Volume 101, Issue 34
March 5, 2012 mcgilldaily.com
McGill THE
DAILY
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Published by The Daily Publications Society, a student society of McGill University.
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News
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 5, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com
3
Motion on accessible education passed at SUS GA SUS Mobilization Committee positive about impact Doris Zhu
News Writer
T
he Science Undergraduate Society (SUS) held the first General Assembly (GA) in its history last Friday evening. The first motion regarding accessible education passed by a wide margin with 81 votes. Quorum for the GA is 125. It was reached within one hour. The motion was moved by U2 Physiology student Leif Halldor Asgeirsson and U1 Biology student Carl Dion Laplante. They are both members of the SUS Mobilization Committee, who started the petition for the GA. The original intent of the motion was to make the SUS adopt a policy supporting accessible education, with a stance against tuition hikes and the long-term goal of free education for all Science students. It was amended three times. The amendments focused the policy on the current Quebec tuition hikes instead of long-term goals. After the first motion was passed, people started leaving, and quorum was lost.
The second motion, to recognize an SUS Strike Committee was withdrawn by the movers, U1 Mathematics student Aidan Drake and U2 Mathematics student Matthew Henry. They are also members of the Mobilization Committee. SUS speaker Matthew Dolson adjourned the GA after the second motion was withdrawn. Though quorum was brief, members of the Mobilization Committee were pleased with the outcome. “To be honest, I wasn’t excepting to reach quorum, so [having enough people show up] was good,” Asgeirsson told The Daily after the GA. “On the other hand, the fact that we have to struggle at McGill to get 125 students to come to a GA is depressing,” he added. Dolson spoke about the passage of the GA’s first motion. “That is as good as it can go,” he said. “It was good that people got involved and people had things to say.” Although the motion regarding an SUS Strike Committee was not discussed on the floor, the Mobilization Committee members were positive about the impacts of this GA. “If we use the momentum of
Henry Gass | The McGill Daily
GA quorum of 125 was reached in under an hour. [the] GA, good things can happen,” said Laplante. He added that the Committee intends to continue working to mobilize for an unlimited general
student strike. There are currently over 91,500 Quebec university and CEGEP students on strike. The Art Undergraduate Society is
holding a GA to vote to join the strike on March 13. The strike is in protest of a five-year, $1,625 hike in tuition fees scheduled to start this September.
Independent Student Inquiry presents final report to SSMU Council Report delayed due to ATI issues with McGill Henry Gass
The McGill Daily
O
ver three months after its launch, the Independent Student Inquiry (ISI) into the events of November 10 published its final report last Thursday. The report comes about two and a half months after Dean of Law Daniel Jutras submitted his report on November 10 to Principal Heather Munroe-Blum. Originally scheduled to be released in January, the release of the final report was delayed while waiting on Access to Information (ATI) requests filed with McGill. Chris Bangs, co-author of the final report and a U2 Economics and Political Science student, said in an interview with The Daily that he filed ATI requests with McGill on five separate dates between November 25 and January 19, some of which were resubmissions of previous requests. McGill has yet to acknowledge receipt of a request that Bangs filed on December 15, and he has
only received one set of requested documents, which related to animal testing. ATI requests at McGill are handled by the office of Secretary-General Stephen Strople. The Quebec Act respecting “Access to documents held by public bodies and the Protection of personal information” states that the public body has a maximum thirty days to respond to ATI requests. “Throughout this entire process McGill has not followed the law in its dealings with me,” said Bangs, “which is really regrettable.” Bangs said that he received a letter on February 15 from McGill’s lawyers to the Commission d’accès à l’information requesting that the commission disregard some of the requests, due to their number and repetitious and systematic nature. Bangs also said Strople’s office cited understaffing from the MUNACA strike last semester as a reason for an extended delay on responding to the requests. Bangs said it could take a year for his case with McGill to be heard by the commission, so he filed a griev-
ance two weeks ago with the McGill Committee on Student Grievances. Bangs’ grievance contends that Strople’s office has violated Parts 1, 5, 6, and 31 of the Charter of Students’ Rights in the course of their dealings with him. Part 31 of the Charter reads that “no personal information shall be disclosed by the University to a third party in a manner which permits the identification of the student.” The basis for the section was a similar letter that the Daily Publications Society – which is also in a dispute with McGill over ATI requests – received from McGill’s lawyers on February 15, which mentioned Bangs’ name. Amelia Bagnoli, co-author of the final ISI report and a U3 Arts and Science student, contrasted the four ATI requests she filed with the SPVM to those Bangs filed with McGill. “I got a letter that recognized that they received my Access to Information requests, got another letter stating that they were rejecting two of them and cited the law by which they were rejecting them,
and then they allowed me access to my other requests,” said Bagnoli. Bangs said the ISI wasn’t “relying” on information gained from ATIs. “It would have been really nice to verify a lot of stuff in the Jutras Report, because we weren’t given access to any information,” he said. The ISI received 34 accounts of November 10, none of which came from administrators or nonfaculty staff. The final report states that “despite repeated requests, all refused to be interviewed, stating that they were participating only in Dean Jutras’ investigation. This continued even after the publication of the Jutras Report.” The ISI presented the final report to SSMU Council last Thursday, and said that one of the main criticisms of it was a lack of perspective from the administration. Harmon Moon, co-author of the report and a U2 Arts student and Daily columnist, said the perception of bias was a “tragic consequence” of the administration declining interviews. “We weren’t out for blood. So that they should refuse to interact with
us on such an essentially innocent level is really galling,” he continued. Bagnoli said the administration “definitely did block our inquiry from having a complete scope of things.” The report made 10 recommendations, but Bagnoli said applying the recommendations was “outside the scope of our mandate.” According to VP University Affairs Emily Clare, SSMU may pursue some of the recommendations. She noted the fifth recommendation, that a “Protocol should be enacted which clearly specifies the process of an unbiased inquiry in the event that similar or comparable circumstances occur again on McGill campus,” would likely be pursued. “This is something we’ve brought up multiple times in Senate,” said Clare. “McGill is not very open to the idea of having an external investigation.” She also admitted that “the year is winding down, so we may not have enough time to really follow things through.”
The 2012 Muriel V. Roscoe Lecture
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Journalism Week is coming up
March 12-16 Stay tuned!
News
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 5, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com
5
SSMU Council denounces Bill C-10 Juan Camilo Velásquez The McGill Daily
S
SMU Legislative Council decided to denounce Bill C-10 – also known as the omnibus crime bill – to provincial and federal governments. The decision was made at Council last Thursday, which also voted on motions that were not formally passed at February’s General Assembly, due to loss of quorum. The motion, moved by Law Representative Ian Clarke, also seeks to make SSMU create a media campaign to denounce the bill, and to support any students that wish to denounce it as well. “One part will be to get the word out and to say this is not a good idea, we should not stand for it, and the other half is to advocate to the government and perhaps change their stance,” said Clarke. VP External Joël Pedneault was also mandated to lead the movement, which will denounce the bill to the University’s member of Parliament, Marc Garneau, and to Quebec senators. The motion to “reform frosh,” moved by VP Internal Todd Plummer, also passed. Plummer expressed concerns over the way Frosh currently runs, citing that, “it orients students to University life in an inappropriate way, and is dominated by ‘bro culture.’” Council also passed a motion on “Negative Corporate Influence on Campus,” which seeks, in part, to “build a University community gov-
erned by students, staff and faculty internal to the University community, rather than corporate agenda.” The SSMU Board of Directors (BoD) also met on Thursday and ratified the decision made by the Judicial Board (J-Board) regarding QPIRG’s fall 2011 referendum results. The ratification came following Council’s recommendations. VP University Affairs Emily Clare told The Daily that the BoD tries to follow Council’s advice because the latter has broader student representation. “In order to respect the internal democratic processes of the SSMU, it’s important that the BoD respects Council’s recommendation. We cannot have international students [on the BoD], so it is inherently discriminatory. Therefore, it is important that the BoD respects the will of Council,” said Clare. During Council, Management Representative Samuel Latham advised councillors to adhere to the recommendations of the Bylaw Review Committee, and discuss whether the decision was unreasonable. “Based on the report of the Bylaw Review Committee, a decision of the J-Board should only be overturned when it is deemed manifestly unreasonable and motivated by discrimination,” said Latham. Adam Winer, Clubs and Services representative, stated that discussion should not focus upon “whether we as individual members of Council find that the QPIRG question was one questions or two ques-
Madeleine Richards for The McGill Daily
Board of Directors upholds J-Board’s decision on QPIRG referendum
The J-Board ruled to dismiss the results of QPIRG’s existence referendum last month. tions,” as doing so would result in “taking the role of J-Board justices.” “I think it sets a very worrying precedent if we as Council, or as a BoD, overturn the decision,” he said. Becca Yu, U2 Arts student, presented a letter to Council, signed by thirty students. The letter expresses “disapproval and frustration” with the J-Board decision to invalidate the results of QPIRG fall 2011 referendum. The letter mentioned that “the decision made by the J-Board could severely affect campus life by
impeding QPIRG’s ability to function in a meaningful way.” “We are also angered by the way in which the decision was made, as well as the reasoning provided,” states the letter. The letter pointed to a potential conflict of interest on the part of Justice Raphael Szajnfarber. After the discussion, the Legislative Council voted to recommend to the BoD to uphold the decision made by J-Board. VP Clubs & Services Carol Fraser
also reported that the Cafeteria Light Project, which has been ongoing for three years, continues to be at a standstill because of disagreement between McGill and SSMU on the architectural designs. Fraser told The Daily that, because the project is funded with student money, the design proposed by SSMU should be upheld. “If it doesn’t even change the lighting capacity in the cafeteria so much, we are considering not even going with the project,” she added.
