vol101issu26

Volume 101, Issue 27

January 26, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

McGill THE

DAILY Unfocused since 1911

Published by The Daily Publications Society, a student society of McGill University.

Mendelson portfolio under review 3 Confederates take refuge in Montreal 10 Dialling in on campus community radio 17

News

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

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Deputy Provost portfolio under review Faculty presidents offer their recommendations Juan Camilo Velásquez The McGill Daily

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he portfolio of senior administrator Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson’s profile is the topic of a for-discussion document written by SSMU President Maggie Knight.

Official signatories to the document, addressed to Provost Anthony Masi, include Knight and the presidents of eleven faculty associations.

The document started as a joint initiative between Knight and some of the faculty association presidents at McGill. The result is a document with recommendations aimed at improving the portfolio by making changes to the role of the Deputy Provost.

The document states a longterm goal of reassessing the Deputy Provost’s portfolio “to ensure its success in years to come, and enable McGill to further its mission as a student-centred University.”

Knight explained that the document arose from a letter sent by some faculty association presidents over the summer, which expressed concern about the extension of Mendelson’s term without consultation.

The document refers to conflicts between students and Mendelson, including the closure of the student-run Architecture Café in the summer of 2010 and the withdrawal of the McGill name from 132 student clubs and services last semester.

“Stemming from [the letter], when the Provost embarked on his revision of the Student Life and Learning portfolio, we were invited as a group to meet with him and discuss things. And given that there are a lot of different issues and it is a complex and detailed portfolio, we wanted to provide a document that was as thorough and constructive as possible,” said Knight.

Jade Calver, Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) president, did not sign the letter. She told The Daily she abstained from signing because AUS Council had recently submitted a similar document. “[Last week’s document] was kind of going along the same lines of the earlier document we had sent to the Deputy Provost,” said Calver. “I didn’t think it was appropriate to sign on a similar letter.”

Calver clarified that, despite not signing the document, the AUS agrees with the sentiments expressed in it.

One of the recommendations states that “students should be informed and consulted in the decision-making process; in the case of decisions being made during the summer, there must be proactive consultation throughout the winter semester.”

Knight stressed the importance of stronger communication lines between the office of the Deputy Provost and students.

“There are clear forums for academic issues, like Senate. We have representation in those committees,” said Knight. “There is no similar body for the governance of

student life. It’s very much centralized within the Deputy Provost office, and there isn’t the same committee structure or government council type structure.”

According to Josh Redel, president of the Engineering Undergraduate Society, another important feature of the document is the call for better relations between the portfolio and faculty associations.

“Right now we do get a decent amount of support from the portfolio, but unfortunately, on certain things, like the McGill name and Arch Café, it’s always reactionary as opposed to proactive,” he said.

Catherine Coursol, president of the Law Students’ Association, spoke to potential ways – mentioned in the document – of closing the gap between students and the administration.

“I think doing so would go a long way to minimize both the real disconnect that exists, and to bring the perceived extent of the disconnect into perspective,” she said.

In an email to The Daily , Masi addressed the recommendations.

“I very much appreciated the thoughtful contribution of these student leaders. Their presentation was impressive, both in terms of content and tone, so much so that we have incorporated some of their suggestions in the Terms of Reference questions for the [Student Life and Learning] review,” wrote Masi.

Masi said that consultation processes are ongoing.

“We will continue to consult

Lindsay Cameron | The McGill Daily

Mendelson is McGill’s first Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning). with students and look forward to further productive conversations during a full day retreat on February 27, when we will con-

vene, along with Principal Heather Munroe-Blum, to learn more about student perspectives and opinions,” he said.

Elections AUS rejects special referendum Proposed amendment to constitution to be discussed at GA Devin Kesner

The McGill Daily

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he Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) General Assembly, which will be held next Tuesday, has sparked debate surrounding the current AUS structure and Constitution.

A special referendum was put forth to amend the current AUS Constitution so that the General

Assembly (GA) would be the supreme governing body of AUS, rather than AUS Council.

The amendment would allow the AUS to become a member of the Coalition large de l’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (CLASSE), which the amendment describes as “a temporary coalition of CEGEP and university student associations from across Quebec” that have assembled in opposition of the proposed tuition

hike, according to the referendum.

In an interview on CKUT’s Morning After show earlier this month, Jaime Maclean, a member of the AUS Mobilization Committee, highlighted that “joining CLASSE would mean that we would have a voice to go negotiate with the government to influence the way that the tuition increases go,” since “one solitary student association at one university doesn’t have that power to do

that on their own.”

Elections AUS rejected the referendum, but will be meeting with members of the AUS and of CLASSE to discuss the matter further. According to Kevin Paul, another member of the AUS Mobilization Committee, the rejection was due to a claim by Elections AUS that the referendum’s whereas clauses were inaccurate, as a CLASSE executive was claimed to have deemed the AUS

as “already democratic.”

Despite this claim by Elections AUS, Paul made clear that “multiple executives of CLASSE have made official statements to the contrary.”

The amendment will be addressed at the upcoming GA. In response to the rejection, a motion has been brought forward to censure AUS Chief Returning Officer Victor Cheng for acting without adequate explanation in regards to the referendum.

4 News Who represents you?

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

MUSA President Katie Larson Winter semester projects include revamping Constitution

Max Amendy

News Writer

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t has been a busy year for U2 student and Music Undergraduate Students’ Association (MUSA) President Katie Larson. Ongoing activities, which include student services and administrative tasks like assigning practice rooms and lockers, have kept her, and the MUSA executive, occupied. “This seems trivial, but it’s a lot of work,” Larson explained. “But that’s what we’re here for.”

However, her duties as president have not kept her from spending hours practicing for her general Music degree programme, concentrating in Voice.

According to Larson, one of the most important services offered by the executive is in the area of musician health. Music students can be required to practice up to eight hours a day. MUSA offers yoga classes twice a week, seminars on physical well-being, and a Musician’s Health Week this March. “We are trying to get the faculty to latch onto this this year, because we see this as something very important,” she said.

A close relationship with MUSA and the faculty administration,

says Larson, is something that is very important to Music students.

Larson cited the two associate deans of Music, Julie Cumming and Sara Laimon, in particular.

“They are so willing to help, so willing to hear what we have to say,” she said.

“The amount of mutual work and mutual respect that I see in Music is unparalleled elsewhere on campus,” she added.

When it comes to relations with the central administration, Larson explained that interactions are much more formal and distant. “It’s a bummer that, when I have presidents’ meetings, and end up talking with others about central administrators, it’s more, ‘Well you guys are more your own thing, and we’re McGill… We [Music] are separate.’”

Larson prefers the small size of the faculty, the informality and the close-knit relations among the musicians. “Everybody knows everybody.

There is a lot more fluidity,” she said.

Aspirations for the rest of her tenure include some tidying up and making provisions for the future. “This semester’s big project is to finalize our constitution, because it’s really old, and really bad,” Larson said.

Larson has some things she would like to see more of from stu-

dents as well as the administration.

“I’d like to see people get more involved,” she said, “I’d like to see people get out of [isolation].”

Events September, 2011, Frosh: Amazing Race – The Faculty of Music still runs an autonomous Frosh. Turnout in September was high with almost 85 people (the Faculty of Music only has about 500 students).

October 13, 2011: Centraid – Fundraiser for Centraid in the Faculty of Music involving miscellaneous members of the Music Faculty auctioning themselves off for ridiculous acts, like wearing high heels for a day, or dressing completely in Spandex.

December 2, 2011: Festivus – A preliminary holiday wrap-up of festivities celebrating the release of the faculty quarterly The Phonograph, the end of the term, and heralding of the New Year.

March, 2012: Clusterfunk – An event of drinking, mingling, and frivolity features a score of live McGill bands.

It is the biggest Faculty event of the year, attracting around 300 to 350 students.

Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily

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News

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

J-Board case develops as hearing draws near

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Justice discloses previous involvement with OPIRG Queen Arsem-O’Malley The McGill Daily

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ince students Zach Newburgh and Brendan Steven announced the filing of a Judicial Board (J-Board) case against Elections SSMU’s Chief Electoral Officer Rebecca Tacoma, SSMU executives and J-Board justices have both released statements regarding their involvement in the case.

The case challenges the results of the fall 2011 referendum question regarding QPIRG’s existence and opt-out system.

SSMU President Maggie Knight released a statement explaining that VP University Affairs Emily Clare will spearhead SSMU decisions relating to the J-Board case.

Knight stated that she has “too

many different roles in relation to the ongoing Judicial Board case” to make decisions regarding the case, including hiring J-Board justices, acting as supervisor to Tacoma, and a history of personal interactions with petitioners Newburgh and Steven.

Knight specified that she voted to censure Newburgh last year following his involvement with Jobbook.

Clare said that she plans to disclose any previous involvement with QPIRG, including professional interactions with the group in her capacity as Equity Commissioner last year.

“I’m not making the decision, just more facilitating the J-Board process,” said Clare.

SSMU’s Conflict of Interest Policy, which was redrafted fol-

lowing last year’s allegations against Newburgh, is also mentioned in the J-Board case itself.

The case charges VP Clubs & Services, Carol Fraser, Clubs & Services representative Adam Winer, and former Arts representative Micha Stettin with conflicts of interest.

The three councillors played roles in bringing QPIRG and CKUT’s referendum questions to Council for approval. At the time, Fraser and Winer were members of the CKUT ‘yes’ committee, while Stettin sat on the QPIRG Board of Directors.

Discussion also arose around the history of J-Board Justice Raphael Szajnfarber, who was involved in a 2008 Hillel Ottawa dispute with the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG).

On Tuesday, Szajnfarber released a statement detailing the situation.

Then-President of Hillel Ottawa, Szajnfarber acted as spokesperson for the organization when Hillel complained that OPIRG had refused to provide funding for an event due to Hillel’s connection to Israel.

“I’m the one who liaised with [Szajnfarber] and asked him to put up that statement, because it’s just trying to get as much information out as possible,” Clare said.

Szajnfarber’s statement outlines the steps he took to inform SSMU of his involvement in the situation during his interview for the position of a J-Board Justice, as well as informing his fellow justices and filing an official disclosure form.

Chief Justice David Parry also

filed an official disclosure form declaring his former position as staff writer with The Daily and Le Délit, though none of his work covered student politics.

Szajnfarber stated that he has “never met or been in contact with any of the parties to the dispute,” and that none have asked him to step down from the case. QPIRG McGill is not considered a party in the J-Board case; the named parties are Steven, Newburgh, and Tacoma.

