Vol102Iss09

Volume 102, Issue 9

October 1, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

McGill THE

DAILY

Corrupt since 1911

Hammer Squad investigates corruption

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

Page 3

SACOMSS Sexual Assault Center of the McGill Students’Society

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Non-Judgmental.

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LEADERSHIP TRAINING PROGRAM

Take the opportunity to sign up for the Leadership

Training Program’s FREE Skills Development Workshops!

These workshops were created to give students the chance to develop and build leadership and life skills. These skills often prove to enhance academic success. downtown campus.

Come and check out the following workshops ...

Who’s Leading You? Wednesday, October 3, 5:35-7:35 pm How do you know if you’re cut out to be a leader? Find out the three keys to starting out your leadership career by standing out above the rest. You will be challenged in a way you’ve never been challenged before. Are you ready to accept the challenge?

Putting Equity and Diversity into Practice Wednesday, October 10, 5:35-7:35 pm Do you understand the difference between discrimination and exclusion?

Or cultural awareness vs. cultural sensitivity? Is your club, service or organization being as inclusive as it can be? Come identify things that you can do to make your own organization more welcoming!

Captivating an Audience: Public Speaking Wednesday, October 17, 5:35-7:35pm Do you get the jitters when speaking in front of people? Public speaking can be a requirement for many professions so taking the opportunity to checking out this workshop and learn more about stress management and helpful public speaking techniques.

Registration available online see all the workshops offered this semester & register via: For more info, drop by the Leadership Training Program in the Firstin the Brown Building, Suite 2100, or call 514-398-6913

We’re here to listen.

514-398-8500

NEWS 03 NEWS Native Friendship Centre struggles with funding

The McGill Daily Monday, October 1, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

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Amid scandals, role of private sector questioned McGill University Health Centre target of corruption investigation

Concordia to emulate McGill’s Rez Project Plan Nord draws activists’ ire

07 COMMENTARY 09 SCIENCE+TECH The long road to gender parity in science Of microscopes and money

11 SPORTS Baseball’s new stats and the MVP race Pop vs. Jock recap

13 CULTURE 15 EDITORIAL 16 COMPENDIUM! Laurent Bastien Corbeil and Nicolas Quiazua The McGill Daily

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s the Charbonneau Commission – tasked with unearthing corruption in the construction sector – enters its second week of inquiry today, Quebec’s construction industry continues to be a source of scandal.

So far, nearly fifty firms have been embroiled in allegations of fraud, corruption, and collusion.

Lino Zambito, the former vicepresident of the construction company Infrabec, told the Commission last week that around ten companies share municipal contracts for the city of Montreal.

According to Zambito, firms overcharge the city by setting their prices at an artificially high rate through a system of collusion. Similar schemes exist throughout the province, he said.

However, the Quebec construction industry often overcharges without resorting to collusion. In January, La Presse reported that the city of Laval had hired six firms to renovate three water-processing plants, costing $187 million. The city said that the project has gone 60 per cent over budget.

Documents obtained by The Daily and Le Délit reveal that one of the firms that won the Laval contract, Kingston-Byers Inc., is currently working on a $6.8 million project to reconstruct the pedestrian roof terraces of McGill’s McLennan and Redpath Libraries.

In 2010, the company reportedly demanded an additional $2 million from the city of Granby for a $13.6 million contract to

Construction at the Glen site began in 2009. complete a sports centre.

According to La Presse, the firm cited “changing circumstances” as reasoning for the additional invoice.

The office of Marlène Painchaud, a legal clerk for the city of Granby, told The Daily and Le Délit that the firm was now the subject of litigation.

The raid On September 18, officers from the Unité permanente anticorruption Québec (UPAC) – known as the “hammer squad” – raided the offices of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC). In a statement released on its website, MUHC administration said that UPAC was requesting “information related to the awarding of the contract for the Glen site public-private partnership.”

UPAC spokesperson AnneFrédérick Laurence told The Daily and Le Délit that the documents obtained in the raid would be kept secret for the remainder of the investigation.

“All I can tell you is that a search was made and people were met [by the investigators],” she said in French.

While no arrest has been made, UPAC’s raid suggests wrongdoing or evidence that could warrant another investigation, according to financial crimes expert Michel Picard.

“A search warrant can only be obtained when there is evidence that something illegal has been done,” Picard told The Daily and Le Délit in French.

Public-private partnerships The MUHC is a $1.3 billion project being built under a publicprivate partnership (PPP) model, allowing private companies to have a stake in the construction and operation of public works.

Before construction, the PPP model was criticized by the president of the Ordre des architectes du Québec (OAQ), André Bourassa, who described the project as a “waste of time and money,” according to Le Devoir.

Hubert Forcier, spokesperson for the Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux (CSN) – one of the largest trade unions in Quebec – told The Daily and Le Délit in French, “When we go toward the private for budgetary reasons, we let go of public expertise.”

“We are no longer able to determine the monetary value of projects and see what is legal and what is not,” he added.

For these reasons, the CSN was “not surprised” by the UPAC raid.

Other governments have also expressed doubts over the supposed benefits of PPP schemes. A 2006 report commissioned by the New Zealand government read, “There is little reliable empirical evidence about the cost and benefits of PPPs,” and “the advantages of PPPs must be weighed against the contractual complexities and rigidities they entail.”

Proponents of PPP maintain that such partnerships are an efficient way of building infrastructure.

In an interview with The Daily and Le Délit, Roger Légaré, the General Director of the Institute for Public and Private Partnership, said in French, “Every project, whether it’s the 25 highway, the 30 [highway], or the Maison Symphonique, were done in time or before [the deadline] at a reduced cost.”

Lack of transparency The government body Infrastructure Québec is responsible for

Photo Hera Chan | The McGill Daily

planning, realizing, and following all major public infrastructure projects in the province over $40 million, including PPPs. Once a project has been approved for construction, Infrastructure Québec chooses the type of project: traditional, construction management, PPP, or turnkey. When the private sector has a high stake in the project, such as is the case in the PPP and turnkey methods, Infrastructure Québec coordinates the selection of the private firm.

“There are disadvantages to each mode. [Infrastructure Québec] does not put any mode above another,” a spokesperson for Infrastructure Québec told The Daily and Le Délit.

The CSN denounced Infrastructure Québec last week over the lack of transparency in its decision making process.

“Even recently, Infrastructure Québec has refused to give us access to information allowing us to know the conditions for future maintenance of institutions, where it is easier to negotiate lucrative contracts to private interests,” a statement on its website said in French.

Moreover, “part of the contract between [Infrastructure Québec] and the private firms has not been rendered public,” Forcier said.

Despite the criticism, Infrastructure Québec stated that no link can be made between PPPs and corruption.

As for UPAC’s raid at the MUHC, Infrastructure Québec said that it would wait for the investigation before blaming the alleged economic corruption on the method of construction.

“It’s going to depend on what UPAC will find,” the spokesperson said.

The service industry While most of the PPPs in Quebec are awarded to construction firms, other forms of PPPs exist in the service industry.

The Centre d’hébergement et de soins de longue durée (CHSLD) at St-Lambert sur le Golf is the first hospice to be built and managed under a PPP scheme.

Luc Pearson, vice president of the Fédération de la santé et des services sociaux (FSSS) for the Quebec region of Montérégie, told The Daily and Le Délit in French that Infrastructure Québec focuses on the financial aspect and “does not account for the reality of the Quebec healthcare system and the shortage of labour.”

When Infrastructure Québec presented the CHSLD project under a PPP scheme, it forecasted savings of up to a $100 million.

Pearson said the FSSS commissioned a study on the scheme shortly after.

“The results showed that the savings are made on the backs of workers [...] the $100 million in savings are made in decreased wages for employees,” he said.

The study results state that given the shortage of labour and the belowmarket wages, the PPP model could lead to a disruption in continuous care and a higher turnover rate.

Infrastructure Québec sees the competitive nature of the private sector industry as an advantage of the PPP model. But according to Pearson, competition has no place in the healthcare system.

“Health is not for sale. The private entrepreneur is there to make profits,” he said.

McGill could not be reached by press time.

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NEWS

5

The McGill Daily | Monday, October 1, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Internal funding controversies threaten Native Friendship Centre Aboriginal Awareness Week highlights land, resource issues Anita Sivabalan News Writer

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ast week, the Aboriginal Sustainability Project hosted McGill’s second annual Aboriginal Awareness Week (A AW) in collaboration with the McGill First Peoples’ House and the Native Friendship Centre of Montreal (NFCM) – an organization that nearly closed last spring due to funding issues within its governance structure.

One of many Friendship Centres across Canada, the NFCM provides a variety of health and social services for Montreal’s native community.

According to NFCM Director Brett Pineau, funding for Friendship Centres is provided by the Department of Canadian Heritage and administered by the National Association of Friendship Centres (NAFC) with assistance from provincial and territorial associations such as the Regroupement des centres d’amitié autochtones du Québec (RCAAQ).

Pineau explained that the NAFC and RCA AQ, who allocate federal funding to the Centre, had not been following the criteria outlined in the Aboriginal Friendship Centre Program (AFCP) guidelines.

In April 2011, the Centre requested a dispute resolution process to deal with these issues, but the provincial association refused to provide a representative, Pineau told The Daily.

“There is a serious structural flaw within the program itself, within the administration of this program,” he said. “In our opinion, the more layers that are

involved in the administration of these federal programs, the higher the increased potential for… program irregularities or management inconsistencies with the established norms.”

In mid-September, after the NFCM had “exhausted most avenues of diplomacy within the provincial and national associations,” it alerted federal funding authorities of the program’s irregularities, according to Pineau.

Because of the Centre’s decision to notify the Department of Canadian Heritage, the RCA AQ “elected to suspend [the NFCM’s] provincial membership and then recommend to the national association suspension of all core funding for that year and all years beyond,” Pineau told The Daily.

