Volume 101, Issue 8
September 29, 2011 mcgilldaily.com
McGill THE
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News
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
3
McGill wins injunction against MUNACA Student demonstration leads to confrontation with senior administrators Queen Arsem-O’Malley The McGill Daily
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ast Friday, McGill filed a provisional injunction against the McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA). The injunction, which lists seven individuals in addition to MUNACA and their regional union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), restricts the union’s picketing activity. It is valid through October 3, when McGill and MUNACA will be in court for a hearing as to whether the injunction will be extended. The injunction lists three affidavits filed by Robert Comeau, director of labour and employee relations, Pierre Barbarie, associate director of security services, and Christopher Carson, operations manager for security services. Michael Di Grappa, Vice Principal (Administration and Finance), said that the injunction was “filed on behalf of McGill University, not the individuals.” There is also reference to events on September 22. Kevin Whittaker, President of MUNACA, explained that the event cited was a protest that MUNACA held in the Durocher area. According to Whittaker, the administration “mentioned that some students felt threatened and that one student was hit by a flagpole – which I’m sure he [just] got tapped.” September 22 was also the date of a student sit-in outside of Senate. Under the injunction, MUNACA picketers are not allowed to occupy three restricted areas, which cover most of downtown campus. There are also over 42 locations listed where picketing is prohibited, including the Montreal General Hospital, Solin Hall, and the McCord Museum. Picketers must be four metres from the entries and exits of McGill property.
There are also noise limits outlined, including a stipulation that no microphones, speakers, or stereos are allowed within 25 metres of McGill property. MUNACA called a general meeting for members on Wednesday, “to inform our members that we will have to be readjusting our strategies due to this injunction,” said Whittaker, who estimated that 1,400 members attended. “Because things are not moving as smoothly or as quickly as we would hope at the conciliation level, we will be putting pressure on McGill and the community to move things along quicker and to actually sit down and properly negotiate with us,” he added.
Student response In response to McGill’s actions, the student mobilization group, Mob Squad, organized an emergency action on Monday. The group, which grew to more than 40 students, sat at the Y-intersection and read the text of the injunction aloud. McGill Security arrived shortly after, and multiple staff members surrounded the group, which did not restrict the movement of pedestrians or vehicles on campus. Derek Tyrrell, a student participating in the demonstration, explained that security guards asked organizers for student IDs and threatened to call the Montreal police. Students pointed to Part IV, Article 25 of the Student Handbook of Rights and Responsibilities, which states that “Every student enjoys within the University the freedoms of opinion, of expression and of peaceful assembly.” The group later marched to the James Administration building. Provost Anthony Masi and Di Grappa, attempting to enter the building, turned to address students.
Masi began talking to students about what he called the “pension crisis” at McGill. When students questioned his presentation of MUNACA’s wage demands, he told the crowd that they did not have the facts of the negotiation. “Keep repeating falsehoods. It makes you feel good,” he told the group. Di Grappa also addressed some of the students, who explained that they had been sitting in peacefully on campus. “You don’t have the right to demonstrate on campus,” Di Grappa told them, and questioned whether the use of a megaphone and sit-in at Senate were peaceful, to which students in the crowd answered in the affirmative. Former Daily Design and Production editor Sheehan Moore, a student in the crowd, taped the interaction. The video was also featured on a CTV report yesterday. In an interview with The Daily the next day, Di Grappa contradicted his previous statement and cited university policy. “As you know, there’s a right to peaceful assembly and demonstrations on campus so long as they don’t disrupt work in the classroom or other work going on at the University,” he said. SSMU VP External Joël Pedneault, a participant in the demonstration, said that he felt Masi and Di Grappa’s actions showed “a total lack of professionalism.” “[I] was surprised and shocked by the degree of bravado with which they walked into the action…and proceeded to not just debate but yell at students… I don’t think it’s acceptable,” Pedneault said. Yesterday, Mob Squad organized a teach-in at the Y-intersection with over 150 students, teaching assistants, and professors in attendance. “It certainly raises our morale in our membership, knowing that
Evelyn Stanley for The McGill Daily
Masi confronted McGill students regarding the injunction the students and the faculty and other McGill community members are out protesting on our behalf,” Whittaker said. When asked for a comment on the event, Di Grappa spoke to how he sees the labour dispute being resolved. “[The strike is] not going to be resolved by rallies and demonstrations, it’s going to be resolved at the negotiation table, and so we encourage the union to be available to continue to negotiate,” he said.
Report on replacement workers Last Friday also saw the release of a report by the Ministry of Labour on their inspections of McGill. The inspector, Thomas Hayden, alleged that Section 109.1 of the Quebec Labour Code was not respected in at least 15 cases. Jérôme Turcq, PSAC’s executive vice-president for Quebec, addressed the findings of the report. “This is really a shame. For an organization that actually prides themselves for being a place where you form the future Prime Ministers, the future judges and the future law-
yers, to disregard legislation in that sense... I think this is really shameful,” he said in an interview with The Daily and the McGill Tribune. “I have no doubt, no doubt, that McGill has used scabs. If there would be an instance of one or two cases, I’d be very careful with what I said, not with what the inspector has found,” he added. An email sent to staff and students from Di Grappa states that “McGill disputes these findings in each and every case.” Di Grappa declined to cite specific examples to The Daily, explaining that court hearings on the matter begin Thursday. The email states that McGill has “found errors of fact” in a number of cases in the report. Whittaker said that neither the report nor the injunction affected conciliation meetings on Monday. McGill and MUNACA will meet next at the negotiation table on Friday. — with files from Erin Hudson, Michael Lee-Murphy, and Sheehan Moore
Arts research award to be scaled down Funding for summer internships with profs runs out Devin Kesner News Writer
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he Arts Undergraduate Research Internship Awards (ARIA) is facing downsizing now that the lump sum fund, which had been granted in 2009, has run out. The Arts Internship Office (AIO), which put on the awards program, is working to fundraise for its continuation, though on a smaller scale. ARIA was originally designed to run for a two-year period – the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 academic years – providing 70 undergraduate Arts students with the funding to work one-on-one with a McGill professor on a variety of
research projects, to be completed over an 11-week period over the summer. The fund was given to the AIO, which then designed the idea for the ARIA program. Each student was awarded $2,000 to $4,000 from the fund itself, and an additional $2,000 matched by the participating professor. While ARIA gave recipients opportunities to get hands-on research experience and work directly with professors, the initial funding from the Faculty was only enough to support two years of the awards program. Anne Turner, the Faculty of Arts internship manager for the AIO, said that finding funding for the program was a “priority” and that they were
“trying to get the pool [of funds] as big as they can.” Despite these downsizings, Turner and the internship program administrator for the AIO Matthew Lyle both emphasized the importance of the awards and their continuation. Prior to the introduction of ARIA, Turner said that “there was all this research going on, but there was no sort of formal process” for arranging undergraduate student-professor research opportunities. Tyler Call, an honours philosophy student, worked with Professor Dirk Schlimm on a project titled ‘The Works of Moritz Pasch” this summer. “I learned a lot in terms of content and how to do research – and do it well – and be very organized about my
research,” said Call. “It’s a good opportunity and I got to learn a lot and do what I like to do and get paid for it so,” he continued. According to Lyle, the AIO aimed for the awards to be “evenly spread out among the [Arts] departments.” Examples of past projects include “Canada’s Looming Demographic Fiscal Squeeze” in the economics department, “Aesthetics and Politics in Contemporary Iran” in the middle east studies department, and “A Sociological Analysis of the Use of Deadly Force From 1977-2010” in the sociology department. “I would do it again,” said Call. “I don’t know if I’m eligible to do it again – as far as I was told once you do it
they kind of want new people to do it every year – but I would definitely do it again.” Lyle added that the popularity of the awards program has shown the AIO “a need for other efforts to promote undergraduate research.” Some of these other efforts include the Arts Undergraduate Research Event, in which students can showcase any research efforts done throughout the year, and research workshops entitled MyArtsResearch. The Arts Undergraduate Society confirmed their intention to provide funding for the program in the future, although exact figures have not yet been decided on. — with files from Erin Hudson
News
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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5
Quebeckers protest provincial corruption Demonstrators demand Charest’s resignation Henry Gass
The McGill Daily
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ast Saturday, over 2,000 people crowded under Quebec Premier Jean Charest’s office at the junction of McGill College and Sherbrooke, protesting the provincial government’s response to recent allegations of corruption and collusion in the Quebec construction industry. Similar demonstrations were held simultaneously in Quebec City and Sherbrooke, launching what has been dubbed “le Mouvement du 24 Septembre.” The movement, organized primarily through Facebook, was formed ten days before Saturday’s demonstration in response to the Quebec anti-corruption squad’s report that was leaked to the media. The report reveals the corrupt state of the construction industry, according to a Mouvement du 24 Septembre press release. “We emphasize the nausea and fatigue of the population on the inertia of the political elite in Quebec, and their inability to resolve important and urgent issues for many years,” stated the press release. Patrick Poirier, one of the organizers of the movement, said the demonstration went “above and beyond [his] expectations.” “Now, the movement is in your hands,” he told the crowd on Saturday in French. “I am calling out to everyone here, to all the citizens of Quebec, to everyone in all the regions of Quebec,” Poirier continued. “We have to mobilize. We can’t wait for someone else to do something; we have to take initiative. We have to unite. We have to send a strong message, and that’s what we’re doing today.” The anti-corruption report, headed by former Montreal chief of police Jacques Duchesneau, described – without naming specific people or companies – how Quebec construction firms conspired to rig bidding processes for
Jessica Lukawiecki | The McGill Daily
Thousands gathered in front of Charest’s Montreal office. public contracts and fraudulent cost overruns on construction sites. The report alleged that companies would use excess funds to contribute to political campaigns, further tainting the provincial contract bidding process. Organized crime is also described to have “settled comfortably” into the construction industry, and launder money through construction projects. In the wake of the Duchesneau report, Charest inflamed public opinion by declaring he would not hold a public inquiry, instead saying he would leave it to the police and the province’s own anti-corruption squad to investigate the construction industry. “I have had enough of the corruption, I have had enough of the [theft] of our resources by Charest’s government,” said David Marquis, a Montreal primary school teacher at the September 24 protest, in French. The Mouvement’s press release concludes by demanding four things of Charest: To begin an inquiry into corruption in the construction industry, to set up a commission to reform the democratic institutions in the province as well as the financing of political parties, to call a general election, and to resign. Testifying in front of the National Assembly on Tuesday,
Duchesneau emphasized the need for a public inquiry – paired with a closed-door enquiry to accommodate those who may fear reprisals for testifying publicly. Yesterday, Charest informed the National Assembly he will “study” Duchesneau’s proposals. Charest also said he “would like to repeat that we gave [Duchesneau] his mandate,” according to the Montreal Gazette. Province-wide polls indicate about 80 per cent of Quebeckers are in favour of a public inquiry. “We need an investigation into construction,” said Marquis. “I can’t imagine how [Charest] can look at himself in the mirror and not laugh – because we need this to take back our social and democratic institutions.” Léon de Montigny came from Verchères, about 45 minutes from Montreal, in order to attend the demonstration. He said Quebeckers have known about corruption in the construction industry – and have wanted a public inquiry – for years. “This is one day in two years where we are asking Mr. Charest for a public inquiry,” he said in French. “We think that this will be the beginning of, what you call, a snowball.” — with files from Jessica Lukawiecki
6 News
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
AGSEM accredited to represent course lecturers Michael Lee-Murphy The McGill Daily
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cGill’s largest union gathered off-campus Wednesday night to celebrate its strength and prepare for a long road ahead. And no, it wasn’t MUNACA. On August 30th, the Association for Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) was accredited to represent the approximately 1,300 course lecturers at McGill.