SSMU Council will hold a public discussion about the case tonight.

According to a statement released by J-Board, there will not be a decision on the case at the hearing, but a judgment will be made “within a reasonable delay after the hearing.” The hearing is set for Monday, January 30.

Petition launched to impeach Concordia Student Union president Henry Gass

The McGill Daily

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pproaching the one-year anniversary of Concordia Student Union (CSU) President Lex Gill’s contentious election, three Concordia students launched a petition yesterday to impeach her.

In a meeting that same night, CSU Council unanimously passed a motion of confidence in Gill.

There are 35 whereas clauses in the petition, available online at stoplexgill.com, detailing – among other issues – the recent decline in student representation on the Concordia Board of Governors, strained relations with other Concordia student societies, and a series of grievances related to the election of Gill’s slate, Your Concordia, last spring.

A parody of the petition site, stoplexgill.ca, was set up hours later.

Gill and her slate were elected last spring amidst a chaotic campaign that feature numerous campaign violations and targeted vandalism by the opposing slate, Action. The controversy continued into this year as a Councilinitiated Judicial Board (J-Board) hearing found that Chief Electoral Officer Bram Goldstein had been inappropriately appointed in the midst of the election.

An appeal of the ruling from former CSU councillor Tomer Shavit was dismissed as out of order by J-Board. Shavit co-authored the petition with Alex Gordon, president of the Concordia Arts and Science Federation of Associations (ASFA), and Marianna Luciano, president of the Commerce and Administration Students’ Association (CASA).

In a statement emailed to The Daily, Gill condemned some of the whereas clauses as “rife with conjecture, misinformation, logical fallacies, defamatory statements, and straightforward lies about myself, and more importantly, the work of my executive team.”

“There is nothing more disappointing to me, or damaging to the CSU’s reputation, than watching a capable student union descend into petty infighting and internal chaos,” she wrote.

Gill devoted several paragraphs of her statement to outlining procedural issues with the petition. The CSU’s current bylaws only allow students to impeach an entire slate – not individual executives. In November 2011, a by-election changed the bylaws to allow individual impeachment; however, the changes do not take effect until March 1.

According to the Link, Shavit defended his petition at the meeting, saying he would continue to pursue an individual impeachment.

Shavit called the current bylaws “open to interpretation,” according to the Link.

In an interview with the Link, Shavit said the petition had been developing for months, but that “it took a while for everything to fall into place.” Before last night’s meeting, various CSU councillors expressed skepticism about the petition.

Anthony D’Urbano, councillor from the John Molson School of Business, said he wasn’t surprised the petition had come up.

“There’s been a lot of controversy with regards to the last election,” he said.

In an email to The Daily before the meeting, Arts and Science councillor Lina Saigol wrote that the petition “seems to be something of

Meetings Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m. in Shatner B-24.

a personal vendetta” against Gill.

“Stuff like this happens every year,” Saigol continued. “I plan to have no part in it, as I find the accusations completely unfounded.”

Arts and Science councillor Bruno Joyal said Gill and Shavit have “been political opponents for some time,” and doubted the petition will raise the necessary signatures to be validated.

“I have no bad feelings dismissing this thing as a farce,” he continued. “Lex is honestly one of the best presidents the CSU has had in the past few years. She’s not some kind of dictator running the show.”

Gill wrote in her statement that “should a petition, collected after [new bylaws are enacted on] March 1 be validated, I’d be happy to call the General Meeting, book the room, and move the motion myself. That is, after all, how democracy works.”

6 News

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Quebec media rejects proposed professional status Student journalists one target of 2011 media report

Engineering council amends OAP bylaws Nick Kandel

News Writer

Steve Eldon Kerr

The McGill Daily

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he Quebec government has paused plans to create a professional class of journalists, following widespread criticism of the proposals.

The plans first emerged with the publication of the Payette Report last January. Minister of Culture, Communications, and the Status of Women Christine St. Pierre asked Laval University professor and former Radio-Canada journalist Dominique Payette to recommend ways of improving journalistic standards in Quebec. One of the recommendations included in the Payette Report involved creating the title of “professional journalist.”

In the report, the Ministry argues that “the increasing number of news platforms do not guarantee better news quality” because amateur journalists, such as bloggers, are not required to follow the “high ethical standards” of professional journalists. The Ministry believes that a professional title is in the public interest because it would distinguish professional journalists from other types of commentators.

Under the proposals, “professional journalists” would also have preferential access to governmental sources and meetings.

In April 2011, the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Quebec (FPJQ) voted 86.6 per cent in favour of creating a professional title.

Claude Robillard, Secretary General for FPJQ, noted that “with the arrival of the Internet, blogs, social media, et cetera, everyone has begun writing and commenting.”

“Even in newsrooms, information is being diluted with the arrival of all sorts of commentators, such as politicians, ex-politicians, hockey players, and exhockey players,” he said.

“We say that, for the public, the difference between someone who has a hidden agenda, and the journalist who isn’t supposed to have any hidden agendas, isn’t necessarily evident,” Robillard added.

However, by the the end of 2011, the FPJQ was divided on the plans.

FPJQ President Brian Myles recently rescinded full support for the title of professional journalist, citing the divisions the plans created within the FPJQ. The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) has critiqued the plan from the start. In a statement

Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

The Payette report was in response to an increase in popular journalism. posted on its website, the CAJ writes that, “The Quebec government’s proposal to divide journalists into classes, backed by legislation, and giving one group rights and privileges denied to the other is a fundamental interference by government in true freedom of the press.”

The CAJ also suggested that the plans implied that the public needed the government’s help to distinguish between good and bad journalism.

“Journalists rely on their credibility with their audience, with the public. Ultimately, that credibility does not reside in a journalist’s title or for whom they work.

Credibility, whom readers and viewers will trust, comes from the content of their work,” continues the CAJ statement.

Sarah Deshaies, Quebec bureau chief for the Canadian University Press and chief copy editor for the Concordian, argued in a December 7 Ottawa Citizen blog post that the plans would severely hinder student journalism, in particular.

“Limiting the access of student journalists to sources, and privileging certain information to paid journalists, also limits Quebec’s youth,” Deshaies writes. “Student journalists are not only trying to build their craft, but they are also

often mandated by the students they serve to report and reflect on student issues, a topic often overlooked by mainstream media.”

Speaking to the Link, Steve Faguy, a copy editor at the Montreal Gazette and creator of the blog Fagstein, agreed.

“Many people see [the word] ‘journalist’ and they think of a newspaper reporter,’ said Faguy.

“But journalism is a lot more complicated than that, and it’s only going to get more so. I think it will be impossible for a line to be drawn between ‘journalist’ and ‘non-journalist,’ because I don’t believe such a distinction exists anymore.”

he Engineering Undergraduate Society (EUS) discussed the Jutras Report – released last month in response to the events of November 10 – as well as changes to the Open Air Pub (OAP), during their first Council meeting of the semester on Monday.

A motion concerning amendments to the OAP bylaws passed.

The amendments include a starker difference between the roles of VP Finance and the Chair of the OAP Committee regarding the execution and financing of OAP. The amendments also added a section on sponsorship, whereas up to three cooperate sponsors will be allowed kiosks per day. Previously, there had been no clause specifying a limit on corporate sponsorship. The event will now also serve non-alcoholic beverages.

The meeting included some general remarks from EUS President Josh Redel. Redel noted that the intramural broomball arena – termed the Iron Rink – will have its grand opening tomorrow, with various pick-up games planned.

Redel noted that the EUS was unable to carry out their previously planned improvements to the rink, due to McGill decreasing the amount of their funding. The University had anticipated higher performance from the fund financing the rink than it received.

“McGill went from giving [EUS] $55,000, to $15,000, to $1,000, but only if we really need it,” Redel said to Council. The installed improvements include an enlargement of the rink as well as new sideboards.

Discussion of the Jutras Report was limited. Ethan Landy, president of the Civil Engineering Undergraduate Society, said that, “[The report] was pretty wellbalanced, and a lot of the claims that the students made in terms of the physical abuse were addressed and confirmed.”

“I didn’t find it biased,” Landy added.

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News

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

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Montreal politician petitions against monarch’s portrait Emily Meikle

The McGill Daily

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n response to the removal of a Canadian painting from the Building of Foreign Affairs, Joanne Corbeil, candidate for Westmount-Ville-Marie NDP, mailed a petition to Governor General David Johnston last Tuesday.

The Pellan Petition, submitted to the Office of the Governor General, protests the removal of paintings

by Quebec artist Alfred Pellan from the lobby of the Foreign Affairs building in Ottawa.

The order to remove the paintings came from Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird last June, when they were replaced with a

portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. Although the petition managed to gather over 200 signatures, including those of some prominent members of Parliament – such as Thomas Mulcair – Corbeil has little hope that it will succeed.

“If something actually happened – well, that would be a miracle,” Corbeil said.

“The petition really aims at showing them that we do not all agree. I’m sure they’re aware of that, but I thought it was important that it was in writing, that people are not necessarily agreeing with this,” she said.

“So many people say, ‘Well, we want to keep our history alive.’ I have nothing against that,” she added.

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“The history is part of our past, and we should not deny it.

But at the same time, I believe we should look toward the future also. Modern Canada, for most Canadians, is not the Queen. She’s not part of our laws, she’s not part of our Parliament. She does not decide things with us or for us.

She’s just a figure.”

The replacement of the Pellan paintings is one of a number of recent moves by the Harper administration to increase the presence of the monarchy in Canadian government.

In early September 2011, all Canadian embassies and missions abroad were ordered to have a portrait of the Queen on prominent display by September 15, 2011. The

demand came shortly after the restoration of the word “Royal” to the names of the Canadian Air Force and Navy in August.

According to Joseph Lavoie, press secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the decision to swap the pictures was spurred by the approach of the Queen’s diamond jubilee, the sixty-year anniversary of her coronation.

“The Sovereign’s Wall is a tribute that befits our head of state, Queen Elizabeth II,” wrote Lavoie in an email to The Daily. “It was also established as a recognition of the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to the Pearson Building on July 1.”

However, Gilles Lapointe, director of the Art History Undergraduate

Program at Université de Québec à Montréal, expressed concerns that the removal of the Pellan paintings compromises an important part of Canadian culture.

“I can absolutely not agree with it,” Lapointe said. “We don’t have that many great painters in Canada.