According to the RCA AQ’s website, however, the termination of membership was “the consequence of a decision by the NFCM to move away from the mission of a Friendship Centre to become a first-line services centre for the homeless clientele.”

“Their story keeps changing.

It changed three times already,” Pineau responded. “First of all, they said that we terminated a special agreement...which expired in 2010.

According to us, that was legally impossible to cancel an agreement that already expired on paper.”

Regarding the RCA AQ’s accusation that the NFCM was no longer providing services for the entire native community – and thus not fulfilling its role as a Friendship Centre, Pineau said that there are many different native organizations in Montreal that administer specialized services, such as the First Nations Human Resources Development Commission.

Community social and feast at NFCM on Friday.

“There are 120 Friendship Centres across Canada, each grounded in communities of varying sizes, with varying social characteristics...and each Centre adapts to its particular set of circumstances and context. The definition of a Friendship Centre is deliberately broad-based in order for this adaption to occur,” he added.

Pineau told The Daily that an unnamed member of the RCA AQ’s Board of Directors – which is composed of unelected representatives from various Friendship Centers in Quebec – told him that the directors redistributed the funding that would have gone to the NFCM themselves, leaving a portion to start up a new Friendship Centre in the city.

“There is certainly a perceived conflict of interest, in terms of a board of directors making a decision to reallocate funding to themselves,” said Pineau.

NFCM representatives will meet with the NAFC Board of Directors in October.

“This will be our last effort within the [Friendship Centre] movement itself,” said Pineau.

Access to land and resources The NFCM is not the only Aboriginal group struggling to meet its needs.

In his keynote speech last Monday, Regional Chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador Ghislain Picard, highlighted the key issues

Photo Hera Chan | The McGill Daily

of land and resources.

Picard explained that the land reserved for First Nations is limited, and that the First Nations often lack a fair share of natural resources. If access to land and resources were improved, First Nations would be better equipped to achieve economic prosperity.

Picard said that over twenty chiefs from various Nations in Quebec planned to hold a summit with the provincial government in August within one hundred days of the provincial elections to discuss land and resources issues.

“The next government will have thirty days to respond […] the clock is ticking,” Picard said.

“It’s going to be up to us to determine what will happen after that.”

Concordia to introduce sexual assault workshops in residences McGill’s Rez Project used as a model Annie Xie News Writer

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he 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy, an independent organization at Concordia University, is hoping to bring workshops to Concordia’s residences later this year to facilitate discussion on sexual assault, gender, and sexuality.

The workshops will be modeled after McGill’s Rez Project, a series of two- to three-hour long mandatory workshops for all firstyear students in residence.

Julie Michaud, the Administrative Coordinator at the 2110 Centre, is

leading the effort at Concordia.

“It’s part of a broader campaign that includes calling on the University to create a sexual assault centre and revise its policy on sexual assault… making the University a safer place for everybody,” Michaud said.

She emphasized the general lack of awareness surrounding sexual assault. “There is less information in popular culture about consent and what it looks like and what it doesn’t look like and why it’s important to get a person’s consent,” Michaud explained.

The workshops are still in their planning phase, and the 2110 Centre is currently in talks with Concordia’s Residence Life.

The 2110 Centre has obtained resources from Rez Project for workshop content, and Michaud participated in training for McGill Rez Project facilitators this past summer.

Unlike Rez Project, however, the workshops at Concordia will not be mandatory for all students in residence. Instead, Residence Assistants will be able to decide individually whether to allow students under their charge to receive the workshops.

Concordia Director of Residence Life D’Arcy Ryan told The Daily, “I don’t like to make things mandatory for students, because once you make things

mandatory for students, there’s going to be backlash.”

Michaud says the situation is “not ideal” but that she remains optimistic. “We would hope that in the future it would be a mandatory program as it is at McGill,” she said.

At McGill, members of the Sexual Assault Centre of McGill Students’ Society (SACOMSS) collaborated with other student organizations to pilot Rez Project in Gardner Hall in 2004. The workshops expanded to the rest of the University’s residences and became mandatory in 2006.

McGill’s Residence Life Advisor Adam Harris Levine has been involved with Rez Project

for several years.

“It makes a very big statement when a department as big as Residences says that this is something we stand behind so much that we are going to require it from the residences. It is one of the frameworks we use for creating a safer space in residences,” said Levine.

He added, “I can see why institutions would be anxious about supporting something like this, because people can get upset when you talk about these topics [that] are often silenced…but if we shy away from talking about this they’ll remain silenced. And I think that would be a disaster.”

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Environmentalists and Aboriginal activists join forces Lola Duffort and Waseem Haja The McGill Daily

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emonstrations were held in front of the Hyatt Regency Montreal last Thursday and Friday in response to Plan Nord conferences taking place inside the building. Another protest also took place on Friday in front of Hydro-Québec’s downtown headquarters.

Thursday’s demonstration began at 11:30 a.m. when roughly 200 protestors – mostly students, locals, and Aboriginal activists – gathered at Square Phillips at the intersection of Ste. Catherine and Union.

An hour later, the protest marched east on René-Lévesque until it reached the Hyatt, where about half of the demonstrators entered the adjacent Complexe Desjardins shopping centre.

Riot police blocked demonstrators as they attempted to climb stairs inside the complex, which connected to the Hyatt. Protesters and police stood in a tense standstill for about 15 minutes before police finally began advancing toward the demonstrators, who immediately retreated outside of the building, booing the police.

The police reported no arrests or injuries and issued no fines.

Plan Nord, the resource extraction and economic development project for northern Quebec initiated by Jean Charest’s Liberal government, was dubbed the “project of a generation” by the party and presented as a way to deal with Quebec’s massive debt.

According to the Liberal government’s calculations, Plan Nord would eventually bring in $14 billion for the province and generate 20,000 jobs every year.

Criticisms of the project have been widespread but scattered: environmental groups have said that the project does not make solid enough promises about conservation; labour unions have pointed out that a project of this scale has been designed with little public consultation; and Aboriginal

ast Thursday, McGill’s highest governing body, the Board of Governor’s (BoG), convened for its first session of the academic year.

The BoG is led by Principal Heather Munroe-Blum and Chancellor Arnold Steinberg and is composed of 25 voting members and two observers.

Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) President Josh Redel and Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) Secretary-General Jonathan Mooney are included in

Teach-in on war in Iran and the University

Wednesday, October 3 12 p.m.

Y-Intersection, McGill Facing the possibility of war with Iran, students have organized a “teach-in” to create a space for dialogue around the University’s links to the industries of war and the path to war with Iran, as well as a reflection on the past, present, and future of Quebec student antiwar mobilization.

Coffee Break with AMUSE at Mac Campus

Protesters entered the Complexe Desjardins. groups say that the plan reappropriates Aboriginal land without properly compensating their communities.

“It’s easy to think of Plan Nord as an abstract problem…with a wide variety of issues. We’re hoping that we can make the Romaine River project a central issue that people will care about,” Alliance-Romaine spokesperson Christopher Scott told The Daily at Friday’s demonstration.

Alliance-Romaine, who joined forces with Rivières Libres for the protests organized in front of HydroQuébec’s downtown headquarters, is dedicated to blocking the Romaine hydroelectric project – an $8.5 billion four-dam mega-complex on the Romaine river which would flood 279 square kilometers of territory, dry up salmon beds, and drastically reduce the oxygen content of the water.

While criticisms of Plan Nord were important talking points for the Parti Québécois during their campaign, they generally focused on the weak royalties the Liberal party had planned on charging private mining companies for extracted minerals.

“Since their election, the PQ hasn’t really clarified their position on Plan Nord,” said Scott. “We’re

Photo Shane Murphy | The McGill Daily

hoping to engage them, and to hear from Martine Ouellet, the Minister for Natural Resources, and Daniel Breton, the Minister of Sustainable Development, Environment, Wildlife and Parks.”

Friday’s demonstration in front of the Hyatt, organized online as “Defending the Land: Indigenous Women’s resistance to Plan Nord and community violence,” featured Élyse Vollant and Denise Jourdain from the North Shore Innu community of Uashat mak Mani-utenam.

Vollant and Jourdain were imprisoned in March for blockading Highway 138 to prevent HydroQuébec from building a high-power transmission line across their territory. Hydro-Québec offered the community $125 million in compensation, $80 million of which was a cash payment to the 4,000 Innu members to be paid out over fifty years.

According to the Globe and Mail, Hydro-Québec’s initial offer was $2 million. The Innus demanded $300 million.

Speaking at a conference organized by Concordia’s 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy later that day, Jourdain explained that this com-

pensation package had been subject to two referenda within the community. The first referendum returned a verdict of 59 per cent against, and the second with 54 per cent against.

Hydro-Québec ignored the results and continued construction.

Jourdain said of the process, “the justice system is a carousel, and negotiations lead nowhere,” adding that, according to her calculations, HydroQuébec was paying each member of the community $1.25 a day for the next fifty years to “allow them to destroy our rivers and pollute the air.”

During the conference’s question and answer period, Geneviève Beaudet, a member of Québec Solidaire’s (QS) political commission, asked what actions the two elected members of the QS could undertake at the National Assembly.

Vollant thanked QS for their support in presenting their petition to the National Assembly before moving on to other questions.

In general, the evening did not address concrete political action; rather, it focused on raising awareness about the disparity in rights between Aboriginals and Canadian citizens.

BoG holds first meeting of the year Jordan Venton-Rublee The McGill Daily

WHAT’S THE HAPS

Two consecutive days of action against Plan Nord

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NEWS

The McGill Daily | Monday, October 1, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

the voting members as student body representatives.

Issues on the agenda for the open session included principal’s remarks and an overview of the BoG’s handbook for 2012.

