lobby all the congressional members, senators, anybody who’s influential in making the tar sands a possibility for the Americans. The Alberta government does the same thing. I’ve met with the Canadian ambassador in D.C. twice now, and I know with
certainty that their role is to promote investment in the Tar Sands. And they do it with other bodies as well, like the U.N. Climate Talks. We know in Copenhagen that both Canada and Alberta were very instrumental in encouraging other countries not to adopt anything that might potentially impact the ability of Tar Sands mined in Alberta to be exported anywhere, and so they’re for thwarting any possibility of any adequate climate agreement. MD: Looking at your community, are people optimistic, or are people feeling the heaviness of the fight against the tar sands? GP: People do feel a sense of pessimism, they do feel let down, especially when our doctor did make the claim of unusual cancers in their community and neither [provincial nor federal] government came to our assistance. Many people were feeling very let down, but I think…we’re seeing that we can, as a community contribute to a larger campaign, so I think people are feeling a little bit better, so while there’s a lot of pessimism there is some hope in
terms of this industry being better managed and hopefully managed in a sustainable way, in the long term. MD: What are the main, practical things that you’re calling for, in the short-term and long-term? GP: Our community has been calling for a moratorium on any further approvals on any new applications or approvals of expansions of any existing projects until its known what the environmental situation is like. … I mean there are so many issues as far as Tar Sands are concerned and a lot of science has been left behind by the fast pace of development. I think its very logical and rational that until we understand with certainty what the status of the environment and people’s health is that it makes absolute sense to put a moratorium. But at the same time, Alberta and Canada – who are responsible in regulating this industry – should strengthen the regulations, the legislation around management of the Tar Sands, because it’s very weak, when you compare it to other countries. —Compiled by Alex Briggs
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The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
SSMU hosts inaugural Forum on Undergraduate Education Nastasha Sartore News Writer
L
ast Thursday SSMU Academic Research Commissioner Devon Willis hosted McGill’s first ever “Forum on Undergraduate Education” in the Shatner ballroom. Willis organized the forum in collaboration with Engineering senator Andrew Doyle and SSMU VP University Affairs Joshua Abaki. Concerned about the current dynamic between students, administration, and staff – and having briefly discussed something similar in Senate caucus – Willis decided that a more comprehensive discussion would be “a really positive way to connect.” “I wanted to create an environment where students, faculty, staff, and administration could come and be together and have a discussion about something that they all could participate in,” Willis said. The forum’s main purpose was to discuss the role of a research institution in undergraduate education. Willis explained that she chose this particular topic because it was “open,” and could be a starting point for a more expansive dialogue between different groups within the University.
Paul Axelrod, a professor in York University’s Faculty of Education, directly addressed the topic of research-intensive universities in his keynote lecture. He focused on teaching strategies, and stressed the importance of undergraduate education in all institutions claiming to promote “higher learning.” A short presentation by Cynthia Weston, director of Teaching and Learning Services at McGill, led to a discussion about teaching outcomes, and allowed students to express their concerns about the development of their own learning. While the majority of students felt satisfied with their breadth of knowledge, many felt that they lacked professional capacity and autonomy. “Weston brought up those two categories, the first one being knowledge-based and the second one being citizen-based,” said SSMU Clubs and Services representative Max Zidel. “Knowledge is important to my degree but I don’t see how those two things are separate. I want them to be combined.” Zidel also questioned the large disconnect, for Arts students in particular, in terms of their education and the University’s research. During the lunch break and roundtable discussions held at the end of the forum, students were
given the opportunity to speak informally with some of McGill’s faculty and administrators, including the Dean of Arts Christopher Manfredi and Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson. Mendelson, who also took part in a panel discussion, spoke about the role of students and administrators in the active learning process. While he recognized that the University has a responsibility to provide opportunities for students, he told The Daily that “students [need] to become engaged in their own education” both inside and outside the classroom. Mendelson also noted McGill’s low levels of student-faculty interaction. He referred to the launch of the student-staff mentoring program, which “was done very specifically for trying to increase…interaction.” In his closing remarks, Abaki said he hoped the forum would be the “beginning of a cooperation between students and staff.” In terms of future forums, Willis hopes to make the event less formal. “Next year I’d like to have more roundtable discussions about different issues,” said Willis. “I was happy that we managed to make this event that was really useful, but also really fun and comfortable.”
The SSMU is currently accepting applications for the
Awards of Distinction! The Students’ Society Awards of Distinction are designed to recognize students who have demonstrated leadership in the University through significant contributions to students’ activities and organizations coupled with outstanding academic achievement.
Three scholarships, valued at $2000 each, will be awarded. To be eligible, a candidate must be an SSMU member who will have completed twelve (12) credits during the current academic year (as of May 2011) and be studying at McGill or another academic institution in an undergraduate program in the 2011-12 academic year.
To find out more about the application process, visit http://ssmu.mcgill.ca/about/funding-and-awards/ All applications are due by April 8th 2011 at 5pm.
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The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
7
Café Cleopatra refuses to relocate More and more bodies Owner resists “revitalization” of the Quartier des Spectacles unclaimed in Quebec McGill Anatomy students using cadavers as educational tools
ore Quebeckers than ever are dying with no one to claim their bodies. With the elderly the most common among them, many of the deceased eventually find their way to educational institutions such as McGill, where they are appreciated in a different sense: for their help as educational tools. In 2010, 424 bodies – approximately 0.74 per cent of total deaths – were left in the custody of the Quebec government. This is an increase of 124 bodies – approximately 0.56 per cent of total deaths – from 2000. Genevieve Guilbault, spokesperson for the Quebec Coroner’s Office, said “we think the reason why we have more unclaimed bodies than before is most of all because more and more people grow old and die alone without anybody that takes care of them.” This is in keeping with what Sandra Miller, a professor in McGill’s Anatomy and Cell Biology Department, told Le Délit in November 2009. “Usually the deceased persons are elderly, Francophone, Catholic, and come from the middle class,” said Miller. Guilbault also said that “immigrants, people that come from other countries, sometimes come alone and it becomes more difficult for us to find family.” There are also cases in which those close to the deceased are aware of their death, but do not wish to take responsibility for them. Guilbault cited funeral costs as a factor. Those outside of the close family must assume all responsi-
bility for these costs – which commonly start at $1,500 – if they wish to claim a body. Of the 424 bodies unclaimed in 2010, 58 were taken to the Quebec Coroner’s office due to the violent or accidental nature of their death, while the remainder, when authorized by a physician, were made available to educational institutions like McGill. The institutions are then, by law, financially responsible for the transportation of the cadavers to their facilities. Subsequently, the bodies must undergo a preservation process involving the injection of chemicals. After this, Miller explained to Le Délit, “the students find themselves face to face with real human beings having all kinds of abnormalities, and this in 3-D.” As stipulated in the Revised Statutes of Quebec, Chapter L-0.2, “An Act respecting medical laboratories, organ, tissue, gamete and embryo conservation, and the disposal of human bodies,” educational institutions are required to send a report on each body to the physician in charge of that region, including not only information about the deceased but also the name of each educational institution to which the body was offered or transported. This way, the fate of the deceased may be made known to any family in the future. As for the bodies not suitable for scientific purposes, Guilbault explains that they must be kept by law for a minimum of thirty days after their discovery while the police search for next of kin. If, after this period, no claim has been made to the body, it is buried in a precisely marked graves so that it is easily identifiable for anyone who comes looking.
are violated when they are given to parents with whom they share no genetic ties. Concerns over whether these children should be allowed to find out the identity of their genetic parents have also been voiced. Clinics across Canada have begun to address this problem by turning to embryo adoption programs. This type of third party procreation entails parents unable to have a child of their own adopting an abandoned embryo to which they have no genetic ties. Toronto hospital Mount Sinai is one of the first to offer a carefully monitored anonymous embryo donation program through its Centre for Fertility and
Reproductive Health. “Everyone who partakes in the program is made fully aware of the social and ethical issues surrounding their decision. Psychological and legal counselling is necessary when dealing with donor eggs or a gestational carrier, and both partners are screened first for infectious diseases,” said an administrative assistant at the Toronto centre who wished to remain anonymous. Other centres have followed suit, including Vancouver’s Genesis Fertility Centre and Calgary’s Regional Fertility Program, where 75 to 100 children have already been born through adopted embryos.
Margaret Fraser
The McGill Daily
M
Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily
Café Cleopatra has no plans to move away from its location in Quartier des Spectacles. Maya Shoukri
The McGill Daily
T
he owner of the popular St. Laurent bar and strip club Café Cleopatra, Johnny Zoumboulakis, will not be selling his bar to the Société de développement Angus (SDA), an urban planning group. The SDA’s request to relocate Café Cleopatra is part of their largescale plan to refurbish and revitalize the Quartier des Spectacles. Zoumboulakis described the SDA’s plans as a proposal presented to the city “to take or expropriate the whole lower Main and turn it into some kind of office tower.” “The Main was never known as an office space. It is a historic place, and it’s been the center of entertainment since Montreal was founded,” he said when asked to explain why he refused to sell. Café Cleopatra has been a part of the neighbourhood for 34 years. “I want to see the continuation of the idea of a Quartier des Spectacles, and not turn it into a Quartier des
Office Tower,” he added. A representative for the SDA, Geneviève Marsan, described the goals of the SDA’s project. “The idea isn’t just to make office buildings, it’s to revitalize the area; to make it more lively, more attractive for tourists and for Montrealers,” she said in French. “Have you been there recently? We want to revitalize the Quartier. We don’t want strip clubs. They don’t fit in with [SDA’s] values. We certainly want to integrate commerce, but not exploitative commerce,” she added. According to Marsan, the revitalization would take place in two phases – beginning in 2013 – and would include opening office buildings and residential spaces. She emphasized that the SDA has no intention of corporatizing the historic area, but instead wants to render it more accessible to the greater Montreal community. Zoumboulakis insisted that the area remains popular for locals and tourists alike, attracting a diverse and reputable clientele.
“[Our clientele] are very nice, very reputable people. Federal government employees come here… they are mainstream people that work from all surrounding areas, from all walks of life, and I have clientele from all nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. Francophones, Anglophones and Allophones – all get along very nicely in here, and they appreciate the existence of Cleopatra,” he said. Zoumboulakis also denied the claim that Café Cleopatra functioned only as a strip club, pointing out that the bar also serves as a venue for many events and festivals. Though Zoumboulakis’s refusal to sell has not deterred the SDA from their plans to proceed with the revitalization of the neighbourhood, it has caused frustration for some of the project’s coordinators. “We’re disappointed. We would have preferred to make one cohesive, integrated, and complete project,” Marsan said. “We’ll construct all around [Café Cleopatra] and we’ll do our project anyway.”
Frozen in limbo Excess embryos in Canadian clinics create ethical dilemmas Jessica Lukawiecki The McGill Daily
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ebate has been sparked on ethical ways to deal with the thousands of embryos across the country that lie in a state of suspended animation, frozen in reproductive clinics. Existing in a state of limbo – not quite alive but certainly with the potential to become so – these embryos have the capacity to survive for decades in cold storage. Currently, Canada’s surplus of embryos exists without any national regulation controlling or keeping track of their proliferation.
