Volume 102, Issue 17

Volume 102, Issue 17

November 1, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

McGill THE

DAILY

Not the fairest of them all since 1911

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

Austerity in the newsroom

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NEWS

The McGill Daily Thursday, November 1, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

02 NEWS

Blackface and other costumes stir controversy at 4Floors

Who Needs Feminism? discussion

SSMU issues apology for violation of safe space

J-Board upholds AUS referendum questions Massive federal budget bill tabled

Laurent Bastien Corbeil The McGill Daily

06 COMMENTARY

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Still Occupying Montreal Defending sexy The politics of dress-up The exploitation of temporary workers Comparing equity and equality

08 FEATURES Austerity in the newsroom

10 HEALTH&ED Home HIV test now available

12 CULTURE Black Theatre Workshop’s Harlem Duet

hotos of students wearing blackface at the Students’ Society of McGill’s (SSMU) 4Floors party last Thursday, published on the Bull & Bear’s Facebook page, sparked controversy on social media sites and prompted SSMU to issue an official apology for failing to establish “sufficient preventative, anti-oppressive measures.”

In the statement released yesterday SSMU said that the incident, along with other depictions of various racial groups, was an “act of microaggression that cannot be justified as creativity.”

“Dressing up as people of colour or indigenous persons perpetuates discrimination towards groups that are historically and culturally disadvantaged on the basis of their personal characteristics. […] It is disappointing to see that there are individuals who lack the necessary understanding or respect,” the statement read.

In an email to The Daily, Johann Annisette, the political coordinator for the Black Students’ Network (BSN), called the incident “completely inexcusable” and said that the BSN was “firm in their stance that the costume is insulting, both toward McGill and Montreal’s black community.”

“I do believe that it is SSMU’s number one responsibility to make sure that they provide a safe and comfortable environment

Leonard Cohen: the lost documentary Pomp and kitsch at the House of Jazz

Fall photo essay

15 EDITORIAL Safe space not blackface

for all. It was a huge oversight on their part to allow these students to enter,” he said.

Annisette called on SSMU to implement “more racially educational programs” and added that it was “unacceptable” for students to be “incapable of seeing the hugely offensive nature of this costume.”

According to former SSMU VP Clubs and Services Carol Fraser, last year’s executive took several steps to uphold the society’s Equity Policy during last year’s 4Floors event.

“We ended up putting posters around SSMU beforehand, and also on our listserv. And then the night [of 4Floors], I was monitoring the

door and we were checking out people’s costumes,” she told The Daily.

“We talked about it before the event. We approached people, not to confront them, but to talk to them.”

SSMU VP University Affairs Haley Dinel told The Daily that this year there was “no substantive talk” on the issue, and that the current executive team felt “uncomfortable” monitoring the door.

Dinel added that specific complaints could be filed to the Equity Commissioners.

SSMU’s Equity Policy calls for the student society to create a “safe haven for all of our members,” and Section 6.4 labels “harassment or

discrimination of disadvantaged groups ” as “serious offences.”

The policy applies to all staff and elected representatives, as well as “all activities and events hosted, funded, and promoted by the Society.”

The Bull & Bear has since removed the controversial blackface photos. In an email to The Daily and the McGill Tribune, its editorial board said that the image was removed so as to not “inadvertently perpetuate a potentially abuse representation of the Black community.”

Other controversial photos – including stereotypical depictions of indigenous and Mexican cultures – remain on the page.

Stalled negotiations leave members paying “ridiculous amounts” in student fees Annie Shiel The McGill Daily

Couple celebrates first wedding anniversary

Photo Hera Chan | The McGill Daily

Mac campus graduate students seek to separate from student society

Poetry at the Atwater Library

14 COMPENDIUM!

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n an attempt to diminish the high student fees paid by its members, the Macdonald Campus Graduate Student Society (MCGSS) is currently negotiating a separation from the Macdonald Campus Students’ Society (MCSS), from which it currently receives a large portion of its funding.

At present, MCGSS is a part of both MCSS and the Post Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS), the graduate student society for McGill’s downtown

campus. MCSS provides MCGSS with Macdonald campus-related services – such as access to the campus bar Ceilidh – while PGSS provides graduate student services downtown, including daycare, grants and bursaries, car services through Communauto, and access to events.

According to MCGSS President Lucy Lu, the movement to separate from MCSS began last year when former MCGSS president Alyssa MacLeod found that MCGSS members were paying higher student fees than most other McGill students because of its dues to both MCSS and PGSS. Continued on page 3

Photo Hera Chan | The McGill Daily

news

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The McGill Daily | Thursday, November 1, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Feminism week concludes with discussion Some feel feminism diluted by initiative his week on campus, feminism was in the air. A group of McGill students decided to launch their own version of the Who Needs Feminism? movement, which began at Duke University in North Carolina last spring.

According to the Duke campaign’s Facebook page, the movement was originally conceived in response to the organizers’ concern over “what we perceive to be an overwhelmingly widespread belief that today’s society no longer needs feminism.”

At McGill, Who Needs Feminism? consisted of a series of photo shoots across campus and in residences of people holding signs explaining why they need feminism. There was a series of small discussions about feminism in residences throughout the week, and a larger group discussion on Tuesday in the Shatner building.

U2 International Development Studies student Brooke Nancekivell played a central role in bringing the movement to McGill.

“This project has been a really accessible way for everyone who has any opinions about feminism, or wants to learn more, or knows a ton, to express one piece of their thoughts on feminism,” she told The Daily.

Like Duke, McGill has its own

Who Needs Feminism? Tumblr to host pictures from the photo shoots and those that people have sent in on their own.

“I think that the photos are a good way to hold people accountable,” said Annie Rose, a McGill student who has been involved in Who Needs Feminism? at McGill.

“Ascribing accountability in these situations is important, because it’s really easy to talk the talk and a lot harder to walk the walk.”

On Tuesday, about twenty people filtered in and out of the SSMU Ballroom throughout the twohour discussion culminating the week. Participants began by talking about what the campaign had accomplished and would accomplish in the future, but the topic soon turned to its limitations.

Adam Finley, a U1 Psychology student who works at Rez Life and helped to organize the week, acknowledged that some of the criticism of it was legitimate.

“Some radical feminists have said they don’t want to participate because it doesn’t do enough or encourages older ideas about feminism, and we understand that, but I think we’ve done a good job of trying to incorporate those critiques into improving the project,” he said.

Isabella Mancini is a U3 Women’s Studies and Sociology student who wrote an op-ed for The Daily about the flaws

of a movement like Who Needs Feminism? At the discussion on Tuesday, she spoke about the problems with defining feminism individualistically.

“This idea that anything can be feminism if you want it to be is problematic; feminism is diverse, but not everything’s feminism.

Misogyny isn’t feminism,” she said.

U3 Sociology and Cultural Studies student Lily Hoffman had a similar criticism. Citing the example of signs that read something to the effect of “I need feminism because my mom is great,”

she said, “[The image] just ends up perpetuating patriarchy, and the movement becomes more about peoples’ own definitions of feminism, which sometimes, honestly, weren’t feminism.”