Ontario universities criticized for new copyright agreement Canadian Association of University Teachers says agreement means “million-dollar increase in fees” Steve Eldon Kerr
The McGill Daily
O
n January 30, the University of Toronto (UofT) and the University of Western Ontario (Western) signed a new agreement with Access Copyright to cover copyright-protected materials in print and digital formats. Under the new agreement, which runs until December 2013, UofT and Western will each pay Access Copyright, a copyright licensing agency which provides access to over 22 million published works, an annual royalty of $27.50 per full-time student. The previous royalty was $3.38 per student, with an added $0.10 per printed coursepack page. The new agreement does away with the per-page royalty for coursepack copying. According to Stephen Jarrett, legal counsel at Western, students paid an average of $18 a year in roy-
alties, which was in line with the Canadian average. McGill’s annual copyright fee is $12.45 for full-time students, with an additional charge of $0.83 per credit. Jarrett told The Daily that Western made the decision to move to a single annual fee because of difficulties identifying digitally-delivered copyright material. “Quite frankly, an equal amount of copyright material is being delivered over online course management systems as is being delivered physically,” Jarrett said. “We have to get a sense of whether or not the materials that are being delivered are subject to copyright or not, and this agreement buys us a couple of years to look into that issue.” The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has condemned the agreement. In a statement released on their website, the organization argues that the new agreement “allows for the surveillance of faculty correspon-
dence, unjustified restriction to copyrighted works, and more than a million-dollar increase in fees.” The CAUT notes that wording in the agreements defines copying as “posting a link or hyperlink to a digital copy.” However, each agreement also explicitly states that “nothing in this agreement restricts the ability of the Licensee...in any way that would be permitted by the Copyright Act, including linking or hyperlinking.” Jarrett admitted that Western disagreed with Access Copyright over what constitutes copying, and said, “[the agreement’s] wording was a compromise.” “If there were some judicial determination in the future that hyperlinking requires the permission of the copyright holder, [Western] would be covered under the agreement,” he continued. Jarrett told Western News that there was no provision that “provides for surveillance of academic staff emails.” The agreement also states that,
although surveying of communications content-management systems will be necessary, “Any survey shall respect all applicable privacy laws, including the Licensee’s privacy policies in effect from time to time, and the principles of academic freedom.” CAUT is also concerned with the agreements because of what they perceive as Access Copyright’s “characterization of the education sector as disrespectful of copyright, despite the sector’s billion-dollarplus annual expenditures on copyright material.” CAUT argues that Bill C-11, the Copy Modernization Act that will amend the current Copyright Act, will be passed in the next few months, and that it “will strengthen the bargaining power of [the education] sector with organizations such as Access Copyright.” Bill C-11, now in its second reading in the House of Commons, would amend Section 29 of the Act to state that “fair dealing for the purpose of research, private study, education,
parody, or satire does not infringe copyright.” Bill C-11’s proposed amendment is the inclusion of “education, parody, or satire.” Jarrett acknowledged that Bill C-11 will change the Act, but said that Western signed the agreement from 2011 to 2013 in order to be certain they will not infringe on it. Over thirty Canadian universities have chosen to opt out of new agreements with Access Copyright. Robert Gilbert, the communications coordinator for Access Copyright, told The Daily that the opt outs, and CAUT’s comments, suggest “that educational institutions decided to opt out of the Interim Tariff in anticipation of the fair dealing exception for ‘education’” that is currently part of Bill C-11. Access Copyright doesn’t operate in Quebec; its counterpart COPIBEC licenses Quebec postsecondary institutions. University of Toronto Provost Cheryl Misak declined The Daily’s requests for comment.
6 News
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 5, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com
Jordan Venton-Rublee The McGill Daily
W
ednesday morning, VP Internal Todd Plummer broke the news over the SSMU Listserv that the Faculty Olympics trophy had been stolen from his office. The event took a shocking twist Friday afternoon when a Facebook profile created for the trophy posted a ransom note on the SSMU Faculty Olympics Facebook group. The ransom note – posted along with a picture of the trophy – stated, “Dear SSMU, We have your beloved trophy. It is safe… for now!” Later Friday night, SSMU received a note, again on Facebook, that outlined three demands in order for the trophy
to be returned. If not met by the Opening Ceremony of the Faculty Olympics, the trophy will be returned “finger-by-finger.” The demands include the SSMU Executive videotaping a rendition of “ ‘Rocket Man’ in the style of the great William Shatner” to send out over the SSMU listserv, along with the re-naming of Gert’s coat check to “Sean Turner Memorial Cloak Room.” This is the first break-in to the SSMU offices, though Wallace Sealy, head of SSMU Security, does not want to think of it as such. “I’m not referring to this as a break-in,” he said. “I’m quite sure it happened during the day when Todd was around.” Sealy said that, as of Friday afternoon, he had “two soft leads,” and was still in the process of reviewing security footage of the SSMU office.
Last year’s SSMU VP Internal Tom Fabian acquired the trophy last year. Plummer said is not worth “more than three hundred dollars.” When asked whether this was an internal attempt to create buzz for the Faculty Olympics, Plummer said that “registration for the [event] filled before I did any advertising, so I would hardly say the event need more buzz.” “I have so many projects going on…that I really do not have time to entertain the whims of these hooligans,” he added. The Daily was contacted by one of the anonymous self-proclaimed “abductors” late Friday afternoon. The phone call came from a cell phone registered in Escondido, California, although the abductor stated that they are, at this time, in Montreal. They reiterated the fact that the trophy was safe and was currently
“wolfing down Alto’s and getting ready for a night on St. Laurent.” Regarding when the trophy was taken, the abductor said they were “surprised” as to how long it has taken Plummer to notice it was missing. They stated the trophy had been gone “a couple months.” “We are just trying to have a little fun and get everybody into the Faculty Olympics spirit,” they stated. The abductors wished to remain anonymous, though Plummer stated that he has “a really strong feeling it is someone from EUS… I think it also could be someone from Kinesiology because they won last year.” When asked if he would participate in negotiations with the abductors, Plummer stated, “We do not negotiate with terrorists, even amateur ones.”
First forum on campus safety, protest spaces, and consultation Manfredi to present final report on October 8 Henry Gass
The McGill Daily
T
he first public meeting of the Open Forum on Free Expression and Peaceful Assembly, hosted by Dean of Arts Christopher Manfredi on March 1, was marked by expressions of disapproval from many students with regard to the administration’s consultation process. The ninety-minute livestreamed meeting, which took place in Moyse Hall, was attended by a handful of students, faculty, staff, and senior administrators. Manfredi, chair of the Forum, structured discussion around questions posed in Dean of Law Daniel Jutras’ report on the events of November 10. David D’Oyden, U2 Arts student, said he found “forums like this to be pointless.” “I can’t understand how you know that tension exists in this University, and we’re not really doing anything to solve it. This is just another talk shop,” he continued. One student in attendance named Courtney explained that, “The format of this consultation seems so flawed to me.” “I feel like by speaking and just being here right now, I’m almost validating this type of consultation
to students, and I don’t feel comfortable validating it,” she continued. A contentious point of debate involved campus safety and the validity of occupations in particular as a method of protest. Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson attended the event and spoke about the five-day occupation of his office last month. “I don’t think that we should assume that people who work in the Deputy Provost’s office should assume that they can have their space invaded,” Mendelson said. “The people who work in my office are members of this community, and they currently don’t feel that they have a safe space to work in,” he added. Caroline Baril, who works in Principal Heather MunroeBlum’s office as senior associate (Government and Institutional Relations), spoke to her experiences during both the #6party occupation last month, and the occupation of Munroe-Blum’s office on November 10. Baril said that some of her colleagues, especially those working in Mendelson’s office, have “become justifiably a little fearful whenever they see a group coming towards them, because they don’t know what to expect now.” She added that the occupations
had caused her to fall behind on work, preventing her from “doing my job, which is contributing to the life of the University.” “I feel, as an employee of the University, that I’m not respected by the people that I’m working for,” she said. Political Science Professor Catherine Lu addressed Baril’s statement. “I find the excessive reliance on the language of fear and security describing the reaction to student demonstrations very off the mark and problematic, because it conflates the dangers of having an armed intruder with the problems of civic protest,” she said. “It’s not what we’d like to happen in our offices, but this is a part of being a public institution,” continued Lu. In response, Mendelson said he was concerned about the “the slippery slope that you’re going to go on, which is that the ends can justify the means.” “It seems to me that there are some ends that we can all agree with, but that doesn’t mean that we would all agree with any means to achieve those ends. So we really have to, I think, be very careful,” he said. Lu, however, said she saw the “slippery slope” pointing in the opposite direction. “When we start using the language of privacy and rights to basical-
ly say those in positions of authority and power really don’t have to listen to people who are lower than us or inferior to us… I think that it’s a big mistake for a democracy, and it’s a big mistake for a university,” she said. One of the first questions Manfredi posed was whether the University should designate specific areas to hold demonstrations. Josh Redel, president of the Engineering Undergraduate Society and a member of the forum’s nineperson Advisory Group, said the concept of a designated protest space was interesting, but that “part of the point is that direct action inherently disrupts something.” “So if you have a designated corridor that’s far away from classrooms, administration buildings, and therefore doesn’t disrupt anything, what’s the point then? They’re never going to use it,” he said. The forum will hold three more public meetings this semester, as well as a conference in April. Manfredi is mandated to submit a final report to Munroe-Blum no later than October 8. After the event, Manfredi spoke to The Daily regarding his final report. “This forum is not about a micro-analysis of specific policies, practices, and regulations. It’s about getting a general sense of the community on these issues that can then form an intelligent discussion on these things,” he said.