No one knows the exact number of frozen embryos in cold storage in Canada. Many of these embryos are “orphans,” and no longer have any connection to their genetic parents. Best estimates on the number of embryos in existence come from speaking to individual clinics. As Simon Phillips, lab director at the Ovo Fertility Clinic in Montreal told The Daily, their clinic alone keeps over 2,500 embryos in their freezers. Genetic parents have three options regarding their extra embryo: disposing of them, donating them to research, or giving them up for adoption. Ovo Clinic began offering the adoption of embryos with the genet-
ic parents’ consent over two years ago. Most parents choose to donate their unwanted embryos to research or have them destroyed rather than give them up for adoption. “Many people hesitate to choose the adoption option because, on some level, they still feel that these are their children,” said Phillips. There is, however, a growing problem in addressing to whom the orphan embryos belong and who has the right to decide their fate. The decision to offer anonymous adoptions of unused embryos has come with a slew of ethical criticisms. Most criticism is centered around whether embryos have rights and whether these rights
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The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
Art Essay
9
Nicole Stradiotto
Paula Alaszkiewicz
Commentary
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
10
Arresting anonymity The criminalization of dissent All we want, baby, is everything Sam Neylon and Al Blair
samandal@mcgilldaily.com
L
ast weekend, 55,000 students, workers, and community members marched against the provincial governments’ planned austerity measures, including tuition increases. Before the march began, police officers on horseback surrounded a group of protesters dressed in black, arresting ten of them “preemptively.” With individuals rounded up before the protest had even begun, there is no doubt that this mass arrest was the result of social and political profiling. This is the criminalization of dissenting bodies: the targeting of the unidentifiable, anonymous bodies of the black bloc. Surveillance of protests allows for dissenting bodies to be integrated into security databases – categorizing and systematizing identities. In the security industry they call this “biometrics”: your fingerprints, your face, your retinas, the way you walk, or the way you talk. The arrest of these ten individuals, whether or not charges are brought against them, served as a way to gain information. By arresting and interrogating these individuals, their identities were revealed. Furthermore, their bail conditions stipulate that they cannot “associate,” destroying their ability to organize dissent or even have a frank conversation about what is going on. Regardless of whether one agrees with black bloc tactics – which, in their attempts at direct action against violent systems of oppression, are often extremely confrontational – it is important to consider the broader implications of this arrest.
When we say that this surveillance controls and stifles dissent, it isn’t just limited to those who were arrested. Marchers apparently pointed out the bloc to police, and moved out of the way when police moved in. Those marchers who did this were unmasked, not protected by anonymity. The price of solidarity is raised every time your picture is taken or your identification asked for. This form of preemptive arrest sets a precedent for future protests. It also instils fear in communities and sets restrictions on who can protest, and in what ways. The ability to organize is destroyed when those making systemic critiques are separated, bodily, from others. Unions agree to police their own members, or risk riot cops showing up in force. But it isn’t just about protecting dissent – or protecting dissenting bodies. We must ask: What are they fighting against? The visibility of the black bloc, their conspicuous presence, their refusal to be viewed as anything but dissenting voices and bodies, is a good start to explaining this fight. We can see it as critique of a system that seeks to keep things going the way they are going, through knowledge about bodies. When the black bloc shows up at many protests, without specific signs or explicit affiliation with organizations, they refuse a system that seeks to organize our bodies into disconnected interest groups: some care about austerity, others care about the environment, others still about prisons. It’s also a refusal to be inserted into those processes where the habits and behaviours of bodies are examined and catalogued in order to make them more productive within the current juncture of capitalism: the management of “human resources.” Our time, energy, and creativity integrated into the creation of value.
I don’t know about you, but I like to read the OED every night before I go to sleep...
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We sound like soulmates!
Al Blair | The McGill Daily
The protest last weekend was against austerity. Austerity sucks the life out of the few structures of support that help us get through the working day and allow us to hope for something more – education, health care, utilities. It’s the piling of more and more pressures on the body. Class power is extended and perpetuated at the expense of people’s bodies. This forces us more and more to manage our own bodies, to try to increase our productivity to pay off rising rents, rising food
prices, student loans, and health costs. This imposed self-regulation of our bodies means more stress, more anxiety, more wear and tear. Austerity becomes one more pressure in a system where we already see the slow wearing-out and death of poor people, racialized people, queer people, disabled people – those facing the many forms of violence manifested through systems of dominance and exploitation. Which is why it seems so impor-
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tant to have a black bloc at a protest against austerity. It is a form of protest that represents an attempt to reclaim the bodily sovereignty lost under the constant, invasive gaze of surveillance, and ravaged by capitalism’s relentless colonization of our bodies and lives. Even if you disagree with its tactics, the anonymity of the black bloc challenges a system that relies on knowledge about bodies. The criminalization of anonymity threatens everyone’s ability to dissent. o
Errata
In “A new riff on the old,” it was incorrectly stated that Sam Amidon’s most recent album was All is Well. His most recent album is in fact entitled I See the Sign. Michael Marotti’s film was listed as Here’s Now in “Film in Fokus” (Culture, March 17). His film is instead called HeresNows. The Daily regrets the errors.
Commentary
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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The patriarchy of feminism First-world women’s move into the centre has come with a price The gadfly Shaina Agbayani
shaina.agbayani@mcgilldaily.com
W
ith the crash of feminism’s first wave, women were catalyzed to seek equality in the realms of suffrage and labour. With the swell of the second wave – brought to the attention of many women by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963 – women asserted control over their own bodies, bodies that had been bogged down by child-rearing and broomwielding. As our feminist romance with the workplace blossomed, encouraged by this second wave, it appears that we forgot to educate men on how to pick up the slack as our careers in the public sphere reconfigured the needs inside the home. With many men ill-informed (or simply slacking) in this regard, who, at liberation’s, would fulfill the domestic tasks that were renounced by middle- and upperclass white women? As domestic labour continues to be regarded as the work of the female body, peripheral women – lower-class women and women of colour – have frequently taken up the mantle of this
undervalued, underpaid work – instead of men. The fact that the brunt of this work has been disproportionately borne by other – outside – women was highlighted by the Philippine Women’s Centre of Quebec and SIKLAB Quebec last Saturday, at their event “Change through the Revolutionary Road Towards Genuine Women’s Liberation!” in celebration of International Women’s Day. According to the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada, at least 100,000 Filipina women have emigrated to Canada since 1992 under the federal government’s Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP) – which usually involves much cleaning in addition to care-giving. The event’s feature film, The Nanny Business, documented the plight of Filipino LCP workers, including a few SIKLAB members here in Montreal, after their arrival in Canada. The LCP is a national program under which migrant labourers – 95 per cent of whom are Filipina women – work as live-in domestic workers in Canada. The LCP requires nannies to complete 24 months of live-in work to be eligible for per-
manent residency. Upon my arrival at the apartment of one LCP worker – which she rents on weekends seeking solace from the work that is so invasive to her privacy – she is engaged in an incensed, teary-eyed telephone conversation with her employer, delineating the hours she had worked that week. While it is the weekend (long her agreedupon holiday), her employer, whose scope of authority often commits her to complacency because of her precarious residency status, reproaches her for refusing the request she work that day. The callous disregard for women’s bodies under the program was illuminated in the documentary by the ordeal of one LCP caregiver, Juana Tejada, who entered Canada in 2003. After being diagnosed with colon cancer while applying for permanent residence in 2006 – hoping to sponsor her family – Tejada was faced with deportation after toiling for three years as a caregiver, because she was deemed a health burden. She died in 2009. Sheila Neysmith, who researches the program, observes that in annihilating the distinction between “public and private spaces; work and leisure; paid and unpaid labour; pay cheque and rent cheque,” the LCP entails extensive overtime and unpaid work.
According to her research, 65 per cent of LCP caregivers surveyed in the Toronto area admitted to working more than the capped 44 weekly hours and 44 per cent of these received no compensation for overtime. Program graduates bear the brunt of employment in which 12-hour days (unofficially) and $1,000 per month salaries (after charges for accommodation and food) are not out the ordinary. Complete these calculations, and pay under this governmentsponsored employment program amounts to less than half of minimum-wage. The long-term effects of the program are further cause for concern. Because LCP workers are actually prohibited from upgrading their educational and professional skills for the duration of the program, the caregiver often possesses no “legitimate” non-domestic work experience postgraduation. As a result, workers are circumscribed to insecure, low-level employment that limits their economic prospects, in effect sustaining their social marginalization. As of 2008, 50 per cent of male migrant Filipino youth (aged 12 to 16) in
Montreal – a substantial proportion of whom are children sponsored by LCP mothers after several years of separation – were not attending school, likely due to the familial, societal, and economic marginalization sustained by the program. As feminist scholar Chandra Mohanty observes, the relationship between centre and periphery always exists. As the position of white middle-class women shifts from the periphery to the centre, lower-class and coloured women come to occupy the position of the periphery. This shift is compounded by the failure of many men to accept the domestic responsibilities that must underpin a genderequal society. This gender disequilibrium is one piece of the global patriarchal structure. Almost half of the women under the LCP are mothers who have left children in their home countries, often paying female nannies even lower wages to care for their own children. Here in the West, what has been conceived of as the work of women is still not valued enough by our government for the proper institutions to be put in place that recognize how fundamental this work is by adequately subsidizing it. As we fail to tackle the deeplypenetrating gender inequality which we blindly see as, “Like, so last feminist wave,” socially and economically marginalized women continue to pay the price. o
Nicole Stradiotto | The McGill Daily
12Commentary
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
What about sex? We are taking elementary and secondary education for granted, at the expense of youth The character of community Adrian Kaats
adrian.kaats@mcgilldaily.com
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n the wake of the release of the 2011-2012 Quebec budget on Thursday, when university tuition was set to increase by 75 per cent over the next five years with no provisions for increased financial aid, money is on many people’s minds. The number of bad decisions the Quebec government has made in regards to education is staggering. A great deal is said about the public financing of our education system. But what about sex? It’s estimated that adolescent boys think about sex approximately every twenty seconds. Yet, in their infinite wisdom, our Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport (MELS) eliminated mandatory sexual education from elementary and high school curricula. The results are worrisome. As far back as the age of eight, I remember having whole afternoons dedicated to sexual education at my elementary school in la belle province. As boring as it was at times, we were introduced to reproductive biology by specially trained educators. By
the end of elementary school, sexual education actually taught us about sex, and the changes we were going through were explained plainly and clearly. We were given instruction about the pleasures we could derive from our bodies in both solo and partnered sexual activity. We were taught not to judge the sexual preferences of our peers. The dots were connected between pleasure, reproductive biology, and the pubescent transformations we were experiencing. And of course, it was repeatedly explained how to avoid STIs, and how to plan pregnancy. All of this by the age of 12. In high school, things took an edgier turn. Our government, understanding that teen sex happens regardless of puritanical beliefs that it shouldn’t, periodically sent well-trained sex educators to engage us in open conversations about sex. They created an environment where the most bizarre questions were welcomed and answered: “No, a woman can’t get pregnant by shaking hands after you’ve masturbated.” We even had the luxury of being herded into our auditorium to listen to people like Sue Johanson discuss in plain English our genitals, orgasms, mas-
turbation, sexual positions – all the things nobody else talked about. Some of the videos we were made to watch about how to use a condom still make me laugh: my favourite featured a wooden penis with a big smile named – wait for it – Woody. But when MELS decided it needed to make itself appear more useful, it implemented sweeping changes to the way we perform elementary and high school education. Many of the changes were controversial, and education professionals are still quite polarized in their opinions of them. Some of the changes, however, are unambiguously stupid. Eliminating specific requirements for dedicated sexual education is certainly one of them. Now, it is simply up to a particular teacher to decide if they want to talk sex. Most don’t, and even when they do, they aren’t trained to do it right. I have a number of friends who teach high school and were around both before and after the reform. All are reporting that when they choose to talk about sex, they now discover that their pupils are awkward, shy, and silent, or vocally ignorant and inappropriate. A friend who teaches English recently told me that when she broached the topics of preg-
nancy and STIs, she was shocked to discover that more than half her class was readily convinced that if you avoid insemination by not ejaculating in a woman, you also avoid all STIs! None of her grade nine students had been instructed about prophylactics of any kind. She probed further and discovered that although many of her students were sexually active, they had never been instructed about how to have sex. One of her female pupils described having regular sex, but neither her nor her partner had ever taken their clothes off: they didn’t know that was normal, and the girl had no idea that she could experience pleasure, let alone an orgasm. Forget any notion of intimacy. This is a modern tragedy. Childhood and adolescent sexual health education is a must if we want a society that practices safe and fulfilling sex, and plans reproduction responsibly. Although we expend
a great deal of energy analyzing the abundant and growing problems with our post-secondary education system, we often do so while taking quality elementary and high school education for granted. But bad policy decisions are everywhere. We need to
Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily
look at our education system holistically, because we are now failing to succeed in the most basic forms of teaching, including the development of awareness and understanding of our own bodies. o
Art Essay
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
Roxana Parsa
13
14 Features
Tom Acker | The McGill Daily
Canada and the AIDS crisis The Daily’s Zach Lewsen examines Canada’s failure to get antiretroviral drugs to the people that need them – and Ottawa’s recent effort to change all that
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n March 9, 2011, the House of Commons passed Bill C-393 with a vote of 172 to 111. The Bill’s sponsor was Ottawa Centre NDP MP Paul Dewar and it was championed by groups like the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the Grannies to Grannies campaign of the Stephen Lewis Fund, as well as generic pharmaceutical companies like Apotex Inc. The bill’s goal is to reduce the red tape around Canada’s production and exportation of generic drugs. The legislation’s opponents have included Westmount-Ville Marie Liberal MP Marc Garneau, MPs from the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois, and research
based pharmaceutical companies like GlaxoSmithKline. The main arguments against the bill include the fact that it violates intellectual property law, creates potential profit losses for research based pharmaceutical companies, and does not address other aspects of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Not only have organizations and MPs communicated their support for the bill, many prominent Canadians – including Somalian born Toronto hip hop artist K’naan and the humanitarian activist Dr. James Orbinski – have stated that they support the bill. The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network also has a petition signed by numerous religious leaders across Canada,
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
and another signed by scientific and medical researchers, encouraging the federal government to pass the bill. The main reason so many have campaigned for this bill is to increase Canada’s exportation of generic anti-retroviral drugs to Africa for humanitarian purposes. These drugs revive the immune systems of those suffering from HIV/AIDS. In most cases, these drugs can significantly extend the lives of those living with the virus. As it stands now, India is the only major global exporter of antiretrovirals. Several other countries, including Canada, have the infrastructure to produce and export the drugs in bulk, but have failed to fulfill that potential.