U2 Sociology student Courtney Ayukawa helped with the campuswide photo shoots throughout the week. At the discussion, she spoke about the role that the photo shoots played in the overall event.

“There were some signs that strongly critiqued radical feminism for being ‘extreme,’ and then there was another from a radical feminist

that kind of discounted these signs, which was an interesting contradiction within the project. But I think that those contradictions led to discussion, which is good.”

The McGill Who Needs Feminism? Tumblr posted more than 400 pictures over the course of the week, with more people sending in pictures every day.

“I think it’s been super successful,” said Finley. “My dad sent in a picture from small-town Ontario.

I didn’t think he’d ever say he was a feminist, so if you think about it, that’s pretty damn cool.”

Continued from page 2 “Different solutions were considered, including working with MCSS and PGSS to lower the fees that we pay to either,” wrote Lu in an email to The Daily. “In the end, we decided that separating from MCSS would give the most benefit to MCGSS.” The proposed separation from MCSS is thus “more of a reorganization to make student society relations and fees more efficient,” she wrote.

Lu explained that with the separation, MCGSS would receive guaranteed annual funding from PGSS in an increase of approximately $5,000, or about 50 per cent more in funding. Breaking away from MCSS would also decrease members’ student fees by $50, which would have gone to MCSS. PGSS would also pay MCSS a certain amount to allow MCGSS to continue receiving the same Macdonald campus services.

According to Lu, the details are currently under review by both parties.

“With the additional funds, we can offer more benefits to our members, such as more travel grants and in larger monetary

amounts, as well as improvements to graduate student life through renovations of our student lounge and more MCGSSsponsored events,” wrote Lu. MCGSS will hold a referendum regarding separation from MCSS from November 5 to 9. They will also be holding a discussion session on the issue tomorrow, November 2, from 2 to 3 p.m. in the Macdonald campus faculty lounge.

According to PGSS SecretaryGeneral Jonathan Mooney, a survey of Mac campus graduate students – which had a 27 per cent response rate – showed that 94 per cent of respondents wished to split from MCSS. When asked about student reactions, Lu cited strong concerns that the proposed changes were not happening quickly enough – particularly in light of the recent PGSS student fee increase.

Mooney explained that PGSS received a letter from MCGSS on May 24 requesting to pay the full PGSS fee and terminate its membership to MCSS, which PGSS forwarded to the Deputy Provost. As a result, PGSS increased its fees for Macdonald campus graduate

students to the full amount and requested that the Deputy Provost’s office terminate all MCSS fees. “…This is where things get a bit unclear,” wrote Mooney.

“At some point the University requested an acknowledgment of the split in the form of a letter from the MCSS. Due to problems of internal communication within the MCSS and concerns about the contract for services, the MCSS refused to sign this letter acknowledging the split, and the Deputy Provost’s office refused to terminate the fee collected by MCSS on graduate students.”

As a result, MCGSS students faced a fee increase rather than the planned decrease – a “ridiculous amount in student fees” that amounts to approximately $120 and is more than double other student society fees, according to Lu. “We expected to finalize the changes before the start of this semester so that the implementation of the new PGSS fee structure (which resulted in an increase in PGSS fees) would have been offset by the removal of MCSS fees,” she wrote.

Mooney said that PGSS and MCSS met again in July and came

to an agreement that MCSS would ask the University to cancel the Fall 2012 fees in return for a payment from PGSS. “However, many people in the McGill administration were on vacation at this time, so it proved impossible to cancel the fee,” wrote Mooney.

MCSS sent another request to cancel or refund the fee in August. The University did not respond until last Tuesday, saying that “they could not cancel the fee because they had been told that the request was not made in accordance with MCSS regulations governing fee changes,” Mooney wrote.

He added that PGSS found this “very strange and frustrating,” but that negotiations have gone well since then and progress has been made toward an agreement.

According to MCSS President Kerry Blake-Savery, MCSS and PGSS are currently in negotiations regarding the continuation of MCSS-provided services to MCGSS students through a fee paid by PGSS to MCSS. “These include use of space, access to clubs, help planning events/selling tickets for events,

accounting, and other administrative,” wrote Blake-Savery.

Mooney wrote that these negotiations have “proceeded nearly to completion,” and a letter of intent was signed by MCSS to enter in the agreement and present a final version in their next quorate council meeting.

Both PGSS and MCSS have also signed an agreement to recognize the results of the referendum “if more than 10 per cent of students vote and more students vote ‘Yes’ to leave than ‘No’ by sending a letter to the Deputy Provost’s office telling them to stop collecting fees and renouncing any claim that graduate students are members,” Mooney wrote.

“I think it was very responsible of MCSS President Kerry Blake-Savery and VP Finance Nicolas Chatel-Launay to sign this agreement, as it recognized the principle of freedom of association for graduate students within the MCSS,” Mooney added.

Lu said she is currently working with PGSS and MCSS to reach a formal agreement on the issue

by November 20, the deadline to make changes to student fees for Winter 2013.

Carla Green News Writer

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Photo Hera Chan | The McGill Daily

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NEWS

The McGill Daily | Thursday, November 1, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

J-Board upholds referenda results despite bylaw violations “Perfection is not the requisite standard,” judgement reads Juan Camilo Velásquez The McGill Daily

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ast week, the SSMU Judicial Board (J-Board) upheld the Arts Undergraduate Society’s (AUS) Winter 2012 referendum results, despite the violations of three different AUS election bylaws during the referendum period.

The decision came as a result of the Bangs v. Calver and Cheng J-Board case filed by Christopher Bangs, chair of the ‘No’ Committees during the referendum, which contested the legitimacy of two questions passed during the AUS Winter 2012 Referenda. The case pursued former AUS President Jade Calver and former Elections AUS Chief Returning Officer (CRO) Victor Cheng.

The first question contested, regarding online ratification, passed with 71.7 per cent of the vote. The second question, to increase the number required to amend the AUS Constitution to a two-thirds majority, passed with 44.9 per cent of the vote.

The J-Board ruling maintains the validity of both these results, but a new question seeking to change the required quorum to change the constitution – from two-thirds to simple majority – will be presented in the upcoming Fall 2012 referendum period.

In the judgment, J-Board recognizes that the respondents Calver and Cheng “were at fault for violating the bylaws,” but J-Board also concluded that the violations were not so severe as to undermine

the voting system and require the invalidation of the results.

In his petition, Bangs alleged that Cheng and Calver had violated six AUS bylaws. The J-Board ruling concluded that three had been violated.

The first bylaw ruled to have been violated refers to questions being ratified only in English despite a requirement for ratification in both English and French.

“The purpose of [the article in question] is to therefore preclude the possibility of there being an English and French question on the referendum, which claim to express the same thing, but in fact have two different meanings,” reads the judgment.

The judgment also refers to two other violations: that five days were provided for campaigning instead of the required six, and that Elections AUS failed to announce the referendum in student publications.