According to the union, McGill’s course lecturers are the lowest paid in Quebec, despite a raise from $5,000 to $6,000 per three-credit course last fall, in the midst of the union’s organizing campaign. Wednesday night’s meeting was the first General Assembly of the newly formed bargaining unit, where about fifty members adopted interim by-laws and learned about AGSEM’s structure. The successful unionization – after four previous tries over the past twenty years – is due in large
“It seemed impossible only a couple of years ago.” Lilian Radovac Chief unionizing drive coordinator Course lecturers joined teaching assistants (TAs) and invigilators, swelling AGSEM’s ranks to over 3,000 employees. Marie Blais, vice-president of the Fédération nationale des enseignantes et enseignants du Quebec, said that the unionization of McGill’s contract-teaching staff represents a major victory. “In our sector, McGill is like Quebecor,” Blais said, referring to the notoriously hard-bargaining media conglomerate.
part to an organizing team led by chief unionizing drive coordinator Lilian Radovac. “It seemed impossible only a couple of years ago,” Radovac said at the meeting. Radovac, who has worked on the union drive for nearly a year and a half, explained that with the new unionization, times have changed. “We are so damn strong,” she said, describing a “historic” time at McGill amidst growing faculty
and student support of organized labour. “When you really have power, you don’t always have to use it,” she said. Adrienne Hurley, a professor in the department of East Asian Studies and a member of the McGill Faculty Labour Action Group (MFLAG), attended the AGSEM meeting to express support for the bargaining unit. MFLAG was created less than a month ago by faculty members in support of MUNACA and other labour unions currently in negotiation with McGill. According to Hurley, the group has since grown to nearly 75 members. As laid out by Quebec labour law, AGSEM’s new course lecturer bargaining unit has ninety days to come to the table ready to negotiate with McGill. In that time, course lecturers will elect executive and bargaining committees, and begin hammering out a package of demands. Richard Hink, a member of AGSEM’s organizing team, said that they plan to have a demands package ready by mid-November. AGSEM’s course lecturers will join the TA bargaining unit, the Association of McGill University Support Employees, and McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association in their ongoing labour negotiations with McGill.
Photo courtesy of Lea Grahovac
Negotiations with McGill to begin within ninety days
Lilian Radovac addressing AGSEM members at their general meeting.
MUNACA pin “not appropriate” for career fair McGill student denied entrance to management event for refusal to remove pin Ethan Feldman
The McGill Daily
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t the Desautels Faculty of Management Career Fair at Hotel OMNI on September 23, SSMU VP Finance and Operations Shyam Patel was denied entry because he refused to remove a button from his lapel supporting striking members of the McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA). MUNACA has been on strike since September 1. The annual Career Fair is open
to all McGill students. Companies at the event included Imperial Tobacco, Bombardier Aerospace, L’Oreal, several banks and investment groups, among others. Lorrie Quigg, MBA relationship manager at Desautels Career Services, spoke to The Daily about the event. “We are typically at the front to make sure students make the best first impression that they can with employers,” Quigg said, mentioning “big badges,” “not appropriate hats,” and “the wrong kind of shoes” as the sorts of things they look out for. Quigg stopped Patel, a U3
Management student, from entering the Career Fair. “She basically said it was not appropriate to wear the pin and I told her that she should not be judging me by the pin that I am wearing,” said Patel. Quigg said that it was Patel’s own admission that was the reaseon he was denied access to the event. “[Corporations] pay to meet students who are looking for work,” she said. “He wasn’t looking for a job. That was not his intention to go, and I know because I specifically asked him.” Patel said he was there “to see
what corporations were there, as I am a Management student, and pick up any documents that may relate to my program.” At this point, said Patel, Quigg conferred with a colleague and they gave him the choice of either taking off the MUNACA pin, or keeping it on and continuing to be denied entrance to the fair. “Whatever you believe in, your cause is none of my business, and none of the employer’s business either,” Quigg said. “They’re not there for that, they’re there to talk about employment opportunities.” Patel chose to leave, and said
this was the first time he had ever been turned away from an event because of a pin. “Ribbons, for example, for breast cancer or violence against women, I have worn to events like this and never been told to go away. I wear this MUNACA pin all the time and no one has ever said anything before,” he said. “I think that it isn’t fair to say you aren’t political and then, to not let someone in because of a pin, is very political,” Patel said. “I’m very disappointed and not content with the way that I was treated,” he continued.
News
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
7
Former director’s resignation ignites controversy School of Architecture and Faculty of Engineering debate over School’s future Laurent Bastien Corbeil News Writer
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n June 23, associate professor at the School of Architecture Michael Jemtrud, resigned from his post as the director of the school. Jemtrud served as director from 2007 until June 2011, and his resignation came after a series of disagreements over the School’s financial expenditures with the Dean of Engineering, Christophe Pierre. Jemtrud is now on leave. The School of Architecture at McGill is a faculty school within the McGill Faculty of Engineering. Four of Canada’s other eleven architecture schools operate with a structure like McGill. During his tenure, Jemtrud made major changes to the architecture program, including developing a 60-credit professional Masters program and reformatting the School’s year-and-a-half Master of Architecture program. Alberto Pérez-Gómez, a professor in the School of Architecture, explained criticisms of Jemtrud. “[Jemtrud] was asked to change this school and move it forward. His new Masters program cost a bit more money and the dean just claimed that
he did not administer it properly. That was the reason he gave for getting rid of him,” Pérez-Gómez said. He added that some professors had also been uncomfortable with how the School was administered under Jemtrud’s direction. “A few of my colleagues felt disenfranchised because the school was heading in a direction they could not understand,” Pérez-Gómez said. “This school was very conservative. Michael was brought in with the express desire to make this school open up.” When asked for details of Jemtrud’s resignation, the current director of the School of Architecture, Annmarie Adams, stated that Jemtrud had stepped down in order to continue his research and other professional activities. Students have also expressed concern over the direction the School will take without Jemtrud. A current student, who spoke on condition of anonymity, voiced his concerns. “We’re really worried about what is going to happen,” he said. “Barely six months ago, McGill was the place to be in Architecture. But, now, I’m worried about the people coming in. The studio projects that they are working on now are just not on the same level that they used to be.” For many students, the prob-
lem stems from the School’s lack of autonomy within the Faculty of Engineering, especially as some members of the Faculty have called into question the necessity of studios and expensive travel abroad programs. “We are fighting for being able to be internationally recognized, rather than to be in the department of engineering and under the thumb of someone who doesn’t understand what we are about,” Pérez-Gómez said. The Dean of Engineering was on leave until September 27, and unavailable for comment before The Daily went to press.
School Under Review The 2011 Cyclical Academic Unit Review of the McGill School of Architecture was obtained in full by The Daily, along with several other documents pertaining to it. The review outlines a proposal for the new McGill University School of Architecture, Landscape, and Urbanism (SALU). The aim of SALU was to “re-imagine” pedagogy and research. “The cornerstones of the proposal are design, environment, and technology,” it states. The proposal also contains plans for a new building, to be located beside the MacDonald-Harrington building, as well as new degree programs, a revised administrative
structure, and an endowment and business case for the School. The proposal for SALU is written with a letterhead dated February 2011 from the office of the director of the School of Architecture, though no names were otherwise attached to the document. The 2011 Cyclical Review, which recommended autonomy from the School, has yet to be reviewed by the McGill Senate. In addition to the internal review, the School underwent a review by external examiners last March. The examiners were Leslie Van Duzer, director of the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia, and Bruce Lindsey, dean of the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design at Washington University. Van Duzer and Lindsey submitted their recommendations on April 4, 2011. The review praised both the School and Jemtrud, and recommended additional autonomy for the School from the Faculty of Engineering. “From our discussions with three directors of the School of Architecture representing a long historical perspective and our discussions with the current Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, it is clear that the placement of the School of
Architecture within the Faculty of Engineering is problematic for all,” the review documents state. In a May 30 memorandum from Pierre to Provost Anthony Masi regarding the 2011 Cyclical Review, the Faculty of Engineering rejected some of the findings of the review and called into question the need for autonomy within the School. “Based on feedback received directly from the School’s professorate, the Faculty is less convinced than the reviewers that all is well within the School,” the memorandum states. “This feedback indicates that there is a divergence of opinion regarding the current leadership and direction of the School. The Faculty disagrees that it is inflexible or undervalues the School in any way.” Jemtrud’s response to the 2011 Cyclical Review reveals that he was committed to achieving autonomy for the School. Due to perceived pressure from the dean to cut costs, Jemtrud believed that the position of the School within the Faculty was “no longer desirable.” Funding is a major issue for the School. Despite the large number of students, the School has run a deficit since 2001 with the exception of 2008, when the Faculty of Engineering absorbed the School’s costs.
GA Supports Commitment to Accessible Education Three of six motions pass before loss of quorum Kallee Lins
The McGill Daily
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SMU held its first General Assembly (GA) of the year on Monday with five motions on the agenda. Three motions – regarding an annual update to SSMU’s Sustainability Assessment, structural reforms for SSMU’s Board of Directors, and SSMU’s commitment to accessible education – were successfully passed before the meeting lost quorum. The remainder of the meeting was held as a consultative forum. Though the GA quickly surpassed its 100-student quorum with a total of 130 attendees, so many people left the room after voting on the motion regarding accessible education that the attendance count was lost. “It started off really promising and we went swiftly through the Board of Directors and the sustainability motions,” said SSMU Speaker Michael Tong. Debate increased exponentially during the motion regarding accessible education, with speak-
ers both against and in support of tuition hikes. SSMU Speaker and chair of the meeting Nida Nizam felt the discussion strayed from the substantive issue of the motion. “There was definitely a lot of philosophical debate going on,” she said. “I think a lot of the motions were boiling down to principles and I think the students just had very different viewpoints based on personal context, especially regarding the Quebec tuition hikes motion and taking a stance on that.” Whether education should be defined as a fundamental right or a privilege was reoccurring theme throughout the debate. Niko Block, a former Daily News and Features editor, made the final comment on the matter. “You can make the argument that education is a privilege and not a right – you can still want that privilege to be bestowed upon every member of society for the sake of making it a more democratic society,” Block said. The motion passed with a vote of 91 students in support, 6 against, and 7 abstentions. It was immedi-
ately following this result that quorum was lost. “There was a movement at one point of many people walking out of the room,” said Arts Representative Micha Stettin. “And I am very curious to know from those individuals whether that walkout was intentional or whether they just had something else to do that was more important. And if it was intentional, why they walked out – what about the GA was not to their liking.” Nizam highlighted that “people are well within their right to walk out on something if they disagree with how it works, but that may delegitimize what they were saying in the first place.” SSMU President Maggie Knight echoed similar concerns surrounding the mass walkout, but acknowledged that maintaining quorum is something the GA has historically struggled with for a variety of reasons. “I think when people have frustrations with the outcome of particular motions it isn’t ideal, but I understand that that motion took a long time to debate. McGill students are busy people
and I understand they have places to be,” Knight said. Knight reiterated her appreciation that the motion to reform SSMU’s Board of Directors had passed, which instituted by-laws clarifying its membership, powers, and procedures. “For me, it was very important that that structure was reformed. It was important that we address the issue of the [SSMU] exec ultimately being accountable to the exec,” she said. Although motions were only symbolically passed after the loss of quorum, those who submitted motions were pleased to see constructive debate continue. Stettin authored the motion regarding support for workers’ struggles, which encourages SSMU to take immediate action in support of striking campus unions. “I think it was an enriching debate,” Stettin said. “I’m glad there were a lot of diverse opinions and I’m glad people got to spend more than 20 minutes talking about the motion before it was even voted on. I’m also very glad that it passed. I’m sad that it didn’t pass with quorum, but, as a consultative body, that will give us a lot of incentive to pass it in Council.”