Pellan is one of them for sure. It’s like we are trying to erase a part of our cultural histor y... Putting him in a closet is not doing Canada and Quebec a favour.”

“We know that the Harper government still sees Canada as a dominion. They still see Canada as bowing to the Queen. We’re supposed to be in a post-colonial era, but Harper is bringing us back into a colonial era. I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he added.

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Commentary

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

9

Back in my day, Compendium! was funny Well, it’s time once again for crotchety old Grampa Daily to weigh in Niko Block Readers’ Advocate readersadvocate@mcgilldaily.com

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his column is typically devoted to an idea, or, at the very least, a specific article.

This time around, however, I’m taking aim at two particular individuals. Their names are Zach and Olivia. They are your Commentary and Compendium! editors this year, (though Olivia is in the process of stepping down).

It’s no secret that Compendium! has been sagging lately. Typically

an afterthought, the product of whatever happens to cross one’s mind – or one’s web browser – amidst those interminable marathons in the Daily office every Wednesday and Friday night, Compendium! is often the neglected urchin lurking in the corner. Content is not discussed at Monday editorial meetings, or even uploaded to the website.

I am sympathetic, however. In time I may even come to forgive their trespasses. Those nights are known for their bitter editorial debates, acid reflux, myoclonic twitches, and – at least in my own experience – frequent bouts of coffee-induced diarrhea (I know it sounds romantic and

fun, but it’s not.)

Compendium is valuable because it lacks all the pedantry of the Culture section, the tedium of News, the lengthiness of Features, and the irrelevance of everything else. It draws people in.

But it’s also political. There is something beautifully juvenile about a section of the paper that has a mandate to take potshots at our own principal. It’s an institution dedicated to indulging our Ninja Turtles-era fantasies of burning down the school, and to our rants about the jerk who sits at the front of class and raises his hand every three minutes to talk about Ayn Rand or some shit.

Since I wound up with a full-page for this column, I’ve culled a few favourites from the days of yore.

Compendium has seen better years – but even at the best of times, most of its jokes fell to Carrot Top lows of unfunniness. Typically it’s been strongest with the Onion-style headlines, flippant caricatures, and lewd cartoons.

I’m not asking the editors to be funnier, but rather to put more effort into fostering a community of contributors. There’s been some decent shit this year. But the inside jokes, the meaningless and uncaptioned images, and vacuous Metrometre columns, (“Last night was Zach Lewsen’s birthday! Cake!

Plus 45”; “I’m going to Igloofest for the first time ever tonight. Plus 30”) have definitely drawn my ire

at times. “I <3 U MUNACA, but I’m tryna watch a movie” – in which the author earnestly complained about the noise emanating from the picket lines last September – provoked a unique fire in my belly.

Anyway, this is all to cordially demand that Olivia’s replacement – whomever you may be – and Zach put a little more energy into the funnies. Thank you.

The readers’ advocate is a twice-monthly column written by Niko Block addressing the performance, relevance, and quality of The Daily. You can reach him at readersadvocate@mcgilldaily.com.

10 Features

John Wilkes Booth lived here: How Montreal fell for the Confederacy

by Matt Herzfeld

“I

must post myself in Canuck airs,” said John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

“For some of us…may have to settle here shortly.” Booth had been making brief visits to Montreal for some time, and he planned on fleeing to Canada after shooting Lincoln. He never made it back north.

After doing the deed at Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. on April 14, 1865, Booth was chased through Virginia, where he was shot in a barn by a crazed soldier from the 16th New York cavalry who had been sent to capture, not kill, Booth. (The gunman, Boston Corbett, exemplified the original meaning of the phrase, “mad as a hatter;” he went insane from the mercury he used in his work making top hats and bowlers.

Crazy enough to castrate himself in 1858.)

Booth was found with several items on him, including a bank receipt from the Royal Ontario Bank in Montreal.

Booth’s desire – to seek political refuge in Canada – has been shared by generations of Americans, from British Loyalists after the American Revolution to Iraq War resisters.

And as the newest parade of laughable candidates for President takes to the nation’s podiums, town halls, and state fairs, America will ring once again with the rallying cry of, “If so and so is elected, I’m moving to Canada.”

But Booth was part of one political migration to Canada with an oft-neglected history.

During and shortly after the American Civil War, between 1861 and 1865, scores of leading Confederate politicians and agents made Montreal their home. The city harbored fugitives, offered up its most lavish hotels to the machinations of racist assassins, and fêted slave owners. Like a vine with tendrils lodged in the cracks of a great stone wall, Montreal insinuated itself into the war of its southern neighbor. And like that vine,

it wasn’t too particular about which side it attached itself to.

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magine you’re walking in the Old Port in 1864 (although it was quite new then, so you might have just called it “the Port”), wearing a coat sewn together from several families’ worth of beaver pelts. If you were a well-heeled southerner in the mid-19th century, Montreal would have held a lot of charm.

By 1861, Montreal boasted over 90,000 inhabitants, making it not only the largest city in Canada, but also more than twice as populous as Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital. Sherbrooke, according to a contemporary account, was “scarcely surpassed by Fifth Avenue in New York in the magnificence of its buildings.” It also proudly advertised over 100 houses of prostitution.

You decide to warm up your body and wet your beak at St. Lawrence Hall, the swank hotel on St. James.

The bar this evening is busy with lingering customers and clouded with smoke. Redcoats and grey coats mingle. This is, after all, the headquarters of the British forces sent to protect the provinces if the war down south decides to creep over the border.

But St. Lawrence Hall is also the staging ground of several covert Confederate operations outside of the U.S. The place is shimmering with the accents and manners of Dixie: it is, reportedly, the only hotel in Canada that serves mint juleps.

Mostly, the Confederates in Montreal were a shambolic bunch. One of them, P.C. Martin, thwarted his own plan to burn New York City to the ground when, afraid of being found out, he closed the door of the hotel room in which he had begun the blaze, cutting off the fire’s oxygen supply so that it burned little besides the room itself. He would later sink with a ship in the St. Lawrence and never be seen again.

The family of another Montreal conspirator, Jacob Thompson, would be caricatured as one of the fallen-from-glory Compsons in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. Indeed, not only was the Oxford, Mississippi native’s home burned down during the war, but in order to avoid charges, Thompson took over $200,000 of stolen money to France with him in order to survive at the Grand Hotel in Paris. Like Elvis, Thompson would die in Memphis.

Yet another, John Wilkes Booth, was from one of the most distinguished acting families of his generation (his brother was the famous Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth). He visited St. Lawrence Hall several times in relation to a conspiracy involving the kidnapping of Lincoln under the pretext of “oil speculations.” During one covert mission in 1864, Booth brought his entire wardrobe with him – including the costumes for Macbeth, Caesar, and Hamlet.

Clayton Gray, in his book Conspiracy in Canada, offers the following quote from Booth, by way of Lawrence Hall owner Henry Hogan: “It makes little difference, head or tail, Abe’s contract is near up, and whether re-elected or not he will get his goose cooked.”

Another conspirator in Lincoln’s assassination, John Surratt, Jr., was also a frequent visitor to Montreal, where he would briefly hide out after Lincoln’s death. Surratt spoke fondly of Montreal – it was there that he bought his prized “Garibaldi” jacket, which he was often seen wearing around town. Though while on a public lecture tour some years later Surratt would eventually admit his involvement in the scheme to kidnap Lincoln, he would not be charged with conspiracy. (Surratt’s mother was charged, and became the first woman executed by the US government.) In his diary, Surratt mentions attacks being planned from Canada on “frontier towns” and planned fireraids on northern cities, including Boston and New York.

These were part of a larger scheme intended to paralyze the North while the armies of

the South regrouped. On October 19, 1864, a band of Confederates led by Bennett H. Young set out from Montreal and ambushed the border town of St. Alban’s, Vermont, killing people and livestock, ruining property, and stealing $208,000 from banks. The raid and the sensational trial that followed caused a major stir in both the Canadian and American press, with New York papers and several Anglophone news outlets calling for war between Canada and the Union. The raid had been planned in the rooms of St. Lawrence Hall.

When Young was denied re-entry into the states by Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor as President, he moved back to Montreal briefly.

Colonel Young came back in 1911, staying at the Ritz Carlton, where he was greeted like a celebrity, visited by droves of people. Among them was Jack Abott, whose father John had defended Young in the St. Alban’s trial, and then become Canada’s third prime minister.

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f you lived in Canada, and particularly in Montreal, during the Civil War, there was a surprisingly good chance you were rooting for the South to win. Of course, many supported the North because they felt it stood for the end of slavery. But much of the Anglophone press whistled Dixie during the war: the Montreal and Ottawa Gazettes were most vocal in their support for the Confederacy, and The Toronto Leader was pro-slavery until 1862, when a new editor took charge. Then there are the numerous reports of Confederate bigwigs, such as Bennett H. Young, being fawned over by polite, Anglo Montreal society.

A strain of sympathy for the Confederacy ran through French Canadian public opinion at the time, too. Only about half of the French-speaking population was literate, and, as historian Preston Jones makes clear, once the Catholic church advocated a view, it was

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

11

Opposite page: John Lovell, Montreal publishing baron (top left); bar room, St. Lawrence Hall ca. 1890 (bottom left); 1181 Rue Montagne, where Jefferson Davis lived (right).

This page: St. Lawrence Hall, St. James street, ca. 1865 (top left); Jefferson Davis and his wife, 1867 (bottom left); St. Alban,s raiders, at the jail door, 1864 (center); plaque commemorating Jefferson Davis, afixed to the west side of The Bay (right).

Black and white images courtesy of the McCord Museum, others by Sergey Tsynkevych for The McGill Daily

largely adopted by the French-speaking population. The Church, and therefore the masses, was distinctly anti-American.

For many conservative French Canadians, America, with its Mormon polygamists and high crime rate, was a kind of modern Gomorrah.

Abraham Lincoln, meanwhile, was seen as an evil dictator. Following his assassination, the Canadien, though mildly praising the American president’s fortitude amidst adversity, remarked that, “today, carried away by grief and an exaggeration particular to the American spirit, [Americans] don’t hesitate to place Mr. Lincoln alongside Washington, and they even go so far as to compare him to Moses.”

On the other hand, influential outlets like the Gazette des Campagnes were writing about the south that it embodied the principles of “learning, the art of war, liberty, patriotism and…honour.”