Despite these violations, J-Board concluded that, taken together, they were not a cause for the invalidation of the referendum.

In making this decision, J-Board claimed, “the reasonable voter had an adequate chance to participate in the voting process, being fully informed of the questions at hand.”

“The Board agrees that procedural perfection has not been achieved, though perfection is not the requisite standard,” the judgment reads. “The Respondents, faced with impending exam periods and the end of the [sic] refrained from exercising their discretion to invalidate

the referendum, since the few violations that had occurred were not sufficiently significant to have an adverse effect on the integrity of the referendum.”

In an email to The Daily and other student publications, Bangs wrote, “I was very sorry to see this decision from the Judicial Board, even more so because of the many factual errors evident in the reasoning.”

Among these errors, according to Bangs, was J-Board’s statement that none of the parties challenged Elections AUS’ decision to have a five-day campaign period at the time it was decided.

J-Board concluded that Elections AUS had not been informed of the violation until April 17, after the referendum was over. Bangs, however, stated that he had “brought up the campaign period with the CRO after [he] became aware of this issue, and [the CRO] did not respond.”

J-Board also concluded that the minimum statutory period of 21 days between ratification of questions and referendum was not violated. “Consequently, between March 9, 2012 and April 9, 2012, 28 days elapsed satisfying the period,” the decision read.

Bangs, however, claimed that the questions were ratified on March 21, not March 9. “Similar motions were passed on March 9, but the two questions being considered were amended on the 21st when they were submitted to the CRO,” wrote Bangs.

Despite upholding the question to increase the majority required

Illustration Bracha Stettin | The McGill Daily

to amend the AUS Constitution, the mover of this question, AUS VP Internal Justin Fletcher, told The Daily he would be submitting a new referendum question.

“Last year during the referendum period I submitted a question to change the process of amending the Constitution from a plurality to a two-thirds super majority,” said Fletcher.

“I thought we should have

a high barrier…because constitutions shouldn’t be so easy to amend. But there is a significant portion of students that vote ‘no opinion’ so I cited that instead of making it two-thirds to amend the Constitution, it should be a simple majority of 50 per cent… it’s like a middle ground,” he said.

The Daily did not receive a response from J-Board before press time. Calver declined to comment.

Conservatives submit massive budget bill Parliament limits debate to five days Jordan Venton-Rublee The McGill Daily

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n Thursday, October 18, the Conservative government tabled the second part of the 2012 budget bill, which runs a total of 457 pages.

The bill’s official name is The Jobs and Growth Act 2012, or Bill C-45.

The budget bill follows omnibus budget bill C-38, which was introduced in March and led to much debate and filibustering from the NDP and Liberal Party opposition.

Bill C-45 is one of the largest budget bills in recent history, second only to the 900-page Bill C-9, tabled in 2010 at Royal Assent.

Much like its predecessor, the bill covers a number of amend-

ments in a variety of categories and changes a total of 74 pieces of legislation.

These include amendments to the Hazardous Materials Information Review, the Employment Insurance Act, the Navigable Waters Act, and the Customs Act, among others.

When asked about the length of the bill, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said in an email to The Daily, “Even though the opposition likes to suggest otherwise, it has been common practice to include various measures in a budget – and the subsequent budget implementation bill.”

“This is nothing new or groundbreaking. This simply reflects the central role of a budget to a Government’s agenda. As the challenges Canada’s economy

faces are neither small nor onedimensional, neither is our plan,” Flaherty wrote.

Another act in the bill, The Bridge to Strengthen Trade Act (Division 5), concerns the creation of a bridge that would connect Ontario to Michigan over the Detroit River. The bridge would be exempt from any environmental laws.

While Conservatives oppose the bill from being split up, they did allow one piece of the bill to be passed separately the day after it was introduced – the part of the bill concernimg Members of Parliament’s pensions.

Last Thursday, the Conservative government also allowed ten House Committees to be assigned to better scrutinize parts of the bill. Committees will

be charged with studying health, fisheries and oceans, justice and human rights, as well as citizenship and immigration.

According to Flaherty, “We want an open, public, and timely study and debate. As always, there will be detailed Committee studies in the House and Senate.”

“We really hope the opposition will give their support at second reading if they genuinely want these committees to study the legislation – instead of shutting down debate and playing political games.”

The same day, however, Conservatives brought a motion to limit debate to five days. The motion passed, limiting the second reading of the bill to begin late last week.

On the opposition side of

the House, there has been much talk about the massive bill being undemocratic.

The Daily spoke with McGill Political Science professor Christa Scholtz about the bill.

“There is a theory that the legislature has to hold the cabinet accountable. The Prime Minister and the cabinet have to hold the confidence of the house,” Scholtz said.

“The problem with an omnibus bill,” Scholtz continued, “is it is completely unreasonable for the government to be held accountable. They don’t have enough time for a detailed examination of the bill, especially it is a problem when the cabinet and Prime Minister invokes a limit on debate.”

The second reading of the bill is currently underway in the House of Commons.

Commentary

The McGill Daily Thursday, November 1, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

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Photos Hera Chan and Jamie Klinger | The McGill Daily

More than you knew

The projects of Occupy Montreal Jamie Klinger Commentary Writer

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ccupy is a system failure; the first international blue screen of death. By October 29, 2011 there were over 2,000 cities occupied worldwide.

We tapped on the wall of our cell, and for the first time in so many of our lives, somebody tapped back. There are others like me out there, other stubborn, idealistic, forward-thinking rebels who, after being oppressed for years, have found a voice, found a friend, and taken up the fight of their generation for (what some believe) is the survival of their very species.

I believe that Occupy marks the beginning of an era of solidarity, giving individuals the motivation and inspiration to imagine the instruments that will build a more collaborative future. It taught us about community, autonomy, self-organization, direct democracy, the true definition of anarchy, compassion, struggle, selflessness, and hope.

On the day of our eviction, after 42 surreal days at the camp (which I called my home for thirty), I spoke proudly to the media, letting them know what had happened. Occupy had been gestating all those days; we were happy on our three islands in the middle of the financial sector, we

hadn’t even imagined leaving our womb, and then – we were born.

No longer would we have to spend time ‘negotiating’ with police who were clearly wasting our time on purpose. No longer would we be forced to accept interviews from media who preferred telling the story of our unusual living situation to the issues we protested – the financial and energy interests influencing our government.

42 days was enough time to learn that the police are there to serve and protect the interests of the rich, to take their orders unquestioned from a government rife with corruption. 42 days was enough to acknowledge the ineptness of the media and the truth of the statement, “If it bleeds, it leads.” And 42 days, whether we knew it coming in or only learnt it going out, was more than enough to see clearly the glaring financial inequality in our society.

The last large assembly of Occupy Montreal met three days after our eviction. The 150 participants present voted to create neighbourhood Occupies, twenty or so groups who would meet over the coming months to discuss and respond to local issues. Some flourished; others floundered.