Clubs and Services Representative Adam Winer submitted the Motion on Student Consultation in Re-Appointments of the DPSLL (Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning)), which would mandate the executive to lobby for a stronger consultative voice from students in the reappointment of senior administrators. With the belief that students should be treated as equal partners in the campus community, he was happy to see the motion passed in consultative forum. “It’s very troubling that students don’t have a say in the appointment of someone who’s supposed to be the voice of the students,” said Winer of the motion, which was drafted with input from former councillor Eli Freedman. All motions voted on by the consultative body will be submitted to the Legislative Council for consideration at its next meeting today. The ad-hoc SSMU by-law review committee is currently looking into GA reforms. The Executive hopes to implement changes before the winter GA, which is set to be held on February 1.
8 News
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
Montreal ranked most bike friendly city in North America Alexis Giannelia News Writer
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ontreal has been ranked the most bike-friendly city in North America, placing number eight on The Bicycle-Friendly Cities 2011 Index. Copenhagenize, a Danish consulting firm that specializes in bicycle culture and traffic, surveyed 80 cities worldwide to create the Index. According to Copenhagenize Consulting CEO Mikael Colville, Montreal’s extensive bike infrastructure, which has been growing since the mid-1980’s, has been largely responsible for the revival of the bicycle as a mode of transportation. In an email to The Daily, Colville cited recent developments, such as the redesign of Laurier by PlateauMont-Royal Mayor Luc Ferrandez – introducing two bike lanes to one vehicle lane, more than doubling bicycle traffic in 2011 – and cycling NGO Vélo Québec, as contributing to Montreal’s high ranking. Cities were ranked in a number of categories, with Montreal
placing high in the categories of gender split, bicycle infrastructure, social acceptance, and bike share program. The bike share program, BIXI Montreal, was implemented in 2009 as a result of the popularity of similar bike systems in Europe. Designed to complement public transportation, the service offers 5,050 bikes at 405 stations around Montreal, and is available from May to November. “There are many stations close together, giving you the ability to park [the bikes] anywhere,” said Sacha Payette, a Concordia student and frequent BIXI user. “You don’t have to worry about them being stolen; the stations are secure.” A representative of BIXI Montreal told The Daily in an interview that they are “happy to be part of Montreal’s high ranking on the Index.” However, the BIXI system has been criticized for a number of issues since its introduction two years ago. Accessibilty and cost-effectiveness are among the issues for casual users. “The system is cheap if you
get a BIXI pass,” said Lucy Young, a McGill student and BIXI user. According to Young and Payette, the fact that BIXI stations don’t accept cash or debit cards – only credit cards or passes – is a significant inconvenience for casual users. Young and Payette were also critical that stations are often empty or at full capacity, making it difficult for users to pick up or drop off their bikes. According to a September 21 article in the Christian Science Monitor, the service is also now relying on government loans to continue operating, given the high cost of transporting bikes out of the downtown core to stations on the outskirts of the city. Montreal initiatives continue to promote awareness of the benefits of cycling as a mode of transportation. On September 24, 2011, Action Climat de Montreal hosted “Moving Planet Earth” at Jeanne Mance Parc, a global project designed to promote active transport, such as cycling, in Montreal.
Ali Mackellar for The McGill Daily
Consulting firm places Montreal number eight on worldwide index
BIXI still has accessability issues.
Secretariat approves tearing down of EUS posters with the McGill logo Administration continues dispute over the use of the McGill name by student groups Morgane Ciot News Writer
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he Engineering Undergraduate Society of McGill University (EUS) has run into problems with the administration over the use of the McGill name in its logo, which they have been employing without University authorization. This is not the first time that the use of the McGill logo among student groups has come under scrutiny from the administration. Frosh, SSMU, and MUS, among others, have also been subject to pressure from the University demanding they remove any ambiguity from their title concerning who is providing services. The EUS has been using the McGill logo for over a year, but this is the first time they have received official attention regarding their allegedly unauthorized actions. Complaints first manifested in an email from McGill’s
Secretariat office, and later in the form of poster tear-downs in the McConnell Engineering building last week. In an interview with The Daily, EUS President Josh Redel described the poster teardowns, which the Secretariat had sanctioned because they sported the McGill logo, as “immature,” and unlikely to lead to conciliatory talks. Since these events, discus-
In an interview with The Daily, Mendelson explained that he was unaware of the poster tear-downs, and said he is “willing to have a conversation” about the issue. He stated that he is waiting for the EUS to propose other avenues of conciliation besides asserting their right to use the name in the logo. According to Mendelson, the EUS is violating a rule that has been in place for some twenty years regard-
“It’s sad to me that [McGill] doesn’t want to be associated with [the EUS].” Josh Redel EUS President sion between the two parties and Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson, who is also involved in this issue, have stagnated.
ing the respective uses of the McGill name and logo. He stressed that there are two disparate issues: the EUS has permission to use the McGill name in their title, but cannot “use a logo that
is similar to the McGill logo.” Mendelson expained that the EUS is demanding to be treated differently from other student organizations that don’t use the McGill name in their logos. Speaking on behalf of the EUS executive, Redel explained that the logo-name division makes the university appear selective about what they do and do not want to be associated with. “It’s sad to me that [McGill] doesn’t want to be associated with [the EUS],” Redel said. He explained that, with all the positive work the EUS does for McGill students, being able to use the McGill name in their logo seems like a natural step in having a mutually beneficial relationship with the University. Mendelson acknowledged that the University hasn’t been negatively impacted by the EUS’ use of the McGill logo, but explained that if guidelines are not respected consistently, it becomes easy to lose oversight of how the logo is being used and with what it
can be associated. He added that societies using the McGill name in their logo results in conflation of who is providing which services and activities, referring to the semantic subtleties that have to be observed. Mendelson explained that “of McGill University” is acceptable because it implies students from McGill are the ones managing the club, while “McGill Services,” for instance, suggests that the university itself is providing the services. Going forward, Redel explained that he thinks the “fairly static” situation will persist until the EUS’s Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) is up for review in less than two years. In the meantime, he stated that the EUS doesn’t believe its use of the McGill name violates their MoA. The EUS is currently investigating the legalities of the issue as well as whether or not investigation into the enterprise will be monetarily worthwhile.
Commentary
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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Listen up! An open letter to Heather Munroe-Blum Amy Monroe Hyde Park
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ear Principal Munroe-Blum, A few days ago, I received your invitation to the Centraide umbrella march. The ding of my email alert was accompanied by the distant sound of bells and tambourines from the strikers outside. Reading it, the utter absurdity of the whole strike situation snapped into focus, sharply enough that I started to laugh out loud, in a library where the number of students vastly outstripped that of qualified librarians. I mean, you must be joking. Not about Centraide. They are a terrific organization, especially in their efforts to help communities organize around common grievances. But seriously, you proposed that students (with their “wacky,” “golf-
y” umbrellas) walk through a picket line of an active community who’ve organized to express their grievances in order to, um, walk around with a wacky umbrella some more. I’m embarrassed for McGill right now – for its administrators, professors, and students. Every day, thousands of us walk past the picket line and are confronted with a vision of exactly how fragmented our campus has become. Few students bother to inform themselves about the goings-on of the strike, and professors (who are justified in their mixed feelings) often dismiss the strike with a groan and a sigh, not wanting to waste valuable class time on explanations of how exactly the strike has interfered with their course reserves or what have you. The effects of the strike are creeping into focus for nearly everyone now. A theatre production I am involved with has been
forced to change venues at a weeks’ notice due to the absence of a highly skilled technician who is also a MUNACA member, and whose absence drastically compromises safety in Moyse Hall. A nonMUNACA-member librarian I often see is overworked to the point of fraying, and feels compelled to keep their support for MUNACA hidden out of fear that they’ll never be tenured. Students conducting their own research have been forced to watch projects they have been working on grind to a halt. And, everywhere, the lines are longer, the faces grimmer, the resentment building. For what? The ideological issue behind this strike has become more and more apparent as time passes. If we take this university to be what it is: a pulsing, self-sufficient manifestation of the body politic, the issue of the strike comes down to one
fact: McGill does not listen to its constituents. McGill has never, in fact, listened to its constituents. The administration’s party line has been, throughout the four years I have spent here, “Shut up and deal with it.” The “bulletins” we have been receiving on the strike have been vague and dismissive, encouraging us all to move along, move on, and to rat on your professors if they choose not to cross the picket line – effectively, to shut this all down with our own indifference. I’m sick of indifference, Madame Principal, and that’s why you heard me, along with the dozens of other students, employees and faculty showing their support for MUNACA, during the student sit-in outside last Thursday’s Senate meeting. That’s why you saw me, you and the other members of the Senate who were forced to wade
through, step over, and otherwise confront the presence of your very dissatisfied students. We’re tired of the administration banking on apathy, striving to keep us uninformed, divided, and content with the little we’re given. You’ll be seeing more of us, and you’ll be hearing more noise. Maybe some more drums. Maybe we should roam through Westmount and keep you and your neighbors up (or maybe that’s my own wishful thinking). If our word is our only weapon, it’s going to be shouted. Good luck with your efforts to contain, minimize, and wish away this strike. If nothing else, be aware that your actions and those of the administration have only made the problem worse. Amy Monroe is a U3 MIddle Eastern Studies. You can reach her at amy.monroe@mail.mcgill.ca.
Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily
10 Commentary
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
Say no to forced prison labour in Ontario How the Ontario Provincial Conservative Party’s crime agenda is inhumane Comment
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s part of his re-election campaign for the October 6 Ontario provincial elections, Tim Hudak, Progressive Conservative leader, proposed mandatory labour in all prisons. The proposed work consists of menial tasks, like picking up garbage and raking leaves, that would be done for up to forty hours a week. It is intended as a punishment for those who have broken the law and as a deterrent to those considering criminal activity. This agenda is both demeaning and ineffective; it violates international labour laws and it increases the chances of recidivism. Compulsory labour violates International Labour Agreements that Canada has signed on to. In 1957, Canada, alongside 168 other countries, ratified the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention. In Article 2 of this agreement, it is stated, “Each Member of the International Labour Organisation which ratifies this Convention undertakes to take effective measures to secure the immediate and complete abolition of forced or compulsory labour.” China and the United States are the only countries that have ratified this agreement and still make prisoners do compulsory labour. While one should sympathize with crime victims, we need to move away from simple revengeoriented tactics and look at long
run crime prevention. Leah DeVellis, a PhD Candidate in sociology at Carleton University, stated in a Toronto Star article that menial tasks fail to give prisoners marketable employment skills and help to make penitentiaries a “revolving door.” DeVellis suggested that only educational, vocational, and social programming in prisons lead to lower recidivism rates. Unfortunately, Hudak’s platform does not even mention these programs. Hudak is clearly more interested in winning the upcoming provincial election than he is in understanding the socio-economic determinants of crime. If the Ontario Provincial Conservative Party was truly serious about fighting crime, they would invest in social programs to help those that commit crimes. While this issue may only directly affect residents of Ontario, people across the country should take note of compulsory labour. If it is introduced in Ontario, it could become a trend in Canada. If this country became one of the few to reject the 1957 Convention, it would be an embarrassment to all Canadians. Students from Ontario should take the opportunity to reject this regressive policy in the upcoming election, and all Canadians should question these types of correctional practices.
Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily
Zach Lewsen
Zach Lewsen is a Commentary and Compendium! Editor at The Daily and a U2 Political Science Student. The views expressed here are his own.