WHAT’S THE HAPS
SSMU Faculty Olympics trophy abducted
Undergraduate Education Forum Tuesday, March 6, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. SSMU Ballroom SSMU is holding its second annual Undergraduate Forum. Professors, students, and administrators are invited to discuss the role of undergraduate students in a researchintensive university.
Arctic Realities: Inuit Perspectives on Change March 12 to 16, workshops daily Various locations around campus McGill University’s Aboriginal Sustainability Project, Aboriginal Health Interest Group, Aboriginal Law Students’ Association, KANATA, and the Inter-Tribal Youth Centre of Montreal is hosting a number of events that examine how people in the Canadian Arctic are able to adapt to the rapid changes occurring in regard to essential health, education, and social services.
AUS General Assembly Tuesday, March 13, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. SSMU Cafeteria The Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) is holding a General Assembly for all its members. A McGill Arts student ID is required for eligibility to vote. All are encouraged to familiarise themselves with the brief guide to Robert’s Rules prior to attendance. The deadline to submit questions for the General Assembly is Thursday, March 8 at 5 p.m. All questions should be submitted to the Speaker, Ben Lerer, at speaker.aus@ gmail.com in either official language of the AUS.
Finance Workshop for PGSS Student Parents Tuesday, March 13, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Thompson House Balroom
The Familycare Committee of PGSS is offering a free financial management workshop, which will cover budgeting and debt management tips for parents and feasibility of student parents saving for their own children’s education. Childcare will be provided. Registration is compulsory. Please visit PGSS’ website to register.
SSMU Sustainability Case Competition Exposition Wednesday, March 14, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. SSMU Ballroom Six groups are competing to design the next sustainable, student-run cafe. On March 14, they will be showcasing their proposals to YOU. Come vote for your favourite concept! The Expo is the final day of the competition: each team will present their cafe proposal to the judging panel and to the McGill community.
Sports
7
Midori Nishioka for The McGill Daily
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 5, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com
Seoul trained One McGill alumnus stumbles upon celebrity in the South Korean sports world Henry Gass
The McGill Daily
T
ed Smith – a Calgarian, McGill alumnus (2009), cofounder of the McGill Fight Band, and fervent sinophile – is a brigade leader for South Korean sports teams the Nexen Heroes (baseball) and Anyang Halla (hockey), and a self-described “D-list” celebrity in South Korea. Henry Gass spoke with him last week on Smith’s last day as an English teacher at a Seoul elementary school. The McGill Daily (MD): So what exactly do you do at these games? Ted Smith (TS): In Asian pro sports, in general, they have this thing called the “cheering brigade.” Asian fans, when they go to sports games, like to participate in a really active way and in a really organized way, similar to European soccer, but almost more intricate. So I started doing this at baseball games. Some guy stands in front and leads the singing and the cheering, and the cheerleaders behind him do dance moves. So I am the guy – I am the leader. I stand up there on a stage with a whistle in
my mouth, and I command people to cheer. And they obey. MD: And did you just start doing this spontaneously? TS: I was very familiar with this culture. When I moved to Seoul, I started following a team called the Nexen Heroes, and I really liked them – and, of course, just going to all the games, I learned songs. So when I actually had the opportunity to get up on stage, I already knew everything I was supposed to do. So that came very naturally. Normally nobody gets up and does it. Korean people are very shy, so usually it’ll just be some noisy guy, with maybe an air horn or something like that. At one of the away games, I was standing in front of my friends leading them, and I just said, after the game, “Tomorrow night, why don’t we all go sit down by the stage?” So I went out and bought a whistle the next day, and I came to the game having no idea what was going to happen, whether or not someone was going to try and, like, remove me from the stadium if I actually got up on the stage. So during the second inning – I was so nervous – during the second inning, I just kind of walked onto the stage very suddenly, started blowing my whistle and started bowing.
By the end of the season, when I had gotten enough notoriety, they started just letting me into games. When I was at away games I would usually just go and buy the cheapest nosebleed ticket and then walk through the stadium and be like, “Excuse me, I’m the guy,” and look really self-important, as if I’m really supposed to be there, and people would just open the door for me and not ask questions. Yeah, it got to that point where I would just walk around the league and everyone was like, “Oh, it’s that dancing white man.” I guess I became a minor celebrity within the Korean baseball world. Most people don’t know my actual name, though. I have all these nicknames that were given to me in Internet chat rooms: “The Blue-Eyed Brigade Leader”; Nextongryeong, which means “The President of Nexen,” or “The Blue-Eyed President of Nexen,” stuff like that. And my detractors, there are a bunch of people – haters – online as well, they called me Hyeotler, which is a contraction of Hitler – “The Hitler of the Heroes.” On my fan page somebody made a photo composite of me, and the next shot is Joseph Goebbels. He’s
giving a speech in Nuremberg, I think, and then there’s me giving a speech at the game, and the pose is almost identical, and the hair style also. The likeness was just incredible. MD: So you’re a minor celebrity in baseball. What is that relative to a major celebrity in Korea? TS: No, I am way down on the D-list, for sure. MD: And are you promoting yourself? TS: Koreans are really super into tech, and everyone is on Twitter, all the time. So I’ve been trying to leverage…social media. People are very interested in what I’m doing, even if it’s just like a picture of my breakfast. So whatever I’m doing – as per the Twitter credo – I just write a short sentence about it. There are just certain people that are like, “Oh yeah, man. Lamb skewers are delicious!” And there will be like four or five people that just comment back right away. There’s this maybe six-second clip of me dancing at a game that’s been shown on like six or seven different programs. In April, Choson TV is filming a 12-minute special about me. It’s a program specifically devoted to foreigners that are into Korean stuff. So they do exposes
that’ll be like: “Steven Hill, from Mazula, is really into Korean traditional drums.” And he’ll be like, “Oh, yeah! I love drums!” So I’m going to be one of those guys. MD: Are Nexen good? TS: They’re fucking brutal. In the early 2000s, they were really good, but then there was a corporate merger between Hyundai and Kia, and they both had baseball teams, and so they had to decide which one to get rid of. And so in that process, they were discarded in a hurry, and the team changed ownership and names a few times, and disintegrated. Everything went to hell. And because they’re not very good, not very popular, that created a big opportunity for me. If I’d have jumped on the bandwagon with one of the more popular teams, I would not be where I am right now. I never would’ve got the chance to get on the stage. I would’ve just been one of those fans.
See mcgilldaily.com for the full text of the interview, including his career aspirations, views on Korean sports culture, his most prized piece of brigade leading equipment, and numerous YouTube links to Smith in action.
8 Features
CHILDREN OF MEN ON DEATH, THREE GENERATIONS, AND THE VARIETIES OF GRIEF
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wondered if his voice would quaver when he stood at the podium, reading the Psalm. But it didn’t. It remained in the strong, familiar baritone register I had always associated with him. This was my father. This was his father’s funeral. Ned Waldo Farr, Jr. Decorated lieutenant colonel; father of five; automotive savant; emotional enigma. It seemed impossible that the small urn my dad towered over could contain such a man. Dad continued: “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” My grandfather was 91. Had he attained some sort of wisdom, when his heart gave out at the end? He was a private man – if he had, we would not know. I looked over again at my father, and down at the little urn, and finally at my feet as I decided to weep for all of us.