In May, Autonomous Neighbourhood Assemblies (APAQs in French) entered the scene and took up the exact roles intentioned by the local Occupy groups. And just like the neigh-

bourhood Occupy groups, some APAQs are standing very strong (such as that of the Plateau) while others have lost their cores.

The Occupy Montreal Kitchen never stopped feeding people and spent the summer throwing a series of free vegan barbecues throughout Montreal, initially in solidarity with Occupy Johnson City’s “Free to you BBQ.” Now working under the name “La Cuisine du Peuple,” they appear at protests and Occupy events.

Throughout 2012, Coop sur Généreux – a decade-old ecoconscious housing cooperative – was inhabited by several occupiers who experimented with using the space to live in accordance with the values of Occupy (as articulated in the Declaration Regarding Personal and Collective Commitments), and began using it to foster community through artistic, educational, and nutritional events. It became evident that changing the world began with oneself, one’s home, and one’s community.

La Chorale du Peuple works through parody, theatre, music, and dance to bring to light our neoliberal dilemma, and will be releasing their first album in November.

JAPPEL, 12M15M, the logistics team, and the neighbourhood Occupy assemblies succeeded in launching six neighbourhood weekend occupations in Montreal this summer.

They included a culmination of

the kitchen, a platform for artists to perform, a documentary film presentation by the Cinema du Peuple, the Gratiferia (a free market), and an interactive series of activities and educational presentations.

REPERES (recherches et enquêtes permettant de renseigner, d’éclaircir et de sensibiliser) is an information retrieval and presentation supergroup, with a focus on neoliberalism.

In regard to real-economy alternatives, SENSORICA is an open, decentralized, and self-organizing value network developed by an Occupy alumnus. I am in the process of developing JOATU (Jack of All Trade Units), a market-variable service exchange system, and we are looking for developers.

On the physical front, “[P(re)] Occupations: The living archives of Occupy Montreal” is a project about telling Occupy stories and building a memory of our struggles, currently on display at the SKOL space.

Online, we, like Anonymous, are everywhere. With nearly 14,000 Facebook fans, the Occupy Montreal page promotes events and opportunities for solidarity. VIA22 is an organization with international appeal for solidarity actions, making the 22nd of each month a focal point to better draw attention to each other’s struggles. And how can we forget OM99%Media, an independent media cooperative; the livestream

team, the prolific twenty issues of the 99% Journal; and the Occupy Montreal Atrium, an online project-organization and discussion forum which is currently in talks with Direct Democracy Quebec (DDQ, a political party also created by an Occupy alum). The two hope to intermingle their efforts in an attempt to bring online a workable direct democracy platform, taking inspiration from LiquidFeedback and NationBuilder.

Occupy Montreal – after the eviction – was viewed by many as an event whose time had passed.

We participated in changing the international discourse, focusing attention on the financial fiasco, and helping thousands develop a sense of hope. OM was in the limelight for a while, and, in Quebec, the Printemps Erable picked up where we left off.

What few people noticed, however, was what we left behind: a dozen projects with focus and intention that have been holding strong and growing their prowess. The seeds of tomorrow lie in the gardening of today. And we’ll be hosting plenty of gardening workshops; you just have to want to grow something.

Jamie Klinger is an active participant in Occupons Montréal, the founder of JOATU, and a proud member of Coop sur Généreux.

You can reach him at jamie@ honestlymarketing.com.

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The McGill Daily | Thursday, November 1, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

commentary

In defence of sexy A note to fellow feminists

Kate McGillivray The McGill Daily

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identity and dabble in the world of fantasy. That a woman would want to be a Red Riding Hood to some guy’s big bad wolf appalls some people – but it shouldn’t. These women are entitled to their play.

To assume that sexy bumblebees are somehow passive prey to those whose desires they might stir is to assume they are powerless. To assume that by choosing a sexy costume girls and women are the playthings of deeply ingrained patriarchy and societal pressures to reveal themselves is to deny them their sexual agency. One can’t label them instant-victims because they’re wearing tube dresses. Maybe I want to wear tube dresses, and be looked at, and feel attractive. Maybe I am just having fun. And, harder for many to swallow, maybe I just want to get laid.

We can look to old school puritanism as well as misguided feminism to explain why this prospect might be met with revulsion and derision by other women. This is slut-shaming. We bristle at some buffoons’ remarks about how short skirts make women more likely to be attacked. To then turn around and bristle at those same short skirts is nothing short of hypocrisy.

Illustration Jacqueline Brandon | The McGill Daily

any level-headed feminists lose it at the sight of the five-inch heels, plunging cleavage, and belt-like skirts that often accompany Halloween’s sexy costumes. To these people, women dressed as school girls or French maids seem lost in the dark ages, enslaved by patriarchy, willingly playing the role of a sexual object. But putting down women for dressing in sexy costumes at Halloween is hypocritical and retrograde. It’s slut-shaming, pure and simple, meaning that it involves putting women down for revealing and taking advantage of their sexuality. A woman in a catsuit is still an independent agent – it’s her prerogative, so everyone needs to back the eff off.

In a recent episode of his podcast, “The Savage Lovecast,” Dan Savage, the columnist best known for his syndicated sex column “Savage Love,” entreated feminists, lefties, radicals, liberals (my people, he added) to get the stick out of their ass concerning sexuality in Halloween culture. The thrust of his argument was this: whether flashing a crowd at Mardi Gras or dancing on a float made out of condoms at a gay pride parade, people of all orientations crave moments of public sexual display. Halloween,

with its wild parties and elaborate, often sexual costumes, is no different. And why should it be?

Savage, ever sex-positive, made me ashamed of myself. Like many women in my lefty milieu, I looked down on women who I felt dressed in a “slutty” way at Halloween. Like many others, I took a secret pride in de-sexualized, “funny” costume choices.

And yet, on paper, I believed women should be free to wear whatever they wanted, to pursue whatever sexual identity or encounter they desired. I walked in a “slut-walk” – last year’s feminist protest rebelling against a policeman who entreated women to dress less slutty in order to avoid being attacked. Apparently, I didn’t really understand the message. A woman’s body is her own, to reveal and use as she sees fit. Period.

The dissonance in my own view of Halloween has roots in a deeper dissonance between sex-positivity, feminism, and, when it really comes down to it, heterosexual sexual identities (if you need proof of this, just look at the debate surrounding feminism and porn). Sexual desire and political righteousness make uneasy bedfellows.

Girls who choose to dress up as Little Red Riding Hood or as a sexy genie are doing something they have every right to do, which is experiment with their own sexual

By day, Kate McGillivray is the mildmannered Multimedia editor at The Daily. By night, she’s known to rock a tube dress. Reach her at kate.a.mcgillivray@gmail.com. The opinions are all her own.

The silence of the marginalized On performativity, assimilation, and the politics of dress-up Ryan Thom Memoirs of a Gaysian

“Beside the waters of the Hudson, I feel my race. Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again.”