In her opening remarks, MunroeBlum described the Strategic Enrolment Management Plan, which has been in the works since 2007, as “one of the priorities of this year.”

McGill’s student body now includes 38,185 students, including both undergraduate and graduate students. Graduate and PhD research students make up 25 per cent of McGill’s student body, which Munroe-

Blum said was a “real strength.”

Also discussed at the meeting was Munroe-Blum’s wish to continue to focus on “maintaining the quality of students” while attracting students to other areas of the University – such as Macdonald Campus – through the enrolment initiative.

She also addressed the ongoing disciplinary hearings from the events of last year, stating that the hearings are being “handled one by one by a disciplinary officer to ensure fairness and consistency.”

Later in the meeting, Dean Ellen Aitken of the Faculty of Religious Studies presented to the BoG,

focusing in particular on McGill’s participation in the Tony Blair Faith Foundation’s Faith and Globalization Initiative. McGill’s Faculty of Religious studies has been a part of the initiative for three years and was recently asked to become the lead university in the network.

The Faculty of Religious Studies is McGill’s smallest faculty, with 14 professors and one faculty lecturer.

“In order to be an educated leader in this world you have to be savvy about the world’s religions,” Dean Aitken told the Board.

The next BoG meeting will be held on Thursday, December 13.

Wednesday, October 3 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Tables outside Macdonald Stewart Building In case of rain: Room 2022 Join the Association of McGill University Support Employees for coffee, tea, and snacks. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet union representatives, ask questions about the union, learn about the collective agreement, and find out how to get involved.

Montreal Council of Women presents “Honouring Women Journalists”

Thursday, October 4 11:30 a.m.

Les Jardins du Canal, 2700 Rufus Rockhead $8 tickets The Montreal Council of Women is celebrating Women’s History Month with a presentation on women in journalism by Concordia Journalism Chair and Associate Professor Linda Kay. RSVP to Frances at 514-935-1674.

7th Annual Sisters in Spirit March & Vigil for Missing and Murdered Native Women

Thursday, October 4 6 to 8:30 p.m.

Parc Emilie-Gamelin Organized by Missing Justice and the 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy, this annual event is held to honour the memories of missing and murdered women and girls, raise awareness, and demand government support for the actions of indigenous families and communities.

$2 Yoga for Stress

Fridays from 4 to 5 p.m.

Brown Building Room 5001 Join Fit@McGill and the Eating Disorder Program for a weekly yoga class and learn to de-stress.

ISAR Oath Ceremony

Monday, October 8 6 p.m.

Next to wooden helix sculpture on McGill campus The Independent Student Advocacy Resource’s Training Program is having its Oath Ceremony. The organization seeks to help students bring about changes on campus.

Commentary

The McGill Daily Monday, October 1, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

God’s anarchists

7

Religion and political activism coexist Vincent Calabrese Commentary Writer

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am both a leftist and a religious person – a fairly traditional adherent of the Jewish faith. To me these two facets of my intellectual life have always supported and strengthened one another. Nevertheless, I have grown quite accustomed to rhetoric which casually lumps religious belief alongside vile forms of oppression. This sort of thinking has unfortunately been standard among many on the left for more than a century. The Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin laid the groundwork for the standard leftist critique of religion in God and the State, writing that “the idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, in theory and practice.”

This assumption is fundamentally mistaken. Religious politics can be perverted and become oppressive, to be sure, just as easily as secular politics can be. But it is important to recognize that there is a strong tradition of religious anti-authoritarianism, and that some of these forces have been among the most successful at creating real change during the 20th century. Because this tradition is so neglected – in our classrooms and at our demonstrations – I’d like to examine the thought of two people who provide outstanding examples of what this sort of politics can look like: the Hasidic rabbi Yehudah Ashlag and the Russian

novelist Leo Tolstoy.

Ashlag is well-known in Judaism for his commentary on the mystical text the Zohar, but his social thought remains underappreciated. He envisioned a libertarian socialist society, one that can be described as both communist, in advocating collective ownership, and anarchist, in seeking to abolish state control.

In addition, Ashlag was a strident internationalist, who wrote that “the entire world is one family,” and hence that “there must be no discrimination among...all the nations of the world,” because “as long as there are differences, war will not end.”

Ashlag developed this vision for society based on the esoteric Jewish teachings of Kabbalah, the basic principle of which is that God, who is all-good, is always giving to the creatures, and never takes. Human society, Ashlag concluded, should model itself on this standard of absolute selflessness.

Another source of Ashlag’s ideas on altruism is the rabbinic work Pirkei Avot, which, in addressing the issues of property and interpersonal relations condemns “the one who says ‘Mine is mine and yours is yours,’” declaring that the pious person is one who says instead that “Mine is yours and yours is yours.” The society which can call itself pious is one in which all give all to all.

Another important source of Ashlag’s vision, a pair of Biblical verses, also happen to form the basis of Tolstoy’s Christian anarchopacifism. The first of these is “Love your neighbour as yourself.” The second is “Love the Lord your God

with all your heart.” The love of God and imitation of God’s self-giving should ground all the believer’s actions. The basic social relation according to this vision is the act of empathy toward the other, which in turn is made possible by God’s empathy for all things.

In the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth declares that “on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,” and it was from these principles, as well as from literal interpretations of certain injunctions from the Sermon on the Mount – namely to “give to whoever asks you” and to “turn the other cheek” against violence – that Tolstoy derived his anarcho-pacifist philosophy.

Tolstoy’s Christianity was universalist in that it required the believer to give all for the welfare of others, with no distinctions by race or class. But his Christianity was also radically individualist: Tolstoy taught that a Christian, if guided by the commands to love God and the neighbour, had no need of either Church or State (he was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church for this belief). The pacifism demanded of the believer by this philosophy is absolute, and does not permit even the killing of animals for food.

The most important part of Tolstoy’s religious legacy is his writing on nonviolent resistance.

These teachings had a profound impact on the young Mohandas Gandhi, who for a time lived on a Tolstoyan farm in South Africa.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was also deeply moved by Tolstoy’s philosophy of nonviolence, which he in turn learned from Gandhi.

These individuals proved that

Illustration Kate McGillivray | The McGill Daily

faith can inspire people to place their bodies on the gears of the political machine when it becomes an affront to human dignity. Their lives and work prove that religious faith does not have to be an accessory to the preservation of hierarchy in society, and has in fact been among the most potent forces in the last century’s political struggles. It is important that secularists recognize the religious contribution to leftist political causes; it is also imperative that religious people listen to the voice of their tradition, which demands that they spend their lives struggling for the oppressed.

On Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, a portion of the book of Isaiah is read at the morning service in which the children of Israel are described crying to Isaiah that their fasting and self-denial has not garnered them divine favour. But Isaiah has a different idea of what

will bring about redemption, declaring, “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn.”

The religious left must not rest until these issues – rather than say, pigheaded opposition to abortion and homosexuality – are the ones associated in the public mind with “religious values.”

Vincent Calabrese is a U3 English and Philosophy student. He can be reached at vincent.calabrese@ mail.mcgill.ca.

A long night’s journey into equality On saviour complexes, the acquisition of power, and becoming a big bad wolf Ryan Thom Memoirs of a Gaysian

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ately, I’ve been thinking about fairy tales – young women in the woods, vicious beasts, and dashing male saviours. Such differences of power, responsibility, goodness, and evil are embedded in those archetypes. If folktales are broad reflections of social reality, then which characters have I inhabited over the course of my gender transition, growing older, deepening my social consciousness? What might I yet become?

A couple weeks ago, a white, straight-identified, athletic male friend of mine invited me to take a nighttime walk up Mont Royal to

share a smoke and conversation.

Without thinking ahead too much, I agreed – and headed out wearing my most fabulous pair of tights and boots (the contextual equivalent of a red riding hood?). As we walked, my friend and I came across a group of eight or ten college-aged young men who began to catcall, and then to scream out threats and the word “faggot” over and over. I responded as experience and my father taught me: first with silence, and when they came too close, with verbal aggression of my own.

My friend remained silent. After a few minutes, they left us alone.

My friend told me how angry he was, how shocked that this sort of thing happens in Montreal, how this was the first time he had ever encoun-

tered public discrimination. How he wished he could have protected me.

“This is why,” he concluded, “we need to educate people.” “No,” I replied, “this is why queer folks need guns.”

It’s been a while since I’ve seen such surprise, fear, anger, dismay – so many emotions – flash across someone’s face all in the same instant. I don’t think our friendship will ever be the same.

Was I joking? Yes, in a way.

Physical violence is never an ideal solution to oppression, and there is something quite ugly about the desire for revenge that accompanies most revolutionary battle cries. But revenge is not what I am writing about today.

I am writing about what I, and many oppressed people, have had to

do to survive in a world where I am not, cannot, do not have the luxury of being surprised by public threats of violence against my person on a daily basis. Where, as a visibly trans* person of colour, my relationship with the police and agents of the state, who are supposedly mandated to protect me, ranges from suspicious to outright hostile. Where I am, at best, a fragile, victimized thing to be protected by brave, straight men – the freakish damsel in distress.

And if I defend myself with fists, blade, or bullet – as, infamously, the Black Panther Party for SelfDefense chose to, then I become the monster in the woods, the big bad wolf, the deranged extremist who must be shut away from society for everyone’s good. I become CeCe

McDonald, the trans* woman of colour imprisoned for stabbing her attackers. This is the choice the marginalized are given: passive victimhood or characterization as evil and criminally insane.

But I do not accept this reality.

Queer people, people of colour, survivors in the margins, we are who we must be: Little Red Riding Hood with a machete in her basket, the wolf with a nose for compassion.

Would-be saviours in the woods, beware: we are not what you think.

We are writing a new fairy tale. We are bringing a new time upon.