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found out about the death of my grandfather at the library. I cried for a couple of minutes with Olivia, my
girlfriend, and then quickly hopped a bus home to be with my father. For as long as I’ve known him (in any sort of adult way), the prospect of death has haunted him. My mom was out of town visiting her own dad, and the thought of my father being alone with his pain was torturous. “I’ve been dreading this day for years,” he told me. “Every time the phone rang, I was sure it was someone calling to tell me he had died”. In the end, he was told by email. Ned was born in New Roads, Louisiana in 1920. A Cajun boy, his first language was French, and he loved to practice what he remembered on us “Cuh-naydians” when we met. His life was blessed by the fulfillment of many dreams. He saw an airshow at the age of five and immediately knew he wanted to be a pilot. Sure enough, he went on to complete Civilian Pilot Training at Louisiana State University in 1939, flying until his retirement in the late sixties. He was a veteran of both World War II and the Korean War by the age of 33, and
was awarded the Bronze Star for valour. He loved women, many women, and, with his Brando looks and pilot’s wings, many women loved him back. After W WII, when he was still in his twenties, he met my grandmother, Frances Allen, in her home state of North Carolina. Over their 66 years of marriage, the two built a life together across America, from Alaska to the Panama Canal Zone, carried by Ned’s piloting career. His charm would get him in trouble along the way. He was not always faithful to my grandmother, though he and Nana stuck it out until his death. On my last trip down, I was touched by the ritual rhythm of their relationship; how even the furniture becomes invested with it: there is something sacred about a bed that has been shared for so long. As I sat between their two withered frames, Ned said to me, “I found her in Charlotte,” his eyes settling on his wife. This gentler mode was rare for my grandfather. He was a hard man, and had a hard relationship with his son. In
one of my father’s earliest memories, Ned had just returned from the Korean War. It had been years since Dad had seen him, so at night he crawled up to his father’s bed to get a good look. Ned woke up, startled, and instinctively reached down at his hip. It was only later that my father realized he was searching for a pistol. At the age of four, my father was told that he would no longer be hugging or kissing his daddy. It was now proper to shake hands. He laughs now when he talks about it, but this harsh upbringing left him ill-equipped for any other reaction: men flew planes, men joined the army, men hit their children. They did not cry. My father turned his back on many of these roles, draft-dodging during the Vietnam War in the seventies and becoming a writer. The tears, however, still would not come, could not come. I lived my whole life without ever seeing him cry, and began to fear the very possibility of it happening (as I’m sure he did). A tall, barrel-chested, gruff man,
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 5, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com
my father’s tears represented for me the masculine apotheosis spinning off its axis into an unknown and terrifying space of emotional intimacy. And yet it was his father who finally taught him to weep. We used to have family reunions, every year for 17 straight years. On the final day of a recent reunion, my grandparents were loaded into the van to go back to Florida. We weren’t sure we’d see them alive again. As everyone scurried for their luggage, my father slowly approached Ned. He embraced him, kissed him on the cheek, and, weeping softly, quickly turned away, still ashamed of his tears. Papa mellowed out as he got older, but, as the firstborn son, my dad never much saw this side of Ned. Ned’s death was peculiarly hard on my dad, then, because it put a seal on a relationship for which there had never been much of an opening, and could have no closure. My father mourned his father like a stillborn child: the tears were for possibilities foreclosed, for a relationship, and a love, that died after a long, intimate gestation, but never quite drew breath.
WORDS BY JAMES FARR ART BY AMINA BATYREVA
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he last years of Papa’s life were spent in a boredom unique to physical men whose vitality is borne steadily away by age. I remember sitting with him in his 90th year, on a North Carolina porch, looking out on the ocean. He in a wheelchair, me in a rocker. A former pilot, he loved to watch the birds. “Showoffs,” he said with admiration. We watched them fly in silence for a minute or so. “You know,” he told me, “I’ve been alive for ninety years. That’s a long time.” “I know,” I said loudly – he never wore his hearing aid. A pelican dove into the water. He broke the silence again. “I’m anxious to see what’s on the other side.” Who was he? Who was he to me? He was the man who not only could fix cars, but loved fixing them. My mom still remembers how he and my grandmother would drive up from Florida to visit us in Quebec. He would spend most of the time under his car, or our car, or any car that needed work (or not). This obsession with the way things work never left, and, well into his old age, he would take apart his VCR and study the circuit boards like a fortuneteller’s tealeaves. Cars were his true love, though, and buying a new car to drive was a constant topic of his conversation during his senility. He was a joker, and laughed at everything, even his own death. It was part of his stoicism. He turned pain into laughter, and thus made it distant, manageable. Once, I was helping him down a set of stairs, and his legs and arms quaked as he struggled with his walker. As I held him by his shoulders, he turned his head around and said, “Normally, of course, I just slide down the banister.” You had to laugh. Even though humour was a means of distancing himself, it also made him closer to us – jokes were the terms of engagement that made the relationship possible for him. Otherwise, what else was there to say? He was a man of anger, of vitality, untethered even by gravity, burning like an engine of one of his beloved planes. As a grandchild I was spared this intensity, but I came to know it in the char-
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It seemed to soothe her to live in the past; the present was a burden impossible to bear. Ned was her life, and his absence bewildered her. She does not know where her husband is. To tell her every day, as we would have had to, was unthinkable. Sometimes she seemed to know. In the courtyard of the nursing home with my mother, she wept and wept. Through her delirium, one lucid agony kept resurfacing: “It’s so hard without him here,” she said, clinging to my mother’s arms. It was decided that Nana would not attend the funeral. She had a first husband who was killed in the Second World War. As Ned’s funeral would be military – in accordance with his wishes – and given her fluid sense of time, we thought it wouldn’t be right to plunge Nana into the potential trauma of reliving both deaths. On our last visit we wheeled her back out into the common room, where her fellow patients were watching TV in silence. We all kissed her, drifting from the room and from her mind as we walked away. Between my grandmother and grandfather on that trip, hers was by far the hardest goodbye. As I write this, she has been transferred to hospice care and can barely eat. She will probably not survive the month.
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acter of my father. I remember Dad coming home with a present for my sister that was flecked with his blood. He had gotten into a fistfight when he went too far into a crosswalk at a light and a frustrated pedestrian kicked his car. Dad would literally experience blinding rages, getting so mad he’d temporarily lose his vision. He’d sit quietly in his chair while my Mom brooded over “that Farr temper,” and I knew Ned was somewhere in her mind. But, as all these notions failed to complete a coherent picture, they faded away, and I saw that I was not really left with a person to mourn, but with a field of straw men who fended off any real sense I might have had of the man.
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e grieve the living as much as the dead. We arrived in Florida a few days before the funeral to spend time with my grandmother in the memory
care unit of her nursing home. Nana has been suffering from Alzheimer’s for the last few years. Her ability to recognize us varied day by day. Once, she saw my father and called him by name. “Tom!” she cried out with surprise. At another time, all she could manage was: “I know you… I know you,” in her gentle North Carolina accent, before bursting into tears with confusion. She had shrunk considerably in her old age, her small face outlining her electric blue eyes. They searched our faces for scraps of recollection, often coming up short. When I held her small frame, she was like a delicate, injured bird. I sang for her as I had so many times before, and, though she couldn’t remember my name, she remembered the harmonies for “Amazing Grace”. As she closed her eyes and sang, I imagined her traveling back to the Baptist church of her childhood. She often spoke of her siblings as though they were there with her, though most of them had been dead for years.
he whole family arrived at the compound at 11:30 a.m. – the service was held shortly thereafter. A folded American flag was presented to my father, Ned’s next-of-kin, and an honour guard fired three volleys over our heads. Stoic, detached: the ceremony fit the man. The priest, my mother’s brother and a friend of the Farrs, delivered a short sermon. “We always say, ‘I’m dying to tell you something’,” he said. “And indeed we are, in this fleeting existence… I would ask you to consider what it was that Ned was dying to tell us throughout his life.” I don’t think I’ll ever know. Ned played his hand pretty close to his chest. We knew he loved us, but we didn’t know how. My father stood up to read the Psalm. The sky was a scintillating, empty blue; a hawk circled overhead, showboating. “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away,” he read. As I wept, as hard as anyone at the service, I wondered why. Of course, Ned had obvious virtues: his physical courage, his work ethic, his ultimate, if oblique, love of family, all of which I construed as what it meant to be a man. But there was an underside to these virtues: his terrible anger, his casual infidelity. And, in the end, all these qualities amounted to a man I hardly knew. Was I really weeping for Ned? Or for the unready hearts he left in his wake? Or for the truth that it is only by the sacrifice of death that we can know, without a doubt, that we lead good lives? Or for the inevitable dull thud when our stories are over and the book is shut? Probably I wept for all of it. Death is a force that draws pain toward it, like a black hole. In a flash, I saw myself move three steps and thirty years forward, into the place of my father at the podium, and he, beyond. Then another three and thrity and – “Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.”