The French Catholic church saw the growing Americanization of Francophones as corrupting, and strictly forbade any involvement in the war. Thus, for these deeply religious people, enlisting amounted to heresy. In his study of the Civil War and French Quebec, Preston Jones notes that, according to the Gazette des Compagnes, “the American Civil War was part and parcel of a global unholy war being waged against Catholicism; as in Mexico and revolutionary France, an anti-Catholic gangrene was working destruction in America.”

If the word of the Church wasn’t enough for you, enlistment in the Union cause was also illegal, per the British Foreign Enlistment Act of 1861.

In some ways, it isn’t hard to see why many French Quebecois bore a grudge against the Union. Thousands of their sons and husbands enlisted in what was seen as a Protestant army which, many feared, would invade British North America as soon as they were done handling the Confederacy. This wasn’t crazy – the New York Herald called for the annexation of Canada in 1861, and, in 1858, the abolitionist

John Brown said the Union should overthrow the “Priestocracy” of French Canada.

And often when Americans were searching for easy recruits, they preyed on French Quebecois, leading to a widespread impression that Northerners were a deceitful bunch.

Despite the temptations of escape from the miseries of army life in a gruesome war (some 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War), desertion was incredibly dangerous. In a letter from his base in Richmond that was reprinted in a French-language newspaper, one enlisted Quebecois described a scene where, “one of [his] compatriots was shot…he was accused of desertion.” That same soldier remarked that in a two-month span, seven or eight soldiers suffered the same fate. As far as the Canadian soldier could tell, the Yankees saw Canadians as mere “cannon fodder.”

And if soldiers were not wounded or killed in combat, they faced the perils of disease, which were increased by the frighteningly bad sanitation standards of the time. One Quebecois soldier, Eusèbe Ouimet, fell ill in a Union camp, and without proper treatment, died shortly thereafter of consumption, after receiving rushed last-rites from the Archdiocese of Montreal.

Nevertheless, almost all of the French Canadians who enlisted in the American Civil War did so with the Union side, for obvious geographic reasons. A recent study by historian Tom Brooks, for example, found French Canadians enlisted in 500 Union regiments but only 46 regiments for the Confederacy.

All in all, about 50,000 people from the area that is now Canada fought in the American Civil War, with about 40,000 fighting on the Union side.

The disparity was, for the most part, not driven by moral scruples. Yes, many French were morally opposed to slavery, and the publication of a French translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin increased abolitionist sentiment amongst the French in Quebec.

But their stance could best be described as indifference. They just weren’t confronted with the issue of chattel slavery on a regular basis.

The practice was never prevalent in Canada, being completely outlawed in British colonies by 1833. Furthermore, the black population of Quebec was nearly non-existent: 18 in 1851, all the way up to 190 in 1861. And even though Canada was the endpoint of the Underground Railroad, Quebec was known to offer bounties for captured fugitive slaves.

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ugitive slave-owners, meanwhile, had an easier time coming across the border.

The family of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, was sheltered in Montreal during and after the Civil War. Anyone who goes to McGill has likely passed the place where the Davis family lived, on Union. (The irony of the street name could not have been lost on the man who had worked to dissolve his country’s Union for the previous five years). The Davises lived with the family of John Lovell, a Montreal publishing baron. His house was on the same block as William Osler’s, Sir Thomas George Roddick’s, and William Molson’s, all familiar names to McGill students.

Lovell, who owned the most prominent printing press and publishing house in Montreal (and now the oldest – it is still run by the Lovell family in the same Old Port building), was very popular among Montreal’s social and political elite. Among Lovell’s close friends were politicians and Confederation activists Thomas D’Arcy McGee, John A. MacDonald, and George Etienne Carter. (Not to be confused with Confederates, Confederationists were calling for the creation of a separate Dominion of Canada.)

Two years after the war, a time in which he faced incarceration in the US, Jefferson Davis escaped to Canada, partly to join his family and partly because his secret papers regarding

the Confederacy were hidden in the vaults of the Bank of Montreal in Place d’Armes, where his sister-in-law had left them after smuggling them into the country.

Canada greeted him like a hero. One account of his arrival in Ontario describes a scene of thousands of people in the streets eagerly awaiting a glimpse of the fallen figure.

After arriving in Montreal, Davis attended a performance at the Royal Theatre on what was then Cote St. (at the back of St. Lawrence Hall). When, midway, through the performance people realized he was in the theatre, a wave of whispers spread through the fashionable (and largely AngloProtestant) crowd. Soon, people were applauding and tossing their hats in the air.

“Dixie! Dixie! Dixie!” they cried. Describing the scene in the New York Times on August 4, 1867, a correspondent wrote, “such a unanimous tribute never greeted a monarch as that expressed for Mr. Davis.”

Eventually, he settled into a house at what is now 1181 Montagne (a house paid for by Confederate sympathizers in town) and worked on his famous defense of the Confederacy, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. He would spend two years there. In a 1960 Montreal Gazette article, an elderly woman recalled Davis’ living nearby and his several “negro servants” frequently entering her father’s general store for supplies.

In the fall of 1867, the Davis’ moved to Lenoxville, QC, near Sherbrooke, where his son attended Bishop’s College. Davis would have spoken at convocation had he not taken a fall on the front stairs of their home.

When Davis became very ill, his medical advisor, D.C. MacCallum of the McGill Faculty of Medicine, urged him to “go to a milder climate.” Montreal, which had welcomed him and his compatriots so warmly, had finally gotten too cold for this consummate man of the south.

12 Commentary

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

McGill administration ignoring the student vote again Yet another example of McGill’s iron fist Tyler Lawson and Simone Lucas Hyde Park

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ACOMSS. Architecture Cafe.

MSA. MUNACA. November 10.

And the McGill administration is at it again. With the announcement that the they are refusing to respect the fall referendum results, we are witnessing yet another example of McGill’s top-down decision making when it comes to students and workers at McGill.

The fall referendum had the second highest voter turnout in SSMU’s history (24.7 per cent, or 5245 undergraduate students). After students voted 72.3 per cent in favour of continuing to support CKUT and 65.6 per cent in favour of continuing to support QPIRG McGill, it is astounding to witness McGill’s flagrant disregard for student democracy, autonomy, and due process.

While McGill has repeatedly stated that the results were “unclear,” they have failed to provide any

substantial arguments to back up this assessment. The referendum question asked if students wanted to continue to support CKUT and QPIRG’s existence with opt-outs no longer on Minerva. And students voted yes. How, exactly, could this have been clearer? It is insulting to the intelligence of McGill students to insinuate that this question was beyond their comprehension.

Mendelson’s arguments are flimsy, inconsistent, and bizarrely selfreferential – he even cites opinion articles as supporting evidence, articles that quote himself on the topic of the referendum. Furthermore, the very idea of an “existence referendum,” term coined by the McGill administration is one that lacks any clear rules or parameters.

QPIRG sent several e-mails to the Administration prior to the referendum period asking to see public rules and regulations governing such a question, to which we never received a clear response. Why is it that our organizations are being

held up to an unattainable, unclear standard (with no public rules or regulations) while the administration can make up the rules as they go?

In The Daily article “Admin invalidates referendum results” (January 19, 2012), Mendelson is quoted saying that QPIRG and CKUT “can …ask a separate question on whether the fee should be non opt-outable, on the understanding that the administration cannot be bound by a referendum on the method of opting out.” Given this statement, how can we ever be confident that any democratic process we undertake will be accepted by the McGill administration? The administration is repeatedly telling us through their actions that the voting process, and therefore the voices and interests of McGill students, are irrelevant.

To give this all a bit of context, the system of online opt-outs was imposed unilaterally by the McGill administration in 2007, ignoring objections from campus groups regarding this violation of student

autonomy. That same year, a SSMU General Assembly motion and subsequent student referendum called upon the administration to put an end to the online opt-out system. Both the motion and the referendum passed, but the McGill Administration chose to ignore these results.

This most recent move on the part of the McGill administration illustrates a serious lack of respect for the autonomy of student-funded and student-run organizations on campus. From the shutting down of Architecture Café, to SACOMSS’s space being threatened, to the Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) being denied a prayer space, to the actions the administration took on November 10 (as well as their response in the aftermath), to the privatization of food services on campus, to their history of ignoring student votes in past referenda, McGill administration rules with an iron fist. Not only does this affect students, it affects workers too. We have seen most recently with non-academic staff on campus

(MUNACA).

As this goes to print, QPIRG and CKUT are continuing to negotiate with McGill to have the student vote heard, and are exploring all options available to each of our respective organizations. It’s time we stop allowing the McGill administration to push us around on campus; enough is enough.

Tyler Lawson is a U2 JointHonours student in Philosophy and Environment Studies, a QPIRG Board Member and a CKUT Member. He can be reached at tyler.lawson@mail.mcgill.ca.

Simone Lucas is a U4 Honours student in Women’s Studies with a minor in Communication Studies, a QPIRG Board Member, and a CKUT Member. She can be reached at simone.lucas@mail.mcgill.ca.

It’s an unwavering belief Why Atheism is not just a convenient lack of religion One Less God Harmon Moon

onelessgod@mcgilldaily.com

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ne of the things that many people wonder about atheists is how strong their belief actually is. When struck with a debilitating illness, does an atheist immediately abandon the shallow, cynical facade and embrace God as a saviour? Can a belief which states that there is nothing after death be of any comfort to somebody soon to face the end of their life?

Obviously, not having died recently, I can’t speak to the deathbed experience, but it’s not difficult to find examples of those secure enough in their beliefs to hold on to them to their last breath. In discussing this, though,

I’ve been placed in a position where the perfect example to discuss is that of a public figure that died very recently. While it seems crass to take advantage of such misfortune to make a point, the timing is too perfect to pass up.

Besides, I’m sure the man would approve were he still around.

Christopher Hitchens was, and remains, a controversial figure of our time. English by birth, he made the United States his home for the second half of his life, where he worked as a columnist and literary critic for a variety of magazines, including Salon, The Nation, and Vanity Fair. Although he defined himself as a Trotskyite and a radical, he also took up more unpopular positions such as a fierce advocacy of the Iraq War, as well as vitriolic attacks on “fascism with an

Islamic face” and the toleration of religious extremism in the name of multiculturalism.

Publishing books with names like God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Hitchens was well known within atheist circles. His was the face that, more than anything, defined the camp known as “anti-theism:” a deep, principled opposition to the collective delusion that he felt defined God and religion. His aggressive attacks on the institution alienated some and bolstered others, so when he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2010, reactions were mixed.