—Zora Neale Hurston, “How it Feels to be Colored Me”

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ost mornings before I go out, I dress up as a white person. The donning of the disguise is a subtle and flawed transformation; sometimes, I am barely aware of it, and other times, it is all I can do to bear up beneath the weight of the mask I must put on. On those days, that weight is enormous and repressive, and, beneath it, my voice

is crushed into silence. Yet the mask is never perfect. My tinted skin and slanted eyes always peek through, despite perfectly unaccented English and a lifetime of immersion in Western fashion and pop culture. Generations of assimilation and class mobility have done nothing to eradicate the core of my foreignness, which whispers of a homeland distant and unknowable, just as my body is alien and unknowable, an eternal stranger in a strange land.

Last week, Daily contributor Tiffany Harrington wrote an excellent Commentary article (“A haunting disguise indeed,” October 25, page 6) on the cultural appropriation of First Nations images and symbols that we tend to see in Halloween ‘Indian’ costumes. The discourse around racial ‘dress-up’ is an important one, and too often derailed by superficial appeals to ‘freedom of expression,’ because there are deeper issues at play here – issues of assimilation and cultural performativity, which I would

like to open a discussion of.

There is a historic tendency on the part of the privileged to mock and dominate the marginalized through mimicry. We need only look as far as the tradition of blackface as a minstrels’ trope in the American South, the derisive Hollywood portrayals of Asian characters such as the landlord Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the depiction of Aboriginal peoples in any ‘classic’ cowboy movie to see evidence of that. Not only are such portrayals of marginalized peoples ignorant and irreverent, they are an example of the oppressor’s power to define us through the oppressive gaze; to wrest our identities from us and reshape them as caricatures worthy of ridicule or fear. Even when the portrayal is ‘positive,’ it is still a part of that insidious colonial process by which the image of the oppressed is transformed from that of a sovereign Other to something governable, and subordinate to the oppressive power.

Marginalized persons, for

the most part, do not have the power to re-define our oppressors through dress-up. There are no ‘white person’ costumes being sold in department stores or Internet catalogues this Halloween. Yet every day of our lives, we must negotiate the landscape of assimilation, must disprove our foreignness and prove our humanity, must act the part of the tamed coloured person who has learned the manners of our master well.

As a child, I learned quickly that English is the language of power: if I spoke and wrote it well in school, I would be rewarded; if I spoke my parents’ language, I’d be punished. I learned to denigrate and despise my foreignness, to hide it as best I could by wearing what the white kids wore and making fun of the ‘FOBs’ (the racist slur, fresh off the boat).

Even today, as I struggle to undo the binding placed on my mind by the trappings of internalized racism, I find myself wondering:

how much of my true self may I show my white supervisors, classmates, friends, before I become ‘too Asian,’ ‘that angry Asian,’ that minority too loudmouthed for my own good? And, having laboured so long to remove my Asian-ness, who is this ‘true self’ that I am trying to reveal?

We are more than our race, than our gender, than the misrepresentation of our bodies. To see beyond the masks that have been imposed on us, we must fight against the images – on television, in literature, on the streets on Halloween – that mock us, that render us eternal strangers, so that we can be unashamed of our foreignness, so that our foreignness becomes knowable and powerful – so that we can see our true selves and be seen.

Memoirs of a Gaysian is Ryan Kai Cheng Thom’s column on cultural difference, intersectional oppression, and genderqueerness. Contact them at memoirsofagaysian@mcgilldaily.com.

Commentary

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The McGill Daily | Thursday, November 1, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Temporary work, chronic exploitation Unpacking Canada’s migrant labour program Zach Lewsen The McGill Daily

I

n 2011, Senthil Thevar was recruited from India to work in a restaurant in the Toronto area. He was paid below minimum wage, not given adequate time off, and forced to live in a cold basement, as reported by the Toronto Star. Not only is his story tragic, it illustrates the types of abuse that temporary migrant workers are vulnerable to in Canada.

Thevar came to Canada as part of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, in which Canadian recruitment companies enlist temporary workers – mainly from the global south – to work in jobs unfilled by the Canadian labour force. These labourers are employed in a diverse array of industries across Canada including agriculture, hospitality, and live-in caregiving, and can stay in the country for a maximum of four years. In 2010, there were over 5,000 migrant workers in Quebec alone.

As migrant workers, they are highly susceptible to workplace abuse like unfair pay, wrongful dismissal, and unsafe working conditions.

At first glance, it seems these workers have access to the same rights as all other Canadian employees. Before an employer brings most temporary migrant workers into the country, they must notify the federal government that the worker’s

wage is similar to a Canadian wage in that field, and that working conditions are in line with Canadian standards. Further, constitutionally ingrained fundamental freedoms – like freedom of assembly, which includes the right to unionize – also apply to migrant workers.

However, migrant workers’ ability to stay in Canada temporarily is restricted by their residency permit, which dictates who they can work for, as well as what region of the country and what sector of the economy they can work in.

According to a Metcalf Foundation report by Fay Faraday, an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, fear of losing their job discourages migrant workers from challenging unfair employee treatment like pay violations and hazardous work.

The report cites a survey of migrant workers in the Toronto and Windsor area in which 22 per cent of the workers indicated receiving pay below minimum wage.

Faraday’s report also lists a study of migrant agricultural workers in Ontario in which almost half of them were not given protective equipment, despite working with chemicals and pesticides. Additionally, only 24 per cent of these labourers who experienced work-related injuries requested compensation from their employers. When asked about why they didn’t pursue their compensa-

tion more stringently, the injured workers cited fear of losing their job and ability to take part in the agricultural foreign worker program.

Migrant workers’ motivation to demand their rights is further inhibited by the fact that, frequently, they live with their employers, which forces many workers into acquiescence of their bosses’ demands.

This asymmetric relationship was evident in Thevar’s situation.

The Metcalf report lists 22 suggestions to curb migrant worker abuse. While the report was centred around Ontario, some suggestions have nationwide implications.

Faraday calls for migrant workers to receive cohesive information about their rights upon arrival in Canada. In addition, she suggests that the federal government could make tied permits more flexible so that migrant workers can work for a different employer in the same sector or region than originally planned.

With over 300,000 migrant workers in Canada vulnerable to abuse, the provinces and the federal government need to explore suggestions similar to the Metcalf Foundation’s, or else incidents like Thevar’s risk being repeated.

Zach Lewsen is a U3 Political Science student and a former Commentary and Compendium!

Editor. He can be reached at zachary.lewsen@mail.mcgill.ca.

Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

Being equal does not mean being fair Examining microaggressions on campus Justin Jek-Kahn Koh Commentary Writer

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magine if our society were a group of homogenous individuals, each one with the same ability to perceive and navigate the world around them. This would be a place where individual and communal experiences are inseparable and identical. The needs of every individual in this society would be universal: simply share everything equally, and everyone will be satisfied.

Take a look at yourself, and then the people around you. The society we live in is nothing like our imagined society. It is vividly heterogenous, with unique individuals revolving in the spaces we share. Yet in blatant defiance of reality, the governance and structure of our society tend to assume that we are all the same. The straight, white, cis-, able-bodied, upper-middle class male is the normative template, and for this reason he has become the point of reference in our continued struggles against oppression.