Commentary
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I have blood secreting from my damn vagina Tyrone Speaks
Christiana Collison
tyronespeaks@mcgilldaily.com
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s I’m writing this column, my uterine lining is shedding, causing blood to stream rapidly from my vagina and uncontrolled contractions (or what I assume feel like contractions, having never been pregnant before) to shoot painfully from my abdomen every couple minutes or so. Today is day three for me. For some women, that may not mean much. But for me, lawd a mercy, it means excruciating pain, loud screams, and blood – lots of blood. Now I warn you, from this point on, it may get a little graphic. So I suggest you prepare yourself. I have a six-day cycle, which means I get a sufficient flow of blood for six days straight. I also have an eight-day pain cycle: five days of pre-menstrual pain – kind of like a warning before the secretion actually takes place – and then three days of unfathomable, unfailing, and uncontrolled cramps that send me into a state of immobility and unconsciousness. But as the piercing throbs ring across my abdomen and penetrate throughout my body, and the pain – so strong, almost too strong to bear, – cuts through me like, “oh, my goodness, have mercy on me, please”, I am forced to stay silent, regardless
of where I am or what I am doing. I am forced to pretend as if nothing is happening. I am forced to carry on with my duties, or, better yet, I am forced to “work through the pain.” But as you may already be able to tell, this silence, this carry-on-with-yourduties, work-through-the-pain shit just isn’t really working for me. The silencing of menstruation in both public and private spaces – not only by women, but by greater society – has enabled the de-legitimization of menstruation and pre-menstrual syndrome. Little girls are told to carry pads, tampons, and the like at the bottom of their purses – far away from the public’s eyes. When the uterine lining’s shedding begins, they’re taught to only say, “I need to use the bathroom” or “My stomach hurts”, rather than the reality of, “I’m on my period” or “I have cramps.” This coerced silencing of menstruation in the everyday lives of women on account of the patriarchy has got to stop. For, the longer menstruation continues to be relegated to the realm of mere “female problems,” the longer it will be viewed as an unworthy excuse and as illegitimate for reason. Even feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, has characterized menstruation as signifying “illness, suffering, and death”. Death, she says! An experience said to signify death? Well hot damn! I do, however, think that a bloodclot the size of a grape pushing through my vagina during the middle
of an exam – sending lighting bolts of pain through every crevasse of my body, leaving my mind in a state of throbbing unrest and my entire being motionless (true story) is quite the Beauvoirian-menstrual experience. It’s reason to, at the very least, be allowed to go to the bathroom during said exam for how ever long I need to “get myself together,” without the fear of having less time to complete the exam. Doesn’t sound like too much to ask, considering the circumstances, huh? It’s time that the silencing of menstruation comes to an abrupt halt. Ladies, let’s take baby steps. Rather than telling my boss I have stomach pains when asked why my head is down on the job, I will instead reply, “Sir/Madam, I’m on period.” Rather than sitting in Adams Auditorium writing an in-class exam fearfully anticipating the worst pains of all – and before I can even shout in agony, its piercing throbs having rushed straight to my brain – I will quaintly go to my professor or teaching assistant prior to the exam and let them know, “I’m menstruating and will need to go to the bathroom a couple times during this test; would it be possible if I could maybe get five to ten minutes after the exam to make up for the time I missed having to change my pad?” I refuse to remain silent about my menstruation and I refuse to aid in the perpetuated de-legitimization of pre-menstrual syndrome. Like I said, currently, I’m on day
Amina Bayreva | The McGill Daily
The un-silencing and legitimizing of menstruation and pre-menstrual syndrome
three and luckily for myself and The Daily, the deadliest pains of all have come and gone prior to writing this article. For, if they didn’t, let’s just say I’d probably be crouched over on the floor trying to muster up the strength to send an e-mail to the editors letting them know my
article was going to be late. Why? Because I’m on my period. Tyrone Speaks is a twice monthly column written by Christiana Collison on the subject of black feminism. You can email her at tyronespeaks@mcgilldaily.com.
Israeli Apartheid Week and BDS are not the answers A response from the Progressive Zionist Club on campus
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he Progressive Zionist Club feels deep empathy for the Palestinian people. We want to see an end to the Occupation. We want to see equality between ArabIsraelis and their Jewish neighbors. We want the Palestinian people to be free. In spite of this – because of this – we reject the goals, methods, and rhetoric of Israeli Apartheid Week and the Boycott, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. The realistic and moral path to Palestinian freedom requires a resolution to the conflict through a two-state solution. Palestinians deserve to live in dignity in their own state. So do the Jewish people. It is hypocritical and morally shortsighted for McGill students to advocate for Palestinians on the one hand and demonize Zionism on the other. To paint Israel purely as a “racist” and “colonial” endeavor is reductive and hateful. Zionism was the movement for the national liberation of the Jewish
people. Zionists should thus be empathetic towards the urgent need for Palestinian liberation, and advocates for Palestinian’s rights should likewise recognize Israel’s legitimacy. It is not difficult to recognize that BDS’s target is not Israeli policies, but Israel itself. American political scientist Norman Finkelstein points out that BDS claims to be agnostic on Israel. However, as he also points out, their three goals only lead to one logical conclusion: the destruction of Israel. This campaign demonizes Israel through the slanderous accusation of apartheid. Israel is not an apartheid state. Israel’s Basic Laws guarantee equal treatment for all citizens, including Arab-Israeli citizens. The Occupation, in spite of its brutality, is the result of a long and complex territorial conflict in which neither Israel nor the Palestinians have been without blame. The “Wall” was built for security purposes, not to enforce racial segregation. While the construc-
tion of the “Wall” has hurt Palestinians, it has also reduced the number of Palestinian attacks on Israeli citizens. This is the kind of nuance that the label “apartheid” obscures. Indeed, the word “apartheid” is not an accurate criticism of Israeli policies, but a weapon aimed at the very idea of Israel. One of the most harmful effects of theʻ prominence of BDS on our campus is that it impedes the development of legitimate, nuanced criticism of Israel. There are many who have the moral integrity to recognize both Palestinian rights and Israelʼs right to exist. Furthermore, there are many who have a firm enough grasp on reality to realize that Israel does exist, and that the path to Palestinian freedom is through a peace process culminating in a two state solution. This is and always has been the only framework that is moral and realistic for addressing the conflict. If there were no Israeli Apartheid Week,
we would be writing this editorial about the need to pressure Israel to end settlement construction to further the cause of peace. Instead, we find ourselves backed into a corner where we must defend the very idea of Israel, as though this issue was not resolved sixty-four years ago with the establishment of the state and its recognition by the UN. BDS catapults us backwards, encouraging us to see Israel and Palestine as irreconcilable enemies. Our role as North American students, not directly involved with the conflict itself, is not to “pick a side” but to demand peace. Paradoxically, BDS’s inflammatory rhetoric and campaign for the delegitimization of Israel ultimately hurts Palestinians. BDS is a blessing for those Israeli hard-liners who justify brutal policies by pointing to existential threats. Many have accused BDS of anti-semitism. While we donʼt believe McGill students are consciously pursuing anti-semitic
agendas when they support BDS, itʼs also difficult to defend the movement against such accusations. How else can one explain a movement that targets Israeli crimes while ignoring other pertinent human rights issues in the Middle East? The disproportionate singling out and demonization of Israel bring us uncomfortably close to the anti-semitic tropes that are such an ingrained part of our Western vocabulary. Meanwhile, the boycotting of Israeli institutions, including its universities, is little more than a collective punishment of Israel. Consequently, BDS hardens hawkish Israeli politicans, fueling the flames that ultimately hurt Palestinians themselves. If McGill students want to get serious about advocating for Palestinian rights, they should stop hosting Israeli Apartheid Week. Signed by the Progressive Zionist Club on campus
Commentary
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 5, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com
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End Israeli apartheid
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very year, people in more than 50 cities around the world collaborate to organize Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), which involves events focusing on bringing light to the unacceptable human conditions suffered by Palestinians under Israeli occupation. And so, with reference to our own history at McGill, things are likely to get heated on campus. The “apartheid analogy” with respect to Israel has always been a sensitive issue; it is likely to result in tense debates, angry words, and uncomfortable situations. Defendants of the analogy will point to the institutionalized and systemic discrimination facing Palestinians – examples will range from property, citizenship, and water allocation policies. In essence, the analogy relies on semantic interpretations that allow the word apartheid to be used more broadly than a one-to-one referent to a historical condition in South Africa. Conversely, opponents of the analogy will point to the tangible differences between South Africa’s Apartheid state, its blatantly racist undertones – contrasting this with Israel’s “democratic mechanisms” that have invariably allowed for Arab candidacy and election within the pre-1967 borders. The IAW movement seeks to raise awareness and call for Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) against the state of Israel. This is partly inspired by the similar economic standoff between the world and South Africa, resulting in the end of the South African Apartheid state in 1993. The namesake of the movement springs from the fact that Israel is guilty of committing crimes against humanity, as defined by the 1998 Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court, which reads: “in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group … with the intention of maintaining the regime.” Those who insist that Israel is engaging in discriminatory policies towards Palestinians often point to the fact that Jewish schoolchildren receive, on average, three to six times more funding that their Palestinian Israeli counterparts. Another common example is the fact that there are separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. Too often, focusing on these specific instances of discrimination misses the larger pattern of control and domination that Israel enforces on Palestinians. The fact that Palestinians are forced to travel on certain roads – in their own territory and without their consent – is certainly a problem. An even bigger issue is how the roads carved out for Israelis are used to demarcate and divide Palestinian territory, impeding access to movement to ensure continued Israeli hegemony in the West Bank. In understanding how the aims of the Zionist political project have influenced specific Israeli policies, it is useful to look to two factors: land and demography. We see the Zionist movement as a nationalist-ethnocentrist project, seeking sovereign Jewish control over a specific parcel of land. To that end, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) was created to expand Jewish control of Palestinian territories through the purchase of property. The JNF controls about 13 per cent of the territory of the state of Israel. Non-Jews cannot settle this land and no Palestinians have ever succeeded in buying back their property, as per
Hera Chan for The McGill Daily
A statement from the McGill Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights
the JNF’s charter. Plus, the State of Israel – by way of the JNF – conducted bulk land transfers with itself in this way: after the 1948 war and expulsion of approximately 700,000 Palestinians from their homes – 2.2 million dunams of land that had been expropriated from Palestinians by the state was then sold to the JNF. This is state approval of setting aside land in Israel for Jewish use only and of divorcing itself from providing even a pretense of equality to its Palestinian citizens. A crucial safeguard of the Zionist project lay in prioritizing demographic over territorial concerns. In the 1930s, an understanding arose that Jews would need to constitute a majority in a part of Palestine in order for the Zionist dream to survive. It was on the basis of this logic that the new Israeli state refused Palestinians the right of return after 1948. This is instructive to point to as
recent examples demonstrate how this idea reproduces itself in new forms. In 2003, Israel passed the Citizenship and Entry Into Israel Law – prohibiting Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who had spouses in Israel from receiving Israeli citizenship. Here Israel is able to fall back upon the liberal notion of equality before the law. Claiming that it does not discriminate against Palestinians, Israel ignores that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians marry Palestinians, and the concrete fact that the law disproportionately affects Palestinians. To give another example, a recent report by Haaretz revealed that over 140,000 West Bank Palestinians were covertly stripped of their residency permits by Israel between 1967 and 1994, a process that the Central Bureau of Statistic estimates has reduced the size of the West Bank population by 14 per cent.