Where Hitchens was uncompromising while he was living, he was even more so while he was dying. At a debate at the American

Jewish University he was asked whether the sickness had caused him to revisit his views on the afterlife. “I would say it fractionally increases my contempt for the false consolation element of religion and my dislike for the dictatorial and totalitarian part of it,” was his reply. “It’s considered perfectly normal in this society to approach dying people who you don’t know but who are unbelievers and say, ‘Now are you gonna change your mind?’ That is considered almost a polite question.”

There was no desperate appeal for divine clemency at the last minute for Hitchens; he remained an atheist to the end.

I don’t know what Christopher Hitchens’ last words were. His last public appearance was at the Texas Freethought Convention in Houston, where he took audience

questions with Richard Dawkins for about an hour. Slightly more than a month from death, he appeared sickly and pale, his head completely bald due to chemotherapy and his eyes sunken into their sockets. Yet he spoke clearly and with good humour and was, as always, unwavering.

“I’m not going to quit until absolutely I have to,” he told the audience of over a thousand. And he didn’t.

One Less God is a twice-monthly column on atheist communities and philosophy. Harmon Moon is a U2 History student and VP External of the McGill Freethought Association.

He can be reached at onelessgod@ mcgilldaily.com. Special thanks to Robert Koeze for fact-checking.

News

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

13

Zionism, the Jewish national movement A response to Tadamon!

ill Daily eva | The McG Amina Bat yr

Russell Sitrit-Leibovich The McGill Daily

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n November 10, 1975, the United Nations General Assembly passed one of its most odious resolutions – which was later repealed in 1991 – determining that Zionism was a form of racism. Speaking before the General Assembly, Israel’s Ambassador Chaim Herzog responded: “Zionism is to the Jewish people what the liberation movements of Africa and Asia have been to their own people… The re-establishment of Jewish independence in Israel, after centuries of struggle to overcome foreign conquest and exile, is a vindication of the fundamental concepts of the equality of nations and of self-determination. To question the Jewish people’s right to national existence and freedom is not only to deny to the Jewish people the right accorded to every other people on this globe, but it is also to deny the central precepts of the United Nations.” Unfortunately, it seems that Tadamon! in Don’t conflate Judaism and Zionism (January 12, Page 12) has not only ignored Herzog’s words but chosen to reiterate many distortions about Zionism and the State of Israel.

Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish peo-

ple, the return to the land of Israel forming a crucial component of the Jewish collective consciousness for over two millennia. Ever since the Jews were first forced off of their land by imperialist powers in the first centuries of the common era, they have sought to reestablish themselves in their ancient homeland. Throughout the long centuries of dispersion, Jews always maintained a presence in the land of Israel, while Jews in the Diaspora continued to hope and long to return home.

The hope was finally realized in 1948, when for the first time in two thousand years, the Jewish people were once again sovereign in the land of their ancestors.

When the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state in 1947, the Arabs rejected the proposal. Instead, they opted to invade the newly reestablished Jewish state with the goal of eliminating it. It was in this aggressive war launched by the Arab states that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs became refugees, in circumstances that historians differ about. However, many hundreds of thousands fled at the urging of the Arab High Command who promised that they would return once the Jews had been defeated. In his memoirs, Haled al Azm, Syrian Prime Minister during

the war, admitted: “Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes.

But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return.”

The Palestinian Arabs form one of two groups of refugees caused by the 1948 Arab–Israeli War – the second and larger being the over 800,000 Jews forced from their homes in Arab countries. These Jewish communities, most of them predating Islam by centuries, were utterly destroyed, with over $100 billion of Jewish property confiscated, yet to be returned. It is estimated that the total Jewish land seized by the Arab states after 1948 is five times the size of the State of Israel . As well, the invading Arab armies displaced thousands of Jews from the lands that Jordan occupied in 1948 such as the Old City of Jerusalem and numerous other towns and villages. Amazingly, in 1948, the state of Israel was able to absorb over half a million penniless Jews from Arab countries who were recently made refugees, while the Arab states, with all of their resources, chose to enact discriminatory policies that kept the Palestinian Arabs in refugee camps for over six decades. Somehow, all of the millions of people displaced

after WWII (the war ended three years before Israel’s establishment) have been resettled. Only the Palestinians languish in refugee camps, mainly to be used as pawns against the State of Israel. As stated by Sir Alexander Galloway, Former Head of the United Nations Refugee Works Agency (UNRWA) “The Arab States do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel.”

Israel is a democratic state in which its Arab citizens enjoy the same rights as its Jewish ones, under Israeli Constitutional Law. While social and economic gaps exist between Israeli Jews and Arabs, Israeli Arabs are among the most successful Arabs in the Middle-East. Numerous Arabs serve in Israel’s parliament and the level of free speech that they enjoy there is unthinkable in any Arab country. An Israeli Arab, Salim Joubran, currently sits on Israel’s Supreme Court. He is the second Arab to hold such a position. According to a 2011 survey carried out by Pechter polls, a majority of Arabs living in eastern Jerusalem would prefer to retain Israeli citizenship rather than Palestinian citizenship should a two-state solution be reached, with 40 per cent of respondents saying that they would move to a different home within Israel should

their neighbourhood become part of Palestine.

Israel’s Law of Return, which grants automatic citizenship to any Jew, is one of the most basic expressions of Zionism and has its parallel in numerous countries.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has accepted thousands of ethnic Russians from the former republics. Similarly, Germany has granted citizenship to the millions of ethnic Germans displaced after 1945 . Yet only Israel is attacked as racist for its Law of Return. Meanwhile, legal scholars have discussed “practice of Apartheid” in many Arab countries. Jordan legally bars Jews from citizenship, as do several other Arab countries In addition, Judges in the Palestinian territory are allowed to sign the death penalty to individuals who have sold land to Israelis, on approval of the Palestinian Authority President.

Israel is by no means perfect.

However, in the rapidly changing Middle-East, it remains an oasis of stability and human rights.

Tadamon!’s members are certainly free to their own opinions, but not to distort the historical narrative and the current situation in the region.

Russell Sitrit-Leibovich is a U2 Political Science student. He can be reached at russell.sitrit.leibovich@gmail.com

Health&Education

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

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R v. HIV Why those with HIV/AIDS shouldn’t be behind bars Mind Over Matter Roxana Parsa

mindovermatter@mcgilldaily.com

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n 2009, Nick Rhoades, an HIVpositive young man from Iowa was sentenced to 25 years in prison for failing to disclose his sexual status to his partner after a one-time sexual encounter. This sentence was equivalent to that of a Class B felony. Rhoades had worn a condom, and the virus was not transmitted. Nevertheless, in addition to the prison sentence, he was required to register as a lifetime sex offender. Due to a strong public response, his original sentence was greatly reduced, and he was released several months after the initial ruling, however, because of his sex offender status he is now unable to be around children, has difficulties finding a job, and is required to wear a monitoring bracelet.

In Texas, a man is currently serving 35 years in prison for spitting on a policeman. His HIV-positive status allowed his saliva to be categorized as a “deadly weapon” – even though it is impossible for HIV to be spread through saliva.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 1998 that not disclosing an HIV-positive status can be seen as fraud, thus invalidating any consent given by the partner.

According to the Canadian HIV/ AIDS Legal Network, people living with HIV in Canada can be prosecuted and charged for not disclosing their status before engaging in what is considered “an activity of significant risk” for viral transmission. However, the definition of an “activity of significant risk” is still unclear. While the punishments for HIV/AIDS non-disclosure are often more severe in the United States, Canada is known to be one of the most stalwart in criminalizing people who are HIV-positive.

Criminal prosecutions here have ranged from charges of assault and criminal negligence, to a charge of first-degree murder.

As HIV/AIDS became more prevalent in Canada, the legal system struggled to keep up with the complicated implications of the disease.

In 1998, an appeal was brought to the supreme court over the case of R v. Cuerrier, whereby a BC Court of Appeals judge ruled that sexual activity which puts a partner at risk of HIV could not be considered assault. The Supreme Court ruled, however, that by having unprotected intercourse while HIV positive, a person can be considered

Abby Howard for The McGill Daily guilty of assault. To establish guilt, Justice Peter Cory stipulated three conditions: that the accused’s acts endanger[ed] the life of the complainant, that he intentionally applied force without the consent of the complainant, and that the complainant would not have engaged in intercourse had they known the person was infected.

The changing legal attitudes towards HIV/AIDS and assault force

us to wonder whether or not nondisclosure should be punished so severely, if at all. If one agrees with this criminalization, do they also agree that other common sexually transmitted diseases and infections, such as hepatitis or syphilis, should be prosecuted to the same extent as the widely publicized AIDS cases?

One of the main arguments ghjghused in support of this criminalization has been that it

could help deter “risky” behaviour and transmission of the virus.

Yet there has been almost no evidence found to support this stance – in fact, it seems that this could only be counterintuitive to public health goals. Researchers from the Canadian HIV/AIDs Legal Network and UNAIDS have stated that these laws could deter HIV testing – and thus diagnoses – due to the fact that these laws are supposed to

be used in situations where a person is knowingly HIV-positive. The lack of knowledge can thus protect a person from being convicted as a criminal. If someone who has taken the initiative to get tested and, potentially, treated, is then prosecuted for a crime, it seems that they are being punished for doing what public health officials tend to encourage. In addition, it’s been found that approximately half of new transmissions occur during periods of early infection, when people are not likely to even be aware of their own status. As an alternative to the criminalization of HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS has advocated positive prevention programs to reduce transmission and to empower people living with HIV. Criminal ramifications of a person’s choice to not disclose their status imply that the person who is HIV-positive has the sole responsibility toward ensuring the health of their sexual partner. The onus on ensuring sexual practices are safe should rest on all individuals involved. Suggesting otherwise undermines the idea that safe sex should be practiced by all, and not just by at-risk groups. Furthermore, if safe techniques are being used, then there should be no “significant” risk for transmission.

Criminalizing HIV transmission also increases the fear and stigma associated with the virus. The media coverage of these cases has already shown how persons who are HIV positive are sensationalized and become the “other” – headlines such as “HIV Monster” from UK paper The Sun, or “Evil Beast” in Scotland’s The Daily Record are prevalent. Sean Strub, a filmmaker whose documentary “HIV is Not a Crime” discusses these issues, refers to the creation of a “viral underclass,” in which people with HIV are then seen as a threat to public health and society in general.