Professor Dershowitz opts for the divisive A recent speech feeds polarization in the Israel-Palestine conversation Corey Lesk Hyde Park
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n the evening of September 15, Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor and author of “The Case for Israel”, took to the podium of the Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue in Westmount following an adoring introduction that declared him a world hero. The much-praised and much-reviled public defender of the state of Israel received a standing ovation from the mostly elderly and Jewish audience prior to even uttering a single word of his speech, entitled “Defending Israel in the Court of Public Opinion.” Many in the audience may have hoped for
some insight into attitudes towards Israel among the public, and among the emerging political parties in post-Mubarak Egypt. Perhaps, others were looking for a refreshing set of intelligent points in defence of Israel to pronounce at dinner parties. Instead, Professor Dershowitz defended his favoured country only against anti-Semitic opposition, ignoring the multiplicity of moderate and reasonable perspectives. The lecture began with praise for Israel’s liberal court system and life-saving technological innovations in the biomedical and agrarian domains. Dershowitz then expressed how ungrateful and disproportionate he found the world’s preoccupation with Israel and its national security policy, attribut-
ing it to strictly to anti-Semitism. He went on to attack some of his opponents in the public sphere, labelling Norman Finkelstein as a holocaust sceptic, accusing Noam Chomsky of equating the Israeli government with the Third Reich, and lambasting Jimmy Carter for his supposed closeness with the Arafat family . Yet, he failed to challenge any of their arguments with regard to the conflict. The rise in popularity of pro-Palestinian positions among Jewish youth was written off as a matter of fashion. The moderate positions of organizations like J Street were deemed an affront to Israeli solidarity. Dershowitz finally beseeched the audience to encourage its children to support Israel, invoking the Jewish cultural
precept of transmitting values and customs from one generation to the next. Throughout the speech, he repeatedly professed his support for a two-state peace. Dershowitz was right to admonish radical anti-Semitic positions against Israel, but, omitting all proPalestinian arguments, even the moderate ones, had the effect of dismissing and demonizing the entire spectrum of their campaigns. The professor failed to recognize that the terms pro-Palestinian and anti-Semitic are not necessarily synonymous, and the anti-imperialist sentiment so commonly invoked in opposition to Israel was completely ignored. As such, the speech failed to address the full variety of public opinions on the conflict, rather pre-
senting it to the audience in simplistic and divisive terms. Rejecting the growing opposition to Israel among Jewish youth was short-sighted. It may be the case that some perspectives are unbalanced, but the move away from a family-based ideological commitment to the Jewish state is one in the right direction – it is a move towards a more pragmatic and peace-minded discourse. What the court of public opinion needs from its respected intellectuals is reason, clarity, and insight. Unfortunately, Professor Dershowitz failed to deliver on his responsibility.
Corey Lesk is a U1 Earth System Science student. You can reach him at corey.lesk@mail.mcgill.ca.
Commentary
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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A lack of diverse opinions McGill Hebrew University Exchange Participants respond to the partnership Molly Joeck and Éloïse Ouellet-Décoste Hyde Park
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cGill and Hebrew University’s Summer Program partnership in Human Rights in Jerusalem drew criticism from students supportive of a boycott of Israeli educational institutions. A group of students returning from the program published an article in The Daily on September 1 entitled “McGill should keep its ties with The Hebrew University,” which argued that the program should be continued as part of the ongoing partnership between McGill and Hebrew University. We would like to continue this discussion, underlining the importance of creating a tolerant and inclusive environment as the program moves forward. We chose to participate in this program because of a belief that, without dialogue and engagement, no progress will be made in addressing human rights violations that occur daily around the world, including in the Palestinian Territories. Furthermore, we feel that academic institutions are an environment where freedom of expression should be tolerated and even encouraged. Our experience in Jerusalem demonstrated a desire – on the part of the program planners – to expose the participants to a diversity of viewpoints. While in Israel, we discussed issues of diversity and human rights with Eritrean refugees, government officials, and Bedouin activists. In some ways, however, the program did not entirely live up to its vision of diversity. The welcoming remarks were made by the directors of the participating human rights centres and by the Canadian ambassador, but also by Daniel Taub, Israeli ambassador to the U.K. While the other speakers referenced human rights and academic exchange, Taub delved into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, sweepingly characterizing Palestinian culture and its heroes as violent. Evidently, Taub is oblivious to the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish and the images of cartoonist Naji alAli. In the context of promoting diversity, how can an entire culture be characterized as vio-
lent? This message did not set a tolerant tone for the program. During a visit to Neve Shalom, an intentional community of Jewish and Palestinian families, two community educators and residents presented a viewpoint many felt was radical in its support of a single secular democratic state as a solution to the conflict. The program coordinators responded to this visit by scheduling a seminar, inviting the dean of the law faculty of the Hebrew University to speak on the subject of Israel as a “Jewish and Democratic state.” The relationship between this subject and the broader theme of the program – diversity and human rights – was unclear. Rather, the seminar was explicitly framed as a response to the ideas presented by the Neve Shalom community, which were
too quickly characterized as unrealistic in their divergence from the mainstream narrative, undermining the legitimacy of this alternative community’s message. The Neve Shalom visit was further marred by its characterization as “a mistake” by Danny Evron, director of the Minerva Centre for Human Rights at the Hebrew University. Why characterize this visit as a mistake? Should such an alternative viewpoint not be heard? In making this characterization, Evron implied that not all viewpoints are welcome, and that a cer-
Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily
tain degree of divergence from the mainstream has no place in such an environment. This does not remain true to the notion of diversity nor to the freedom of expression that the Hebrew University should encourage. Ultimately, this academic program, in order to maintain its own
diversity, must encourage a wide spectrum of opinions while acknowledging that, in such a context, there may be diverging viewpoints.
Molly Joeck and Éloïse OuelletDécoste are both students in the McGill University Faculty of Law.
All photos by Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily
12 Features
The SSMU executive was decadent and depraved The Daily’s Queen Arsem-O’Malley explains how two visions of student government came to a head at McGill last year
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hile SSMU burned, Anushay Khan wanted to dance. In the agenda of the April 7 SSMU Council meeting, in the thick of months of Executive infighting, VP Clubs and Services Khan submitted a motion proposing a dance-off between the six executives, a lighthearted attempt to break up a tense meeting. But, even though they were meant in jest, the teams Khan proposed for the contest – herself, VP External Myriam Zaidi, and VP University Affairs Joshua Abaki against VP Finance and Operations Nick Drew, VP Internal Tom Fabian, and President Zach Newburgh – hinted at the deep rift at the heart of undergraduate selfgovernment that year. By spring, it was a bifurcation solidified by months of bickering, stalled decisions at Executive Committee, and a tense office environment that some reported as bordering on threatening. Crucially, the Executive was divided over competing visions of SSMU: one that prioritized political activism, represented by Zaidi’s camp, and one that put McGill’s social calendar to the fore, headed by Newburgh. By the end of the school year, the two sides were barely speaking, let alone facing off in dance competitions.
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2010-2011 was an eventful year for SSMU: confidential meetings late into the night, former executives criticizing their successors, campus publica-
tions squabbling amongst themselves on matters of both editorial stance and reporting, anonymous sources, leaked documents. But, ultimately, the controversy boiled down to ideology. The Students’ Society of McGill University is frequently referred to as a student union, though, in name, it is a society. It’s a distinction of little note to most, but of utmost importance to those attempting to navigate the SSMUniverse. In Quebec, it is typical for universities and CEGEPs to have a student union, but McGill does not necessarily think of itself as a typical Quebec school. The word “union” has specific connotations – workers’ rights, fighting for a cause, solidarity. The larger Quebec student movement has historically lived for these battles. Provincial student groups, represented by acronyms like FEUQ, FECQ, and ASSÉ, made headlines with their antituition activism. The word “society” has quite another feel, and marrying the two terms can be a delicate procedure. The SSMU executive consists of a President and five Vice Presidents – Clubs & Services, External, University Affairs, Internal, and Finance & Operations. Clubs deals with clubs; External deals with the broader Quebec student movement, and has led the fight against tuition hikes; University Affairs is a largely academic portfolio, working on things like extending winter break; Internal tends to plan a lot of parties; and Finance keeps SSMU’s books and sees that Gert’s pays its tab. They’re all crucial positions, and all come with
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
a student-financed salary of roughly $30,000. Execs take a leading role in handling the millions of student dollars placed in SSMU’s hands every year – running the Shatner building and Gert’s, and, most importantly, acting as the primary contact point between undergraduate students and the McGill administration. But students don’t seem to care who takes the helm from year to year. SSMU elections have an unfortunate history of acclaimed positions and low voter turnout: the last few years have seen tallies of 30.9 per cent of undergrads (2008), less than 20 per cent (2009), 28 per cent (2010), and 21 per cent (2011). A huge percentage of students – like, maybe, the 79 per cent who neglected to vote last March – may not even realize what SSMU does. In the 2010 elections, two positions were acclaimed, while the presidential race was a strange battle between SSMU veterans Sarah Woolf, who represented the political left, and Zach Newburgh, who stood for a moderate voice. (Stefan Link also made a good showing in the Presidential race, but his campaign was haunted by repeated election bylaw violations and paranoid accusations that another candidate ordered an assailant to punch him in the stomach at Gert’s one night.) The election resulted in a mixture of both ideologies and personalities on the Exec, best exemplified by the divergence between Newburgh, who won the Presidency, and Myriam Zaidi, the outspoken, politically radical VP External. Zaidi has a presence that is felt (and heard) before she enters a room. She has a booming voice and a distinctive laugh, not to mention
opinions on just about everything under the sun. Previously a member of SSMU’s External Affairs Committee (and, before that, president of her CEGEP’s student union), Zaidi is steeped in the world of Quebec student politics. She is currently on the staff of MP Laurin Liu, one of the McGill students elected to Parliament this spring. She claims that she was reluctant to run for an executive position – a full-time, high-stress role that precludes academics for a year. “They said we need someone who has the Quebec vision in here, we need someone who knows how it works on the other side to get involved at McGill and I refused many times” before finally agreeing to run, she says. Still, with an unmatched student movement pedigree, Zaidi seemed like she was born for the combative, political External gig, the same job Jack Layton held when he was a McGill undergrad. Newburgh, in his own way, was equally fit for the role of President. Before running, he was head of Hillel Montreal, the prominent Jewish campus group. He has over 3000 friends on Facebook. His LinkedIn account boasts an extensive list of titles – ending with SSMU President – and a glowing recommendation from Nick Drew, a stalwart Newburgh ally: “Zach demonstrates outstanding qualities of leadership,” it reads, has “a positive energy” and is “socially savvy.” No one who has ever met Newburgh would disagree with the last characterization. (Newburgh refused to grant an interview for this story, and informed The Daily that Drew and Tom Fabian would refrain from commenting as well.) One of his pet projects last year was SSMU
Homecoming, an event that was promoted as the first of its kind. The “Homekoming Bash 2010” lost more than $18,000, even more than SSMU’s substantial estimated loss for the event. (“[Newburgh] wanted a carousel,” Zaidi says.) In an email to The Daily, Newburgh claimed that the 2010-11 executive “did several great things for student life over the course of our terms in office.” The first thing he listed was Homecoming. Newburgh and Zaidi were, at the start of their terms, the most diametrically opposed members of the Executive. Take, for example, their attitudes towards the McGill administration. Newburgh used a deliberately conciliatory tone with the admin, an approach in which, as Drew might say, his social savvy came in handy. The SSMU president is the sole undergraduate on the Board of Governors, which includes the CEO of Telus and a former senior vice president of Astral Communications Inc. Newburgh fits into this kind of crowd easily, as I witnessed at one BoG meeting when Newburgh chatted with board members and updated them on his roommate’s graduate school acceptance. Not surprisingly, Zaidi took a more confrontational tack with the Principal and company. The administration’s official position on tuition hikes is that Quebec should charge students the national average – McGill supported the province’s tuition increase in the spring. Zaidi, echoing SSMU’s official position, is fiercely opposed to increased tuition. “I, categorically, from the beginning, was like, ‘No, no, they will fuck us until the end,’” she told me in a recent interContinued on page 14
Opposite page: Zach Newburgh, President of SSMU, and Myriam Zaidi, VP External. This page: Joshua Abaki, VP University Affairs (top), and Anushay Khan, VP Clubs and Services. Next page: Tom Fabian, VP Internal (left), and Nick Drew, VP Finance and Operations (right).