The discrimination and oppression facing Palestinians is not just another regrettable manifestation of the racism and inequality that, as Israel advocates love to remind us, exist in every society. It is rooted in the very nature of Zionism – an ethnocentric colonizing venture that relies on the continued subjugation and dispossession of Palestinians for its very survival. In its seventh year, IAW continues to grow as more and more campuses join the movement. The fight does not stop outside university walls. Global opposition continues to rise, with more trade unions, political parties, and political activists endorsing the call for BDS every day. Together we will make the rallying cry, “end Israeli Apartheid!” a reality. Signd by the McGill Chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights.
We must reject Israeli Apartheid Week A statement from the McGill Students for Israel
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e, McGill Students for Israel, strongly condemn Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) and the Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement as a whole. Though IAW’s stated intent is to advocate for Palestinian human rights, their actions end up serving to demonize and delegitimize Israel First and foremost, the idea that Israel is an “apartheid state” is not grounded in reality. In Apartheid South Africa, South African citizens of colour were completely – and legally – excluded from the civil services afforded to whites. They did not have access to the same medical care. They could not attend the same schools, visit the same beaches, or even use the same public restrooms. Needless
to say, they also could not vote or run for public office. Israel is a modern democracy that, under its Basic Laws, affords equal rights to all citizens, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, et cetera. This includes Arab Israelis, who possess the exact same rights and privileges as Jewish Israelis. There is no legal distinction between the two. Arab Israelis can vote, they can run for government, and are, in fact, frequently elected to the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament. Since the state’s inception, Arab women have had full civil liberties in Israel, unlike in some Arab countries, where they, legally, cannot vote, cannot run for public office, and, in at least one case, cannot even travel without male accompaniment.
Those living in the Gaza Strip and West Bank are not citizens of Israel, and as such, the comparison of modern-day Israel to Apartheidera South Africa lacks integrity – it either ignores what Israel is today, what South Africa was then, or perhaps both. Beyond its factual ignorance, IAW further outrages us for its insincerity. At a recent event at Imperial College in London, Norman Finkelstein, a prominent critic of Israel, berated the BDS movement for its “disingenuousness”, saying its leaders “think they’re being very clever” for their “three-tier [plan]” which includes “the end of the occupation…the right of return… and equal rights for [Palestinians] in Israel”, knowing full-well that “the result of implementing all
three is…no Israel”. Society cannot afford to accept that goal. Rather, we must strive for peace and a two state solution, two things that Israel has done and continues to do. Israel has twice attempted to help establish a Palestinian state, once in 2000 and again in 2008. In August 2005, Israel enacted a unilateral withdrawal plan from Gaza. Since the Gaza War, which ended on January 24, 2009, there are no remaining Israeli settlements or soldiers on Gazan soil. In 2006, Palestinians had the chance to elect a democratic government that would strive for peace with their neighbours; instead, they elected Hamas, who immediately targeted rival Palestinian political party Fatah, and began encouraging other groups to carry out attacks against Israel.
IAW and the BDS movement are an impediment to peace. Their fight to delegitimize Israel precludes discussion, serving only to further divide the two sides. In 2010, the Legislative Assembly of Ontario unanimously condemned the movement, and at the national level, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, and the NDP have all denounced it. IAW’s efforts are not progressive, and are based on a dangerously distorted reality. Even as Zionists, we would never call Israel perfect. We believe that, like any nation, it does need to be held accountable. However, as a society, we must do better than Israel Apartheid Week. Signed by the McGill Students for Israel.
Science+Technology
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 5, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com
So good so far
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A coffee a day
Dreaming up a new way to power cars Ryan Lee
Science+Technology Writer
Researchers develop commercial caffeine measuring app
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lectrically powered vehicles have been viewed negatively in the past for having low battery lives and for the inconvenience that comes with having to recharge. But how would being able to charge your car, while driving, change the public’s view of these vehicles? Standford University’s Global Climate & Energy Project has introduced the concept of charging vehicles on the go, wirelessly. The basic concept involves a series of coils that would be embedded under the pavement of the road. The coils emit a a magnetic field, and when the car passes over them, they pick up energy via a receiving panel underneath the body of the car. Researcher Shanhui Fan explains that “this wireless transfer scheme has an efficiency of 97 per cent”— that is, it is very efficient. This, however, is for a single car going down a highway. Efficiency may differ from region to region due to surrounding noise pollution, weather (ice, snow, et cetera), and other external radiation that may affect energy trans-
Shelley Han
Science+Technology Writer
I Edna Chan | The McGill Daily fer. Further testing is being done to determine potential impacts of this technology on human health. Presently, there is not an official estimate of the costs of implement-
ing this system on an entire highway. Wireless charging technology has seen growth in the consumer electronics field recently, but is extremely premature when applied on the scale
of moving traffic – still only just a good idea, and existing only in computer simulations. But the potential for the development of this technology is incredibly large.
Quantitative Biology comes to McGill Exploring the natural world with numbers and stats Hussain Sangji
Science+Technology Writer
“M
cGill went through a period of tremendous renewal in recent years, with many new faculty recruited from across disciplines in the Faculties of Engineering, Medicine, and Science”, stated Jacalyn Vogel, a professor in the Department of Biology and an associate member of the School of Computer Science. Among these new hires, she explains, were researchers with backgrounds in the physical sciences and engineering, who had developed an interest in biological problems. Others came with training in biology and were looking to utilize the tools of computer science, mathematics, and biophysics in their field. These researchers came together to form the Quantitative Biology Initiative (QBI), an interdisciplinary group designed to foster collaborations between researchers and provide biologists with the mathematical and computational tools they need in their work. Vogel, who is a co-director of QBI, says, “the QBI formed quite naturally – based on common interests
and the need to share expertise and resources.” These interdepartmental collaborations are reflective of a larger trend in medical and biological research, which is becoming more personalized and interdisciplinary. Partly due to the explosion in biotechnology, there is an increasing push to place biology on a firm mathematical and physical framework. Steven Michnick, a professor of Biochemistry at the Université de Montréal and a member of the QBI, believes that “quantitative biology is becoming a dominant trend at the forefront of biomedical research,” since classical techniques are good at creating lists of parts of biological systems but not at explaining how the parts work together. He believes that “classical biology methods are poor at providing details of biological mechanisms [and] quantitative biology fills this gap.” The growing collaborations between professors and across departments at McGill laid the foundation for a corresponding undergraduate program. Frederic Guichard, also a professor of Biology and a co-director of the QBI, explains that the undergradu-
ate Quantitative Biology option is designed to provide biology students with quantitative skills that are increasingly important in both medical practice and biology research, and also to expose them to quantitative fields like physics, math, and computer science that they may otherwise overlook. The program begins with a core of biology classes and includes some introductory coursework in physics, chemistry, mathematics, and computer science. Students can then choose from one of two streams: Physical Biology or Ecology and Evolution. The first stream, Physical Biology, emphasizes interdisciplinary cell and molecular biophysics, with courses in organic chemistry, thermodynamics, and electricity and magnetism. The second stream concentrates on ecology, evolution, and statistics. Both offer options for interested students to explore mathematics and computer science further, or to pursue specializations in their chosen streams. The strength and novelty of the program lies in the flexibility available to students to pick and choose from a wide variety of courses from across departments. Guichard says that this allows students to “define
their own perspective and vision of what quantitative biology is all about.” Vogel, who is also the coordinator of the Quantitative Biology program, believes that the program will “foster rigor, boldness, and creativity,” because it will allow students to work with professors with a wide range of expertise and give them the freedom to explore problems to which they may not have otherwise been exposed. Though Quantitative Biology is currently only offered as an option within the Biology major, it is in the process of being approved as its own program by the Quebec government. Vogel is also designing a corresponding graduate program. Since the program’s origins lie in partnerships between researchers from different faculties, the research infrastructure of the program is especially strong. This also means that there are currently many opportunities available for undergraduates to become involved in this research. Those interested should visit biology.mcgill.ca/QBI for more information about the both Quantitative Biology Initiative and the new undergraduate program.
f you make frequent trips to Second Cup or Starbucks, you know how it feels to lay awake in bed wishing you had passed on that last cup of coffee. Too much caffeine can leave you feeling anxious and restless at a time when all you want to do is sleep. So, how much coffee is enough to keep a caffeine addict fueled, and how much is too much? Penn State researchers have created an app designed to answer just that question. Caffeine Zone is an app that uses data from pharmacokinetics models to show the level of caffeine in a person’s body in real-time. Every time the user drinks, for example, a cup of tea, they log in the amount of beverage and the time it took them to drink it. In turn, the app generates a line graph that displays a 24-hour progression of the level of caffeine in your bloodstream after consumption. The graph also shows the optimal range of caffeine to maintain so you know exactly when to refuel. The app is based on research that examined the potentially mitigating effects of caffeine on stresslevels. Penn State scientist Frank Ritter, a developer of the app, owns the small company that produces it. Ritter was involved with the research on caffeine and stress, and the idea for the app came from his difficulty in trying to model the impacts of caffeine on cognition. After two years of working on the project, and a few prototypes, Caffeine Zone is now available both as a paid app and free app (which has ads) through the Apple App Store. The small amount of money generated by the app goes to Ritter’s company. It is used to improve the app, to cover accountant and business costs, as well as to help pay for new machines for testing. He hopes Caffeine Zone will help people to get the most out of their yummy stimulant beverages by managing their consumption more wisely. “I know that I drink more tea and more decaf and more slowly than I used to,” says Ritter.