Ryan Thom’s Memoirs of a Gaysian is one of The Daily’s 2012-2013 columns.

Reach them at memoirsofagaysian@ mcgilldaily.com.

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Commentary

The McGill Daily | Monday, October 1, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Letters Inclusive? LOL

Fendy/Mendy

Confession of desire

Do we need to send bullets?

Bang goes the union

In his September 13 diatribe (“A personal attack from behind a screen,” Commentary, page 6) on the value and place of sarcasm in civil discourse, Morton Mendelson stated that during orientation, “a world-record fruit salad was prepared...to promote the values of inclusivity.” Like no doubt at least a number of other people who have passed through McGill’s gates over the years, I suffer from a digestive disorder that prevents me from eating fruit salad: had I been a student at orientation week this year, I would have faced the choice of being excluded from the festive conclusion to the activity that all my peers would be allowed to partake in, or suffering in pain and discomfort for a number of days, just for the privilege of taking part in the activity all my peers were. Is this how the Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) – with his PhD in psychology and expertise in adolescent psychology – defines “inclusivity?” Or are those of us with chronic diseases (Crohn’s disease, colitis, et cetera) simply not considered worthy of inclusion?

To the McGill students who experienced a similar sense of exclusion and devaluing of your personhood while reading Professor Mendelson’s piece, please accept my most heartfelt wishes of solidarity and strength.

In four years, you can finish at McGill and move on to an institute of higher learning where your presence and participation will be valourized, rather than shunned.

In other words, it gets better.

I’m writing in response to the piece “A personal attack from behind a screen” (Commentary, September 13, page 6) by Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson – in particular, I’d like to comment on his reference to McGill’s Policy on Harassment, Sexual Harassment, and Discrimination Prohibited by Law. I found this reference not only ridiculous, but insulting to those who have actually faced harassment or discrimination at McGill. There is simply no comparison between a public figure that has a satirical story written about them and an employee, student, or other member of the McGill community who survives harassment, sexual harassment, or discrimination. Since Mendelson is a public figure (and he has chosen to become one), his actions and words are up for discussion and comment in ways that those of the average person at McGill are not; this discussion can involve both serious and satirical commentary.

Further, Mendelson is in a position of authority at McGill – a critique (even a somewhat absurdist one) of the way he exercises this authority or acts in his position cannot be construed as harassment. To do this would not only ignore the power relations usually involved in harassment and discrimination, but would also leave the media almost unable to perform one of its most important functions: to seriously inspect and criticize authority.

Lastly, for Mendelson to compare the Compendium! piece to harassment and discrimination seriously undermines survivors of harassment or discrimination. He belittles what survivors have gone through by comparing it to a Compendium! article and, by referring to harassment and discrimination in an almost casual way, he contributes to a culture at McGill that does not take these issues seriously or work to end them on campus.

In their September 17 article (“Confessions of a feminist killjoy,” Commentary, page 8), Isabella Mancini and Jamie MacLean contend that “If you were an astronaut you might find it weird that... no one understands the terms you use at work everyday.” Perhaps this statement reveals a fundamental disconnect between feminists and the rest of us. What astronauts do on a daily basis is, quite literally, rocket science, and they are likely far from surprised that laymen are clueless about even the basics of physics, let alone the complexities they deal with. Astronauts don’t find this offensive nor repressive, but recognize pragmatically that this is the way the world works.

And when they talk about physics and space to the rest of us they do so without condensation and criticism because they want us to know what they know and reduce our ignorance. I guess I just want the authors to keep this in mind as they struggle to spread awareness about their passions. Yes, I confess, I know very little about the information you study on a daily basis. I’m sorry about that too, I guess. I genuinely would like to be more aware of how I contribute to oppression in society and become informed about feminism, but just be fucking nice about it when you fill me in. Please.

Contrary to Moe Nasr’s kneejerk condemnation of McGill’s partnership with Israeli universities in “64 Bullets from McGill to Tel Aviv” (Commentary, September 24, page 6), McGill’s initiative is an opportunity for constructive dialogue in a region of conflict that is a locus of campus activism. Although the author suggested that this partnership is a guise for the support of the Israeli government’s policies, a university partnership is independent from the politics of its country.

Analogous to our own school, the faculty and students that generate the research at McGill will be fortunate enough to come from a variety of different backgrounds and political orientations. Although the author alluded to one professor’s rationale for defense techniques, he did not make reference to the boisterous student activism that permeates the heterogeneous student bodies at Israeli universities. Just like at McGill, Israeli students and staff are not required to be complicit with the actions of their government.

Like in any democratic country, universities are incubators for intellectual discourse and provide a safe forum for dissension, Israel being no exception. Through my internship at OneVoice, a movement advocating a two-state solution, I was exposed to campus activism that openly criticizes many political policies the author refers to. Although the author claims McGill implicitly supports the Israeli policies towards Palestinians, many Israeli students certainly do not.

Nevertheless, while ignoring some of the heinous punishment endured by Palestinians who “collaborate” with Israelis, or the reprehensible persecution of homosexuals in the Palestinian Authority, the author implores McGill to support Palestinian academia. McGill should offer its students and faculty the opportunity to engage with the brightest of the international community, regardless of their geographical provenance. We have been offered an opportunity to globalize our campus activism and we owe it to ourselves to take advantage of the chance to interact with those at the forefront of the conflict.

I was happy to read about my Judicial Board case against the Arts Undergraduate Society last week (“Bangs v. Calver/Cheng J-Board preliminary hearing held,” News, September 24, page 4). The reality is that the election period last year featured serious electoral misconduct, which neither former President [Jade] Calver nor former CRO of Elections AUS [Victor] Cheng denied in their response to my petition. In fact, I would draw attention to how closely our accounts lined up, with one or two minor exceptions, leaving the many incidences of electoral violations more or less uncontested.

As for me, I am very excited that we get the chance to go forward here. This case is not just about the individual questions at hand, but about a larger belief in the need for accountable student unions. Of course I do care deeply about the questions I am contesting. But I would remind you that democracy – even the kind we practice in a university – does not run on impartiality, nor should it.

AUS members deserve a fair election, regardless of the outcomes. The integrity of our student union processes, especially in the tail-end of a massive student mobilization campaign centered around student-union syndicalist organizing, is extremely important. Far too often we disregard the goings-on in the AUS, preferring to focus on SSMU or external news, and every year that I have been at McGill there has been at least one major scandal involving the AUS. Up until a couple of years ago, the AUS didn’t even pay their taxes! We need to stand up for the integrity of this organization, and encouraging fair, responsible elections is just one step forward.

—Max Silverman B.A. (Honours) with Great Distinction, Canadian Studies, 2010; Civil Law candidate, Université du Québec à Montréal; Columnist, McGill Tribune, 2008-2009; 2009-2010 Vice-President (External) – SSMU 2006-2007; 2007-2008 Councilor, Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) 2005-2006; Founding President, Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE); Worm Compost Workshop Facilitator, Gorilla Composting McGill, 2004-2005

—Joan Moses U3 Honours Political Science Daily Coordinating Editor 2011-2012 and Design&Production Editor 2010-2011

—Mark Bay U3 Geography and Economics P.S. And for full disclosure (re: Adrian Turcato, “Don’t make excuses for rape culture,” Commentary, September 13, page 5) I am a mixed race AsianCaucasian male. That shouldn’t matter really though.

—Kiara Kaminski U2 Religious Studies and Economics

—Chris Bangs U3 Economics

SCIence+Tech

The McGill Daily Monday, October 1, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

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Science: Why does it have to be “A Girl Thing”?

Gendered advertising is not the solution

Illustration Esmond Sage Veronica Winslow The McGill Daily

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his summer, a video went viral on YouTube – no surprise there – but this particular video touched on a rather heated topic: that of women in science. The European Commission’s “Science: It’s A Girl Thing” campaign, designed with the admirable goal of encouraging more young women to pursue careers in science, was launched in perhaps the most offensive, demeaning way imaginable. The campaign’s debut video delivers a frenzy of techno music, pink everything, lipstick, giggling, skinny models, short skirts, sky-high heels, makeup, sexy poses, hugging, some beakers, words like “hydrogen” because oh-my-godhydrogen-like-totally-cool, and the list goes on. Then, at the end, the words, “Science: It’s a girl thing!” are splashed across the screen.

Almost immediately, the people of the internet, especially female scientists, took to the comments and ripped into the video, denouncing it as offensive, demeaning, and insulting, not only to women in science, but to women in general.

In many places, North America included, women are underrepresented in the sciences. It makes sense to develop campaigns aimed at young women to show them that science is just as much theirs as it is anyone else’s, and that no one can tell them otherwise. It’s a passion, just the same as fash-

ion or makeup is. But is the real issue that science is not spoken “in [women’s] language,” as Michael Jennings, European Commission spokesman for science, feels is necessary, or is it that women cannot seem to be taken seriously by their male counterparts due to a greater societal problem? Beyond the offensive nature of the suggestion that women need a tailor-made language in order to find something interesting, the responses to the video are proof enough that the latter is the real issue.

It does not make sense to promote science as a “girl thing.”

Science is an everyone thing, an anyone thing. Thus, a good promotional campaign of the sciences would be better off trying to get to the root of the problem – that society at large does not fully acknowledge women and men as equal, especially when it comes to the workplace – rather than further differentiating men and women by specifically targeting young women. It should address all people, to bring awareness to the problem that must be fixed from within.

So, where does McGill stand in this issue of women taking an equal place with men in the sciences? I interviewed a few of our own women in science, along with Professor Martin Grant, Dean of Science, to get an idea of McGill’s scientific situation.