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patented drug is the original drug that a research-based pharmaceutical company produces. A generic drug is made of the same chemical as the brand name versionsm, but has a different marking, colour, and label. The price of a generic antiretroviral drug can be up to 95 per cent cheaper than its brand name competition. This price difference occurs because generic companies do not have to invest in the invention of the drug in the way the brand name companies do. Currently, the cost of brand name antiretroviral drugs is too expensive for many African countries to afford. Studies have shown that generic production of drugs can reduce the price dramatically. According to Richard Elliot, Executive Director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, “the single most important factor that has driven price levels down has been the ability to get antiretroviral drugs in generic form.” That Canadian antiretroviral exports will increase as a result of C-393 is a near certainty, though the precise extent to which that will occur remains unclear. Following the bill’s passage, Apotex – the largest generic pharmaceutical company in Canada – has additionally committed to producing a drug that is specifically designed for children with HIV/AIDS. Currently, there are approximately 2 million AIDS deaths per year in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. “Globally, roughly 15 million people at the moment out of the 33 million who have HIV/ AIDS are in need of antiretroviral treatment,” said Elliot. “There’s a real treatment time bomb here.” Despite the fact that Africa makes up the majority of the demand for antiretroviral treatment, the developing world makes up a small portion of the demand for brand name antiretroviral drugs. According to Rachel Kiddell-Monroe, the president of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, the developing world is only receiving a sliver of the pharmaceutical drugs produced worldwide. “Ninety per cent of pharmaceutical companies’ incomes come from the developed world,” she said.
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n 2004, the Paul Martin government passed a bill that creates Canada’s Access to Medicine Regime (CAMR). This legislation was designed to encourage Canada’s exportation of generic
drugs to developing countries for public health purposes like the treatment of AIDS and malaria. CAMR intended to enhance Canada’s production of generic antiretroviral drugs by allowing the government to issue a compulsory license to a generic company to produce a specific drug needed to treat a public health problem in a specific country. But CAMR is mired in red tape and legal contradictions that act as roadblocks to improved levels of treatment. Only one batch of generic antiretrovirals (which was sent to Rwanda) has left Canada since CAMR was passed, and this came only after a four-year process of working through government paperwork and negotiations with the patent-holding pharmaceutical companies. By contrast, in 2008 alone India exported generic antiretrovirals to 96 countries. Kiddell-Monroe said that CAMR is currently “too complicated, its got so much red tape and bureacacy in it that it makes it really diffficult for developing countries to use. ... Developing countries themselves have seen that they don’t have the resources to manage it.” In an article posted on Apotex’s website, the company’s president Jack Kay stated, “We invested millions in the research and development of the product and legal costs in negotiating with the brand companies, and made no profits in the process. We did it because it was the right thing to do.” Apotex also indicated that they would no longer export any generic antiretrovirals to the developing world unless the federal government reformed CAMR. Currently, the compulsory license system produces strains on the exportation of generic line drugs. With this licensing system, generic companies can only export one drug to one country for a specific time period. This type of license is ineffective because viruses transfer between multiple developing countries and many of these countries need the same drugs. Also, epidemics can persist for longer than the imposed time limit. In addition, these time limitations prevent the mass production of generic drugs that can make these a profitable industry.
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n addition to the compulsory licence, the legislation discourages generic exportation through arbitrary limits. Currently, there is a list of exportable drugs under Schedule One of CAMR that are allowed to be exported as generics. Not only are there arbitrary restrictions on the drugs that are allowed to be produced, but CAMR only allows specific countries to receive Canadian generic exports. To receive the drugs, a country must be on a list of eligible countries and, then, must declare that it is unable to produce these medicines domestically. Bill C-393 removes these disincentives for generic production because it will make the process of obtaining an export license a single bureaucratic step. It additionally removes the arbitrary cap on drug exportation. Under a one licence system, a generic drug company will obtain a permanent license for a drug of any amount, to be exported to any coun-
try in need. Bill C-393 will also remove the arbitrary limitations listed earlier. First, the bill would force CAMR to allow all drugs defined by the WTO as treating a public health problem to be exported instead of just those listed in schedule one of CAMR. In addition, the list of coutries allowed to import would be extended to all countries facing a public health problem instead of the limited list of nations allowed to import Canadian made generic drugs. Conservative MPs and research-based pharmaceutical companies have opposed the bill because they believe that increased generic exportation could violate intellectual property rights under the WTO’s Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The agreement, in effect since 1994, sets minimum intellectual property protection standards for patent holding companies and individuals.
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laxoSmithKline (GSK) is one of Canada’s large research-based pharmaceutical companies that holds copyright on a number of ARVs. GSK opposed Bill C-393 on the grounds that it would infringe their rights as patent holders, potentially leading to a loss in their profitability. In an email, Michelle Smolenaars Hunter, a spokesperson for GSK stated that “the provision of medicines is only one essential element in addressing healthcare issues in the developing world.” Kiddell-Monroe dismissed the assertion that drug provisions and health infrastructure improvements are mutually exclusive. In describing the role of health infrastructure, she said, “of course we need all that but this is not an either or situation... you can have a beautiful health centre but if you got no drugs in it what does it mean.” The Harper government has largely backed the research-based patent holders. Heather Hume, a spokesperson for Industry Minister Tony Clement, stated in an email that Clement is opposed to Bill C-393 because it “would revoke intellectual property rights.” However, the WTO has since reformed its regulations surrounding generic drug exportation. Section 4 of the WTO’s 2001 Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health states, “While reiterating our commitment to the TRIPS Agreement, we affirm that the Agreement can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of WTO members’ right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all.” Pharmaceutical companies like GSK have also claimed that they have donated a large quantity of antiretroviral drugs to developing countries, rendering reforms of CAMR unnecessary. Elliot, however, responded that these “donations are not significantly enough in quantity to actually address the real needs of patients.” For now, however, people who are fighting for increased global access to ARVs, like Elliot and Kiddell-Monroe, are hopeful that C-393 will pass in the Senate and fulfill its objectives.
15
Science+Technology
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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Your criminal mastermind The ethical implications of neuroscience in the legal system Anthony Cotter
Science+Technology Writer
D
uring the late 1960s and early 70s, San Francisco was home to a generation that believed they were part of a revolution that was changing the relationship between human bodies and human minds. One of the tenets of their rebellion was freedom: freedom to live as equals, to disagree with their government, to love whomever was around to be loved, and to alter their minds with whatever exogenous chemicals were available at the time. Back then, the city was also home to Benjamin Libet, a physiologist at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), who was quietly conducting his own experiments in consciousness. Libet recorded electrical activity in the brain while asking his subjects to voluntarily raise a hand. He established that there was about a half-second delay between the brainactivity that initiates the voluntary motor movement and the conscious decision to raise the hand suggesting that this “decision” was a story concocted by the conscious brain to explain the involuntary impetus. Such a result challenged the very idea of free will, instead suggesting that we were essentially puppets dancing to the pulls of invisible strings. Libet’s conclusions have since been largely overturned. The con-
sensus among both philosophers and psychologists today is that the delay actually represents the separation between first- and second-order consciousness, i.e. thinking about thinking about raising the hand. But the controversy surrounding Libet’s experiments is a good example of how neuroscience – the study of how the physical processes of the nervous system produce mental phenomena – can and have been part of a revolution in the way we think about thinking. Advances in imaging technologies can be used to correlate what’s happening in the environment outside a brain to the patterns of activity within it. For instance, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) uses rotating magnetic fields to produce a real-time image of brain activity, based on volume and degree of oxygenation of blood in the brain. Because different categories of thought, like places or faces, correspond to different structures in the brain, when a participant thinks of either a place or face, the observer behind the monitor will be able to tell the difference – to read the participant’s mind. But peering into the black box within our skulls could have dark consequences. According to Hank Greely, a Stanford Law professor, neuroscience may enable predictions to be made about people’s future health or behaviour. In more Twilight Zone-like scenar-
ios, “unwanted” behaviour, such as sexual deviance, addiction, or political beliefs could be treated by electrical implants. Many of these ideas are still the realm of science fiction. But today’s neuroscience is having a huge impact on the field of criminal law. In March 2005, neuroscientists contributed to a landmark case in the U.S. in which the Supreme Court ruled against giving the death penalty for offenders under the age of 18. They argued that adolescents are not as capable of controlling their impulses as adults because the development of neurons in the prefrontal cortex – an area associated with social behaviour and conceiving the future – isn’t complete until the early twenties. The correlate of the argument was that adolescents should not be punished for the immaturity of their neural anatomy – that the crime was really the fault of the brain, not the person. The Canadian Criminal Code removes responsibility from anyone “incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of the act or omission or of knowing that it was wrong.” The U.S. ruling raises some sticky questions about the word “appreciate,” a concept that implies the ability to foresee and anticipate consequences. What constitutes a “mature” anatomy? Should adults with damage to the prefrontal cortex be held responsible for their actions? How do brains differ between people that are able to
control their baser urges and those that are not? There is a body of findings that suggest the prefrontal cortex acts as a valve for the instinctual motivations of the reptilian and earlymammalian brains we all carry. Overtax or inhibit the prefrontal cortex with alcohol or sleep deprivation and it becomes evident that our ancestors mostly desired sex, pizza, and warmth. Daniel Ambrosini, a lawyer-cumneuroscientist studying at McGill, cites the 1992 case of Herbert Weinstein as an example of a landmark case in the “my brain made me do it” argument. Weinstein was a New York ad executive who strangled his wife and threw her body from a 12th story window. During the first-degree murder trial, the defence counsel presented an image of Weinstein’s brain showing a large cyst in the frontal lobe as evidence mitigating his criminal responsibility. Because the prosecutors were afraid of the effect the images might have on the jury, they agreed to drop the charge to manslaughter, and Weinstein and his brain avoided a life sentence. Abnormal development of brain structures involved in motivating instincts can also overwhelm the prefrontal cortex. In August 1966, Charles Whitman, a student at the University of Texas killed his wife, mother, and 13 other people on campus before being shot by the Austin police.