Of course, intent and motivation should play a role in any potential legal rulings. If a person was malicious in their intent to knowingly spread the virus, then there is justification for legal prosecution.

However, it is important to note that these cases are rare. While most people may believe that there is an ethical requirement for an individual to disclose their status, the increased role played by the judicial system in determining the culpability of an HIV-positive person is troubling. The tendency to marginalize those who suffer from AIDS is all too common, and this recent criminalization must stop in order to be able to address and prevent further HIV transmission.

Health&Education

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

15

SAT fraud amongst high school students

Ami na B at yr eva |

The M

cGil l Da ily

The motivations behind the cheating

Taylor Holroyd

The McGill Daily

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recent expose in the New York Times has uncovered an SAT cheating ring in the United States. Five students from different high schools in Nassau County in Long Island, New York were paid up to $3,600 to take the tests for 15 other students. These were students who wanted to get into university but had low test scores, below-average marks, unembellished resumes, and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to pay the high price that these test takers charge. The 15 students who hired the test-takers have now been charged with summary conviction offences, while the five test-takers have been charged with indictable offences.

The crimes were uncovered when a student at Great Neck North High School confided to a guidance counselor that someone was being paid to take the SAT for others. The principal of the school compared student’s GPA to SAT scores and noticed discrepancies for multiple students, particularly those who had taken the SAT at a different

school so they would not be recognized. The students were arrested in September of 2011, but they were not charged until December. The school administration found it difficult to prove that cheating had occurred because College Board, the company that administers the tests, was reluctant to release information about the students.

The students’ motivation to cheat ultimately stems from the extremely competitive test-taking culture in North America, and the United States in particular. There is an enormous amount of pressure on students to perform well, achieve high marks, and gain entrance to the best universities in the country which accept very few students given the number of applicants. As the pressure to do well intensifies, so does the technology that enables the students to cheat.

Standardized tests are used as a supposedly fair and objective criterion with which different universities can evaluate prospective students. However, the high frequency of cheating on these tests suggests otherwise. Desperate students may believe that, with their below-aver-

age scores, their chances of admission to a respectable university are slim. In the case of the students in Long Island, working harder or lowering their expectations was not considered. Instead, they turned to cheating on the tests as a last resort.

But these students recieved little sympathy. As District Attorney of Nassau County, Kathleen Rice, stated in a press release, “The young men and women arrested today instead chose to scam the system and victimize their own friends and classmates, and for that they find themselves in handcuffs.”

At the centre of the scandal is Samuel Eshaghoff, a 2010 graduate of Great Neck North High School in Long Island, who allegedly took the SAT or ACT for fifteen other students over the course of three years, guaranteeing his clients high enough scores to gain university acceptances.

Eshaghoff – now a student at Emory University in Atlanta – will not face criminal charges for his acts. In lieu of a prison sentence, he has been sentenced to tutor underprivileged youth on their SATS. That such dishonesty was possi-

ble – and easy – in Long Island raises questions about how widespread cheating on standardized tests might be throughout the United States. There have been multiple cases of teachers helping students on standardized tests, as well as students communicating in the test room using codes or hand signals.

Eshaghoff used fake identification to impersonate his clients, several of whom were female students. In a 60 Minutes episode about the scandal, Eshaghoff spoke to Security during SAT testing. “I would say that between the SAT and ACT, the security is uniformly pathetic, in the sense that anybody with half a brain could get away with taking the test for anybody else.”

Eshaghoff admitted that while his family is wealthy, they are currently in financial and personal distress, which might explain the motivation behind his willingness to take the tests for other high school students. Eshaghoff also revealed “altruistic” intentions in the 60 Minutes episode when he described himself as “saving someone’s life” by taking the test for them. “I mean, a kid who has a hor-

rible grade-point average, who – no matter how much he studies – is gonna totally bomb this test, by giving him an amazing score, I totally give him this . . . new lease on life.

He’s gonna go to a totally new college. He’s gonna be bound for a totally new career and a totally new path on life.”

This most recent scandal raises questions about the privilege afforded to wealthier students when it comes to uhniversity admissions – the students who Eshaghoff was “saving,” after all, were paying up to $2,500 a test. Students from more affluent households tend to score better on standardized tests. This may be due to a number of reasons: they can afford to retake the tests and improve their scores, or they can pay for extensive practice courses and tutors. Affluent students, like the ones in Nassau County, also tend to have competitive, statusconscious parents who pressure them to get into the best universities. The wealthiest students are not necessarily the most intelligent, but by paying their way through the required testing, their applications appear to be more impressive.

16 Culture

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Canadian film makes a bid for the big leagues Cinema Verite

A

s any TA in any 200-level Arts class at McGill will undoubtedly repeat, it’s not a good idea to start an essay with a generalization. This is great advice, but I want to betray this rule for brevity’s sake and just get this out in the open: since the dawn of humanity – or at least cinema – Canada has always had a complicated relationship with the United States – or at least Hollywood. Many would argue that since Canadian talent, whether creative or performative, can be found in most Hollywood films, a national cinema is hardly real. As the argument goes, since many of these films are actually shot in Vancouver’s school yards, Toronto’s streets, or Montreal’s studios, the wall that distinguishes between Canadian and Hollywood cinema is crumbling, if it ever really existed.

And yet, there comes a time every year when this distinction matters the most, when the country as a whole rushes to the newsstand to see if Canada might finally “score the big one.” The time I am referring to is, of course, the Tuesday that just passed, in which the list of Academy Awards nominees was released. Whether you like their selections or not, there is no doubt that the Oscars can be as grandiose as the Olympics to cinephiles,

Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

John Watson cinemaverite@mcgilldaily.com

especially when a film from one’s country enters the “Best Foreign Language” category. Such is the case for Canada for the second consecutive year as Montreal filmmaker Philippe Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar enters the race.

Having already gained domestic recognition – in the form of a Genie Award – for his 2006 film Congorama, Falardeau is now drawing the gaze of movie buffs around the world. Monsieur Lazhar revisits many of the same themes and concerns as his penultimate C’est pas moi, je le jure!. Namely, the film deals with childhood trauma and coming to terms with the reality of death, but with a decidedly more mature approach. Whereas

the opening scene of C’est pas moi, je le jure! semi-comically depicts a ten year old boy attempting to hang himself for no apparent reason while Patrick Watson’s twangy guitar coos in the background, Monsieur Lazhar opens with a schoolboy’s discovery of his teacher’s suspended body in his classroom. The film follows the school’s replacement teacher Bachir Lazhar, an Algerian refugee who attempts to guide the children through this traumatic period. As you can already imagine, the film falls into the trap of one of those “the teacher learned as much from his students as they learned from him” narratives, but shies away from oversentimentality just enough to be taken seriously. The

question on everyone’s lips: could this be what it takes for Falardeau to score Hollywood’s prestigious prize?

In this writer’s humble opinion, not a chance. By all means, Monsieur Lazhar is a well-made film that grapples with difficult subject matters while shedding some light on current social issues both in Quebec and abroad, and is thus perfect fodder for the Academy.

But the film fails to reach a level that that will earn it anything more than a nod, something that last year’s Canadian nominee, Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies, had, despite its losing. The last and only time a Canadian took this award was in 2003 with The Barbarian Invasions

by Denys Arcand, a veteran director at the top of his game who had received two previous nominations.

Falardeau is proving to be a filmmaker to keep an eye on, but his latest effort lacks the “masterpiece” quality of a work like Arcand’s.

While Monsieur Lazhar is, like so many movies at the Oscars, a filler within an essentially predecided category – all signs point to Iran’s A Separation, an internationally-recognized critical success, taking the honour – its nomination nonetheless indicates that Hollywood recognizes Canada’s film industry as a force to be reckoned with, whether this industry is truly distinct from its own or not.

Denys Arcand invades Cinema du Parc Emily Harris

Culture Writer

T

his month, Cinema du Parc is holding a tribute to renowned Canadian filmmaker Denys Arcand, whose work has been applauded both at home and abroad. Aiming to bring Arcand’s notable work back onto the big screen, this tribute will show every feature film, documentary, and most shorts created throughout his career.

For over forty years, Arcand has established himself as an acclaimed director and screenwriter within both the national and global film communities. Sardonically realistic, his films offer an intelligent and incredibly funny – albeit controversial – perspective on the social and political processes, priorities, and beliefs within our world.

Roland Smith, the owner and programmer of Cinema du Parc, contrasted Arcand’s films against those typical of Hollywood, saying, “His films are more personal.

They’re not made to make money,

but to make people think. They entertain people intellectually.” He described Arcand’s signature cynicism as “intellectual but not overly intellectual, and very funny.” Due to their focus on the nuances of human nature and interactions, these films have maintained their strength and humor throughout the years. Chosen as the first retrospective of 2012, Smith has provided an exclusive opportunity to honor and celebrate this Quebec icon’s success.

Arcand’s films have won awards and been screened at film festivals throughout the world. His films have been nominated three times at the Academy Awards; in 2004, his feature film Les Invasions Barbares (The Barbarian Invasions) took home the Oscar for “Best Film in a Foreign Language.” Smith describes this picture as, “the resume of Arcand’s career,” and a definite must see for tribute go-ers.

The recipient of several other notable awards by such cornerstone film institutions as the Cannes Film Festival and the Cesar Awards, Arcand has arguably become the most widely celebrated French Canadian director

of all time. He has propelled Canadian arts beyond the confines of this nation – a difficult task in an entertainment world so firmly dominated by Hollywood powerhouses.

Denys Arcand will open this tribute by presenting the premier film, Jesus de Montreal, at 7 on the evening of January 27. This film is

Edna Chan | The McGill Daily

Arcand’s most widely viewed and recognized piece. Created in 1989, this film broke Arcand into the American and international film community.

Located just up the street from the McGill student ghetto, this tribute is an incredible opportunity to experience Montreal’s creative culture, even for those of us who aren’t focusing

on a minor concentration in World Cinema. Roland Smith promises that he intends this tribute to be, “not just a retrospective, but an event.” And not to worry monolingual students, there will definitely be subtitles.

The Retrospective runs from January 27 to February 9.

Culture

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Your neighbourhood frequency

17

Brendan Lewis dials-in on campus community radio

D

oes checking your Facebook profile a little too often leave you feeling digitally dazed?

Yearning for an analog alternative?

Everyone wants a little taste of nostalgia these days, to reclaim a past that was lost with… Wait right there!