Chelsea Gilliam, a student in Chemistry and Nursing, said, “[I’ve personally experienced] a very equal atmosphere within the science world.” Jacqueline Riddle, another

student in Chemistry, agreed: “I don’t think the science faculty at McGill is a mostly male environment. […]Obviously there are departments that are male-dominated, but there are also departments that are female-dominated.”

The statistics given to me by Dean Grant are evidence of this: about 60 per cent of the 4,000 undergraduate science students are women, and more than one third of professors hired since June 2005, when he became Dean, have been women. It is a proud number for Dean Grant, but he does not wish to pat anyone on the back for it, himself included. “I want people to keep working on it,” he stated. “It requires constant vigilance.” Considering that all six of the female professors in the Physics department have been hired in the past ten years, it is clear that this is an upward trend.

Melanie Lyman-Abramovitch, a Computer Science student with minors in both Physics and Math, disagreed. “I actually feel pretty strongly about this kind of thing,” she asserted. “I’m in Computer Science, which is particularly bad off. I have classes where women are less than 10 per cent of the students.” When asked if she ever felt uncomfortable being a woman in science, she replied, “All the time. Every day. I’m writing this from the Physics lounge.

There are currently three women in here (including me) and nineteen men. Sometimes, if I’m the only girl here, they forget that I’m here. I then get to listen to a lot of degrad-

ing, unpleasant talk.” It’s important to note that while women are rarely told that they are incapable of doing science based on their gender, merely a discrepancy in numbers can create an uncomfortable environment.

This, however, is something that needs to be changed at the societal level, she commented.

“I don’t think any one school can solve this problem.”

Dean Grant believes it is profoundly important to make all students comfortable and able to work in their academic environment. He stated, “What actually changes things is that people feel comfortable with it and they see role models.” That is why he strives to hire smart, young, progressive women and men, who can be inspiring role models to the students, willing to both teach and research alongside them. For Dean Grant, it is important for students to identify with their professors. “It’s the most profound thing we do,” he says.

In some students’ eyes, Dean Grant’s efforts appear to be working. “I am very happy with the way McGill handles women in science. I realize there is a great deal of discrimination out there that women face at other universities, and I am thankful that McGill has seemingly eliminated this from their practices,” says Gilliam.

The problem comes down to the specific departments – particularly the students in those departments. Physics, Math, and Computer Science have fewer women than all the other departments, and women like Lyman-

Abramovitch in those disciplines notice the discrepancy in ways that are not necessarily felt by women in other sciences.

Maddy Anthonisen, a Physics undergrad, says that she would be happy if a student club dedicated to women of science existed at McGill.

“I think it’s a great idea; women are dramatically underrepresented in certain scientific fields (physics in particular) so it’s good to have a special campaign to target this issue…. There could be more clubs or programs dedicated to women in science. Maybe the club could talk to high school students.”

However, Gilliam says that starting a club exclusive for women in science would be no help. “It … would go against the ideal of science being non-gendered. A special “women in science” club would suddenly raise barriers and create a strong distinction of men versus women. The goal should be to integrate both genders equally, not separate them.”

Therein lies the solution: rather than dedicating a campaign to women in particular, there should simply be promotion of integration and equality of gender in science, wherein male and female students work together. While creating a safe space for women in the world of science is a necessary and admirable endeavour, the promotion of scientific careers should not be targeted to a single gender. The ideal of a non-gendered discipline is the goal, not a shift from “male dominance” to “female takeover.”

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science+tech

The McGill Daily | Monday, October 1, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Funding and the FEMR How to spend $10 million on a microscope S. Azam Mahmood Synapses and Systems

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ome to a $6 million microscope, the Facility for Electron Microscopy Research (FEMR) is one of the most highly funded labs at McGill. The Daily sat down with its Director and founder, Dr. Hojatollah Vali, who described what it’s like running a lab at McGill, especially at a financially uncertain time. He also answered questions about the monstrosity of a microscope that the FEMR hosts, shedding light on what it does, how it works, and why it’s such an important tool. It’s known as the state-of-the-art FEI Titan Krios 300 kV cryo-scanning/transmission electron microscope, and Vali gave us an idea as to why it cost, in total, a whopping $10 million.

McGill Daily (MD): In short, how would you describe the FEMR? Dr. Hojatollah Vali (HV): When I first came to work at McGill, the electron microscopes were…all over the campus. Different faculties had their own microscopes for different purposes. Out of the total of 18 microscopes, 12 of them did not work. I thought it would be important to develop a facility which would allow and promote research using electron microscopy in all the disciplines that [it] was relevant to.

Hence, I drafted a proposal to set up what later became the FEMR. MD: Are the facilities of the FEMR open to any department at McGill?

HV: Absolutely. Any department at McGill can use the FEMR’s facilities. People from outside McGill, from other universities, [also] come and use [our] equipment. We also make it a point not to charge high user fees because we want to promote academic excellence and the idea of learning, which would be difficult if we charged high prices.

MD: The most interesting piece of equipment in the lab is the Titan Krios. When was that bought?

HV: That was actually in 2009.

The Titan Krios microscope, pictured from behind.

But it took two years for us to install it. The problem was that the ceiling was not high enough to accomodate the 4.5 metre height of the microscope. It was because of this renovation that its installation was delayed.

And unfortunately, this renovation cost McGill about $4 million.

MD: This renovation was just for the microscope to be hosted in the building?

HV: Yes, it was just for the microscope.

MD: And how much did the microscope itself cost?

HV: The microscope’s cost was about $6 million, but that came from government agencies, from the CFI (Canada Foundation for Innovation). Almost $4 million of the renovation costs was completely from McGill.

MD: What exactly does the Titan Krios do? What makes it such a special state-of-the-art machine?

HV: It really comes down to the question of conventional electron microscopy versus more advanced cryo-electron microscopy. Cryoelectron microscopy is to examine the structure of cells, proteins, poly-

mers, et cetera. It’s the best way to get the most accurate structure of such systems. Your samples are frozen at the liquid nitrogen temperature, since the microscope operates at this temperature. The entire time, your sample is frozen…and is never exposed to any form of dehydration.

This is a very advanced and state-ofthe-art technique [that produces] some of the best results. That is why this microscope is so unique. But also why it is so expensive.

MD: How many of these microscopes are there in the world?

HV: When we bought it, it was the first one. But right now, I think there are about twenty or so in the world. This is the only one in Canada.

MD: Would you say the FEMR is one of the best-funded labs at McGill?

HV: Yes, although it’s difficult to say. We get $135,000 a year. There are some labs that get more, and others that get less. It really depends on your requirements, how much you really need to conduct quality research.

The costs of other labs and facilities may be less, so we would take more priority in terms of finances.

Photo Hera Chan | The McGill Daily

MD: How does funding work for the FEMR in general?

HV: Maintenance of [our instruments] is very expensive. […] We get grants, user fees, and support from the university. And usually these machines are on the service contract.

But generally there’s a possibility that grant agencies will support us. Unfortunately, since the Conservative government came in, most of these grants are gone.

Some agencies in Quebec…[support] us – we have one grant from NanoQuebec that’s providing only for the maintenance.

But, ultimately, the university has to support us. The indirect cost for this facility is huge. You need electricity, maintenance, air-conditioning – all these things come at a very high price. And McGill covers all this.

MD: McGill estimates that its budget will be heavily affected by the freeze in tuition. Do you think this would affect this lab?

HV: That’s something we have to see. They might be able to come up with a solution. Unfortunately,

money is always an issue. Tuition is a big issue, but it’s not the only issue. The grant issue is a very big issue as well – the fact that, with the Conservative government coming into power, we have lost access to many grants. Last year, we had two or three grants which don’t even exist anymore. But, in terms of tuition, I think we [should] share [the responsibilities]. For instance, my colleagues and I don’t get high salaries. We get either half or one-third of what we would get in the private sector. But we stay here because we are committed. We are here for the students and that’s something they need to realize. The money doesn’t go anywhere – it doesn’t go to buy luxuries; it’s going to maintain [the quality of the lab]. It’s not here for our salaries. The students have to understand this. We all have to contribute in our own way.

MD: Have you experienced a financial change already?

HV: Oh, yes. Every year, we are getting a certain chunk cut.

It’s not that we don’t have enough money to cover our expenses; we are reducing our expenses. We are honestly cut every day and gradually that adds up.

MD: What separates this lab from other labs?

HV: Nowhere else in the world can students touch state-of-theart instruments like the Titan Krios. We are the only lab in the world that actually trains students in how to operate such high technology machinery and such state-of-the-art equipment. We see it as theirs – as the students’.

The mentality of the FEMR is to incorporate students. Everything we have, we share with them.

And this is really the only place in the world where you can get such experience. It’s important for the students to know and remember that we really are here for them.

We are all part of the system. We are all in this together.

S. Azam Mahmood can be reached at synapses@mcgilldaily.com.

Introducing Synapses and Systems, Sci+Tech’s biweekly column Synapses The function of the synapse is to transfer information, in the form of electrical activity, from one cell to another. Consider the information that is difficult to find, the issues we cannot approach, and the questions that are impossible to answer. Now reflect on a way in which light can be shed on these issues, through the transfer of knowledge from its protected sources, to your very hands. This column is your synapse, your mechanism through which necessary information is transferred from its protected sources, to the general public.

Systems A system is defined as a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network. McGill is often considered a closed system. It’s important to critically view perspectives outside the McGill bubble, and to understand how very interrelated certain subsystems are. Your setting is your system, the world in which all your information is densely packed. This column will make this community a system that is complete, yet incomplete, isolated yet integrated.

Integration To pretentiously quote Donald Rumsfeld: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know.

There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” This column is here to illuminate the shadowed, dark unknowns. It is here to transform the outlook and perspective of the McGill community, by linking science to real life at McGill, by being the synapse that alters the system.

Sports

The McGill Daily Monday, October 1, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

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Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

What’s valuable, anyway?