Following the massacre, an autopsy revealed Whitman had a tumour in his amygdala – an area of the brain that evolved in mammals and is associated with fear and aggression. In October 2007, a group of neuroscientists, psychologists, and lawyers was awarded a $10-million grant from the MacArthur Foundation to study the impact of modern neuroscience on criminal law. Their work aims to answer the primary question that arises from the collision of the two disciplines: namely, how does the structure of a brain affect the liability of a body? Should we trust fMRI scans to distinguish truth from fiction? Should the police be able to get a search warrant for someone’s brain? Should we be made to answer for our urgers, or only our control over them? If Kermit the Frog came home to find Ms. Piggy in bed with Fozzie Bear and knocked the stuffing out of both, should he be punished less if an x-ray could prove that Jim Henson’s hand was behind the blows? As neuroscientists and their technologies learn to tease apart the strings that make us dance, our laws will have to adapt. For now, the point at which people should be excused from responsibility for the actions of their bodies because they are not able to control themselves remains ambiguous. Neuroscience is providing new frames through which to question the control we have over our actions, but, ultimately, the answer may be ours to choose.
Brains are alive with the sound of music McGill research finds connection between music and dopamine Melanie Kim
The McGill Daily
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ccording to a study conducted at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University (MNI), listening to music we love stimulates production of the pleasure chemical, dopamine, in our brain. This is not a new idea: listening to music can be described as one of the most intensely pleasurable human experiences, causing both states of craving and euphoria. There hasn’t been evidence of a dopamine release occurring with music because it was too hard to measure… until now. Lead investigator Valorie Salimpoor managed to combined techniques of functional magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography to get impressive results. Along with other researchers, Salimpoor, a PhD student in the MNI lab of Robert Zatorre, a professor of neurology at McGill, was able to estimate exactly when and where dopamine was released while listening to music. Stimuli that are necessary for survival – like food and sex – involve a
reward system in the brain called the dopamine reinforcement circuitry. This circuit is ancient and has evolved to reinforce behaviour necessary for survival. The demonstration that an abstract reward, such as music, can lead to dopamine release suggests why music, which has no obvious survival value, is so prevalent across human society. The team at the MNI measured dopamine release in response to music that induced “chills”: changes in heart rate, respiration, skin conductance, and temperature. Chills are byproducts of intense or sudden autonomic nervous system arousal, and some people get them very consistently when they experience intense pleasure in response to music. This allowed researchers to objectively identify when participants of the study were experiencing emotional arousal. This innovative study showed that two separate brain circuits are involved in the release of dopamine at different phases of music listening. Researchers found that during the peak chills, dopamine was released in the ventral striatum, the same area involved with the consumption of
cocaine and other intense pleasures. Furthermore, during the anticipation period, dopamine was released in the dorsal striatum, which is connected to the frontal cortex and other “thinking” areas of the brain. These areas are involved in taking information from our environment and integrating it with information that is already stored in our brain. “Based on all the experience you have about how sounds are supposed to be formed, and how you would like them to be formed together, it’s almost as if you create an anticipatory craving of a note,” Salimpoor explained in an interview with The Daily. “When you’re listening to music, you’re not listening to it in real time, especially for a song you like. You’re usually a few seconds ahead of the music, but you still need to hear it – you need that auditory stimulation. And that’s where the pleasure comes in. It’s like expectation, then confirmation.” Although dopamine is generally thought to be involved in anticipation, there isn’t only an anticipatory component to music because it’s not pleasurable to hear a single note. But since music is a whole bunch of single notes organized in time, the researchers
Lorraine Chuen for The McGill Daily
concluded that it was the time component that made the listening experience so pleasurable. “It’s kind of like a roller coaster in a sense, because you go on it to experience emotions and feelings, but it’s perfectly predictable,” Salimpoor said. “You know what’s going to happen, but it still surprises you and you still enjoy that surprise.” Technically, people could listen to their favourite part of the song over and over again, but nobody does that because the buildup of anticipation is what’s important. In the case of music, dopamine plays a role in both the anticipation of music and the realization of these expectations . When people are asked why they enjoy listening to music so much, it always comes down to the enhance-
ment of emotions. Imagine watching blockbuster movies like Titanic or Jaws without a soundtrack. Would people really be able to feel the passion, fear, and distress of the characters without the sumptuous, thematic soundtracks that shake your heart and shuffle your mind? “This is the question I always get asked: Are we addicted to music?” Salimpoor said. “I say yes because look at how much money our society spends on going to concerts, buying music, buying speakers, iPods, and anything to basically enhance these musical sensations. And so yes, I do think we’re at least mildly addicted to music. And now here’s the physiological proof that music is working in our systems.”
Science+Technology
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
Top five things in your body that should kill you (but don’t)
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Jenna Blumenthal investigates how destructive parts of your body can be, and how adept your body is at exploiting these functions for the better.
Why it should kill you Gut flora (microorganisms taking refuge on your insides) Nicola Stradiotto | The McGill Daily
Liquored up lab rats New gene therapy could cure rodents of their alcoholism William Dickerson
Science+Technology Writer
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esearchers at the University of Maryland may have found a way to cure alcoholism in binge drinking rats. Rather than applying current techniques of psychosocial and pharmacotherapeutic intervention, the team, led by Harry L. June, professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology at the university’s School of Medicine, used gene therapy to treat the alcoholic rodents. The rats were first given a taste for booze with an invitation to an open bar. They were trained to self-administer doses of an ethanol-saccharin cocktail by pressing a lever – four lever presses for a 0.1 mL shooter. Over a two-week period, the rats were then weaned off the saccharin and slowly introduced to a 10 per cent ethanolonly solution. With an understanding of the lever mechanism and a maturing palette for spirits, the rats were ready to party. The University of Maryland researchers exposed their subjects to thirty-minute binge drinking sessions for three days. While binging, the rats were given a choice between the ethanol solution and water, and after each session tested for blood alcohol content. Rats with blood alcohol content greater than 0.08 per cent (the cutoff for excessive drinking as defined by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse) were considered to have a preference for alcohol, and were then selected to receive gene therapy. The team found that the desire to binge drink was linked to the reward circuitry in mammalian brains. In rats, the protein αalpha-1 subunit –
a receptor located en masse in the brain’s ventral pallidum – is the culprit. In humans, preliminary testing indicates that the αalpha-2 subunit is linked with impulsivity, anxiety, and drug abuse. Using the Herpes Simplex virus as a vector – a vehicle for the transfer of genetic material to a target cell – June and his team introduced small interfering RNA chains into the ventral pallidum, inhibiting αalpha-1 subunits, and virtually eliminating the rats’ desire for excessive alcohol consumption. The rodents showed no desire to drink for six days after the surgery, but began drinking increasingly soon after, reaching pre-surgery levels on day 13. The duration of the effects represents one of the most important flaws in current gene therapy, and is a barrier between clinical trial and human application. Due to rapid cell division, lasting effects of gene therapy are difficult to sustain. Fortunately, the vector used in the treatment isn’t toxic, inhibiting only its specific target cells: it caused no loss of body weight and did not alter general activity levels. Before gene therapy can be used to help cure alcoholism in humans, conclusive evidence must link the αalpha-2 subunit to alcohol dependence. Researchers will need to exhaustively explore the molecular pathways of the subunit proteins and determine if procedures are safe. June hopes to use the information generated in the study to develop drugs that could use the subunit receptors to their full advantage, bypassing the need for vectors. If testing is successful, gene therapy as a cure for alcoholism may lie in the near future; thanks, in part, to a few sober rodents.
Apoptosis (programmed cellular suicide)
ActivationInduced Deaminase (AID)
Neural adaptation
Killer T Cells
Your intestines are crawling with trillions of bacteria and other microbes, many of which are indistinguishable from those that make you ill. An entire ecosystem of organisms lines the inside of your gut, uniquely adapted to surviving the harsh conditions of the human intestine. Not only are these microbes loitering inside you, they are clever enough to obtain necessary resources directly from your body. If the integrity of the intestinal wall is breached, these bacteria can invade the host (you) and become a threat.
Believe it or not, your cells are programmed to die. Upon receiving appropriate signals, the cell can activate a class of internal proteins that wreak havoc on organelles. Other activated proteins attack the cell’s DNA, destroying any possibility of normal cell function. Apoptosis can be triggered by molecular binding of the cell’s “death receptors” – unprotected surface proteins that, when stimulated, initiate a series of reactions that lead to breakdown of the cellular membrane, cell shrinkage, and DNA fragmentation.
AID is a simple protein that distorts normal patterns of DNA by deliberately introducing mutations. By rearranging the chemical composition of DNA molecules, this process will transform the proteins that will then be produced by the cell. Manipulating genomic material can have detrimental effects, including disrupting the cell’s usual activity and encouraging the growth of malignancies.
Neurons are lazy. In a complete affront to all logical thought, many sensory neurons become less responsive when confronted with continuous stimulus. They’ll respond to the onset of stimuli, but do not continue to convey this information if the stimulus persists. Your neurons tire of sending the same sensory information to your brain, and, if you think about it, this should have some pretty heinous effects on all neurological functions. If your brain doesn’t get updated, how can proper control persist?
Killer T Cells are important to the immune response. But instead of reacting to invading bacteria or viruses, Killer Ts attack your own cells. Unlike other immune cells, Killer Ts can’t even recognize these pathogens; their activity is limited exclusively to attacking the organism’s own cells. When active, Killer Ts release “cytotoxic granules” that can bind to the target cell’s membrane and induce apoptosis.
What it does instead The constant interaction with these unique organisms serves several valuable functions. They ferment non-digestible materials (such as unabsorbed alcohol and gum) and are key players in normal immune resistance. When the body interacts with these microorganisms, it learns about the external environment and cultivates specialized responses to antigens, essential for the development of a capable immune system. The organisms themselves barricade invading pathogens by competing for space and nutrition, and release antimicrobial substances to limit the proliferation of harmful bacteria. Apoptosis is a tightly regulated process, and ridding the system of unneeded cells is important in maintaining healthy body function. In some cases, excess cells are produced and only those that properly mature survive. Programmed cell death serves as a practical self-editing mechanism, enabling the body to keep only the beneficial cells around. Surrounding cells keep a close check on this degradation, engulfing the leftover fragments before any damage to the body can occur.