MTV may want you to believe that the radio star was killed long ago, but the folks at Montreal’s own CKUT have been keepin’ the airwaves bumpin’ on the FM dial since November 1987, and the station’s AM precedents got the party started way back in 1966.

The starving student lifestyle sometimes leaves one feeling short on stimulation, craving something more than our mundane and flavorless t surroundings. I remember moving into my apartment last August, before I had acquired my crappy Swedish furniture, before I had signed a contract in blood with my internet service provider, before I had even a single crumb of food, and my only companion was an alarm clock radio. Lamenting my boredom, I fiddled with the dial, listening to Mr. Radio’s many split personalities vying for my attention. My friend was truly at his finest – and most sane – when he stopped speaking in tongues, shouting corporate advertisements

Abby Howard for The McGill Daily and replaying the trashy Top 40 tracks that you know he hated anyway, and broke my austere isolation with sexy soca rhythms, funky jams, underplayed alternative artists, and undiluted political discussions. In short, when he landed on 90.3 FM. Though social media may be the darling of popular culture these days, community and campus radio has a long history of demonstrable positive influence. Shelley Robinson, executive director of the Ottawa based National Campus and Community Radio Association (NCRA), an advisory and advocacy group, opines “I appreciate the role of social media, but I feel like community radio is the original social media.”

CKUT sustained this mission through the Ante-Zuckerburgian dark ages, and as it asserts on its website, “Our call for volunteers reads the same as it did twenty years ago....‘no experience necessary, only innovative ideas, enthusiasm, and a keen desire to increase the breadth of broadcasting in the city.’” It’s as egalitarian as any social media site ­- though Facebook statuses and Twitter posts carry no caveat for innovation or enthusiasm.

However unique, CKUT is certainly not a singular organization; Canada

plays host to a great many campuscommunity radio stations of excellent quality, including Concordia’s CJLO, University of Alberta’s CJSR, UBC’s CiTR, and the University of Toronto’s CIUT – to name but a few. The value of these stations transcends the quality of their programming, and rests more centrally in their overwhelmingly positive effect on the individuals, groups, and larger communities receiving their signals. Explains Robinson; “I have always loved the idea that in community radio, there is a bumpingup against each other, so when you listen at different times you’ll hear such totally different, diverse things…

These shows might have nothing to do with the kind of music you like, the kind of arts content you like, the kind of news and information that you access, nothing! So you meet people and hear perspectives that you would not hear otherwise.”

This dynamism is integral to the character of community radio. Ken Stowar, station manager and program director at CIUT told The Daily, “What I feel is very important is moving forward and constantly evolving, and adjusting, and tweaking what we do to ensure that we are doing what we’re all here for—appealing to listeners

and potential listeners.”

Yet the obstacles that these stations face in maintaining their mere existence, let alone improving or expanding themselves, cannot be underestimated. As Louise Burns, head of sales and administration at CKUT explained, the station’s ongoing challenges with regard to online optouts “sort of put you in a referendum every term, because you’re always defending your fees.” But online optouts are not, in fact, the standard, and stations like CIUT Toronto don’t have any opt-outs at all. Station Manager for CiTR, Brenda Grunau, elaborated on the nature of their newly-implemented opt-out system: “We just got opt-outs last year, which was a mechanism introduced because we had a funding increase… We have had support from student council, so that the opt-outs have to be done in person, so I think how the opt-out are delivered makes a huge difference.”

With political manoeuvers hanging their funding so delicately in the balance, the future of independent radio, yet remains uncertain. Most recently, Ryerson University’s student union withheld funds from the now-defunct radio CKLN following issues of internal conflict at the station. This led the

CRTC (the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Committee) to revoke their license in January 2011, reducing the likelihood of the station’s eventual return to the airwaves.

Efforts to protect and promote these stations are hardly dead, however.

Robinson describes one of the NCRA’s latest initiatives called Reclaim Your Radio.

“For instance, in communities like Montreal, there’s no spectrum left on the FM dial. So what that means is that if a new station wants to start up, there’s no place for them. It often has an impact if you’re talking about a rural area and that is close enough to the city – a good example is in the GTA. It’s really hard for small communities outside Toronto to get a license [to produce community radio].” Though urban areas are the primary locus of independent radio efforts, such peripheral areas surely deserve more than peripheral representation in the existing, metropolitan-minded programming. “What we want is to run a campaign with MPs so that eventually every community across the country has at least one reserved frequency for a campus or community radio applicant.”

18 Culture

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Food for frostbite

Listening pleasure?

Biting into Arepera du Plateau

Cloud Maintenance fails to meet great hights

Angus Sharpe

Kasra Sammak

M

I

Culture Writer

The McGill Daily y friend has frostbite. Having forked out far too many dollars on a weekend spent skiing in Mont Tremblant, the poor bastard ended up taking away just two things. Number one: that he “dresses like a [insert homophobic expletive here],” an appraisal bellowed from the balcony of your typically pleasant SnowJammer. Number two: a couple of numb, blackened toes courtesy of some faulty, “[adapt homophobic expletive here] ski boots.”

So where better to take him to warm up than Venezuela – obviously – where the temperature is currently a toe-melting 31°C? But my hopeful plans were dashed by those coldhearted folk at The Daily who, refusing to bankroll a last minute flight, suggested I take him to Arepera du Plateau, the newish Venezuelan place on the corner of Duluth and De Bullion, to see if I couldn’t warm him up with traditional Latin American cuisine for less than $10.

Now, I know absolutely nothing about Venezuela, which is lucky for you as it keeps horrifically forced puns to a minimum, but stepping into the small-ish unit, the instant impression is one of authenticity meets gentrified cultural experience. It fits in on the plateau, where every single eatery has a tagline for your friends – even Champs, just a sports bar, has novelty value at its core. So, authentically, we have an open view of chefs baking and preparing arepas in the back, with plaintains and avocados spilling out of wooden buckets beneath the counter and chunky glass vats of colorful – dare I patronize – exotic juices on top. But in the same instant there is, framed upon the wall, an extensive and ornate rendition of the family tree of Simón Bolívar – think Latin American William Wallace but with loads and loads of genuine success. And then, just tucked in the top

Abby Howard for The McGill Daily corner, a mocked-up lazy-man lies in a hammock enjoying a siesta, his hat pulled over his eyes while the neck of his guitar pokes off the edge. It’s a cross-over-the-threshold experience, from snowy, frostbitten Montreal to equatorial Venezuela, and it’s kinda nice – colourful juices on top But onto the food. Essentially, an arepera is to arepas what a bakery is to bread or cinema l’amour is to…amour.

Arepas themselves are a VenezueloColombian thing, a kind of hefty, crunchy wrap with the mechanics of pita but closer to a baguette in the bite.

They make up the bulk of the menu here with around 30 different ways of packing them full enough to fill, all for between five and nine dollars.

My new-found vegetarianism, which I desperately wish to lose should any reader be willing to shoulder the burden, meant I could get a cheaper arepa – The Domino (black beans and cheese) is only $5 – with a sugar cane juice adding up to $8.50 pre tax and tip. There’s a decent selection for vegetarians and a lesser one for vegans (or “ultra vegetarianas” in Spanish), but should you want to spend a little more, Arepera du Plateau proudly caters to

the omni in omnivore – wild boar and shark were the most fanciful creatures available.

The service is great. Our waiter was an extremely helpful dude who met my barrage of stale questions about heritage and history with a smile. Indeed, he was Colombian like a few other staff, but the two owners, one of whom arrived in Canada recently and the other, the chef, seventeen years ago, are both Venezuelan.

And here is the food critic’s dilemma. I don’t like Arepera. I think the bread is too sickly. I think the sugar cane juice is far too sweet. I find the fillings fall out and go all over you and burn your hands and make you look like a mal-coordinated toddler. And yet, almost everyone I know who has been there – eat in or takeaway – has come away singing about it. So, given the nice people, the integrity shown and the added variety it offers to an already diverse street, I shall put my misgivings down to personal taste and give it a hearty recommendation. As for my frostbite friend, he went absolutely Caracas for it. That’s just one pun. I’m not even sorry.

must begin by immediately conceding my bias against Kevin Hearn, a musician from Toronto, Ontario and his debut solo album Cloud Maintenance.

Namely, I am upset that this person is selling something that is not brilliant. I am merely an arrogant musician who is too lazy and cowardly to record anything because I fear that it might end up sounding like this.

Don’t get me wrong, Cloud Maintenance is alright. By that, I mean you can put it on and it won’t interfere with your auditory environment, in most cases.

Maybe a catchy motif here or there. An interesting, simple piano part that might grab your attention if you are not really listening to anything else. But if your environment even slightly involves paying attention – which is quite rare these days – you will notice that there is nothing original about the nostalgia that Kevin Hearn proclaims himself to feel. You will notice he is not on the “journey” he thinks he’s on.

Rather, he’s sitting in one spot, dancing around his nostalgia and trying to pretend that it is something else, something magical, a “City of Love.” Really, it is just an expression of want, and a cheap one at that.

Listen with both of your ears and you will hear it.

It does not sound like he is listening to himself, but that he is simply jumping onto a feeling and trying as hard as possible to express it without reflecting upon what that feeling entails, or where that feeling will lead. I can feel him jittering on his seat with excitement in “See You Again” when he realizes that he really wants to see me again. Calm

down, Kevin, I’m not going anywhere right now.

It’s not that he’s a bad musician, he has a certain control over and grace in his piano playing at times (honestly he kind of gets me in “Tell Me Tell Me”).

However, perhaps he would learn to control his anxiety if he spent even more energy on his piano work, the artistic medium through which Hearn most clearly expresses musical potential. Instead, he pretends to be calm by writing generic and lyrically-lacking mellow tunes. In order to convey that he’s not completely depressed, he also throws in a few upbeat songs, like “Don’t Shuff le Me Back” or “House of Invention,” which in reality, merely express an absence or loss. Stop fooling yourself, Kevin.

As far as I’m concerned, Cloud Maintenance is only going to last as long as people are not paying attention to themselves. Surely, you might feel a bit nostalgic and get on Hearn’s level at first, but eventually you’ll be so bored that you’ll need to put on some Edward Sharpe to reinvigorate yourself, to remind yourself that you are fighting to be here, right now, and not dwelling in Kevin Hearn’s fantasy land. A land where we wait for a dead receding train which was once so full of meaning.

The funniest part is that I actually really like his music. It sounds good. That’s why I would expect so much from him. I want him to start taking responsibility for his image. But in the end, he’s not as good as his music is, so I can’t really expect anything great from him.