Culture
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 5, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com
13
On an afternoon in Montréal-Nord Angus Sharpe discusses one of Montreal’s most politically charged boroughs
Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily
T
ake a city map, draw a circle from Westmount, up to Outremont, over to Parc La Fontaine and back down to Old Montreal – going round the pier they use for Igloofest. Aside from a few too many god-awful trips to IKEA, you have the geographical area that I have covered since moving here. And when I leave in June, I will take my experience of this tiny portion of the island, and shamelessly sell it under the banner of “Montreal.” My Montreal-world does not include Montréal-Nord, a recently assimilated borough of near 90,000 people touching the river in the northeast, opposite Laval. A month ago, I didn’t know what MontréalNord was, nor where, nor that it even existed and, from what I could tell, neither did many McGill students. Upon informing someone that I was going to the little-heralded arrondissement, the stock response was nothing but a blank face – revealing in and of itself. To be fair, three guys in the smoking area of a Crescent Street dive were slightly more vocal in their unilateral advice of, “don’t go.” The more politically aware among you recalled something about police violence and riots a few years ago, and the most informed even hesitantly offered up a name, Fredy Villanueva. The public legacy of the neighborhood, particularly for most McGill students, appears to reach back just a few years to August 9, 2008. On that day, under still unclear circumstances, this 18 year-old Honduran immigrant was shot dead by the Montreal police (SPVM). Peaceful protests organized in response to his death gave way to riots – cars were set ablaze and three police officers and a paramedic were wounded, one of whom was shot. In a neighbourhood with rapidly shifting demographics due to immigration, and where 20 per cent of people speak neither French nor English, there is a precedent for the SPVM’s notorious racial profiling. Aside from this single, unhappy event, research about MontréalNord was slow – the internet yielded little more than a fairly bare wikipedia page and an article somewhat ironically detailing the area’s isolation. Upon departure, all I had was a metro line and bus number scrawled on the back of my hand. Rising up the escalator of metro stop Henri-Bourassa, I gradually traded the aesthetic familiar to my
narrow, plateau-centric Montrealworld for the near novelty of a major bus terminal, over which a construction site loomed large. As it happened, just riding the bus into town I was given a crash course in Montréal-Nord. The dreary route down Boulevard Henri-Bourassa, one of three multilane dual-carriage arteries– delivering a daily flow of vans, trucks, and buses in and out of Nord, is lined by a dull sequence of garage-dépaneurpizza place strip malls. The monotony of the scene, while sobering for me, was a constant source of celebration for the toddler sitting opposite me, who delighted in shouting at me in Spanglish about every car and coche that slugged by. His mother, a twenty-something first generation Mexican immigrant, had recently moved away from Montréal-Nord, and talked about it in a very defeatist tone. She described how residents come from countries where there is no respect for the police and, conversely, the police here have a negative attitude. “It’s not the sort of place you want to walk around by yourself,” she readily admitted as I prepared to alight, alone. Her
son was equally reluctant to see me abandon our vehicle spotting game, “We need to find mas!” Entirely by chance, she told me that I happened to be getting off at Parc Henri-Bourassa, the site of the Fredy Villanueva shooting, where her mother still lived. I can’t say that I walked round a large proportion of Nord’s 11 square kilometers, but neither can I say that I ever felt threatened. The neighbourhood around the park, mostly white wooden panel bungalows, is not particularly notable, and spreads in this mold with the odd cluster of similar shops tucked in here and there. The black population is manifest; cosmetic shops advertise most boldly their range of hair accessories and the local minimarket reserves a shelf for African woodwork pots. The urban blueprint continues all the way until you reach the next mega road, Boulevard Léger, hugged by slightly larger commercial parks, and including an utterly miserable bar. No music or conversation drowned out the ringing of middle-aged men and their beloved slot machines until the bored barwoman easily summed up the difference between her and
my Montreal-worlds: “The Plateau? Everything you need you can walk to.” Outside, waiting on another bus to take me to Pie-IX, the third big fat boulevard of the borough, it seems she’s not wrong. When it was amalgamated into Montreal proper in 2002, MontréalNord was the only borough not to retain its logo, and its Latin slogan, “The strengths of the citizens are the strength of the city,” does feel forgotten in a borough that seems to be lacking a strong identity. And so, that logo is not to be found flying outside the red brick Town Hall, but in a historical compendium tucked away in a library further down the Rue Charleroi, a smaller, better Pie-IX offshoot. Local newspaper, Guide de MontréalNord and pamphlets selling a full culture calendar indicate community cohesion, though the latter is essentially just commercials. The aforementioned millennial compendium stretches back through 85 years of Montréal-Nord history and includes a commendation from then Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard, “the production of this book testifies to your pride in
and attachment to your living environment and the strength of your sense of belonging.” The “you” here is the Comité d’histoire de MontréalNord, whose team photo lies over the page and is as covered in old, white faces as the then town council pictured opposite. Neither appear more diverse than those on the next page, the class of 1935. It’s difficult to judge the “sense of belonging” amongst such a shifting population, but it makes sense that one route to a stronger community – especially in overcoming the civil anger at civil authority out-shouting Nord’s apparently deep history – is the election of representative officials. As of 2009, the borough council has one black member to four white, and no ethnic minorities at all on city council. Obviously a delicate, complex situation, it feels as though this might be the first step toward instilling pride in the newer residents that is so evident in its historians, the first step to ensuring that when a future ignorant student asks the downtown public if they know anything about Montréal-Nord, no one responds, “Yeah. Don’t go.”
Blue Ivy Carter is gonna run to be a culture editor next year. Think you could do better? E-mail culture@mcgilldaily.com for details.
14 Culture
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 5, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com
Mile End ink Bodkin tattoo has left a mark on Bernard Nathalie O'Neill
The McGill Daily
A
little over a year ago, Mile End’s Bernard gained a welcome addition for ink enthusiasts. Artist Dominique Bodkin owns Bodkin Tattoo, a neighbourhood business with a cozy feel and a sharp approach to body art. Business is growing swiftly for this Mile End parlor, that recently celebrated its oneyear anniversary. The shop is one large room, with a small, enclosed area at the back for clients who prefer to have ink applied away from curious onlookers. The place feels like an old repurposed Mile End apartment, with vintage wall trim and mouldings. Posters of classic tattoo drawings and inked sailors share the wall with eclectic art prints. Inviting, mismatched couches and armchairs add to the cozy atmosphere of the shop. As I talked to the artists, a young client was checking out tattoo drawings with an artist while his friends alternately joined in conversation and played DJ on the shop’s laptop. Tattoo artist David Choquette is the latest addition to the team. Hired only three weeks ago, he was drawn to Bodkin after several stints at other studios. “Bodkin is
a welcoming place,” Choquette explained. “Away from the larger downtown studios there is more freedom for creativity.” His arrival brings the team to three artists, two of them women – Dominique herself and tattooist Jessi Preston. The female majority makes this shop exceptional in the tattoo world, which is heavily dominated by male artists. In opening her shop, Dominique Bodkin followed in the steps of her father, a tattoo artist from Quebec who often pops into the Bernard business. This legacy, reflected in the old photographs hanging in the shop, shapes Bodkin’s character. It’s no surprise that her father passed down the torch in an artistic tradition that has often marked by familial relations or cultural ties. The vintage decor of the shop reflects the blend of tradition and modernity in the artists’ work. The artists at Bodkin specialize in both custom and classic tattoos. Choquette noted a growing trend for an old-fashioned style as vintage tattoos have been experiencing a comeback. Checking out Bodkin’s surroundings, it’s clear that this retro lean is part of more widespread aesthetic nostalgia, manifest in a neighbourhood cluttered with second-hand clothing stores, such as Annex Vintage and Citizen Vintage nearby. “More cli-
Ian Murphy | The McGill Daily ents are coming in for their first tattoos,” noted Choquette, “and tattoos have been getting bigger,” a fact the Bodkin artists attribute to a growing acceptance of body art in mainstream society. Bodkin’s approach to tattooing blends tradition and innovation. Customers can choose from pre-
drawn tattoos or create their own with the artist. The process can be as collaborative as the client wishes. “Large tattoo studios are often less flexible,” Choquette pointed out. Bodkin Tattoo’s character makes it ideally suited to the neighbourhood, which is a large part of the shops success. Choquette noted the
shop among the Bernard businesses, most of which are also relatively small. The shop relies heavily on neighbourhood patrons, and walkins make up at least half the clientele. It’s a neighbourhood spot in the best of ways – and with Bodkin around, the neighbourhood will be getting inked for years to come.