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14 Features
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
Continued from page 13 view. “We have to stop thinking that we have to be nice to them.” Despite differences in opinion or aim, the executives began the year united. They rallied around a cause that students were passionate about: namely, the student-run Architecture Café. (The administration closed the popular cafe last summer over student protests.) It wasn’t until mid-January that the Executive’s disintegration began. Six SSMU executives were scheduled to depart for a weekend retreat to kick off their second semester working together. They never left. When asked about it at Council, Newburgh replied that political differences among executives, stemming from a presidentially-led effort to scrap the General Assembly, had caused them to abandon the retreat. In an interview with The Daily during the first week of Febraury, Drew said that the retreat was cancelled because of the heavy workload that executives were handling. What Drew and Newburgh both neglected to mention was the animosity that had begun to fester within the executive on both political and personal levels. On January 19, at the weekly meeting of the Executive Committee, Newburgh had revealed that he had been involved in a project outside of SSMU since September. A Montreal businessman had approached him with an offer to work at an Internet startup, Jobbook, which helps match job seekers with employers. Since then, he had spent weekends and nights working on the project, traveling to England and to Ivy League campuses in the US to promote his new venture. All of this was done without the knowledge of his coworkers and fellow executives; the terms of his contract bound Newburgh to confidentiality. The ensuing campus media storm took everyone by surprise. The McGill Tribune garnered an interview with Newburgh immediately after his in-camera trial at Council, where he escaped impeachment, but was formally censured. Newburgh was then
unreachable for the weekend, leaving others to explain the situation. At the time, Abaki called the Tribune piece a “one-sided story” that left out details; the ensuing Daily articles (many of which I wrote) were roundly criticized as well. Both papers editorialized on the issue. (The Tribune included a disclaimer that their Managing Editor, who lived with Newburgh, had not been involved in covering the story or in editorializing about it. It was a reminder of the bizarre nature of the university setting: how about a disclaimer that Anderson Cooper shares a kitchen with Sarah Palin?) Two views of the situation began to cement. The first was that involvement in the company would be a boon to McGill students, that Newburgh’s time outside of the office was his own, and that it was a great opportunity. The second view was that Newburgh had used his position as leverage for a matter not related to SSMU, and had betrayed the trust of fellow executives, of Council, and of the student body. (This was The Daily editorial board’s position.) If ideological differences are something that a group can work through, deceit is not. The Executive split into the two factions that Anushay Khan would satirize months later with her dance-off teams: Khan, Abaki, and Zaidi thought Newburgh had betrayed them. Fabian and Drew backed the embattled President. By the end of January, the bad blood proved too much: with Jobbook hanging over their heads, the Executive cancelled their annual retreat together.
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But the controversy prompted a discussion of the nature of SSMU. Traveling to Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Princeton to promote a startup, while using the title of SSMU President to get in the door, doesn’t seem like a particularly union-oriented, student-centred, or progressive thing to do. A former Councilor, who asked not to be named, explained their disappointment with
SSMU after the experience of last year. SSMU “has so much money, so much influence,” but doesn’t live up to its full potential, the Councilor said. “Petty issues” and “personal conflicts” prevent representatives from completing projects and being truly productive, they continued. After the debacle and drama, elections for a new Executive began in March. They ended in a resounding victory for the left. Maggie Knight, a thorough and vocal Councilor, was elected over Cathal Rooney-Cespedes, who had attempted to follow Newburgh’s progress from Speaker of Council to President. Joël Pedneault, a good friend of Zaidi’s and a student movement veteran, took over as External. Carol Fraser, volunteer coordinator for the free, vegan lunch outlet Midnight Kitchen, took Clubs. Shyam Patel, who has repeatedly expressed his intent to revive the Financial Ethics Review Committee, won Finance. Emily Clare, the former Equity Commissioner, nabbed University Affairs. And the new VP Internal, Todd Plummer, was the only Internal candidate at election debates to prioritize a speaker series over a series of parties. Paltry election turnouts may suggest that students really do want SSMU to be more of a society than a union, just a campus bubble filed with alcohol and political neutrality. But, there are indications that things are swinging in the opposite direction this year. The new Executive is extremely political. McGill’s Mobilization Squad, a cadre of student activists who stage sit-ins and marches, is growing more and more visible on campus. We may yet be at the start of a trend toward the union side of the equation. It is a new year and a fresh start. Few of last year’s Councilors remain on Council – the complexion of SSMU is drastically different. But at least one trace of the 2010-2011 Executive remains on campus. In early September, Zach Newburgh showed up at a meeting where AUS Frosh packets were being assembled. He had a flyer he wanted to include. He introduced himself as an employee of Jobbook.
Letters
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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QPIRG, essentially, through its funding and participation in social justice-related activities, somewhat bears a role that McGill’s administration fails to fulfill. Nicolas Magnien McGill Student
End the strike, McGill Dear Dr. Munroe-Blum, My distress over the university’s response to MUNACA workers has been brewing since nearly a month ago, on the very first day of the strike (and it is a strike, not some nebulous labour disruption). But the final straw that has pushed me to write this letter was the update I received from the university Monday morning, practically crowing over the injunction to keep MUNACA from “disrupting” the campus. My education has indeed been disrupted over the past four weeks, as has that of thousands of my fellow students. But please, let us be clear about who has disrupted it. • It is not MUNACA that has been dragging out this contract dispute in order to avoid even meeting the industry standard, when it has the resources and the reputation to be a leader among academic institutions. • It is not MUNACA that has jeopardized our educations, our funding, and our stress levels by not making it clear to students that their strike-related difficulties in adding or dropping courses, borrowing books, or paying fees would never be counted against them. • Despite the picket lines, it is not MUNACA that has prevented professors from exercising their freedom of conscience teaching their classes where they see fit. Ask Professor Michelle Hartman. • It is not MUNACA that has allegedly tried to illegally employ replacement (“scab”) labour, and to pressure AMUSE and AGSEM members not to strike in solidarity. • It is not MUNACA that has used its access to student email addresses to send out weekly mass emails that disparage and minimize their opponents in profoundly biased ways. • And finally, it is not MUNACA that has used “noise” and “disruption” to justify a legal injunction that prevents the other side from peacefully airing their grievances, while continuing to finance multiple loud and disruptive construction projects on campus.
The university and its leaders have a responsibility to set an example for the world in the realms of civil discourse, honesty, ethics, and the right to freedom of thought and conscience. You are currently failing in that responsibility. Dr. Munroe-Blum, the ball is in your court to cordially and positively resolve this conflict. I hope that you will do the right thing. Sincerely, Mona Luxion PhD Candidate School of Urban Planning McGill University
McGill’s administration is inconsistent
QPIRG’s existence is imperative
Re: “Demonstrators Barred from Senate” | News | September 26
I am writing this letter to emphasize the need for a QPIRG’s existence within the McGill community. QPIRG is an important ‘umbrella’ organization uniting several clubs on campus led by students seeking an active role in their community. The help that QPIRG has provided these associations, both logistically and economically, not only is undeniable, but has also always been greatly appreciated by students. This must not be forgotten. One must understand that opting out will undoubtedly affect the degree to which they can express themselves on campus, if only in terms of the resulting decreased number of clubs surviving such a loss. Another point is that QPIRG, essentially, through its funding and participation in social justice-related activities, somewhat bears a role that McGill’s administration fails to fulfill. For instance, thanks to its funding of the KANATA Journal, QPIRG not only contributes to the improvement of relations between native and non-native communities but also helps advocating for an Indigenous Studies minor at our university, which McGill’s administration still refuses to create. Needless to say that such a program would be quite popular on campus when one looks at the increasing number of multidisciplinary courses related to the topic being created every year, reflecting a growing student interest for such a topic. Lastly, I truly believe that the opt-out campaign takes advantage of the ignorance of many students on issues that they have perhaps never even tried to be informed of. I do not blame the average student who sees in the opt-out option a minor solution to personal indebtedness, but I accuse them of ‘opting’ for an intellectual shortcut with the excuse of saving $7.50 per year. I believe this is deplorable and if students truly wish to have voice on campus maybe they should at least make their own investigation before opting out. Therefore, because of the Quebec Public Interest Research Group’s relevance in student life, I believe it should remain considered an important student service to pay for. Thank you for your consideration,
Dear Dr. Monroe-Blum and Professor Mendelson, This letter is written with concerns to the statements quoted in The Daily article published on Monday, September 26, 2011, titled “Demonstrators Barred from Senate.” I would first like to address my open dissatisfaction with the McGill administration’s behavior regarding the MUNACA strike. Their apparent resistance to compromise harms the union between McGill staff members, as well as sets a poor example for students. This is an academic institution, and we are here to learn – there’s a definite educational opportunity in resolving this strike, and the administration is not utilizing it. Secondly, I would like to state my disgust with the lack of unity that the administration demonstrates. Dr. Monroe-Blum, you are quoted as saying, “We are all proud of all members of our employee groups.” And while I would so like to believe this fact to be valid, your co-worker, Dr. Mendelson forces me to conclude otherwise. He’s quoted, “The vast majority of services, at least for now, have not been critically reduced.” In my opinion, that is a direct jab at the work the MUNACA employees perform. Their services are quite obviously missing from student life. As an employee of McGill residences, I can say that – with regards to the efficiency and speed at which matters are attended to – there is clearly a missing link. Further, Dr. Mendelson, I do believe that your job title is Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning). Thus, I conclude that it would certainly do you some good to come out into the sunshine and speak with the students themselves regarding the MUNACA strike – rather than assuming we have not noticed the difference. It is one thing to believe that you’re working for student rights, but it’s quite another to come and stand with us.
Amy Preston U1 Arts McGill University
Dear McGill Daily,
Nicolas Magnien McGill Student
Gentrification is about more than just students Hi McGillians, I’m an alumna of McGill (‘07) and also part of a working group at QPIRG McGill called Right to the City. This working group does research, education, and action on the displacement of marginalized groups from neighbourhoods. Some people call this gentrification and think it’s sort of a good thing because everything gets shinier and there are some cool bars before they get turned into the inevitable bauhaus-style furniture stores. And ‘those’ people who were always around before looked kind of scary anyway. But a particular interpretation of aesthetics shouldn’t overshadow the fact that people – as we speak, all across Montreal – are being forced from their homes and the neighborhoods they have deep ties with. This is bad for everyone; cohesive neighborhoods and communities are one of the most important sources of quality of life, and of struggles for social justice. Students get blamed a lot for this ‘gentrification’ phenomenon, and I think a lot of us feel pretty guilty. And for sure, those of us who are more privileged (and not all students are!) must take responsibility for our impact. But a lot of this is to distract from the developers, city planners, and politicians that are the real drivers of neighborhood displacement. So that’s my pitch – it’s not inevitable, get involved! Also, this working group is just one of a ton of projects and groups supported by your fee levy to QPIRG McGill, which pretty much no other institution would be interested in funding or supporting. Holly Nazar M.A. Candidate Media Studies Vice-President External Graduate Students’ Association Concordia University
It’s not that simple Representatives of QPIRG and Tadamon!, while defending their calls to remove Lebanon’s ruling Hezbollah party from Canada’s list of terrorist organizations, claim to support the interests of refugees and migrant workers. I feel obliged to mention that the 400,000 Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon under Hezbollah rule are barred from holding professional jobs, owning property, accessing public health care, or even from leaving their camps without a permit. Sam Bick, Claire Hurtig, and Rami Nakache also assert their passion for the rights of queer people – surely forgetting that Hezbollah enforces a strict version of Sharia law under which homosexuality is punishable by death. I hope I need not mention Sharia’s distinctive approach to the rights (or lack thereof) of women – another area of concern purported by QPIRG’s representatives. Bick, Hurtig, and Nakache go on to reiterate Tadamon!’s core principles, which “reject…oppressions based on class, gender, ‘race’ and ethnic or religious affiliation.” I do not expect them to be concerned with the repeated calls by Hezbollah leaders for Israel to be wiped out and Jews to be exterminated from the Middle East. We might hope, though, that they would recognize their own staggering hypocrisy in standing up for one of the world’s most repressive, violent, and dangerous political movements. McGill is an institution of higher learning with a proud history. Its students should not be compelled to fund QPIRG, an organization whose actions are so plainly and wildly at odds with the principles it claims to uphold. Emile Scheffel J.D. Candidate University of British Columbia Faculty of Law
The Daily received more letters than it could print this issue. The rest will appear the next time we’ve accumulated a total of 5 letters. Send contributions to letters@mcgilldaily.com from your McGill email address, and keep them to 300 words. The Daily does not print letters that are racist, homophobic, or otherwise hateful.