At any given moment, an overwhelmingly large population of pathogens can enter your body, which your immune system must battle. AID’s unique abilities to induce random genetic mutations in certain immune cells is harnessed; accelerating the evolutionary process and generating a wide range of highly differentiated cells enabling individualized response to specific antigenic substances. Thankfully, precise regulators that restrict AID’s potentially damaging activity to particular cells of the immune system silence unwelcomed mutagenesis in the rest of your body. The body is magnificent. Not only can it decide which sensory information is important, it actually assigns individual properties to different neurons depending on their role. For something like pain receptors, neurons do not exhibit this lethargy; you continue to acknowledge pain even if it is unaltered. However, right now you probably aren’t thinking about the fact that your foot is still touching the floor, and perhaps that nasty locker room odour has become tolerable. This is a direct result of your neural system’s ability to adaptively silence redundant sensory information. The regulation of our own cells is our main defence against viruses and cancers. Other cells in the immune system often miss viral infections because viruses don’t float around the space between cells, like bacteria – they hide inside human cells. Killer Ts become activated when they bind to cells that are infected with a virus or have genetic alterations associated with cancers. When a cell becomes damaged, it presents a specific receptor on its surface that stimulates the Killer Ts, confining their prolific killing abilities to only those cells that may harm the body.
Sports
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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Sacrificing bodies for reputation McGill Rugby players talk about the expectations for athletes to play through pain Caught offside Katie Esmonde
katieesmonde@mcgilldaily.com
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ou need only see a few minutes of a rugby match to realize how incredibly beautiful, yet intensely brutal, this game can be. Rugby is masculinity personified: aggression bordering on violence, fierce competitiveness, teams as a brotherhood, and bodily sacrifice all in the name of victory. The status associated with this level of masculinity is certainly positive for the players involved, but the price they pay with their bodies can cost them dearly. Ask any rugby player about their injury history and they will often have many stories to tell. When I interviewed McGill Varsity rugby players Josh Balloch (fly-half), Gideon Balloch (winger), and Valentine Sergeev (flanker), they all had this to say about their own injuries: “I’ve been pretty lucky.” They told me of broken noses, concussions, a week’s worth of memory loss, injured backs, and “dislodged” ribs. But even so, they are probably right to describe themselves as lucky. A compounding factor is the tendency of elite athletes to refuse to call it quits after getting hurt, thus worsening the damage. “Everybody plays through injuries all of the time,” said Gideon Balloch. “It is emasculating to have to stop playing because of injuries. But there are also cases where it’s stupid, or impossible, to keep playing.” But what most people might consider “stupid” or “impossible” is probably a lot less than what it would take to sideline a McGill Redmen rugby player. Since the expectation is that they will continue to play through pain, players who are not as willing to make the sacrifice can be judged. “I was definitely made fun of when I came off with the rib injury because I had continued to play, so it appeared that I could play,” said Josh Balloch. “That added to the illusion that I was being a sissy.” Not all players are equally under suspicion, however. “Knowing the person is really what makes the difference,” Sergeev explained. “Someone who you associate with being a little soft, I guess, you’ll automatically think that maybe he’s just being soft again. But [for] guys I’ve always seen as tougher, if they get injured I’m actu-
Rugby players often focus on the competition at the expense of their own health. ally kind of worried. Because if they say it hurts, it hurts.” This isn’t to say that injuries are not taken seriously in rugby; in such a dangerous sport, “you don’t really want to ever be on the field when you’re not 100 per cent,” according to Josh Balloch. But, at the same time, players pushing themselves too hard – sometimes at the request of their coach or other players – are far from unheard of. “I’ve seen some pretty uncomfortable things,” said Sergeev. “Sometimes player safety is definitely put after winning.” There are myriad reasons why a player would choose to sacrifice their body for the game. “The overt motivations are winning and partaking in something as great as playing for a team,” said Gideon Balloch. Sergeev also listed school pride and playing for your teammates as contributing factors. But when bodily sacrifice is coded as masculine behaviour – and players who fail to live up to these expectations are passed off as “sissies,”
“bitches,” or “girls” – is it really out of the question to suggest that fear of emasculation may play a role? “I would say that there is a certain aspect of being emasculated or seen as more feminine that is involved there,” clarified Josh Balloch, “but I think at this point, it manifests itself under the surface. Sometimes people do call you a girl, but there’s sort of an understanding that is built when you’re growing up that this is masculine, this is feminine, and you don’t have to say it in so many words because everyone has a common understanding of that.” A fear of emasculation may not consciously contribute to risky onfield behaviours, but the conflation of masculinity with playing through pain in pursuit of victory is so firmly entrenched in the culture of contact sports that it does not have to be explicit – the effects are still there. It is not a coincidence that many athletes often describe sports as a war. “This is a war. This is a battle,” said Sergeev. “People go to war, they sacrifice themselves, so you
should too. They sacrifice their bodies and their minds for a greater cause, and that’s the same mentality you adopt in rugby. Is it a war? Yes, but not in the sense that you want to kill people or destroy things. It’s a war in the symbolic sense.” In war, as Sergeev explained, it is expected that soldiers will put their bodies on the line for their country. Sports culture often conflates competition with war, and these risks on the field are thought to be justified. Perhaps the players are not consciously thinking about masculinity, but it is certainly implied in our feelings toward the game; in fact, masculinity may be the reasoning behind them. Masculinity is sacrifice. Masculinity is physical dominance. Masculinity is winning. Masculine privilege is a doubleedged sword. The players that are considered the most masculine – the hard-hitters, the top-scorers, the guys that never have to come out of a match – receive a great deal of respect from their teammates, their oppo-
Courtesy of the McGill Rugby team
nents, and their fans. In a lot of ways, masculinity itself is a competition: for some to win, others must lose. Being an elite athlete in an aggressive sport, particularly if you’re one of the best, is one way to win. Of course, this all comes at a price. This is not particular to rugby, since playing through injury is common for most athletes – men and women alike. When considering the long-term effects, one need only reflect on the fact that the life expectancy of professional football players is twenty years lower than that of other men due to a lifetime of medical maladies and concussions. Injuries build up – they do matter. The players that I interviewed talked a great deal about the benefits of playing varsity rugby: friends, school involvement, mental strength, physical fitness, life lessons on hard work and dedication, and even a vague mention of “rugby bunnies.” But you can’t ignore the price that almost every player must pay along the way.
T H E R E A R E O N L Y Beat the buzzer, write for Sports TWO ISSUES LEFT sports@mcgilldaily.com
Sports
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Dangles and death threats Violence in sports and its long term effects Paging Dr. Gonzo Ben Makuch
benmakuch@mcgilldaily.com
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ou’re a fucking pussy. I’ll fucking kill you if you get up,” he said with a self-important atavistic grin on his face, filled with the same malicious intent of most sexist diatribe. I was playing in a soccer game against the Laurentian Voyageurs and I had just finished telling that particular opposing defender that he was in fact not going to university, but attending a high school. So as an epic case of dangle-itis (a deking frenzy) struck me à la Cristiano Ronaldo, he decided to fly into my ankle like a shot down Spitfire. I didn’t deserve it at all – I was just being an asshole like any other athlete I’ve ever known or competed with or against. Talking trash is just a part of the game; nothing personal, just another dehumanizing tool necessary in psychologically beating your opponent. I never said it was nice. What can I say, not every athlete is like me. Some are honourable. But me, I’m team Materazzi. Soon after, I was lying on one of those boring blue mats you see in gym corners – the kind people sweat on then fake sanitize with spray bottles filled with water and blue food colouring. Some athletic therapist poked and prodded my leg as I squirmed in agony. She had that “oh-you’re-prettyfucked” look on her face. She was also interested in the calcified lumps running up and down my
Ian Murphy for The McGill Daily
legs, which were – as I explained – historical records of my oftenpunished talent for dangling frustrated opponents. This time, one of those mouth-breathers really got me. I can only imagine it was a thank you for me being better than him, or just a patented move of the pack of talentless quagmires that is the Laurentian Voyageurs varsity men’s soccer team. The verdict (which I didn’t know at the time): I broke my ankle – chipped a finger-sized splinter off the bastard, in fact. It was pretty obvious just by looking at it that something unholy had possessed my ankle, as a water bubble sud-
denly sprouted out of nowhere at the top of it. “You better get your fucking ass back out there, McCooch,” spat my searingly infuriated and overgrown Scottish badger of a coach. He never once pronounced my name right in the three years I knew him; instead he Scottish-ized it. Then again, he was also the type of guy who still used phrases like “coloured boy” for African-Americans. We were playing a man down for ten minutes, waiting to see if I would be resurrected and cometh once again upon the holy Laurentian Soccer Field. If I had anything to do with it, which I didn’t, my answer would have been
“fuck right off coach.” But as I said, he was a Scottish badger: rarely seen in Canada and always to be feared everywhere. He had essentially issued me the “shit-or-getoff-the-pot” ultimatum – the most feared by any athlete in a team environment. If you don’t play, or do not continue do so at a high level, somebody is going to take your spot right from under your nose. A game off is an opportunity for an underling to snatch what he thinks is rightfully his. And you hate him for it. And he hates you for it. That’s why I have a laugh anytime a professional athlete talks about “the guys” or the artificial camaraderie I consider a plague on
a largely adversarial locker room subculture that persists in most sports. That’s generally why you’re a weak and inferior athlete if you allow things like broken bones or concussions to hamper your play. Because the biggest and baddest motherfucker on the team, the guy everyone wants to be, will play missing half a leg and some fingers to be the best. In my experiences, that guy is also psychotic. But everyone else is cannon fodder. “I can’t do it,” I said, and my decision was final. He walked away to the bench without even looking at me, barked another name in Scottish and I never played again for the rest of the season. By the Laws of Manliness I am one of the dreaded “pussies.” But I’ve broken way too many bones and had way too many concussions to adhere to some over-enthused Rudy code of ethics or to give a shit. Glory is a temporary jolt of testosterone, adrenaline, and endorphins running through your veins, eager for a way out. I still run into old teammates who start recalling the glory years and, not all, but some, talk about the permanent damage they’ve sustained to their bodies because of their athletic careers. Back issues, ankle operations, knees, the works. My nose is visibly crooked, like a Swiss ski slope, and on a cold damp day when the rain seeps into my shoes I feel the brittle demands of my old coach, right in my ankle. That being said, it could just be a bad case of dangle-itis.
Athletes pressured to cheat
Coverage of steroid abuse in the media neglects the institutional influences Jessica Lukawiecki The McGill Daily
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rom the day they begin playing sports, athletes are pushed to be on top of their game in every way: to eat right, train hard, and play well. These young athletes experience extreme pressure to not only be the best they possibly can, but also compete with other players who have undergone the exact same kind of training. We are quick to point fingers and accuse athletes who turn to steroids for extra help as being cheaters, but in a world where being the best you possibly can be often isn’t enough, can we really blame them? Pursuing a career as an athlete can be trying, even for the best players. One can train as hard as possible, eat healthy, and give up most of their social life, but in the end
you either make it or you don’t. Not making it can involve losing years of expensive training and hard work, as well as dreams of honour and fame. Because of the pressure, athletes placed in such a position will often turn to anything that can provide them with an edge. Anabolic steroids are the most commonly used performance enhancing drug. These are synthetic hormones used to boost the body’s ability to produce muscle and prevent its breakdown. Although banned in professional sports and known to have harmful long term side effects, there are still a number of athletes turn to these performance boosters for extra help in keeping on top of their game. “We can’t deny the facts: steroids break records – records that someone not on steroids could never hope to beat,” said Dan Conacher, McGill Redmen hockey player.