St. Henri’s writer in residence Quebec studies professor lectures on Gabrielle Roy in translation
T
he fever of the bazaar rose in her blood, a kind of jangled nervousness mingled with the vague feeling that one day in this teeming store things would come to a halt and her life would find its goal... Everything in the place summed up for her the hasty, hectic poverty of her whole life here in St. Henri.” With these first few lines of the novel, The Tin Flute, Gabrielle Roy began a prolific and meaningful writing career, becoming a respected literary figure in both English and French Canada. Her novels weave together story and memory, creating a portrait life for the urban poor in St. Henri before the outbreak of WWII in The Tin Flute, or of idyllic rural existence in Where Nests the Water Hen. Roy began her first novel after teaching in rural Manitoba, fleeing the war in Europe, and working as a journalist in Montreal. Hoping to learn more about this enigmatic literary personage, I attended
“Montreal and Quebec as Seen by Gabrielle Roy, a lecture given by McGill Professor Jane Everett. I spoke with Everett, the author of In Translation: the Gabrielle RoyJoyce Marshall Correspondence, to discuss translation, style, and all things Roy. The McGill Daily (MD): In the lecture, you discussed that, in the first translation of Roy’s The Tin Flute, the class issues in the novel were emphasized over language issues. Do you think translated works can ever compare, or discuss in depth, themes written into the originals, such as in Roy’s novel? Jane Everett (JD): I feel that with the first English translation, done by an American editor, Hannah Josephson, in 1947, it’s clear to me that she’s more sensitive to the class issues. I don’t think she’s as aware of the linguistic issues. They’re there in the novel, the author talks about French and English without problematizing it
explicitly. I don’t think the translator knew enough about Quebec and Montreal, and the history, to bring that out. The other thing is, in terms of the translation itself, there are some classic errors in the translation that have to do with her not knowing Quebec regional expressions, that have to do with how we talk about the weather, and stuff like that. Roy herself, when the translation was shown to her, she had 24 hours to give feedback on it, so she said it was fine. She regretted that afterwards, which is why she always followed her English translations so closely, and wanted to have a final say on the decisions. For example, the original French title of The Tin Flute means secondhand happiness in French. MD: Do you think Roy was negotiating between the two different literary backdrops of urbanism and ruralism as a young author, or negotiating between her own past experiences? JE: Certainly something that
critics have suggested is that she was trying to find her voice. The life story of a writer, some author’s use them directly, some don’t, some use them as a well-spring. What becomes literature may have no connections with the facts of your life, but it has been informed by your life experience. I think Roy was aware, very aware, of how her whole life experience had informed her outlook, and how her life story was an important element of who she was. What’s interesting with Roy, and which she suggests in her own autobiography, is that all these fictional works are all preparations for the autobiography. She was working things out in fiction. Not as an intentional project, but you get a sense from the autobiography, that she feels that’s what she was doing unconsciously. What’s interesting is that some of these works - the ones where you have a young woman who chooses to teach, and then becomes a writer - what you have there, with
different degrees of explicitness, is the adult writer, looking back on the child, and trying to explain something that happened that might have been informative. In the autobiography, sometimes she will refer to own of her novels as having already described her experience, because what she feels has been captured there is not factual authenticity, but authenticity of the experience. MD: Which work do you suggest people start with, who are just discovering Roy for the first time? JE: I would go with The Road Past Altamont. — Compiled by Victoria Lessard The full interview will appear on the online version of this story. More information about the “Who are They?: A lunch series on some of Quebec’s national figures and key historical moments” can be found through the Quebec Studies department.
15
The McGill Daily | Monday, March 5, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com
volume 101 number 34
editorial 3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-24 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9 phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com coordinating editor
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James Farr
EDITORIAL
Opt-outs killed the radio star On March 8, when voting starts on the SSMU referendum question, undergraduate students will have a choice between preserving the quality and editorial independence of CKUT 90.3 FM, a valued campus-community institution, or imperiling its existence. The radio station is asking the student body to vote on whether or not their $4.00 a semester fee will become non-opt-outable. Students should vote 'yes’. (Full disclosure: The Daily collaborates with CKUT on a biweekly radio segment.) If CKUT remains opt-outable, and faced with the vagaries of the online opt-out system, it could be difficult for CKUT to maintain its editorial independence. If students start pulling their money from the station because it takes an unpopular stance on controversial issues, it would face a strong incentive to change its coverage. This would compromise CKUT’s ability to cover issues with the frankness and honesty that are integral to good journalism. This is by no means an unprecedented argument. All public broadcasting relies, to an extent, on the idea that some media should be exempt from the pressures of tailoring coverage to suit the tastes of advertisers and a fickle public. The CBC exists on this assumption. On campus, other publications such as – The Daily and The Tribune – are also non opt-outable in part to maintain their editorial independence. Moreover, the loss of student fees that CKUT incurs due to opt-outs is bound to cause the quality of CKUT programming to go down in a kind of death by a thousand cuts. As a campus community radio station, under their license from the Canada Radio-television Council (CRTC), their on-air advertising is restricted to four minutes an hour. And the station already has a tight budget – for example, they operate with a threadbare staff: just six full-time and two part-time employees. The full-timers make $26,000 a year, a pittance given the creativity and technical expertise that goes into running a radio station. Much of the rest of the station’s budget is overhead like rent on their radio tower and office space, costs over which the station has no control. CKUT can’t trim around the edges – big funding cuts could be fatal to their continued presence on campus. We recognize that CKUT’S $4.00 per semester fee is a greater burden for some students than for others. But CKUT is not changing its current policy of allowing any student to go to their office and request a refund – they wish to take refunds out of the University’s purview to have greater control of their own finances. CKUT doesn’t ask why you want your money back – the process is not intended to embarrass or intimidate anyone. So vote ‘yes’ between March 8 and 14, and keep CKUT independent and strong.
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Compendium
The McGill Daily | Thursday, March 5, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com
Lies, half-truths, and D league baseball stars!!
16
Welcome to The Daily’s McGill-based pop culture and current-events March Madness bracket. The series will run all month! Email compendium@mcgilldaily. com or tweet at @mcgilldaily with your picks or if you think you have better match-up ideas. All contestants subject to our comedic whims.
Samosas
Winner 3
Winner 1
Vielfalt Waffles
Bill C-10
William Shatner
FINAL SHOWDOWN Winner 2
Ted Smith
Winner 4
Trophy Thieves SSMU Security
Milton Avenue Revolutionary Press
Ted Smith vs. William Shatner The McGill Alum turned South Korean baseball brigade leader and dancer is up against stiff out of this world competition from William Shatner. However, Smith’s fluency in both Korean and Japanese has created an upset victory over Shatner’s Klingon.
If you’re funny, we want to know about it --> compendium@mcgilldaily.com
In li ke a lion, out li ke a lamb
The Crossword Fairies The McGill Daily
Across
1. Aged 4. Sinfully slow animal? 9. “___ for the poor” 13. Keats or Yeats 15. Lady part, slangily 16. Aggravate 17. ___-bodied 18. Hate 19. Beige 20. Heir apparent’s placeholder 23. Some deer 24. Can you dig it? 25. Loses at poker? 28. Atlantic City attraction 30. Wager 33. “Nearer my God to ___” 34. Allegation 35. Number of rings to rule them all 36. Palate cleanser? 40. Anger 41. To no ___ (fruitlessly) 42. It may be proper 43. Each 44. Beach bird 45. 2000 Olympics city 47. Jersey Shore hair product 48. “__ __-Team” 49. Passive foreign policy 57. Junkie
58. Clear, as a disk 59. “Cogito ___ sum” 60. Soviet cronyism 61. Recently changed at Tim Horton’s 62. Chowderhead 63. Freshie, next year 64. Choppers, so to speak 65. Maiden name indicator
Down
1. Sunfish 2. Brain area 3. Schwartz’s, e.g. 4. Investments 5. Sites for studs 6. ___ and aahs 7. Formal version of 33 across 8. Not diatonic 9. Excellence, to Homer 10. Centers of activity 11. Collection of nuclear warheads 12. Turn on a pivot 14. Jack Russell or Boston 21. Soda 22. Ad spot 25. Bacon unit 26. Not here 27. Allude 28. Calvin or Naomi
29. First sandwich maker 30. Fifth element 31. Follow 32. Itsy-bitsy 34. Blacken 37. Consumed 38. Most sleek 39. Never been kissed? 45. Shucks 46. Asian capital 47. Circumference 48. Cable receiver 49. Protuberances 50. Nobel Peace Prize city 51. Half-moon tide 52. Great Lake 53. Bring down 54. Pumping ___ 55. Eye 56. Post-It