Health&Education
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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Residents score a strikeout General strike by Quebec medical residents ends with satisfactory outcomes Mathura Thevarajah The McGill Daily
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collective sigh of relief resonates from the medical community as the Fédération des Médecins Résidents du Québec (FMRQ) and the Government of Quebec progress into the final stages of solidifying a contract for Quebec’s medical residents. Had recent salary negotiations not been successful, the detrimental repercussions of the recent strike in Quebec would have continued. The FMRQ is an organization that advocates for Quebec residents – doctors who have finished medical school, but are completing their obligatory postgraduate training in their specific fields. According to the FMRQ, there are 3,000 residents in Quebec who work an average of 72 hours a week in over 100 health institutions. Dr. Joseph Dahine, internal medicine resident, FMRQ board member and president of the Association des Résidents de McGill, explained that the residents’ main grievance was that their pay was 30 per cent less than that of their equals in other provinces. This disparity in pay appears to make Quebec a less attractive option for potential residents.
overwhelming influence. Studies have [also] proven that residents are more likely to practice [medicine] in the same places they had been trained [for residency]. This results in a hemorrhage, whereby Quebec is losing doctors to other provinces.” Yet some students do not believe that Quebec residents asking for pay parity with residents from other provinces is fully justified. “Considering that tuition for medical education at the University of Toronto is $75,000, whereas it’s $22,000 at McGill, it doesn’t make much sense to expect the Quebec government to close the gap between salaries,” said April Rose, a third year medical student at McGill. “If the government is required to raise medical school tuition in order to raise resident salaries by also increasing medical tuition, it’s better for myself and for the profession that they keep tuition low, even if residents make a little less money than they would in other provinces.” Initially, residents tried to express their grievances without sacrificing medical education or patient care. “We tried to create promotional material to inform people of our demands,” explained Dahine. “But that wasn’t enough. The government was not rational in their negotiations and offered
Third year medical students were at risk of failing their clinical core rotations, which could pose the threat of postponing graduation. “In 2011 there were 106 unfilled residency positions in Canada and an alarming 84 of those spots were in Quebec,” said Dahine. “At the end of the day, when doctors are choosing where to go for residency, polls have shown that pay has an
ridiculously low salary raises just to appease [our demands].” It was under these circumstances that, on July 11, 2011, residents decided to completely stop teaching medical students. This tactic seems to have had its greatest
effect when it was communicated to the Quebec government that third year medical students were at risk of failing their clinical core rotations, which could pose the threat of postponing graduation. This put pressure on the government to begin taking the residents’ demands more seriously. Yet, though this manoeuvre reached its target, the collateral damage to medical students and the burden placed upon staff and medical education administrators was substantial. In many instances, hospital staff had to supervise students directly so that students could continue their education without interacting with residents. Pediatrics, the branch of medicine concerned with the medical care of infants, children, and adolescents, is thought to be the core rotation hardest hit by the strike. Half the students doing pediatrics during the strike did not receive any ward exposure, which is where general pediatrics is optimally learnt. Dr. Preetha Krishnamoorthy, program director of the Undergraduate Medical Education in Pediatrics, explained how the residents’ decisions to stop teaching required her to completely revamp the curriculum. “When residents decided to suspend teaching, we had to pull students off of wards and find alternative subspecialty options that would allow them to fulfill their core requirements. We just had to make it work because we didn’t want to delay their graduation.” Though the pediatric training for this year’s medical students was a difficult experience, Krishnamoorthy states that it was not necessarily a negative one. “In the end we made it work because the students really stepped up to find alternative solutions that made everyone happy,” she said. “I was incredibly impressed by the maturity, poise, and professionalism by which everyone worked together.” Nevertheless, according to Esli Osmanlliu, executive president of the Medical Students’ Society of McGill, 62 per cent of third year medical students said the strike
had affected their education. “Although there still was support for the FMRQ demands by medical students, we strongly believed that a prolonged teaching strike would have had long-term effects on medical education and the eventual quality of care delivered in Quebec, which is a risky business for all stakeholders,” he said.
will be a 6 per cent annual increase in salary, a doubling of on-call hourly wages, and a $210 teaching stipend for every rotation. Non-monetary gains include personal on-call rooms rather than shared rooms and a better maternity leave package. In addition, the 16-hour work shifts negotiated earlier this summer are to be fully implemented by July 1, 2012.
In many instances hospital staff had to supervise students directly so that they could continue their education without interacting with residents. General strike becomes a reality Despite all that was taking place, negotiations between the FRMQ and the government remained at a standstill and the FRMQ was forced to subscribe to their last resort. On September 19, 2011 at 8:00 a.m. the FMRQ decided to initiate a full-on general strike. This meant that 10 per cent of all residents would stop working entirely every day. “The strike was the big gun that required residents to leave the hospitals,” said Dahine. “With the onset of the general strike, negotiations intensified. The [Quebec] government recognized the imminent threat a general strike would have on patient care and how chaotic it would be in the hospitals. So [they] were pressured to give us their best offer in the shortest amount of time.” Fortunately just 3.5 hours after commencing, the strike ended on September 19, 2011, at 11:30 a.m., after FMRQ members received an offer that they deemed satisfactory. This latest offer gives Quebec residents a 20.3 per cent increase in salary over five years. Specifically, there
At present, two out of the four union members – McGill University and University of Laval – have approved the offer. The University of Sherbrooke and University of Montreal will be voting this week. “This is a huge achievement since sleep deprivation studies have proven the adverse effects of 24-hour calls,” said Dahine. “In fact, Quebec is a pioneer in this arena since other provinces still have 24-hour calls.” However, some students, including Rose, have doubts. “Many residents and senior staff question whether the advantages of cutting down on the hours are ultimately worth it since shift work may affect continuity of patient care and because through 24-hour calls, trainees learn and are exposed to a lot more medicine,” said Rose. Nevertheless, after all this, Dahine believes that the greatest achievement of the strike was proving the value of residents in academic and community hospitals. “Now, no one can deny that residents are an integral part of the healthcare system both clinically and academically.”
Interested in writing for Health&Ed? email healthandeducation@mcgilldaily.com
Health&Education
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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Discriminatory blood Canada may follow U.K. and lift ban on MSM blood donation Christopher Lane
Health&Education Writer
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n September 8, 2011, health ministers in the United Kingdom resolved to lift the indefinite ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men (MSM). Instead, a one-year deferral period was implemented, in which men who have engaged in same-sex sexual activity within the past 12 months are restricted from donating blood. The U.K. is joining other countries like Australia, Japan, and Sweden with this policy shift. Canada still has an indefinite ban, which prohibits blood donation by all MSM since the year 1977, citing statistics that claim these men are at greater risk for HIV/AIDS. Canada’s current policy, along with those of other countries that prohibit blood donations from MSM, is mainly based on the fact that HIV infections are
There have been enormous advances in blood testing technologies that have reduced the risk of HIV-infected blood contaminating the blood supply. For instance, Canadian Blood Services and HémaQuébec – non-profit organizations that manage the supply of blood and blood products for Canadians – subject blood from all donors to rigorous testing before it can enter the blood supply. Although there is a “window period” of a few weeks wherein blood from newly-infected donors may give a false negative test result, many experts, such as those in the U.K., have concluded that a one-year deferral would be more than sufficient to account for this period. Canadian Blood Services and Héma-Québec have been considering a similar move to shift to a definite deferral period for blood donations by MSM. The two organizations are independent of one another, but currently have the
“[one of the effects of the current ban] is that it continues to [perpetuate] the stigma that HIV is a gay man’s disease, and that all gay people are promiscuous and carry disease.” Adrian Lomaga Lawyer who has pursued a case against Héma-Québec more prevalent among MSM relative to the population at large. Moreover, support for the policy has also been bolstered by the tainted blood scandal that affected Canadian blood banks in the 1980s, when numerous transfusion recipients became infected by HIV. There are now many groups that oppose the lifetime ban for MSM, such as the Canadian Federation of Students, the Canadian AIDS Society, and EGALE Canada, on the grounds that such restrictive policy is discriminatory and outdated.
same policy in regards to MSM. In order to go through with such a policy change, they would have to be sure that the risk of blood contamination would not increase. Some studies have suggested that moving to a one-year deferral period would slightly increase the risk of infection. However, Dr. Norbert Gilmore, former professor and associate director of the McGill AIDS Centre, maintains that this difference would be too small to be of any significance. “The testing is of very high quality,” he said.
In 2010, Gilmore and three colleagues published a report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that suggest the removal of the lifetime ban for blood donations from MSM. Their analysis concluded that “a five-year deferral period could maintain the same residual risk as indefinite deferral.” They also outlined that the very marginal increase in risk inherent with a one-year deferral period may be a cost outweighed by other gains. Lifting the ban would promote a less discriminatory image for Canadian Blood Services, and may increase the number of donors – both MSM and from the general population. Adrian Lomaga, a McGilleducated lawyer who had pursued a case against Héma-Québec, mentioned that one of the effects of the current ban is that it “continues to [perpetuate] the stigma that HIV is a gay man’s disease, and that all gay people are promiscuous and carry disease.” He decided to delay his case, as he judged that there was a reasonable chance of the policy changing soon. Lomaga and Gilmore both highlighted the double-standard of how Canada’s blood banks treat different risk factors. Whereas heterosexuals can be promiscuous and donate with no deferral if they claim to know the sexual backgrounds of all of their partners, a monogamous man in a samesex relationship can never donate blood. In addition, blood donors are not asked questions about unprotected sex, and most other risky sexual activities only lead to six or twelve month deferral periods. While Gilmore and Lomaga were both reluctant to blame discrimination for the longevity of Canada’s ban, Gilmore did say that he doubted such a strict policy would be applied to a heterosexual community. While change is nearing, it seems unlikely that a monogamous gay man will be able to donate blood in the near future. In an interview with The Daily, Marc Germain, vice president of Medical Affairs for Héma-
Whereas heterosexuals can be promiscuous and donate with no deferral if they claim to know the sexual backgrounds of all of their partners, a monogamous man in a same-sex relationship can never donate blood. Québec, said this is partly due to the fact that more detailed and personal questions, about such things as safe sex and fidelity, would have to be added to an already long list of personal questions, thus making it more difficult to gather valid information. There is, however, reason for opponents of the ban to remain optimistic, as Canadian Blood Services and Héma-Québec have been looking into alternatives to the indefinite deferral period. Germain expressed Héma-Québec’s view that a five-year deferral period would be optimal and safe, as it would not increase the risk of contamination. HémaQuébec does not control the donor restrictions, so they have petitioned the
Canadian Standards Association (CSA) to allow for a five-year deferral period, and expect that it will be put to a vote at the CSA’s next meeting. Germain added that “the recent decision in the U.K. is helping.”