New statistics shed light on age-old debate Elie Waitzer Sports Writer

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ere we are again, with almost 162 games in the books. The daily grind of baseball’s regular season is over in a few weeks, and it’s time to start thinking about awards, specifically, the Most Valuable Player (MVP).

Since 1931, the Baseball Writers Association of America has chosen the winner of the award in each league, and almost every year, fans are outraged. What qualifies a player as an MVP? Is it the big round numbers? Do they carry their team on his back down the stretch? Do they win the Triple Crown? Do they hustle down the first baseline every time? The real question is, can we accurately quantify a player’s performance over a season – can we throw all the numbers into a formula and come out with a clear winner? This is what the emerging field of “sabermetrics,” the application of statistical analysis to baseball, attempts to find out. And the answer thus far has been: pretty much.

Widely considered to be the father of sabermetrics, Bill James pioneered the field in the late seventies with the Bill James Baseball Abstract. Since then, sabermetrics has attained widespread popularity and recognition. Many big league general managers and

broadcasters now use advanced statistics in order to evaluate players, and perhaps no other statistic has had as much influence as Wins Above Replacement.

Commonly abbreviated as WAR, the stat attempts to summarize a baseball player’s entire performance into one number by measuring the value of a player in total team wins.

It essentially asks, “If this player got injured and their team had to replace them with a minor leaguer or bench player, how many wins would the team lose?” The formula includes weighted values for hitting, defense, and base running while taking into account park factors and the difficulties of each defensive position. With the focus now shifting away from traditional counting stats such as wins, earned run average, batting average, and runs batted in (RBI), and toward advanced stats such as WAR, the players who win the MVP this year are going to be very different from the players who won it in years past.

For a good example of how the MVP has been traditionally decided, let’s go back to the 1995 season. Mo Vaughn is declared the American League (AL) MVP despite significantly under-producing Cleveland’s Albert Belle in almost every statistical category. If we take a look at the sabermetric stats under the hood, the picture gets even crazier.

Vaughn’s WAR of 5.2 pales in comparison to Belle’s AL-topping 7.4 WAR – Vaughn didn’t even crack the top

15 in overall WAR that year. However, while WAR is good at measuring individual performance out of context, it is often unreliable when evaluating a player relative to the league, or relative to another player. The statistic Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) measures precisely how many runs a player has created relative to the league average of 100. For example, a 125 wRC+means a player created 25 per cent more runs than league average. In 1995, Mo Vaughn won the MVP with a wRC+ of 138 in the same year that Albert Belle posted a wRC+ of 174 – that’s a 36 per cent gap in run creation.

So, how did Belle create 36 per cent more runs than the league’s “most valuable player” and receive no recognition? For one, Belle’s surly personality and short temper earned him no love. He frequently attacked fans for shouting racial slurs and making light of his drinking problem. By the infamous 1995 season, his volatility had antagonized the media, who chalked up their MVP decision to “character.” Later, commenting on the MVP debate that year, Vaughn said, “People are looking at the whole thing, and that it’s not just numbers.” This is the common debate over the MVP – is it numbers, or numbers and intangible characteristics like leadership and character?

Will it be “not just numbers” this year? Can we throw things like character and leadership and hustle out the window now that

we have shiny new stats like WAR and wRC+? Let’s take a look at the candidates.

The National League (NL) is basically a three-man race between San Francisco’s Buster Posey, Pittsburgh’s Andrew McCutchen, and the defending MVP, Milwaukee’s Ryan Braun. While Braun’s bat is essentially keeping his team alive down the stretch, the Brewers are probably not going to make it into the postseason.

Last winter’s performance enhancing drug allegations aren’t going to help either. As for McCutchen, he currently leads the NL with a .336 batting average. Pittsburgh hasn’t played meaningful baseball in a month, though, and McCutchen’s MVP case just isn’t strong enough to push him over the top despite his NL-topping 7.9 WAR. Posey will probably win the NL MVP this year. San Francisco has already clinched the NL West, and it has a lot to do with Posey.

As a team, the Giants offense has managed to post a slightly below average wRC+ of 98; Buster Posey owns a wRC+ of 158, an elite level of production rare at the catcher position. Posey has been the team’s biggest offensive weapon down the stretch. Since the AllStar break (and the suspension of Melky Cabrera, the team’s top producer), Posey has smacked 13 home runs, driven in 56, and maintained a .384 batting average. No doubt this scorching stretch will

be fresh in voters’ minds as they cast their MVP ballots.

In the AL, rookie phenom Mike Trout of Anaheim has all but run away with the MVP Award, even with Miguel Cabrera’s impressive season for Detroit. Trout leads the majors with a massive 9.5 WAR – that’s as many wins as superstars Edwin Encarnación and Josh Hamilton have accumulated this year combined. Incredibly, Trout didn’t make his season debut until April 29th, almost a full month into the season. Prior to 2012, the 21-year-old only had forty major league at-bats under his belt. By traditional statistics though, Trout’s season doesn’t look as traditionally MVP-worthy on paper. Miguel Cabrera has hit almost twice as many home runs as Trout, and leads him by wide margins in batting average and RBIs, and Cabrera has a chance to win the first Triple Crown since 1967.

However, WAR tells us a different story. Trout’s rare combination of power, speed, athleticism, and the ability to hit for average makes him a valuable contributor in every aspect of the game. He leads the majors with 47 stolen bases, makes spectacular catches in center field seem routine, his arm is a cannon, and his bat isn’t too shabby either. Superlatives aside, Mike Trout has been the life of Anaheim’s team since his debut, and even if Anaheim doesn’t make it into October, he deserves the AL MVP.

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sports

The McGill Daily | Monday, October 1, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Illustration Hera Chan and Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

Pop vs. Jock Charity basketball game offers hoops and harmonies Timothy Lem-Smith The McGill Daily

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s I walked into the McGill gym last Sunday afternoon, the results of the second annual Pop vs. Jock – a charity basketball game put on by Arcade Fire’s Win Butler – seemed preordained. Watching McGill Redmen and Concordia Stingers effortlessly throwing down reverse doublepump slam dunks on the “Jock” end of the court, while a seven foot giant hefted a much smaller, bearded yoga instructor towards the rim by his underarms for a dunk on the “Pop” end during warm-ups, seemed to underscore the absurdity of Pop vs. Jock as a concept.

Not that the point of a charity game should be to display the best that competitive basketball has to offer. But at least during the warm-ups, it looked that we were about to witness the reverse equivalent of what would happen if Pop vs. Jock was not a basketball game but a battle of the bands – that is to say, this was going to be a rout.

Canadian DJ Kid Koala, looking

dapper in a giant koala costume, played a remixed version of the national anthem. The players lined up facing each other and were introduced by a couple of announcers who had the charisma of radio hosts: people used to not hearing people laughing at their jokes.

Some of the standouts from the Pop team were Arcade Fire members Win Butler and his brother, Will, alongside The Strokes bassist Nikolai Fraiture, and Martin Starr of Freaks and Geeks fame.

The aforementioned sevenfoot giant turned out to be proballer Luke Bonner, the brother of the NBA’s Matt “Red Rocket” Bonner, while the diminutive yoga instructor was introduced as Ryan Leier, a former college player who now resembles a Norse hero because of his bushy blonde beard. On the more anonymous Jock team, there were surprisingly few McGill players, but it was possible to pick out Redmen guard Karim Sy-Morissette and Martlet point guard Dianna Ros. Once the game started, it became clear that despite the obvious discrepancy in athleticism, the game wasn’t going to be the one-

sided affair warm-ups had foretold.

Win Butler proved himself a savvy post player, threading graceful no-look passes to cutting teammates. His younger brother, though relatively inept as a player, had the energy of a pre-teen riding high on endorphins; he bounded around the court even when he was supposed to be on the bench. Beneath Leier’s outward yogi was a pretty wellrounded basketball IQ, manifested in his effectiveness as an unselfish point guard. Starr, for his part, led the Pop team to a late first quarter comeback.

After coming into the game in the second quarter, Fraiture seemed put off when a soaring jock tried to block his breakaway layup and tumbled down on top of him. But he seemed unfazed a moment later when he came back down the court and made good on a short jumpshot, raising his hands to the sky afterwards in delight to form the pose of a Vector cereal posterboy.

At halftime, the game was still neck and neck, with the Jocks holding on to a narrow 46-43 lead. The halftime show

began with a disorienting glowin-the-dark roller disco session, the rules of which were unclear.

Afterwards, Talking Heads’ lead singer David Byrne teamed up with Fraiture and the Butler brothers to perform covers of “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians, and then K.C. and the Sunshine Band’s “That’s the Way (I Like it).” The crowd was almost as delighted as Will Butler.

The second half was no less close than the first. Highlights included the Jocks making a series of impressive putback dunks, a small child in the crowd holding up a cardboard sign that read, “Basketball was originally played with a soccer ball until it was changed in 1920,” and an excited Will Butler trying in vain to distract Jocks taking foul shots by furiously twirling towels and jumping up and down behind the basket.

The real drama came in the final moments of the game, though.

With just over a minute left on the game clock and the Pop team down by a few points, a referee made a questionable foul call on a Pop player that enraged Win Butler. Butler threw his hands in the air and got

in the ref’s face before stomping to the other end of the court yelling profanities like, “That’s weak shit!”

A minute later, Leier took his first and only shot of the game, a heroic three-pointer that tied the game up and sent the crowd into hysterics. But a referee called the shot off, probably for no other reason than to see if he could make Win Butler’s head explode, which it almost did. But, seeing the advantage his status as a world-renowned rockstar afforded him over a university-level referee, Butler grabbed a microphone and threw the decision to the crowd. He faced us and said, “Because this is a charity game, we’re going to let you decide!”

The people spoke, the basket counted, and at the last second a Jock hit a cool three-pointer that sealed his team’s victory.