We would like to think that being equal is the same as being fair, and the easiest way to fulfill everyone’s needs is simply to give everyone an equal amount of everything. However, this concept of equality fails, for it operates under the assumed notion of a homogeneous society, ignoring diverse individual needs. Imagine that a vegetarian, a professional football player, and a celiac are having a meal together.

Equality would mean giving them the exact same portion of meat lasagna, failing to account for the vegetarian’s lifestyle choice to not eat meat, the football player’s occupational need for more calories, and the celiac’s biological response toward gluten. None of these outcomes seem to be fair for each person, even though they all received an equal share.

The example above highlights a need to shift our focus from equality to equity, two concepts that are sometimes used interchangeably, but are fundamentally different. Equity represents fairness and justice, and can also be defined as the ‘equality of the outcome.’ It involves respecting the

heterogeneity of our society, where individuals have different needs, and acknowledging historical and current oppressions that continue to divide this society. Equity also requires an understanding of privilege: the benefits and rights held by a small group of people to the disadvantage of others.

McGill, in many ways, operates under the presumption that we are all students on the same level playing field. Many are proud of how international our community is, how vibrant we are as a group of diverse people, with a range of different cultures and languages. We forget that with diversity comes responsibility, and we often ignore the fact that the complex dynamics of society are reflected within our community – a microcosm where equity has not been achieved.

Oppression in our community is often perpetuated by micro-aggressions: commonplace, day-to-day interactions in which intentionally or unintentionally, people are discriminated against and insulted. Asking a person of colour who identifies as Canadian, “where are you actually from?” per-

petuates the racist notion that people of colour will always be foreigners in their home country. Having sexist team names such as “Occupy Vagina” at Carnival contributes to the objectification of women and their bodies.

Using the words “no homo” or “that’s so gay” implies that homosexuality is negative and deviant.

But, unlike physical aggressions, microaggressions are often ignored.

Individuals who experience microaggressions are often told that it is not a big deal, or that they are overreacting. In denying the experience of the individual, we overlook the fact that microaggressions arise from systemic oppressions that are embedded in our community. There is a tendency to define oppression only in extreme terms, evidenced by the perception that only intense physical and verbal violence toward people of colour constitutes racism. Yet the truth is that oppression is experienced differently at all levels of society. Only by acknowledging and addressing oppression in all its forms can we begin to create a community that is equitable.

Therefore, readers should know that SSMU has an extensive Equity Policy which attempts to create a functional anti-oppressive environment, condemning harassment and discrimination of disadvantaged groups and individuals. Integral to this policy is the Equity complaints process which allows a formal resolution to be made after a thorough investigation by the Equity Commissioners in conjunction with the Equity Committee. These resolutions include, but are not limited to, suspension or dismissal from a SSMU position, or suspension of financial support for Clubs, Services or Independent Student Groups that violate the Equity Policy.

The EUS and MUS both have Equity Policies operating on similar principles, and AUS is in the process of developing their own, having recently established an ad hoc committee.

Justin Jek-Kahn Koh is a U2 Cognitive Science student and one of two SSMU Equity Commissioners.

He can be reached at equity.com@ ssmu.mcgill.ca.

8

features

Mirror, Mirror, on the wall Quebecor media is the worst of all Text: Lola Duffort | Illustration: Hera Chan & Amina Batyreva

W

hen Lorraine Carpenter walked into the Montreal Mirror offices on a late June afternoon, she noticed Hugh (she would never learn his last name) out of the corner of her eye.

The nondescript corporate suit had been appearing sporadically in the office in the past six months, meeting often with her increasingly harried boss, Mirror editorin-chief Alastair Sutherland. The thought, quickly suppressed (“almost a joke,” she said), crossed her mind; are we getting shut down?

But when she heard the dull thud of office supplies shifted into boxes, the couldn’t help but walk over to Sutherland.

He asked her to shut the door behind her, and almost immediately, she knew. She had been at the Mirror for over twelve years.

When Quebecor, the media behemoth that owned the Mirror, announced that it was stopping the publication immediately, most of the staff certainly met the news with a level of outrage, particularly about the way in which the shutdown was handled. Quebecor didn’t even wait until Sutherland had had enough time to send a message to his freelancers before shutting down the company email. The media conglomerate stripped the website of all of its content before writers could save their clippings – or even know that they were in a position to need to save their clippings – and replaced the website with this now infamous posting: Dear readers, It is with great regret that we recently stopped publishing the Montreal Mirror.

The June 22 edition of the free Montreal English-language cultural weekly will be its last.

The growing popularity of digital media and communications has irremediably changed the context in which free cultural weeklies operate, bringing about economic challenges which have unfortunately compromised The Mirror’s viability.

We wish to thank all the readers, advertisers, writers and staff whose passion and talent contributed to making the Mirror a true Montreal cultural and journalistic institution.

The editors of The Mirror This message, incidentally, hadn’t even been seen – let alone written – by the Mirror’s editorial board before it was posted to the website. Another Quebecor press release noted the loss of seven jobs

in total, making no mention of the dozens of freelancers who relied on the Mirror’s consistent pay and exposure. *** According to most of the former Mirror-ites interviewed, Quebecor’s relationship to the paper had been one of benign neglect. Their corporate owners didn’t exactly pour money into the newsroom, but they also stayed out of it. For the most part, editors at the Mirror were grateful for their autonomy, rather than a few more bucks.

Suddenly though, Quebecor realized that their little bête noire actually did cost some money to run, and a round of cost-cutting initiatives was instigated roughly six months before the ax finally fell. Page counts shrank, the office moved across the street, entire sections disappeared, and the flat-checker was replaced by an unpaid intern.

“I don’t know these people, but I sort of just picture them looking at a spreadsheet and going, oh! This is where we can save money,” former Mirror film editor Malcolm Fraser told The Daily.

The Mirror’s francophone sister publication, ici, had been dumped in a similarly unceremonious manner back in 2009 – former Mirror-ites described walking into their shared office to simply find the staff of ici gone.

Several on the Mirror’s staff pushed to make the publication at least more relevant on the web – if they couldn’t afford pages, couldn’t they at least publish web exclusives? And why not develop the website, make it more user-friendly, workable on smartphones – and why, the staff asked, didn’t their paper have an app?

Whether from on high or from Sutherland – who had, by all accounts, spent much of his nearly twenty-year career at the paper trying to keep the corporate kill-men at bay, the response was always the same – there was no budget for it. *** When Radio-Canada’s investigative reporting show Enquête ran an expose on Quebecor in November of 2011, the media conglomerate did what it always does to defend itself – it invoked the crisis facing print media.

By 2010, Quebecor had pulled its major newspapers out of the Quebec Press Council, a private nonprofit dedicated to reviewing complaints filed by the public

about ethics in print and broadcast media.