Oles Chepesiuk for The McGill Daily
18 Art Essay
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
Roxana Parsa
Culture
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
Making mayhem
A poem for Troy Davis Troy Davis was executed by the American state of Georgia on September 21, 2011. A black man, he was convicted of the murder of white police officer Mark MacPhail, though evidence remained inconclusive, and the murder weapon was never found.
Carla Bozulich talks punk and performance
there are flowers on the altar of my rib cage for you, Troy; not dead ones, not the wilting ghosts of memory on the lid of a casket, but live, weedlike, opening like hands.
Meagan Potier Culture Writer
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not because i knew you personally, Troy, but because i didn’t. because when they killed you, people who didn’t know you, like me, had to open our eyes ears hands mouths when they killed you, we cried coughed shuddered gasped and little sparks flew out of our bodies: Ian Murphy | The McGill Daily
efore meeting Carla Bozulich – and with only a preliminary google search to go on – it would seem easiest to categorize her as a musician. While this is certainly true, after speaking with Bozulich it’s necessary to further describe her, not only as an artist, but also as a participant in and observer of the broader evolution of North American culture in an almost anthropological sense. Bozulich was born in New York, but now subscribes to a more nomadic lifestyle that she describes as, simply, “travelling.” She is best known for her music; first as a founding member of performance-heavy band Ethyl Meatplow in the 80’s and early 90’s, then as a singer for the 90’s band Geraldine Fibbers, and, most recently, as the singer and founder of Evangelista. While Bozulich’s contributions to music have been many, her appreciation of it started long before she began to play. “Before punk rock, as a kid of five, six, or seven I went to jazz shows with my mom – in the 70’s people were just so demonstrative. But when punk rock hit, it was insane, people yelled and they danced if they liked it and if they hated it they’d throw things. […] As a teenager at punk rock shows when I was younger, maybe 14, I was a very shy person, I didn’t yell. I loved the music but part of it was also seeing the people and how they reacted. It was as much about the audience as it was about the band.” Later on, having outgrown her shyness, Bozulich went on to be a founding member of Ethyl Meatplow, a band known for their cult-like following and intense crowds. “ [At our shows] people were flying through the air and screaming, it was very sex and humour driven and our music was very loud and aggressive. We caused a lot of mayhem. We had a lot of encounters with the police. People would always get undressed and come up on stage and either we’d kiss them or we’d throw them off – a lot of people fell in love. It’s impossible to really put into words how extreme it was, our music was really new and exciting.” Since then, music – and also crowds – have changed. Carla commented that “there was some kind of shift, now it’s like people don’t get any more excited when watching a band perform live than they would watching them in a YouTube video.” This is an interesting insight, considering it points to the effects of the internet and social media on the music industry with regard to crowd mentality. “Honestly it is a bit
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disconcerting – not as a musician but as a person. I want people to have an intense experience like the ones I’ve had myself. I want people to react. … You can be at a gig now and dancing, and the next day it’ll show up online and people will make fun of you. In art – projecting and broadcasting everything is great – but it comes with a cost. There is a lack of healthy naivety now that promotes this selfconsciousness. Kids can’t fuck up anymore. People will know – it’ll be on a social networking site.” Bozulich is also known for her performance pieces, mainly the Eyes-andEars series that focuses on creating “a feeling of having all of one’s senses stimulated – that’s what I hope for – it should be an experience they weren’t expecting.” These pieces are relatively unique in the sense that they are written after the locale has been chosen in order to reflect said locale. Bozulich explained that “the history and juxtaposition of a place, it’s details, are important” These performance pieces are somewhat scripted as each section of the story unfolds within a particular constraint of time but are often very improvisational and allow for each performance to be unique. Bozulich is not only a performer, but also a writer and a painter. Her writing has been published in Alternative Press, LA Weekly, Austrian music mag; SKUG, Time Out New York, and Germany’s SPEX. She was a long time editor and contributor “at the wild LA underground magazine – Ben is
Dead.” She has also contributed to The Wire, and “The Art of Touring” (a book about the artist’s life on the road), and currently has a piece on spirituality in music featured on xtrememusic. org. Besides this, she has written several chapters of an unfinished novel, “The Sparkley Jewel”, as well as many poems. In regards to the vast scope of her talents, Bozulich notes that “I don’t see a lot of separation between creative endeavours, it all stems from the same place. It’s all art.” So where exactly does it stem from for Bozulich? “My primary influence is love. When I listen to my own music I hear it over and over and it’s about grappling with it and surrendering to it and leaving it, and celebrating it… I was born a lover, and I was born curious. I need to learn and grow and see things change. I need to know that I don’t know everything.” Though her influences have not changed, her style and music have. “My musical evolution… shows that I haven’t changed but that my music has become more refined. I feel like the same person very clearly, it’s a matter of growing and learning so much, [I feel that I] have become a much more complicated person in a really good way.”
Check out Carla Bozulich and the rest of Evangelista along with John Eichenseer and cut featuring Gibet and Mensch at Casa del Popolo on September 29, $11.
the memory of mothers, whispering in infant ears, whispering in accents, bad grammar, forgotten languages, whispering through the bloody aftermath of labour violence scraped knees broken glass knuckles, “you can be anything you want to be, little one, my baby, in this country, anything you want,” MLK in grainy footage, proclaiming, “Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims’ pride, From every mountainside Let freedom ring,” a dream that i was climbing up the stairs to the musical sound of coins falling from my pockets and covering everything and at the top there was a window and there were bars on it and down below there were a thousand tiny candle flames little sparks that flew out of this world when they killed you, and we won’t get them back; they are yours now, small lights burning in the place wherever you are. you became the difference between promises and prayers, Troy. now we know it. i never knew you, Troy, but still, there are flowers on the altar of my rib cage for you; not dead ones, but live, growing in salt water.
– Ryan Thom
Inkwell
20 Culture
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
Intertwining tongues English Language Arts Network brings together English and French arts communities Victoria Lessard Culture Writer
Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily
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he English-Language Arts Network (ELAN) of Quebec recently organized and hosted the “State of the Arts” summit in Montreal. Running from September 22 to 25, the event brought together representatives from the English and French artistic communities to discuss issues facing Anglophone artists and cultural producers working in Frenchmajority Quebec. The summit consisted of a two-day conference entitled “Creative Solutions for a Creative Community,” open only to invited participants (all notes from the conference are available to the public online at http://www.scribd. com/elanquebec). On the third day of the event, the ELAN opened the summit the public with two panel discussions: “Many People, One Official Language” and “Invisible or Too Visible?” where audience members were encouraged to participate in the lively question and answer sessions following each debate. The summit concluded with the premiere of a bilingual musical, “The Season: a Musical by Socalled,” held in conjunction with Pop Montreal. The ELAN organized the “Creative Solutions” forum to examine the issues faced by English artists in Quebec, with participants actively putting forward solutions to resolve the topics debated at the conference. Some of the issues raised affected both language communities, and discussions united the two groups in the creation of action plans to resolve these common problems. Topics included building a net-
included topics such as: the accessibility of cultural productions in other languages (for example, the accessibility of a French theater piece to an English audience, as well as the reverse), the possibility of a “backlash” by Quebec art funding programs against English artists out of fear for the deterioration of French culture, and the public image of the English artist among the French community, among many other subjects. The resounding issue that
Are Anglophone artists and cultural producers an important part of the arts in Quebec? Or are English-speaking artists “threatening” a thriving French cultural community that one would struggle to find in other areas of Canada? work of assistance for “first-time artists,” creating more support for cultural and racial diversity in the arts, and getting educational institutions more actively involved in the arts community. However, many discussions dealt with the language divide between English and French artists working in Quebec. These
seemed to keep appearing throughout the summit was the topic of cultural participation and exchange between the French and the English artistic communities. In the conference entitled “Are we part of the Quebecois nation?”, participants questioned their role as English art producers in a primarily French artistic population.
Contributors asked if they needed to more actively participate in and support French cultural productions, or, alternatively, whether they should be focusing on promoting and pronouncing their own Anglophone identity. This became a huge source of debate within the conference, especially in the “Invisible or Too Visible?” discussion. The title of the panel seemed to present the overall deliberation of the summit – is the English arts community suffering from under-funding and lack of exposure in Quebec? Are Anglophone artists and cultural producers an important part of the arts in Quebec? Or are Englishspeaking artists “threatening” a thriving French cultural community that one would struggle to find in other areas of Canada? The participants in this panel all brought up the lack of coverage of cultural events in the other language group’s media. Each group felt underrepresented in everything from popular culture, such as the movies, to more erudite productions like theatre. D. Kimm, a Francophone artist who participated in the discussion, felt especially strongly that cultural events targeted at a particular language group (for example, a reading by a poet that identifies themselves as a Francophone) were poorly attended by the other language group.
The panel equally represented self-identified Anglophone and Francophone individuals, and once all of the participants recognized their similar concerns about the lack of representation in the other artistic community, the panel began to work more productively together. They agreed that there was a need for dialogue on the part of the English and French arts groups, in order to become more supportive of one another. The idea of bilingual artistic endeavors was put forward, and the concept of Montreal as a shared linguistic space became a unifying idea for both the panel participants and the audience members. Montreal’s mixture and support for both languages in creative enterprises was lauded. Brendan Kelly, an Anglophone panel participant, put forward a question that seemed to resound with many audience members: why are there no representations on the CBC, or in other Canadian cultural productions, of French and English people living together and navigating cultural differences and similarities on a daily basis? In other words, why are so few national movies or TV shows set in Montreal? The ELAN summit raised many important topics that are integral to the continued support and growth of arts production
in Quebec, and created many viable action plans that can start to be implemented throughout the province. Though the focus of the summit was on the issues that English-speaking cultural producers face in FrenchCanada, the conference and the panels were most productive when they were united in recognizing the similar goals of both communities. This recognition began a better dialogue between the two language groups, and lead to interesting discussions that focused more on the possibilities of increased interaction between the communities, rather than on the question of majority versus minority. The cultural richness of Montreal was emphasized and celebrated throughout the panel discussions, but the possibilities of creativity and diversity would be wider if the idea of collaboration and dialogue could be expanded upon, rather than continuing to focus on two identities. This collaboration cannot solely extend to the artists though – audience members must actively participate in order for our two enriching identities to flourish side by side. So, to Anglophones and Francophones, see a French movie, check out an English poetry reading, and enjoy the thousands of artistic possibilities that Montreal has to offer.