McGill’s coaches and trainers do a good job of keeping their athletes off steroids by enforcing random drug tests and encouraging players to follow natural, healthy methods of getting in shape. But despite these efforts, temptations exist, particularly for athletes who plan on pursuing athletics at a higher level. “The way that athletes are evaluated can unintentionally pressure them into using performance enhancing drugs.” said Andrew Barr, coach of the McGill Redmen basketball team. “In a sport like football, where much of an athlete’s talent evaluation has to do with how big they are and how much they can lift, steroids have the potential to boost an athletes stock significantly. The fact that the educational component is there and usage rates are as high as they are proves that the incentives to use steroids, at least for some athletes, outweigh the risks.”
These risks, both psychological and physical, can prove detrimental to the athletes who use them. Conacher explained that athletes who use steroids will begin to mentally rely on them to perform well, believing that the steroids, and not their own talent, is showing through. “Although I’ve heard of people who decide to go on steroids just to temporarily boost performance so that they can pursue a higher level of athletics,” said Conacher, “they will often end up staying on them because they believe that without that extra push, they will fail.” The physical consequences of steroids are enormous as well. With side effects ranging in severity from mild to serious, steroids can cause problems with hair loss, body acne, dizziness, premature balding, and stunted growth, and can increase the risk of developing heart disease, strokes, and cancer
when not managed properly. There are also a number of gender specific side effects, such as changes in menstrual cycles and deepening of the voice for women. Men have been known to experience painful urination, shrinking of the testicles, and development of breasts – ironic symptoms for athletes who are trying to “bulk up.” The trouble with steroids is that they provide fast acting, short term benefits to performance, potentially appealing to athletes under so much pressure to perform. They can lead to dependence, dangerous health effects, and expulsion from professional sports when caught, but despite these dangers, some athletes continue to find the benefits worth the risk. Perhaps the real problem isn’t in the steroids, but in the unimaginable strain we place on our athletes to be faster, stronger, and bigger than is humanly possible.
20Art Essay
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
Rosie Dobson
Culture
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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CULTURE ESSAY
Fashion in transition
Is the latest vogue in models’ bodies a tokenization of gender-bending?
Erin O'Callaghan
The McGill Daily
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ashion is about fantasy. Known for pushing boundaries of race, gender, and comfort, the fashion industry has never been one to shy away from the different. Given this tendency, the nude image of Lea T – one of fashion’s most recent “it” models – that appeared in French Vogue last August was not entirely unexpected. Nudity, especially for a magazine like French Vogue, is standard practice. For this particular photo, however, it is not the act of being nude, but Lea T’s physical body that is the subject of discussion. Lea T is a transsexual model, and the controversial photo in French Vogue makes it impossible to ignore this fact. With one hand barely covering her male genitalia, Lea T unabashedly places herself, and her body, on display for the world to see. “On the one hand I think it’s a really fantastic image and I really have a lot of respect for Lea T… on the other hand, it’s French Vogue. It’s part and parcel with the beauty industry, which fetishizes images that might seem shocking,” explained Cultural Studies professor Alanna Thain to The Daily. When the August 2010 issue of French Vogue was released, the picture of Lea T created a lot of buzz in the fashion industry, and shone the spotlight on the difficulties transsexual and transgender people face every day. “I agreed to pose in the name of all my transsexual friends,” Lea has been quoted as saying. In posing for this photo, Lea has become a sort of spokesperson for transsexual and transgender people who are comfortable with their identity, yet do not necessarily want to submit to full surgery. While the nude photo and Lea’s subsequent success in the fashion industry is a step toward opening up more widespread discussion of gender issues in society, Thain warns against its potential tokenism. “[There is] always the problem when there is one model who is going to stand in for a certain kind of difference,” she said. Furthermore, in every other aspect besides having a penis, Lea T has the body of a model. Tall, slim, and with a face too interesting to be merely pretty, Lea T simultaneously conforms to the fashion industry’s typical body type, and challenges it by having a penis. “[The] strength
Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily
and interest of this image is a beautiful sexy woman with a penis,” Thain states. However, she did not find the image particularly shocking. “I’m not sure if it is being received as shocking in the same way it would have been 10, 15, 20 years ago.” The fashion industry has long been known for championing unrealistic body types. “Feminist theory has spent a lot of time deconstructing the ways that your typical model doesn’t represent the typical average woman anyways,” explained Thain. “So if [Lea T] can be a way
to provoke debate and to provoke questions of fantasy [and] expand our sense of what counts as beautiful and sexy and fashionable and desirable, great.” However, if Lea T’s image merely reinforces the rigid ideals that the fashion industry upholds, she may represent nothing more than another thin, beautiful model with a unique characteristic that the industry is exploiting. The fashion industry is famous for picking up on uniqueness, and exploiting it to achieve a particular look, or push a specific fashion.
Take the upsurge of gap-tooth models that occurred a few years ago. Dutch model Lara Stone, a typical model in every way except for the prominent gap between her two front teeth, took the fashion industry by storm. Suddenly, gap-tooth models were everywhere. Today, gender-bending seems to be the latest “trend” in fashion. Lea T first appeared in Givenchy’s autumn/ winter 2010-2011 show for long-time friend Riccardo Tisci and has since walked the runway for Alexandra Herchcovitch in her native Brazil.
Nineteen-year-old Andrej Pejic, an Australian (via Serbia) male model who made his debut on the Gaultier menswear autumn/winter 2011-12 catwalk, has modeled both male and female clothing. While he still appears to identify as a male in the media, he walked Gaultier’s couture catwalk as “the bride,” and stars in Marc Jacobs’ latest campaign in gender-neutral clothing. Catwalks for autumn/winter 2011-2012 were full of gender-bending tricks. Vivienne Westwood put lipstick on her male models, and Gaultier had male models walk the runway in short-shorts with heavy beards. The February issue of LOVE magazine was the “androgyny issue,” featuring Lea T dressed as a woman and Kate Moss dressed as a man, kissing. But none of these examples indicate any real acceptance of transgendered issues by the industry. Although the fashion industry appears to be pushing the boundaries of gender, it is still doing this in a way that completely conforms to our society’s typical definition of beauty and desire. Thain questions whether gender-bending in fashion is an example of creating more openness within pre-existing gender definitions, or whether the industry is actually reinforcing norms through this apparent gender-bending. “[The gender-bending] is fluid and it’s not fluid – it plays off of a kind of dynamic tension,” Thain says. “[The fashion industry] tends to reify those two worlds [of male and female]; only a privileged few who can move back and forth between the two.” Pejic was quoted backstage at the Gaultier show as saying he would consider a sex change if Victoria’s Secret offered him a contract. “You’d have to wouldn’t you? I couldn’t imagine doing it any other way,” Pejic said. This admission is a clear commitment to traditional gender definitions; despite modeling both female and male clothing, models that cross-dress are still expected to fulfill the typical stereotypes of the gender they are representing. As Thain expresses, the potential strength of the nude image of Lea T or the cross-dressing of Pejic is how they highlight the norms those who are different must conform to in order to be accepted by society. “What fashion really calls into focus is the way that transsexual and transgender people are pressured to present a very normative model of sexual or gender identity in order to gain access to all these sorts of privileges.”
Culture
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
23
Who is Ana Mendieta? New graphic novella addresses the marginalization of women in art through one forgotten female figure Flora Dunster
The McGill Daily
W
alking through The Whitney Museum last month in New York City, a loud voice echoed across the galleries. An overzealous guard was standing behind a piece by Minimalist artist Carl Andre, whose austere tile-like installations are often mistaken as being part of the floor. The guard shouted, “This is art! Do not step on it!” and policed our movement through the room to make sure we didn’t stray too close. The irony lies in the fact that Andre, whose work is removed and protected from the body of the viewer by institutions like The Whitney, was married to Cuban artist Ana Mendieta, whose work helped to redefine how the body is seen in relation to its surroundings, to the earth, to the past, and to itself – a site of autobiography and engagement. Christine Redfern is the author of a new graphic novella entitled, Who is Ana Mendieta?, illustrated by Caro Caron. In an interview with The Daily, Redfern explained that although “everyone realizes the importance of women’s work…when it’s passed on to the next generation, many times the women aren’t there. What they did is forgotten.” By
researching and re-presenting Mendieta, the book hopes to preserve her memory and work for a future art historical discourse. Who is Ana Mendieta? commemorates its subject, but is also an act of protest on behalf of the women who are pushed out of our collective memory by structural inequalities that continue to privilege men, and that shy away from seemingly controversial topics. Mendieta used her body to claim a space in the universe – not above nature, but a part of it, and her work documents her embodied existence by offering proof of her physical and spiritual presence. In a 1974 performance entitled Body Tracks, Mendieta faces a wall, buckling to the ground as her hands leave two streaks of red paint in her wake, traces of her body’s movement through time and space. In her “Silueta” series, the artist projected her form onto and into her surroundings – exploding the outline of her body into the earth with fire and gunpowder, sinking it into mud. The body is present, assertive, and engaged. Redfern noted that, “Art comes from somewhere – it’s not existing in a void,” and Mendieta’s propensity to draw from and record her own subjective state of being is powerful proof. Art historian and critic Lucy Lippard, who contributed the novella’s intro-
duction writes that, “Although her body was her raw material, her art was never narcissistic, but rather a process of self-discovery, selfaffirmation, and the exorcism of pain.” Mendieta’s story ends abruptly in 1985, when she “went out the window” of the 34th-floor apartment she shared with Andre. In the panel depicting Mendieta’s death, Redfern writes that, “The police, unlike Mendieta, didn’t photograph the body,” a noticeable irony indicative of the ease with which a body can be made irrelevant. Andre was tried and acquitted for Mendieta’s murder, and though his potential guilt is still a controversial issue, many would prefer to ignore his involvement in her death altogether. “The whole affair was merely a blip in his art world success,” writes Lippard, and in addition to preserving Mendieta’s practice and memory, she suggests that “the very directness of the graphic novella is an ideal vehicle for the outrage women feel about the extent of domestic and general violence against us.” Mendieta’s erasure – both physically and from canonical art history – is tied to larger trends of systemic violence against the body, no matter how hard we try to empower and protect our existence. When asked about Mendieta’s life within the context
Courtesy of Caro Caron and Christine Redfern
of women’s experience, Redfern said that, “even women not being given the same opportunities is all part of an undervaluing of women, and how they’re treated…it all comes down to respect…So, clearly, her story
ties into violence against women, and that’s ongoing. The struggle continues.” Who is Ana Mendieta? is available from June 2011. See bit.ly/anamendieta for more information.
A walk to remember Labyrinths can be used to move meditation out of your head, and help both body and mind Tamkinat Mirza
The McGill Daily
T
he use of labyrinths as a meditation tool can be traced back to many religious traditions, and has been associated with various cultures, including Greek, Celtic, and Mayan. The McGill Chaplaincy services have recently incorporated this tradition by setting up a weekly labyrinth in the SSMU building, open to anyone wanting a quick way to clear their head, de-stress, or find solutions to life’s nagging problems. Although there is a tendency to think of the labyrinth and the maze as interchangeable, the former differs from the latter in that it does not contain dead ends – instead there is a single path which leads from the front to the centre and back. “Ancient people discovered that walking a complex, but single path that requires your attention can change the state of your being,” Chaplain Neil Whitehouse explained in an interview with The Daily.