Anyhow, I still listened to his music and enjoyed it. So I suppose we can all be a bit inauthentic at times, and I suppose that’s why we have guys like Kevin Hearn.

Meat pies in Moyse Hall Vidal Wu observes the beautiful chaos of Sweeney Todd

S

weeney Todd is a comment on chaos: humanity’s attempts at taming it and its inevitable reestablishment. It’s a hard thing to get down on paper, and it’s harder still to produce an entire production based on it. The Arts Undergraduate Theatre Society (AUTS) should certainly be commended for their collective courage in embarking on such an ambitious endeavor, filled with equally demanding roles.

Directed by Phae Nowak and produced by Andrew Poile, Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street recounts a humble barber’s return to London after an exile to Australia for a crime he never committed. Understandably, he’s obsessed with getting revenge

against the man who sentenced him, Judge Turpin (Mike Sornberger).

Sweeney Todd (Benjamin Harris) reveals himself to the audience as a broken soul, one beaten by the fist of a corrupt society. Harris works the stage well, filling it with an impressive tenor in “No Place Like London.”

Nowak’s minimalist – or technically, Brechtian – approach, stripping the set of superfluous elements, puts the actors front and center, and the show – and ultimately the students – benefit from it. He meets Mrs. Lovett, played by the charming Zara Jestadt, the soon-to-be demon pie maker of Fleet Street, and begins his new life bent around fulfilling his most fervent desire. On the way, the duo picks up a boy, Toby, (Brendan Edge) who,

while endearing, did have an unfortunate habit of fumbling his words.

It’s curious that the production’s conviction comes across most strongly when Todd gains his in the middle of “A Little Priest.” All of a sudden, all of the production elements that previously felt somewhat disjointed come together in a heartracing mille-feuille of madness. The singing takes on the world-weariness that the characters embody and the music begins to rivet your attention to the madness that is about to unfold. You’re left a bit uncomfortable at its intensity, and Nowak likes it that way. Beautiful things often have something strange about them, or in this case, something terrifying.

All that notwithstanding, there’s

no shortage of genuine talent here, whether one looks up at the stage or down into the pit. Jestadt initially comes across a bit too light-footed, but gains her gravitas in ample amounts by the second act. Niko Gelfars as Anthony is perfectly cast, the image of earnestness, with the shrill voice of young love to boot. Maddie LawranceThorne as the beggar woman plays her part spectacularly, all the while looking like a bedraggled Lily Cole.

Down in the pit, Sean Mayes must be credited with conducting the fabulous Barber Shop Players, and giving the production a roaring cacophony.

There’s a moment that particularly stands out as everything that Sweeney Todd got right: a Phantom of the Opera moment with a single

white spotlight shining over the audience. Simple, striking, effective.

Admittedly, I never saw Sweeney Todd on stage before, but I did see the film adaptation with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Pleasantly enough, the live performance lived up to the production value of the Oscar-winning film, or at least didn’t pale in comparison, and left a definite impression upon the audience. Chaos comes to a head and as is the way of the world, chaos reasserts itself; it just never looked as good as this.

Sweeney Todd runs from January 19 to 21 and 26 to 28 at Moyse Hall.

Tickets are $10 for students and $15 for adults. Visit autsmcgill.com for tickets.

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

volume 101 number 27

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EDITORIAL

Keep student decisions in student hands Last week, the McGill administration invalidated the results of SSMU’s fall referendum, in which a majority of students voted for the continued existence of CKUT 90.3FM and QPIRG McGill with student fee refunds (opt-outs) to be back under the purview of the organizations. The administration bases this decision on the lack of clarity they perceive in the referendum questions, which discussed both the existence of the two organizations and their opt-out systems. While the clarity of the question remains in dispute, this disagreement distracts from the pressing reality that the administration is undermining student democracy by invalidating the referendum’s results.

If a potential bylaw violation or any other dispute pertaining to the referendum is to be raised, it is the place of students, and students alone, to take up that fight.

For student democracy to occur, a case questioning the validity of the referenda questions should be, and has been, brought before SSMU’s Judicial Board. Given the fact that such a governing body endowed with judiciary powers like SSMU’s J-Board exists, the administration has no jurisdiction and no right to make judgements regarding the validity of referenda questions – the judgment is unequivocally the prerogative of J-Board.

Moreover, this is not the first time that the administration has shown disregard for student group’s autonomy. As of September 2007, the administration unilaterally changed the system of opt-outs from one that was self-administered through the student associations who offered students’ full refunds of their fees to one that was online on Minerva, QPIRG and CKUT were the only organizations at McGill offering an opt-out. The institution of online opt-outs via Minerva was done without consultation or any warning to QPIRG, CKUT, or students. McGill acted in bad faith by not offering previous warning to QPIRG or CKUT. Students have never democratically supported the online opt-out system, however there is ample evidence that they reject it. A November 2007 General Assembly motion mandated SSMU to “take every reasonable action to reclaim and protect the sovereignty and independence of all campus student groups and activities” and to “take every reasonable action to put an end to the online opt-out system recently created by the University such that campus groups shall be in charge of their own opt-out processes.”

Additionally, a SSMU referendum question in Winter 2008 saw a majority of students vote against the administration’s change to making opt-outs online. The administration also disregarded this referendum result.

While student challenges to any SSMU referenda via the J-Board is the due process that should be followed, The Daily has serious reservations concerning the case brought before J-Board by two students last week. It does not appear to be a coincidence that the two students petitioning the case, Zach Newburgh and Brendan Steven, both have considerable history with the QPIRG opt-out campaign. The singular focus of the case against QPIRG, without mention of CKUT, also supports the view that this case is about more than due process in SSMU. We, as a student body, now have no choice. Regardless of what the J-Board rules on the validity of QPIRG’s referenda questions, the administration has already made the decision that QPIRG must run a second existence referendum this winter in order for the administration to sign Memorandum of Agreements with the organizations. The University is exploiting its power over CKUT and QPIRG, power that it should not have in the first place, while striking a deafening blow to students’ autonomy by discounting a student’s vote.

As CKUT and QPIRG prepare their next move and the J-Board case unfurls, The Daily stands in solidarity with the members of CKUT and QPIRG offering them support in this difficult, frustrating time. The students and community members involved in either organization have already worked gruelling hours through the fall referendum period, the administration has now sentenced them to yet another stressful period of campaigning, further draining these organizations finances. The Daily rejects the administration’s actions and encourages students to support these valuable organizations.

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In the article “Left on the cutting room floor” (January 23, page 17, Culture) the Canada Council for the Arts was incorrectly titled the Canada Council of Arts. In addition, a budget detailing “intensification of copyright law and intellectual property protection” was attributed to the Canada Council for the Arts. This was also incorrect. The Daily regrets these errors.

19

Compendium!

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Lies, half-truths, and fucking adorable bunnies.

20

cute bunnies, whether you like it or not.

It was oddly warm this week!

PLUS 50

Mad Men at Gerts today!

PLUS 50

It’s the last weekend of Igloofest.

EVEN

Shit is fucked. #administration #qpirg #ckut

MINUS 60

Slipping all over the place.

MINUS 50

Watching other people slip all over the place.

PLUS 50

TOTAL

PLUS 40

Dear Lord Gaylord, FUCK YOU GUYS Fuck you, Daily. The crossword is the only reason anyone picks up the newspaper anymore and now you’ve gone and RUINED IT for everyone. WHY ARE THE ANSWERS HERE? Isn’t McGill supposed to be a community devoted to the pursuit of higher learning? Do you take us all to be lug heads? HAVE SOME FAITH. This is just insulting. Turning the answers upside down doesn’t fool us. Can’t you just let us have this one thing? We love the challenge of the crossword, the suspense provided by the week’s wait for answers. University students are already tempted to moral degeneracy at every turn; why must you make it so easy for me to cheat????!!!!

P.S. A PUREE IS NOT A THICK SOUP.

FUCK THIS LACK OF TAMPON DISPENSERS Fuck the fact that there are not tampon dispensers in Wong. Add that to the list of things you do not have access to when you have a lab in the basement of Wong: cellphone service, sunlight, tampons. You can also not find tampons in Rutherford. Or in Trottier. It’s an interconnected tampon DESERT. Who were these building built by?? Who do you even call to get support for this problem? Why can’t HMB be on the board of a TAMPON COMPANY? There are also no tampons in the bathroom in McConnell, in case, having resigned yourself to leaving your lab partner for dead in favor of bundling up and going on a tampon-hunt, you were planning on checking there.

Themugyl Dehllie | The McGill Twice-a-weekly

Lord Gaylord

The McGill Daily

Fuck UP Daily editor Anne Onymous would like to apologize for putting Monday’s crossword answers right next to the puzzle. I mean, she figured that people didn’t like waiting a whole fucking week to know whether they’d filled out the crossword properly or not, but apparently SOME people are too easily tempted. Apparently SOME people can’t handle having the answers so close by. Apparently, it’s too motherfucking hard to control your eyes and stop them from wandering to the complete other side of the page and focus on the answers that are UPSIDE THE FUCK DOWN. But whatever, if this is the vitriol I get for trying to shake things up a bit. If this is the wildly erratic reaction I’m going to get for trying to be fucking HELPFUL. So be it. Whatever, it’s not like I’m bitter or anything.

Dear Lord Gaylord, Sex with my boyfriend is great, but recently he’s been having some trouble getting hard. Especially if we haven’t had sex in a while or if he gets whisky dick? I can’t help but feeling that I’m doing something wrong or that he isn’t interested in me. What can I do to make sure we keep and heat and he keeps it up?

–Sexually Frustrated

Dear Sexually Frustrated, The first thing you need to know is that his ability to get hard probably has nothing to do with his attraction to you. Lots of guys have trouble keeping it up during sex, in fact close to 10 per cent of all men have reported having issues keeping it up more than one time during sexual intercourse.

Now, there are a couple of ways to help solve the issue. If he is indeed suffering from “whisky dick”, tell him to lay off the whisky, or at least if you know you are going to want

to have sex later on in the evening remind him not to get too drunk.

If it’s happening with you when you’re sober, a good idea is not to focus on it; the more pressure you put on the situation, the worse it will be. Try some foreplay or do something you know he likes.

After a few minutes the problem will probably resolve itself. Even if it doesn’t, there are plenty of other fun things you can do that don’t require a hard penis.

sbi