Culture
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
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Of MAUS and Men Cartoonist Art Spiegelman speaks on his storied history with the graphic novel Laura Payne Smith Culture Witer
F
or many students, “Saturday lecture” is an offensive phrase. It recalls cramped classrooms and pontificating professors, all on a day that should be academia-free. This assumption could not have been proved more wrong when three hundred or so patrons came out to hear the famous cartoonist, Art Spiegelman, speak candidly about comics. Art Spiegelman is a cartoon author and artist renowned for his graphic novel series, MAUS. Spiegelman was a guest lecturer for the SBC gallery at Concordia University on September 24 presented in part with POP Montreal. The lecture, entitled “What the %&*! Happened to Comics?,” was an hour and a half discussion about the history of comics, and Spiegelman’s intimate relationship to the medium as the author of MAUS. When I was a child I loved Archie and The Beano, (a British comic collected by my father) but the lecture introduced me to a whole new world of comics. From Little Nemo to Watchmen, Spiegelman described in detail how comics came to be and how they create meaning. The common perception of comics is that they lack certain intricacies found in traditional literature. However, Spiegelman wanted the audience to appreciate comics the way he does, like they hold great secrets to be shared. He emphasized how each element implicates its own meaning in order to tell the story. Spiegelman’s lecture not only focused on the importance of illustration in comics, but also on how the graphic aspect of comics has evolved throughout history. He explained that the basis of comics and their
Edna Chan | The McGill Daily
characters stem from the study of physiognomy. Artists learnt how to draw characters based on particular traits discovered through this field, such as physical cues of trustworthiness or aggression. For example, he showed us a comic of Little Orphan Annie, and explained how the blank
eyes of the characters are extremely expressive because they allow the reader to project their emotions into the story and onto the characters. He explained that he borrowed this technique when creating the characters in MAUS because it allowed the reader to connect more deeply to
their emotions and the emotions discussed in the story. When Spiegelman spoke about MAUS it was clear that its popularity made him somewhat uncomfortable. He mentioned how he was considered to be one of the fathers of the graphic novel, joking that, “I
still demand a blood test.” MAUS is a biography of his father, Vladek, and alternates between his life during the Holocaust and his life in New York, depicting Jews as mice and Germans as cats. Maus began as a three-page comic in Funny Animals, but was published as a book and became a comic phenomenon. He spoke frankly about his work and his appreciation that people felt so connected to it. He also gave the audience a peak into his new book, MetaMaus, which will be released on October 4, 2011. The book discusses the MAUS series, and goes into detail about what the comic has meant to him and his family. It gives explanations to questions such as: why mice, why comics, and why the holocaust? The most moving part of the presentation was when Spiegelman said, “You’ve heard about MAUS from me, but the real person who should be telling you is my father.” He then proceeded to play a recording of his father telling a portion of the story from the novel while images of the Spiegelman family and various drawings depicting the story came on to the screen. Once the recording was over, the lecture ended with a few tears and loud round of applause. The lecture was intimate, informative, and hilarious. Being somewhat naive to comics, I was both excited and nervous, since I expected to be surrounded by people eager to discuss Superman vs. Batman, the eternal debate. This misapprehension was soon corrected when I saw everyone from students to seniors to families waiting eagerly while discussing their favorite graphic novels and artists. Not only did I discover a whole new side to comics, but I learnt it from someone full of passion and appreciation for the art.
In your Moonface POP Montreal concert showcases a local indie pop legend’s current project Eva Goodman
Culture Writer
I
ndie pop’s legendary Spencer Krug is the mastermind behind the band Moonface. Krug, best known for fronting Sunset Rubdown and the recently disbanded Wolf Parade, is also involved with a number of other musical projects, including Frog Eyes, Swan Lake, Handsome Furs, Fifths of Seven, and Destroyer. Moonface was born in January of 2010, when Krug posted a twenty-minute long track entitled Dreamland EP: Marimba and Shit-Drums as a pay-what-youwant release on his website. After the break up of Wolf Parade in May 2011, Krug focused his atten-
tion towards Moonface and, by the end of May, he had played shows in Montreal and Brooklyn under the name. He proceeded to release the album Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I’d Hoped on record label Jagjaguar in early August. Soon after, he launched a lengthy tour across the U.S. and Canada, including this past Saturday’s POP Montreal show. At the show, Krug fans gathered anxiously at Breakglass Studios to see his latest project in action. Expecting a large, crowded show, many were pleasantly surprised to find themselves in a space that more closely resembled a living room than a music venue. Breakglass Studios is a cozy, third-floor recording studio in the Mile End. It is home to an impres-
sive list of musical artists, including Krug’s bands Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, and Moonface. Other big names that have recorded at Breakglass include Montrealbased bands Islands, Stars, Unicorns, Holy Fuck, Land of Talk, and Young Galaxy. The fans, buzzing with anticipation, quickly filled up the small room, and a quiet hush fell over the crowd as a white linen curtain was pulled back to reveal the performance area. On a worn carpet, surrounded by paper Ikea floor lamps and lit-candles, stood the performers: Krug, smiling out over his electric organ and Mike Bigelow behind his large xylophone and electric drums. Krug opened in an almost shyly soft voice, thanking the audience
and noting, with no hint of irony, that he didn’t expect anyone to show up. He paused, exchanged a quick glance with Bigelow, and, at once, submerged the quiet studio in what seemed to be the voice of a different person entirely. It’s difficult to pinpoint the origin of Moonface’s magic. Perhaps it’s Krug’s singing voice, which is, for lack of a more fitting word, profound. His speaking voice, understated and gentle, relays no hint of the deep and resonating beauty that occurs as he begins to sing. Bigelow’s percussion is also remarkable: his arms relentlessly appear to be a blur of motion, striking clear and ringing keys. The pair has a remarkable chemistry, and there is a striking unity in their performance. Both men, though
more-than-comfortably accomplished musicians, performed like they desperately had something to prove. They were drenched in sweat after fifteen minutes, striking keys with their entire bodies and barely pausing between songs. The Dreamland EP opens with the line “I venture into a dreamland.” Nothing could be more fitting. Moonface’s music transports you into world built upon experimental sounds and imaginative meanderings. The best part: they’re Montreal-based and will likely be back after their October tour. Moonface’s Dreamland EP: Marimba and Shit-Drums and their full length Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I’d Hoped are both more than worth a listen.
Compendium!
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
Lies, half-truths, and sexual solidarity!
On strike until conditions improve
Poster Edged Baby Sloths
Sex just ain’t the same without MUNACA Salvador Daliance and Simone de Boudoir The McGill Daily
Bikuta Tangaman | The McGill Daily
L
ike MUNACA, we have also declared a strike this fall. The nature of our strike, however, is somewhat different. We have no qualms with wages or pensions – the thing is, certain relationships have been giving us far too few benefits. But we’re not talking about the McGill administration; we’re talking about dicks of a whole different kind. Said dicks, and those to whom they belong, have been treating us less than adequately. Much like the McGill administration, they have been withholding information, sending mixed messages, falsely portraying our situation, refusing to engage in discussions with interested parties, and broadcasting misrepresentations. For this reason we – like our role model in not-taking-any-shit-fromno-one, Miranda Hobbes – have declared a sexual strike until conditions improve. Picket signs will be the only things raised in our beds in the cumming weeks. Horns will be the only things blown, and drums will be the only things pounded. The following is a list of our demands. 1) Don’t be an asshole – espe-
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cially after we sleep with you. 2) Don’t be a hipster-leftist misogynist – the fact that you’ve read bell hooks doesn’t mean you can interrupt women when you talk to them. 3) Don’t kiss us and then introduce us to your significant other – confusing, to say the least.
4) An injunction on aloofness – refusing to talk isn’t cute, seriously. 5) Don’t talk to me only on facebook chat or by text message – try a fucking phone call. 69) Don’t play games – we’re not opposed to role playing, but let’s climb on out of the sandbox when
it comes to matters of the heart. In summary, if you want the striking to end, and the stroking to begin, you’re gonna have to step it up. Basically, we’re just looking for someone who makes us want to sing Beyonce’s “Love on Top.” Is that so much to demand?
Extra Poster Edged Baby Sloth
Actually, fuck the administration. Their response to this strike is such fucking bullshit.
JUST FUCKING END THE STRIKE MADNESS
A
lright, someone’s gotta say it, and I will. Fuck this MUNACA strike, and fuck that students can’t be against it without being accused of being capitalist and bourgeoisie. Fuck school politics. McGill works because everybody works, isn’t that what we’re supposed to be taught in school? Right now we’re all pulling their dead weight, everything’s getting backed up and the administration doesn’t even budge. Building hours are fucked and student theatre in particular is bleeding money they don’t have. If I have to listen to another air horn or see another green pin in the hallway I’m going to lose it. McGill’s a zoo this semester, and we’re all just feeding into it, not understanding that we’re just screwing ourselves in the end. Students pay for this strike. Students, with our marks, with our money, with our time and frustration, students are the only ones who lose from this strike. So fuck it, maybe I’ll protest their protest, it’d be equally productive. Fuck This! is an occasional anonymous rant column, and the barrel’s been a bit dry lately. Please send your diatribes to fuckthis@ mcgilldaily.com!!!
MINUS 167
And fuck your bullshit injunction, McGill.
MINUS 93
SERIOUSLY.
MINUS 93
LOL Rick Perry’s BLR Soundbite (go type it in on Youtube). Two of this season’s returning comedies gave gay male characters prominent screen time. Where are all the lesbians in TV?? Blue Jays finish season with a win.
TOTAL
EVEN MINUS 50 PLUS 22 MINUS 381
How’s your life been lately? Email compendium@mcgilldaily.com, I’d love to hear from you!
compendium@ mcgilldaily.com <3
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 29, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com
EDITORIAL
volume 101 number 8
editorial 3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-24 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9 phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com coordinating editor
Joan Moses
coordinating@mcgilldaily.com coordinating news editor
Henry Gass news editors
Queen Arsem-O’Malley Erin Hudson Jessica Lukawiecki features editor
Eric Andrew-Gee
MUNACA is not a dirty word Last Friday afternoon, McGill was granted an injunction against MUNACA. The injunction, or emergency court ruling, restricts union activities pertaining to picketing around campus property. Restrictions include the maintenance of a four metre distance between picket lines and McGill property, a limit of 15 picketers per group at that distance, and noise limitations. Michael Di Grappa explained the administration’s reasons for requesting the injunction in his email to all students and staff on Monday. “In response to MUNACA/Public Service Alliance of Canada pressure tactics that have been limiting access to our campus and putting members of our community at risk, McGill asked the Superior Court of Quebec for an injunction…” he explained. By portraying MUNACA picketers as a threat to the McGill community – rather than the fellow members of the community that they are – the admin misleadingly paints MUNACA workers as violent, and may isolate their fellow McGill community members from their cause. Di Grappa’s email demonizes workers and portrays picketers as being in confrontation with students.
commentary&compendium! editors
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Amina Batyreva
Contributors Edna Chan, Oles Chepesiuk, Laurent Bastien Corbeil, Morgan Ciot, Ethan Feldman, Alexis Glannelia Eva Goodman, Molly Joeck, David Kesner, Christopher Lane, Micahel LeeMurphy, Corey Lesk, Victoria Lessard, Kallee Lins, Ali Mackellar Ian Murphy, Roxana Parsa, Laura Payne Smith,Meagan Potier, Evelyne Stanley, Mathura Thevarajah, Ryan Thom
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McGill is also using its mass communication channels to undermine MUNACA’s cause in the eyes of students, propogating its own rhetoric on the strike. This is particularly unfair, as Friday’s injunction even further restricts MUNACA’s already limited capacity to distribute information on a level remotely on par with McGill. While McGill has been sending out e-mails to the McGill community, MUNACA workers do not have so much as access to their McGill emails, and, thus, may not even have direct access to the administration’s statements about them. Previously, MUNACA’s largest means of distributing information was the noise they made, the space they occupied, and the fliers they created. Now that they’ve been pushed farther away from campus, their reach has been compromised and their voice stifled. Out of the 1,700 MUNACA workers on strike, many come to campus each day to picket four metres away from their place of work. Even after almost a month, workers are still picketing to have progressive pay scales that don’t necessitate working up to 37 years before reaching maximum salary, to have control over their pensions and benefits, and to have seniority at McGill considered as part of hiring practices. Neither the union’s strike tactics nor their demands are threatening to students – McGill should stop claiming that they are. Now that MUNACA workers have been pushed even farther away from campus, it’s more important than ever the McGill community joins in mobilization efforts and supports our fellow community members by wearing buttons, attending demonstrations, and informing ourselves and our friends.
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