The concept behind the labyrinth as a meditation tool is that when a person makes frequent left and right turns, the brain’s awareness also shifts between left and right hemispheres – allowing for a greater engagement of both. “The design that we’ve chosen is from the cathedral in Chartres, which is the classic medieval labyrinth. It dates from 1201 and includes many 180 degree turns. Analysing some of the effects of that, people have pointed to the way in which those turns may encourage a connection between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, and that correlates easily with some of the well-known, recorded and proven effects of deep meditation. “Most of the time when we’re working in a logical, rational fashion, we’re using most of the left hemisphere of the brain. If walking the labyrinth encourages a connection between the left and the right, then we’re using more of our brain... It can be a more powerful experience, and it can
help you intuit answers to questions that you can’t rationally solve... It can help people to have deep insight into their lives,” Whitehouse said. “The inclusionary aspects of the labyrinth experience must not
Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily
be ignored – it provides an active form of meditation for those who find themselves unable to sit still for long periods of time. “When [the body] is moving, the mind is not so shocked by experience.
Classic meditation (when you’re sitting still), deprives the mind of a lot of normal sensory input,” Whitehouse explained. “So, an itch that you wouldn’t have otherwise noticed amplifies, because the brain amplifies the fewer signals it gets to the same level as before. That’s why sitting still can be a challenge... But a labyrinth, it allows you to walk, you’re still getting input from the brain, but it’s very similar input all the time, you just walk in a pattern,” Whitehouse expressed hope to generate more interest in the labyrinth over time. “[The reception right now] is good. I think it’s just difficult to get people to break their routine from being so busy and so under pressure. It’s a sort of paradox...if you actually encourage your spiritual side whilst you’re under pressure... I think you will perform better, actually. It’s [about] trying to set up healthy patterns for lifelong learning,” he said. Beyond their function as meditational tools, there has been research into extending the use
of labyrinths for medicinal purposes, such as in the treatment of Alzheimers. Galantamine, a chemical used to treat this disease, is naturally occurring in many amaryllis flowers – which in turn could be used to plant labyrinths. In addition, anyone suffering from diseases caused by chronic levels of stress can benefit from the labyrinth’s soothing effects. The chaplaincy’s labyrinth provides students with a de-stressing experience that is arguably more personal, and does not rely on outside perspective or expert input. The experience centres around a person’s own thoughts, making what one attains from it distinct and variable. The overall potential of the labyrinth lies in its ability to soothe and de-stress, as well as an inherent ability to improve overall mental and physical health. The labyrinth is set up in Shatner 203 on Wednesdays from 2 to 5 p.m. For more information visit the group’s Facebook page, on.fb.me/ labyrinthmcgill
24Culture
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
From the body’s mouth
The Daily in conversation about the work of the body through stripping, singing, and performance art
The stripper
A
McGill undergraduate who wishes to remain anonymous spoke with The Daily about her work as a stripper, and the role of the body in her job. The McGill Daily: I was trying to think of a way to start, and I figured it might be interesting to begin with the basic concept of nudity. We normally think of nudity with connotations of intimacy, or maybe shame or sex, but for a stripper, nudity is kind of your work uniform. Was that jarring when you began?
Anonymous: Um, yeah. Definitely. With nudity, something jarring, or a paradigm you have to adjust to is you see women naked. Like, the women that I work with I see them naked all the time, many days a week, and some of them I’ve never even exchanged pleasantries with. So, it redefines intimacy, I guess, in this huge way. MD: How has your relationship with your body changed since you began stripping? A: Well, I’ve effectively become a vegan, because of maintaining
my weight, and I’d say that I’ve become less self conscious – cause you have to do a lot of those things in the dressing room in front of people and get over it – but more self-aware. You know, cause like the club is filled with mirrors...and often a girl might be dancing for a man and just looking at herself the entire time. I’m aware of the way that the back of my hair looks, my posture, whether my stomach is sticking out, all of these things. My body, it’s a lean, healthy, student girl body, but it kind of outs me as
the stripper dilettante because I haven’t invested in it the way the kind of, real contenders at the club have. You know, a significant amount of the money they’re making – all of it sometimes – is going into maintaining that person, that whole look. MD: That’s funny, cause it’s sort of just this capitalist paradigm where you have a tool with which you produce things, and if you’re responsible you invest some of your profits back in the tool to improve it.
A: Yeah, and you can’t help it. The shaving, the working out, you have to have some gesture toward this ideal that they’ve been upholding for decades, really. Before I started working there I did some research into what sorts of things you should have to be prepared and stuff, and there was a real emphasis on having fake things, because fake things signify that you’re not a normal girl, you’re a special girl, you’re this wonder girl. —Compiled by Ian Beattie
The opera singers
R
ebecca Woodmass and Jana Miller are currently doing their Masters of Music in Opera Performance. The McGill Daily: How does opera singing engage your body? Rebecca Woodmass: It’s very physical. A lot of people think singing is just voice and it’s not. Especially in the past thirty years I would say, opera’s become [younger]. If I were overweight it would be difficult to get a role now, which is totally different from what it used to be. We have to stay in shape. But also the singing itself, what happens with the fat person, they have a natural grounding to the earth that makes them feel heavy and able to produce a beautiful, rich sound. Whereas with a smaller person like me, I really struggle with staying grounded, so that’s a huge issue for a lot of us small sopranos. All the sound and all the energy comes from the diaphragm and so if you don’t feel like you’re attached to the
Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily
floor, you don’t feel like you’re supported by the earth, it’s really difficult to get your breath out of your chest. That’s the main physical part. MD: Do you have a routine to keep your vocal cords healthy? RW: I’m less kind of diva than most singers about that. I think that if we can’t live our life what’s the point, right? There’s singers that drink and there’s singers that don’t drink and I drink – a lot. I stay well hydrated, I do yoga all the time, and on warm-ups I focus almost only on the breath. Jana Miller: It’s really important to take care of your body. Mostly staying hydrated. You need the constant mucus on the vocal chords. MD: Do you have a routine to stay healthy? JM: Not at the moment, it’s been a really busy year and I know it’s something you should make time for. There’s a lot of singers, especially in opera, who are amazing, and they’re not physically fit. It’s not a steadfast rule but it can also be beneficial to your mind and your spirit
and that’s all tied together with singing voice because singing is so visceral and human. Connection with the emotion and the body are completely integrated. MD: Do classes emphasize the need to pay attention to the body? JM: There’s been some programs they’ve created in the past couple of years. They’ve given yoga classes for musicians and in Opera McGill we do tai chi and they’ve offered stage combat, which helps you protect your body during fight scenes properly. MD: Does opera singing engage the body in ways other singing doesn’t? JM: Most definitely, because you’re your own amplifier. You don’t have a microphone, you have to create your own resonance in your body and it has to project over an orchestra into a big hall. That’s what we train to do, which is quite different from other kinds of singing. —Compiled by Carolina Millan Ronchetti
The performance artist
S
adaf Nava is a Montrealbased performance artist who incorporates installations, live music, and movement into her highly physical and often dramatic performance pieces.
The McGill Daily: How do you as an artist use your body in your work? Sadaf Nava: I use my body in my work instead of creating an art object, which I have no storage space for, and no money in order to create, and no time or craftsmanship, and no interested collector to by it. So, therefore, working with a living, breathing, moving entity is more interesting to me and always more threatening to an audience, which instead of an inanimate object draws more attention to itself, and essentially I want as
much attention as possible. MD: Do you find that using your body in art is inherently more confrontational than using other mediums? SN: Yes, because it’s unpredictable. It’s always unpredictable. Even for myself, and sometimes I am unsure as to what will happen during a performance. So, it’s even more threatening to myself as to where it will go. The boundaries are all open. MD: How does the presence of your body effect the installations you have created? SN: Sometimes I use several bodies in order to create an installation, and the choreography of people again is more interesting than photos on a wall, or presenting, organizing work in a space,
the installation I create are disposable, and are created usually to be destroyed. They are just a complement to the art itself, and the art itself is elsewhere, and that is why documentation of it is the only artifact that’s left and that will survive. MD: Do you think that your work as an artist changes your relationship with your own body? SN: It removes the limits of the body completely. And the role and the title of artist, now I can see it as choreography, I can see it as dance, I can see it as theatre, and this is really important to me to broaden the idea of what is an artist, and the body itself, it removes any restriction in the body. — Compiled by Fabien Maltais-Bayda
Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily
Culture
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
From the graveyard to the gallery
25
Art Mûr’s new exhibit “Bone Again” explores our modern conception of death Amina Batyreva
The McGill Daily
T
he deathly silence in the Art M û r gallery is broken only by the intermittent mechanical whirring of one of its installations, Brandon Vickerd’s “Champions of Entropy” – one pairs of antlers locked in a perpetual struggle, the ghostly non-existence of the rest of their bodies: surreal and nightmarish. Art Mûr’s exhibition this month, Bone Again, is very much reminiscent of a bad dream – a celebration of the ill-remembered imagery that haunts our subterranean consciousness. Surrounded on all sides with images of bones and skulls, one can’t help but feel alone as the only avatar of the living amidst this morbid dreamscape. And yet, the primordial repulsion one might expect to feel towards these emblems of death is curiously absent. Instead, the pieces exert a fascinating pull: a certain solemnity and dark charisma in the staring eye sockets and the elegant lines of bone, as evidenced in Bevan Ramsey’s “Bone China” series and Karine Turcot’s dreamlike “La vie en rose.” The exhibition itself is an exploration of the way contemporary artistic thought tackles the theme of memento mori – a Latin phrase that translates roughly to “remember that you will die.” The exhibit program states that the phrase dates as far back as Ancient Rome, where it was whispered in the ear of a triumphant general to remind him of
his mortality. Art with this cautionary theme, ranging in terms of visual aesthetic from openly confrontational to quietly philosophizing, became a popular theme in medieval and Renaissance art, influenced largely by the moralizing prescripts of Christianity to live virtuously, and the miasmatic spectre of the Black Death which hung over Europe. In a long-running tradition of memento mori artwork, Bone Again surveys the concept of death in art under the purview of modern society. “All of the artists who did the work are still alive, and the pieces were made in the last ten years,” says Rhéal Olivier Lanthier, one of the two founders of the gallery. A few themes thread through the collection, notably a comment on the vanity of indulgence in the face of inevitable death. Hanging in the front window display looking onto the street, is Christoph Steinmeyer’s “Disco Inferno,” a pair of fake skulls tackily studded with mirrored tiles evocative of disco balls. The appropriation of death in this gaudy style is repeated in Damien Hirst’s “For the Love of God, Laugh,” a silkscreen print of his famous diamond-encrusted skull, which Hirst claimed he sold for £ 50 million, and Laura Kikauka’s cheeky parody-homage made of dollar-store plastic skulls and rhinestones, “For the Love of Gaud.” Images of skulls were used by people like the Hell’s Angels; they represented something fearful and scary. The image of the skull used to be thought of as disgusting, but now you see it on dresses, t-shirts, videogames. It’s like a fashion
Edna Chan | The McGill Daily
object now,” said Lanthier. These works seem to display the contemporary blase attitude towards depicting death and the grotesque. The traditional imagery of death has become, for us, contrived and abstracted due to death’s tangible absence from our ordinary lives. Advancements in medicine, technology, and our sanitized cultural infrastructure have ensured that unpalatable reminders of death – such as the bodies of the dying and the dead – are absent in the day-to-day. The disappearance of religion as a governing authority in the Western world has also contributed to our disappearing concern with the afterlife. “In this day and age the threat
of eternal damnation informs the daily lives, and acts of precious few Westerners. Furthermore, in Quebec, the number of believers has plummeted so that its inhabitants particularly give little credence to this threat,” writes Ève De GarieLamanque in the exhibit catalogue. Though the collection deals with the theme of vanitas which was traditionally the domain of Christian art, religious imagery is scarce in Bone Again, with the only explicit reference being Al Farrow’s “Humerus of Santo Guerro” – a sculpture of bullets and bone crowned with the figure of Christ on the cross, criticizing religion’s history of war. The historical gravity and solem-
nity which death once demanded has given way to a wry, ironic, and increasingly detached treatment of it in today’s society and art. As religion and the fear of mortality gradually disappear from the modern consciousness, the way that we view bodies and their skeletal remains – both animal and human – seems to have changed. Exhibits like Bone Again illustrate this growing disconnect between our conceptions of our bodies as alive and dead, and the aesthetic journey of our remains, from the earth to the gallery. “Bone Again” runs until April 23 at Art Mûr, 5826 St. Hubert. For more information see artmur.com
Muse
Well I guess it would be nice If I could touch your body I know not everybody Has got a body like you
No ivory statue will be erected in her honour Not marble, nor cheap bronze. Clay and Play-Doh will suffice. She gets no token for any of the Inspiration she gave
Let us touch your...