The teams celebrated as Queen’s “We Are the Champions” blasted from the speakers – a final attempt by Pop to steal glory from the Jocks.

As the crowd filed out, gold confetti burst out of two confetti machines and rained down over Pop and Jock alike.

Culture

The McGill Daily Monday, October 1, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

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Culture Haps

Faust October 1 to 4 9:15 p.m.

Cinéma du Parc 3575 Parc Avenue $8.50 students, $11.50 regular Winner of the 2011 Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Aleksandr Sukorov’s version of the German legend draws lightly on Goethe and Thomas Mann to create an original adaptation.

Sukorov’s latest continues his series of films on the corrupting effects of power, which he has previously explored in movies about Hitler, Lenin, and Hirohito.

McGill Jazz Students October 2 5:00 p.m.

Upstairs Jazz Bar 1254 Mackay Free Every Tuesday and Thursday, Montreal’s classiest jazz venue hosts students of McGill’s jazz program for a two-hour set. Grab a drink and enjoy the music without the hefty regular cover that the Upstairs charges for professional groups. Concordia students play the same time slot on Wednesday.

Illustration Alice Shen | The McGill Daily

Popcorn movie needs a little butter Inescapable struggles to escape mediocrity Hillary Pasternak Culture Writer

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n the taxonomy of action heroes, Adib Abdul Kareem, played by Alexander Siddig, is more akin to an updated Hitchcockian everyman than the nigh invincible badasses of the eighties and nineties. There’s a chase scene that lasts about one city block, and ends with our hero’s ungraceful, clearly painful collision with a slow-moving car. His wounds carry over from scene to scene. He winces in pain. He looks like hell.

A former Syrian intelligence operative, Adib, has left his unsavory past behind for a quiet family life in Toronto. But when his daughter Muna disappears on an unexpected jaunt to Damascus, it takes about the space of a scene change for Adib to book a flight, start opening old boxes full of old passports and photos, and make phone calls he probably doesn’t

want to. There to grease his way through Syrian customs and into various government institutions is Fatima (Marisa Tomei, in femme fatale mode if we’re to judge by the eye makeup), an old flame that’s kept burning while he was away.

While it’s refreshing to see a less-than-superhuman action hero, it’s hard not to realize a certain overly pat thread weaving through the plot: the action doesn’t actually kick in until about two thirds of the way through the movie, so before that, we have a sort of modern Middle Eastern noir. Albeit with the clues outlined in fluorescent chalk – a plain blue headscarf found in Muna’s hotel room leads directly to a vendor with whom she’d struck up a reasonably confessional friendship. Adib picks one photo of his daughter out of hundreds on a restaurant wall in record time.

The more obvious bits of the film wouldn’t matter as much if

Inescapable were intended to be fun or campy, but that’s obviously not the goal here. It doesn’t have enough emotional oomph to function as a morality tale, and the plot isn’t quite taut or twisty enough to do any justice to the tradition of corrupt-government thrillers. The movie seems to be at its best when operating as an acidic love letter to Damascus.

Though it wasn’t shot on location, director Ruba Nadda has found a way to capture a bit of authentic-feeling life and bustle during street scenes, as well as a palatable undercurrent of paranoia fitting for a place with about a dozen secret police organizations.

The movie seems to draw its principal line between bureaucratic obstruction and honest individual struggle, preferably outside of the corrupt system.

Nothing ever gets done within: Adib might never have gotten into the country without Fatima’s outside contacts. Paul Ridge of the Canadian embassy (Joshua

Jackson) isn’t any good to the mission until he takes off the suit and starts trawling the streets alongside our intrepid hero.

Adib’s old friend Sayid (Israeli actor Oded Fehr, who you’ll half recognize from a supporting role in one action movie or another) is almost immediately recognizable as untrustworthy, as we first meet him in military dress, working as a government desk jockey. Our hero, on the other hand, politely-but-firmly bucks authority. He never lies, never misleads anyone, and only asks for the truth with the firm, sure demeanour of someone with justice on his side, keeping bad cop tactics as an absolute last resort. This is a universe where being the good guy is a decision. Maybe not an easy or safe choice, but certainly a clear one. Siddig doesn’t do much to give us a look at Adib’s inner life. Though the camera seems to adore close-ups of Adib’s handsomely haggard mug, we never get to see what goes on behind it.

Dexterity: READ Books with Kathy Slade October 3 6:00 p.m.

Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery 1455 de Maisonneuve O. Free admission The Leonard & Bina Ellen gallery is hosting Dexterity, a series of lectures highlighting research and initiatives at university art galleries. This Wednesday, Kathy Slade, the manager and buyer for READ Books, is giving a lecture about the works currently being published at the Charles H. Scott Gallery, the institution attached to Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

Parampara October 5 7:30 p.m.

Tanna Schulich Hall 555 Sherbrooke Street West $16 to $35 for tickets If you’ve never heard of Pandit Satish Vyas, the santoor (a flat lap harp) playing musician behind Parampara, then you’re missing out! Vyas plays music that sounds like dreams rolled in honey, like clouds dipped in gold, like fruit made ripe and sweet by a million suns.

Go for rapture, go for wonder, go for love.

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The McGill Daily | Monday, October 1, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Culture

Inkwell - Julia Isler The Education of Agnes The day was cold and wet, brightened only by the yellow leaves that flew like damp swarming glitter whenever the October wind blew. It was a day possessing that particular composition of elements that leaves one indifferent to everything, yet fervently desperate to live. Agnes Bloom, dressed all in black, as was her custom, felt the weight of her own inertia quite keenly as she stood in the light rain under her sombre umbrella.

Her rendezvous with Scarlett had been arranged for a quarter to three, but Agnes did not expect her before three on the nose. According to Scarlett, fifteen minutes late was not late at all. She was, of course, fully aware of how profoundly irritating most people found her chronic tardiness, but the truth was that she rather enjoyed making others wait.

Agnes had resigned herself to the fact that she would always be waiting for Scarlett, for the simple reason that she was always more anxious to see Scarlett than Scarlett was to see her.

She looked up from her intent study of the pattern made by falling raindrops in a puddle to cast a disparaging glance at the group of youths crowded under a nearby gazebo. Their callous butchery of the English language offended her greatly, but also filled her with a satisfying sense of superiority. Her pretentious gaze lingered on their garishly fluorescent garb, a small smirk touching the corners of her lips, then flitted to

the approaching pair walking arm in arm, locked in fervent conversation.

She felt a sudden and quite unexpected lurch in her stomach at the sight of the two of them.

Scarlett’s eyes sparked mischievously at Agnes as she stroked Douglas’ arm. “I’m so sorry, did I keep you waiting?’’ she drawled with a sudden grin, as if she had meant to stay dead-pan but couldn’t contain herself. She made a lovely contrast with the weather.

“Of course you did, and don’t say you’re sorry, I know perfectly well that you don’t mean it,’’ Agnes replied in an acidic tone that did not succeed in masking her pleasure.

“You know me much too well,’’ was said with delightful insincerity.

“That’s quite unfortunate, most people who know her too well go insane within a year,’’ Douglas said.

Scarlett brushed the comment off with a wave of her hand, “Well at least it makes their lives more interesting. A mind completely lacking in neuroses is utterly dull. There is nothing I find more intolerable than a perfectly normal person. All they can talk about is the weather. Shall we go somewhere? It’s quite ghastly out here. I’m absolutely frozen.’’

Douglas gave a moan of protestation. “I’m enjoying the cold! Besides, I don’t feel like being indoors.’’

“You are an odd bird, aren’t you?

I’m afraid we can’t indulge your whims, Douglas, dear Agnes and I

will catch our death of cold if we do.

And we can’t have that, Agnes has not yet written a work of genius. It would be a dreadful waste of talent for her to die at such a young age.’’

“You flatter very nicely, Scarlett.”

“I do my best,” she sighed.

Douglas inquired after the time. “It’s ten after three,” Agnes informed him.

“Ten after three is when I leave you, then. Agnes, am I still meeting you tomorrow for dinner?”

She smiled, “If I remember.”

“You remember everything. I’ll take that as a yes.”

“I’m afraid I have a terrible memory for social engagements.”

“Don’t be coy. I’ll see you tomorrow. Cheers,” he threw over his shoulder in a carefully nonchalant manner as he set off toward the college doors.

“I didn’t know you knew him!” exclaimed Scarlett as Douglas was swallowed by the monstrous grey building.

“Oh I haven’t known him for long. I thought him a perfect idiot for quite a while, you know, all fancy social artifice with no real intellect.

He’s actually quite fascinating. He’s delightfully warped.”

“Sounds like me.”

“Yes, exactly like you.”

They started strolling along the path that led across the college grounds. Soggy golden leaves landed on the black umbrella with a satisfying smacking noise. It had stopped

raining, but neither of the two young ladies noticed. The air had the autumnal smell of cold smoke, which they breathed in deeply. Agnes associated the crisp scent with indifference, whereas Scarlett associated it with sin.

“Where are we going, exactly?”

Scarlett asked, banishing thoughts of men in black trench coats and unspeakable crimes from her mind.

“I don’t know. There really isn’t anywhere pleasant to go anymore.

I’ve grown tired of all the cafes. Why don’t we walk for a bit?”

“Alright. It’s stopped raining, you know. You can put down the umbrella.”

Agnes felt much more at liberty without the turgid canopy of the umbrella blocking her view. The sky seemed much vaster to her, yet at the same time much more ominous. It was a dark brooding sky, the kind that made her feel on the brink of some impending tragedy. It was the kind of sky under which she could imagine herself dying some beautiful ghastly death. The dark atmosphere would accentuate her pale cadaverous complexion and add to the glorious mystery of premature death.

The thought of her own dead body made her quiver.