In response to charges that by doing so, Quebecor had betrayed promises made to the Quebec National Assembly in 2001 – who had allowed the conglomerate’s merger with Quebec’s largest cable TV operator Videotron despite anxieties about Quebecor’s ever-swelling size – Quebecor executive J. Serge Sasseville had this to say in a statement published on their website: “That’s completely ridiculous. In the past ten years, the context of print journalism and the media have completely changed and it is completely normal, and even responsible, that we have made decisions to adapt to this new context, even if this means modifying previous stances.”

Two years prior to dropping out of the Quebec Press Council, Quebecor cut

maintenance. Yet, despite decimating its content-generating workforce, it hasn’t stopped putting out newspapers.

Quebecor is one of Canada’s largest media conglomerates, and, according to several independent surveys, it’s responsible for at least 40 per cent of the media that Quebecers consume. Together with the provincial pension fund, it owns and operates the province’s largest newspaper chains, an internet and cable provider, broadcasting, publishing, and production company TVA Group, internet portal site canoe.ca, movie rental stores, book publishing companies, and the largest music retailer in the province. *** After a 15-month lockout at the Journal

The corporate instinct to cut costs when the going gets tough – generally by firing people or shedding pages – inevitably hastens a shut-down because it renders the publication obsolete to readers, and advertisers, because circulation drops.

600 jobs in Ontario, Quebec, and Western Canada weeks before Christmas. A press release cited rising costs, flatlining advertising, and the growing availability of free online content as the cause.

Around the same time, Quebecor locked out 253 journalists, editors, photographers, and newsroom workers from the Journal de Montréal for nearly two years over collective agreement renegotiations. A Quebecor press release again cited the “difficult context” of the print media industry. “This is a crisis situation affecting everybody,” the release continued.

Two years later, in 2011, Quebecor slashed another 400 jobs, and remained largely silent on the issue. They refused to comment and released no details about where the cuts would be concentrated, or why they even occurred.

This is not to say that Quebecor hasn’t created jobs – it has created at least 500 in 2009 alone and over 800 in 2010 – but none of these jobs are journalism jobs.

Instead, they are concentrated in sales, IT work, customer service, technical support, programming, network construction, and

de Québec, the Quebec labour board ruled that Quebecor had made use of scabs by hiring out subcontractors. The decision was eventually appealed and overturned, but Quebecor nonetheless decided to change tactics.

It created QMI, a wire service that would allow its many media outlets to share their content amongst themselves. This solidified Quebecor’s longstanding strategy of media convergence – generally speaking, this involves corporate concentration, and increased digitization to facilitate content sharing – which allowed for two things: package deals for advertisers, and reduced labour and administrative costs. Oh, and it allowed Quebecor to put out a Journal de Montréal, even when the majority of its newsroom was locked out.

Journalists and press councils across the province say that convergence is dangerous for the diversification of content, kills local coverage, and overworks journalists.

Why have more than one journalist cover an event, Quebecor reasons, when digitization makes it possible for their content to feed a multitude of publications

9

The McGill Daily | Thursday, November 1, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

and media platforms? Besides, diversification of content is a “dead debate,” says Sasseville; a proliferation of critical and differing voices is guaranteed by the internet and social media. He looks to Egypt to illustrate his point, saying in French that “even in authoritarian regimes, it is no longer possible to monopolize public debate.”

The implication is that the critical work of a professional class of journalists can somehow be safely relegated to Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

In an interview with Enquête, president of the Fédération professionelle des journalistes du Québec, Brian Myles, characterized Quebecor’s success saying that “Quebecor isn’t a satellite in the information industry – it’s a planet that generates its own gravity, that spins in orbit in its own solar system.” *** The way that one of the Mirror’s founders, Catherine Salisbury, tells it, the Mirror’s sale was a classic tale of big guy eats little guy. “We approached Quebecor at a time when we were under significant competitive threat from Communications Voir,” Salisbury wrote in an email to The Daily. “Voir’s wealthy owners, Rémi Marcoux and Claude Dubois, founders of Transcontinental, had tried to intimidate us into selling.” Its offer rejected, Transcontinental retaliated by starting up the English-language alt-weekly Hour in hopes of running the Mirror out of business. Offering higher salaries, the Hour hired away key staff, and by offering packaged deals on advertising, it undercut the Mirror’s rates.

“If an advertiser bought an ad in Voir, a free or next to free ad would be tacked on for the English market in Hour. This technique was effective in pulling away our advertisers. And given that we did not have the financial capabilities of fighting

such an aggressive approach, we looked for other solutions,” explained Salisbury.

Left with no other options, they pitched a French-language sister publication to Quebecor, then a Transcontinental competitor. Quebecor agreed, ici was born, and within a couple of years, Quebecor had invoked a clause in the original shareholders’ agreement and bought out the shares that remained in the founding members’ control; the Mirror was fully integrated into the Quebecor empire.

It is perhaps especially ironic, then, that a common Quebecor refrain is that media convergence is precisely what’s going to save the independent voices that once populated the media landscape.

“This movement is beneficial because it allows for a diversity of voices, instead of the disappearance enterprises that wouldn’t otherwise have the financial means to survive,” read the same 2011 Sasseville letter that justified the company’s decision to pull most of its major newspapers out of their respective press councils. *** So when the news broke – mainly by word of (cyber)mouth – several Mirrorites staggered into a Little Italy bar (perhaps competing bars will hang plaques in twenty years: “CultMTL born here”) and hatched a plan to fill the void left by their paper’s closure.

“First, this city deserves that coverage, and people deserve to have their bands covered and to know what’s going on and stuff, and fuck you! You don’t get to do that. First of all, the way that Quebecor handled that was sloppy, and it is out of a similar sense of rage about this new America that we’re building here in Canada,” said former freelance editor Emily Raine.

CultMTL went live online weeks after

and has since been publishing about forty articles a week about Montreal food, music, books, fashion, and occasionally, news.

The online publication is largely staffed by former Mirror contributors and editors, and features familiar Mirror landmarks “Rantline” and “Sasha’s sex advice column.”

In September, it published a student guide, as its first print edition, and the next month it put ten thousand copies on stands again, officially declaring itself a monthly print publication as well as a daily website. *** Financially viable media that meaningfully connects people to their communities, that is edgy and irreverent, that is critical and angry, that is concerned with the cultural landscape, is entirely possible today.

It exists in Seattle, where the Stranger publishes gay rights activist (and particularly articulate sex columnist) Dan Savage, breaks stories about municipal politics, and, as of 2012, wins Pulitzer prizes. It exists in Portland, where the Willamette Week reported a 5 per cent pre-tax profit in 2007, and won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 2005 for a story first published online. It exists in Boston with the newly re-designed and re-branded Phoenix. And, most tellingly, it also exists in Halifax, where Salisbury is keeping free alt-weekly the Coast alive and kicking in a city a tenth of the size of Montreal.

She admits that the recession and the digital revolution have severely impacted alt-weeklies – print-classified advertising doesn’t exist anymore, and web advertising, which commands much weaker rates, has overtaken print advertising as the dominant marketing strategy for most companies. Besides this, the economic downturn has meant that businesses have little extra money (if any) to spend on advertising and promotion, “the bread and

butter of free alternative weeklies.”