When she is done making love to the countless poets, painters, sculptors, the wannabe rock stars , the humble jazz musicians, those “avant-garde” theatre performers, & the plethora of photographers with sexual intent. (The numerous images of her naked body captured on various media).
...mind
No appreciation for the art she helped to create. Nothing for her withering beauty Only broken ballads written for her poems dedicated to her destructive sexuality (so raw and vivid men step over their mothers just to Fuck her).
The last Culture meeting is this Tuesday, 5:30, Shatner B-24
And when they are done with her She is no longer modest. Her intentions misconstrued Her life: ridiculed & examined (She dances like a nymph in the night) —Theran Seaton
Inkwell
Last chance for romance
C ompendium!
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
Lies, half-truths, and soggy kitties
Cat-astrophe!
oLIFESTYLES
How to be an arts student...
Crisis exacerbated by excessive water waste from cat-flushing Bikuta Tangamann and Stefan Goulet The McGill Daily
E
nvironmental activists are currently lobbying the Canadian government to prevent the flushing of toilets by cats due to rising water consumption. Surveys have shown that one of the leading causes of water consumption in North America is a result of cats flushing toilets in domestic households. “We are currently facing one of the greatest dangers to our environment,” said Lotus Greenberg, a leading activist of North American Organization for Feline Litigation and Shortage of H 20 (NOFLSH). “The world’s leading scientists have found that cats flushing toilets is one of the leading causes of climate change and the Canadian government needs to start addressing this issue now.” The Harper Government, however, is currently dragging its feet in presenting legislation to Parliament. “We are waiting to see if the United States government will take action,” said a spokesperson for the Conservative Party of Canada. “It is important for Canadians and Americans to work together on creating a uniform climate change policy across North America.” Pro-Flush groups in America,
Courtesy of Reuters
Chairman Meow is pictured flushing his throne. however, are strongly opposed to any prevention of cats flushing toilets. “It is a fundamental right for cats to have the liberty to flush toilets if they want to,” said Chester Chesire, head of National Right to Flush (NRF). Prototypical cat-flushing-prevention technology is currently in development, but Pro-Flush lobby groups are trying to limit further federal funding. “Cats like to flush toilets and their owners like to videotape them and post it on YouTube,” according to NRF’s website. However, Greenberg feels that
immediate action must be taken. “This is one of the most important crises facing humanity right now and we need to prevent cats from bringing about catastrophic changes to our environment,” said Greenberg. “He’s a cat flushing the toilet. He doesn’t care if he’s wasting water – he just likes to push the handle and watch the water go down.” Protests against cat-flushing will be held at the Y-intersection this coming Tuesday. Organized by Students for Flushing Responsibly.
You can count on me! Miss Nomer
26
improve everything, but don’t follow through on anything. Realize that the rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to you. Hand papers in weeks after they are due. Charm your professors so they don’t take off points. Get an A in the class anyway. Get unpaid internships at plac-
Use non-hierarchical structures to further your place in the social hierarchy. Talk with confidence about things you don’t really understand. Mention Foucault. Mention Derrida. Mention Sartre. Laugh when someone pronounces their names wrong. Hate corporations while spending all your money at Starbucks. Hate misogyny and shop at American Apparel. Appropriate everything. Tell everyone you hate appropriation. Take classes in things you don’t care about so you can bring them up later in conversations with people you don’t like at parties you weren’t really invited to. Talk about grad school. Talk about grad school constantly. Complain about political systems. Complain about the right. Complain about the left. Don’t vote, ever. Don’t talk in class unless absolutely necessary. Make fun of those who do talk. Dress up every morning, but try to make it look like you haven’t tried. Never, ever wear sweat pants. Chain smoke cigarettes. Skip class. Sleep in late. Complain often about the amount of work you have. Don’t read the course pack but insert yourself into every class discussion. Use anecdotes about your summer abroad to make sure the conversation is all about you. Have ideas on how to
Across 1. It can be top, bottom, or over 5. Next in the series, after 22-Down 9. Prefix with type 14. Former Raptors player 15. Poems of praise 16. More ready to eat, as in fruit 17. Practice in the ring 18. Grasslands 19. Happening 20. CGI, explosions and green screen, e.g. 23. Chapter in history 24. Paddle 25. Farmer’s field, abbr. 28. Turkish title 30. Products of some chewing gum 34. One guarding the net 37. Evict 38. Film genre 39. First in the series 40. Desert bloomers 41. Kiss in London 42. A movie based on a novel 44. Covered access to sewers 46. Holy Trinity part 47. Fitting 48. Next in the series, after 39-Across 49. Stylish, in the 60’s 51. Why 62-Down afraid of the beginning of this clue, or the next several in the series
Nicole Stradiotto | The McGill Daily
es no one has ever heard of. Spend your parents money to get an education in a field that is shrinking. Make yourself completely unemployable. Acknowledge this, then disregard it’s importance. Tell people you are doing it for yourself. Tell people that there is always grad school. Talk about grad school. Talk about grad school constantly... —Moan Livers
59. Having a tendency to 60. Black-and-white cookie 61. Fling 63. Computer key 64. Friendly 65. Sun hat 66. SHO series 67. Contributes 68. Black stone
32. Prevent legally 33. Time in spent prison 35. Made brighter 36. Modern courtroom evidence 40. Camera brand 42. Lotion ingredient 43. Drums 45. One side in the NFL negotiations 50. “Same here” 51. Gush 52. Sea flier 53. Cast a ballot 54. U.S state 55. Alum 56. Stampeding group 57. “High” time 58. Catch sight of 62. Next in the series, after 5-Across
Down 1. “60 Minutes” network 2. “My bad!” 3. “Immediately!” 4. Next in the series, after 48-Across 5. Leaves 6. Bright thought 7. _____piccata 8. Latin 101 word 9. Kind of house 10. Inland watercraft 11. Crude group? 12. Camping gear 13. Crumbs 21. Shipping container 22. Next in the series, after 4-Down 25. Discrimination against the elderly 26. “We’re not _____ take it” 27. Dangerous gas 29. Battery terminal 30. Call-waiting sounds 31. Saint ____, Caribbean nation
Solution to “Goodness cretaceous” I D E S
N A Z I
C U R L
C O M E
A N A L
N E C K
A B A T T O I R S
D I C E S
E N U R E
N U R S E
V I B E S
S A N T R A E D A O D D V E E R T B O G
T R O O P S O U R S A C E
Y I N G S H A N O S A U R U S
L E A N C E H A L T O U S E L S
C O M T E O O T R E L T O P H P E R R E R U S A H D O I L O D
O M A N I
N I X O N
S T I N G
A I N T
B O O R
U N D O
A R I A
R E S T
M O P E
27
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 21, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
volume 100 number 40
editorial 3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-24 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9 phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com coordinating editor
EDITORIAL
Whose streets? It can often be hard to see the value in public protests. A few hundred, or perhaps thousand, people walk through the streets, singing and chanting. Traffic is shut down for a couple of hours, and at the end of the day one gets the sense that nothing has been accomplished.
Emilio Comay del Junco coordinating@mcgilldaily.com coordinating news editor
Henry Gass news editors
Rana Encol Mari Galloway Erin Hudson features editor
Niko Block
commentary&compendium! editor
Courtney Graham
coordinating culture editor
Naomi Endicott culture editors
Fabien Maltais-Bayda Sarah Mortimer science+technology editor
Alyssa Favreau
health&education editor
Joseph Henry sports editor
Eric Wen
photo editor
Victor Tangermann illustrations editor
0livia Messer
production&design editors
Sheehan Moore Joan Moses copy editor
Flora Dunster
But recent events in Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Jordan have proven otherwise. The fact that the people of two of these countries have peacefully toppled their own dictatorial governments indicates that something tangible and specific is in fact accomplished each time we choose to make a statement by putting our bodies in the streets. Staging these demonstrations is an important way of catalyzing discourse on issues our governments would rather we forgot about. By occupying public spaces, we can force negotiation upon those who would rather ignore our grievances. The past ten days in Montreal have seen their own share of demonstrations. On March 12, an estimated 55,000 people marched in protest of tuition hikes and the spending cuts included in the coming year’s provincial budget. On Tuesday, hundreds again took to the streets demanding an end to police brutality. In recent weeks, students in Liverpool, Milwaukee, and Berkeley have occupied buildings on their campuses, demanding an end to post-secondary education cuts. In all of these cases, demonstrators have succeeded to some extent in having their demands met, and in gaining the support of legislators and faculty members. Our very right to make our voices heard is also under threat as police increasingly use mass arrests as an anti-protest tactic. At last Tuesday’s demonstration, 258 people were arrested, most of them simply for being present at the anti-police brutality march. The vast majority of these people were entirely peaceful, and only about a dozen have been fined for disturbing the peace.
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Last summer’s G20 in Toronto marked another disgraceful abuse of state power. As a small group of demonstrators burned a couple of police cars and smashed a few windows, the Globe and Mail claimed that protesters’ intentions were to “whip up such a street war that the news of the violence would overwhelm the substance of the summit.” What some of the more extreme protesters were guilty of that weekend was not in fact violence, but rather vandalism. Falling directly into the discourse espoused by the Toronto Police, much of the mainstream media failed to make any distinction between protesters’ aggression against private property and police aggression against human bodies. The problem is not only that property was being treated like people that weekend, but also that people were being treated like property. The Globe’s is the type of rhetoric that enabled the police at the G20 to forcefully strip search dozens of people, rip off a man’s prosthetic leg before dragging him along the ground and detaining him, and beat dozens of innocent protestors and bystanders with impunity. Of the 1,100 people detained that weekend, only a minute fraction were ever charged with anything. Nevertheless, they were forced into cramped and unsanitary conditions, and given little to eat or drink. Women were threatened with rape. Many were denied access to medical treatment, and virtually all were denied access to legal counsel. If Canada’s government expects its rather tepid endorsement of the Egyptian revolution to be taken seriously, it owes its citizens a serious apology for what it perpetrated at the G20 last summer. The mass arrest of protestors in Montreal is equally unacceptable. Our right to take a political stand by putting our bodies in public spaces is inalienable and a pillar of any healthy democracy.