It must be specified that Agnes was not the least bit suicidal. It was merely that she found death quite romantic. When she read of Ophelia drifting down the river, serene and lifeless with water lilies and seaweed tangled in her hair, she, like so many before her, was enchanted.

The heady brew of lost potential, melancholic in its beauty, was quite intoxicating to her. Like a budding flower severed just as it is beginning to blossom, it filled her with a regret of wonderful things that could have been, but are now irremediably lost.

When nothing is possible, all possibilities exist simultaneously.

“Do you ever envy those who die young?”

Scarlett was only momentarily taken aback by the question. “Of course,” she answered, “people who die at an early age are forever wrapped in mystique. And eternally young. It’s the whole going up in flames business. It never loses its charm.”

Agnes sighed. “I’m quite enamoured by the notion. Which is of course very different from the reality of the matter. I’m much too content, and I lack the strength of character. If I were to die young it would have to be accidental. I’d never be able to kill myself. It frightens me.”

“No, I don’t think I’d be capable of it either.”

“You like yourself much too much to be able to commit suicide,” said Agnes, smiling at her friend.

Scarlett grinned, “Ah, are we back on the topic of my ego again?

You’ve already heard my confession: I’m dangerously self-content.”

“I know, I just like to poke fun at you. You’re easily tormented.”

Scarlett waved a hand, “It’s all an act, I swear.”

Art Essay - Vivian Gu

EDITORIAL

volume 102 number 9

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In cold (discriminatory) blood

editorial board 3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-24 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9 phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com coordinating editor

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cover design Hera Chan contributors Chris Bangs, Mark Bay, Vincent Calabrese, Vivian Gu, Waseem Haja, Kiara Kaminski, Timothy Lem-Smith, S.Azam Mahmood, Julia Misler, Joan Moses, Shane Murphy, Hillary Pasternak, Nicolas Quiazua, Esmond Sage, Alice Shen, Max Silverman, Anita Sivabalan, Ryan Thom, Jordan VentonRublee, Elie Waitzer, Veronica Winslow, Annie Xie

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All contents © 2012 Daily Publications Society. All rights reserved. The content of this newspaper is the responsibility of The McGill Daily and does not necessarily represent the views of McGill University. Products or companies advertised in this newspaper are not necessarily endorsed by Daily staff.

Printed by Imprimerie Transcontinental Transmag. Anjou, Quebec.

ISSN 1192-4608.

Héma-Québec, the provincial blood supply agency, was on our campus last week. The presence of this organization, which continues to uphold discriminatory policies toward men who have sex with other men (MSM), creates an unsafe space on campus for students and undermines the dignity of many members of the McGill community.

In 2006, SSMU Legislative Council banned Héma-Québec from operating within the Shatner building, citing the organization’s screening procedure as a violation of the SSMU Constitution. The previous year, a queer-affiliated group staged a demonstration at an on-campus blood drive to protest Héma-Québec’s policy. In response, the agency shut down the blood drive.

This year, however, the blood donation agency came and left without discussion or reflection on the effects of its presence on campus. SSMU and Queer McGill did not communicate with their constituents and did not comment on the issue. Although boycotting Héma-Québec is not the solution, not talking about the issue isn’t solving anything either.

Héma-Québec has an essential role in providing healthcare to the province; with the help of its donors, the organization saves lives on a daily basis.

As such, blood donation is an important way to give back to one’s community and should be thoroughly encouraged. It is for this reason that the ban on MSM is especially discriminatory: members of our community are being denied the opportunity to help their peers, while many who need life-saving donations do not receive them.

Héma-Québec justifies the MSM policy, implemented in 1977, by pointing to the higher prevalence of HIV among homosexual men. According to their website, HIV prevalence is over 10 per cent among gay men as compared to 1 per cent among heterosexuals or other queer-identified groups.

However, in a recent issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Mark Wainberg of the Jewish General Hospital and Norbert Gilmore of the McGill University Health Centre argued against the maintenance of a lifetime ban for all men who have had sex with men. This study is one of many that have concluded that lifting the ban is safe, citing the availability of new, highly sensitive methods of screening for HIV-positive samples.

In recent years, many industrialized countries have lifted lifetime donation bans and replaced them with deferral policies that range from one to ten years.

Although Héma-Québec supports replacing the permanent exclusion with an exclusion period of five years for MSM, the agency cannot change the policy by itself, as it is currently regulated by Health Canada.

Although the proposed revision to the policy would allow for a wider sample of donors to be included, it continues to be discriminatory. Five-year deferrals and lifetime bans are crude policies that base their exclusion on group membership rather than behaviour.

As it stands, the policy allows a straight man who has engaged in risky behaviour, such as having unprotected sex with multiple partners, to donate. Yet it prohibits a monogamous gay man who practices protected sex from donating. This policy is not appropriate, and it continues to discriminate against men who have had sex with other men. Alternative changes, such as revising the pre-screening procedure, should be considered.

Héma-Québec certainly provides a vital service to the province, and blood donations should not be obstructed; if anything, donations should be promoted. But not protesting this policy perpetuates the marginalization of groups that face attacks on many fronts in society. Héma-Québec and its MSM blood donation policy have a negative effect on members of our community, and it must be addressed.

Errata In the article “Queer McGill holds Fall General Assembly” (News, September 27, page 2), The Daily incorrectly referred to Eliot Hautefeuille as a former Queer McGill executive. Hautefeuille is currently an executive for Queer McGill.

We also mistakenly used the term “transgendered” instead of “trans*.”

We would also like to clarify that the motion “War With Iran” was passed using a voting system on computers at the GA, and not by online voting.

The Daily regrets the errors.

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compendium!

The McGill Daily Monday, October 1, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

lies, half-truths, and fuckity fuck fuck fuck

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Does your vote matter?

Probably, in the scheme of things, only a little Vanity Vixen The Twice-a-Weekly

D

oes your vote matter? Why vote? Why wait for an hour to pick up a sticky pen and circle a person you’re only half sure about. Your vote won’t matter. The scales won’t tip, the universe won’t shift. A cluster of wannabe politicians did some math and the odds of your vote being the deciding one is one in sixty million. You’re more likely to be struck by lightning twice, and frankly, that might be more pleasant than waiting in line to vote.

Why is there such a big hype?

It’s that people feel like they’re in control – that as long as you get your entire extended family to agree, your candidate of

I

choice will win. With the U.S. presidential elections coming up soon, even us up north can feel the vibe. The speeches, the chants, the ostensible feel of control radiating at full speed. The bumper stickers, the little plastic flags, the countdown. That feeling that you’re part of something.

You’re really not. You don’t get to be part of the process. You sit at home with a bag of Cheetos™ on your beer gut as you nervously await the results thinking you had an impact.

Candidates only give a fuck about you when you’re about to vote. Right before you tick that box, they’ll butter you right up like a baked potato. Then they’ll promptly throw you in the oven and let you burn to a crisp. Not the good crisp – the kind you

find at the bottom of a basket of fries – but the dark remnants of an old skillet.

It makes sense though: why else should the president care about you or what you have to say? Why else should Mr. Presidente consider your wants or needs? OH WAIT. The problem is that too many Americans see voting as an opportunity to participate in the way they’re governed. But most of the time, they don’t really know who to vote for. Too many Americans vote just because they can, not because they actually care.

Voting is a privilege. Voting is an honour. Voting is freedom. Too bad yours doesn’t really matter.

And it never will.

Or maybe it will.

Illustration Vanity Vixen

FUCK THIS!

’m reading Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, a feminist tract written years ago by Elizabeth Wurtzel and I’m beginning to understand why all of this is so confusing. By all of this I mean the two opposing thoughts that are always inside me. Firstly, the “I’m a feminist, I’m independent, I don’t need a guy, if he doesn’t like me that’s fine.”

Secondly, the “how do I act, I shouldn’t seem too flirty/desperate, I can’t go crazy after he breaks my heart, I need to be self-contained and self possessed and be a lady.”

But these are their rule – men’s rules. Or, rather, women’s rules for living in a man’s world.

What about my own rules? Why can’t I be both a feminist and be independent, but also sometimes desperately crave a guy’s attention and go batshit crazy when he hurts me? Why am I advising my sister to cut herself away from her ex, to not make the same mistakes I made with

Boy X, when I kept emailing/texting him for about three months after he broke up with me? I say it’s because I don’t want her to prolong her hurt, but maybe keeping it inside herself is more damaging.

Why do we tell ourselves that we are independent women but then adhere to the societal rules that tell us the “right” way to act with a guy? Because we allll do.

I’m probably the worst at this, always telling my girlfriends to relax, just be cool, act like this, don’t be like that.

Argh. I’m still as confused as ever but at least I know where my confusion is arising from. We are bombarded from all sides by contradictory messages. You are strong, and you don’t need a man...but this is how you should act when you want one.

K bye xxx BYE!

AND THIS!

F

Illustration Sid the Craezy Busturd

UCK the NHL lockout. Fuck the fact that the collective ownership of the NHL decided that instead of redistributing their own wealth among teams that are struggling financially, they would take it away from the players. Fuck the NHL for putting teams in places where ice hasn’t grown since wooly fucking mammoths walked the earth, and for fucking over traditional NHL markets with solid fan bases that actually make money. Fuck the fact that our favourite players will be forced to abandon us for Europe as we get closer to losing the first regular season game, then a month of games, then the Winter Classic, and then the best playoffs in sports, the Stanley Cup playoffs. Fuck 365 days of no rowdy fans, playoff beards, or zambonis; without Don Cherry’s colourful commentary or John Tortorella’s sass Fuck the fact that all I want is hockey back and there’s nothing I can do.

Fuck the fact that I am completely powerless to protest because despite this bullshit labour dispute, when the NHL returns from its lockout I will keep watching.