But it’s entirely possible, she argues, as long as you put a priority on maintaining a loyal readership. “You have to be much more creative than before and your whole staff has to work as a team. Perhaps this is what Quebecor was having a hard time with at the Mirror. As I understand, [the paper] was run out of the offices of 24 Heures. That must make it hard to work towards a collective vision of serving your community.”

And therein lies the operative difference between the Stranger, the Coast, and most of the best weeklies and print publications surviving the downturn, and the Village Voice (now a desiccated version of what it once was), and the countless alt-weeklies that have shut their doors: independent ownership. The corporate instinct to cut costs when the going gets tough – generally by firing people or shedding pages – inevitably hastens a shut-down because it renders the publication obsolete to readers, and advertisers, because circulation drops.

Cult is doing the opposite – it’s trying to connect people to their community first, and it’s thinking about money last.

Admittedly, Cult is on pretty shaky ground – advertising revenue is paying for the costs of printing, but not much else, and nearly three months in, most of their writers are still generating content pro bono.

Carpenter, now its music editor, freely admits that the publication will need to figure out how to turn a profit if it wants to stick around in the long run; even renegade punk-rock journalists have rent to make. But it’s a self-determining publication – owned and operated by people who are actually part of the community they serve – and that will most likely make all the difference in the world.

The third print edition of CultMTL hits stands today.

HEALTH&ED

The McGill Daily Thursday, November 1, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

i0

Home HIV tests hit the market Still unavailable in Canada Tamkinat Mirza Ninth Life

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cientists have developed a prototype for an ultrasensitive sensor that allows doctors to detect early stages of diseases with the naked eye, according to a paper published in the medical journal Nature Nanotechnology. These findings have already found their way into commercial use, although this availability is not universal.

The team who conducted the research reported that the sensitivity of their visual sensor technology is tenfold that of the current methods for measuring biomarkers. In tests, the sensors have been able to detect even very low viral loads in samples, detection that has previously been impossible. The test uses nanotechnology that works by turning a sample solution a distinctive red or blue color, easily detectable by the naked eye.

The greatest impact of this research is expected to impact HIV diagnoses, especially in developing countries, which have fewer economic resources per capita and a greater rate of infection relative to the rest of the world. However, it is hoped that the test can be adapted to detect other diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, sepsis and leishmaniasis.

“Unfortunately, the existing gold standard detection methods can be too expensive to be implemented in parts of the world where resources are scarce. Our approach affords for improved sensitivity, does not require sophisticated instrumentation, and it is ten times cheaper, which could allow more tests to be performed for better screening of many diseases,” Professor Molly Stevens of the Departments of Materials and Bioengineering at Imperial College London told Medical News Today.

The OraSure HIV test, approved by the FDA this summer for use in the United States allows people to test for HIV in their own homes,

The Daily Elections

detecting the virus within twenty minutes through a simple mouth swab. The test costs about $40 and, as of September, is available in American stores.

A trial for OraSure showed that the home test only detected HIV 92 per cent of the time for people carrying the virus, leading some to conclude that although the test is convenient, it may be lack degree efficacy.

Prior to saliva HIV tests, at home HIV test kits required blood samples, which had to be sent to a laboratory to be tested–taking longer and reducing the privacy of athome testing.

Researchers for the new HIV diagnostic test intend to collaborate with global NGOs to help manufacture and distribute the new diagnostic technology in developing countries, helping to decrease the spread of the disease Undoubtedly, the manufacture and distribution of this diagnostic test will make an impact globally.

While the impact on underdeveloped countries – where medical resources relative to the population are low – may be the most noticeable, there is still a need for diagnostic tools like these in Canada.

While the OraSure test was passed by the FDA this summer, it has yet to be approved by Health Canada.

Sarah O’Dacre of Health Canada confirmed in an email that “the OraSure Rapid Test (HIV test kit) is not approved for sale in Canada.”

When The Daily spoke with Dr. Nikita Pant Pai, a clinical epidemiologist at the McGill University Health Centre who has been involved in evaluating Point of Care HIV tests, she emphasized the increasing role that diagnostic kits like these might play. “I am aware that there is a lot of interest in proactive communities to get them into Canada…Approval of [the] HIV self test will pave the way for several other self tests (other key infectious and chronic diseases)….it is a concept whose time has come.”

The number of newly HIVinfected Canadians in 2008 was between 2,300 and 4,300 people, indicating that, while incidence

Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

of the disease is higher in other nations, Canada still has room for improvement, and OraSure tests may help.

Pai also mentioned the importance of creating support systems for those diagnosed with HIV outside of the doctors office. “It is important to set up counselling systems in place before we con-

sider self tests for Canada,” she emphasized. This concern was also raised in the FDA approval process, leading OraSure to add a telephone counseling number on the side of the kits.

While there is great hope for this technology, there is also great concern. There are still roadblocks to its Canadian implementation,

which might take some time to resolve. However, a focus on the Global South for the product may provide greater returns through lowered costs and increased accessibility for HIV diagnosis.

Ninth Life is a column by Tamkinat Mirza. She can be reached at ninthlife@mcgilldaily.com.

Seeking: Culture, Health & Education, and News editors Rundowns Nov. 27 | Elections Nov. 29 | 6 p.m. in The Daily office (SSMU B-24) Candidate statements due Nov. 25 to coordinating@mcgilldaily.com

poetry, prose, visual art due November 4 to litsup@mcgilldaily.com

CULTURE

The McGill Daily Thursday, November 1, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

Harlem Duet provides a conscious prequel to Othello Kira Walz Culture Writer

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arlem Duet explores the connections between race, jealousy, history, and the complications of love. It is a non-chronological prelude to Shakespeare’s Othello through the eyes of Billie, Othello’s first wife, as she experiences the misery of being left behind, after Othello leaves her for a new, whiter lifestyle.

Written by accomplished playwright Djanet Sears and directed by bornand-raised Montreal director Mike Payette, this dynamically powerful drama explores the role that race can play between lovers, and whether love is ever sufficient. It ventures beyond the personal realm, into the political, in an interplay between love, race, and the fight for equal justice for black Americans.

Although a prequel to Othello, Harlem Duet is not set in Shakespearean England, but in three different time periods: in the 1860s, in pre-Emancipation Proclamation America, in 1928, during the Harlem Renaissance, and in contemporary America, at the corner of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Boulevard. in New York City. Jeremiah Sparks, who portrayed Canada (a character in the play), said, “It is a beautifully written dark story filled with pain, and wrapped up in love.”

The talent of the carefully selected top-notch cast seems infinite: Lucinda Davis is an explosive Billie as she experiences the emotional torments that Othello, co-star Dave LaPommeray, brings upon her. Joined by Jeremiah Sparks, Neema Bickersteth, and

Liana Montoro, this all-black cast is perfectly paired with the skills of director Mike Payette to produce a sensory theatre experience.

After undertaking the tremendous task of analyzing Othello, Sears conjectured that Othello must have had a wife before the young Desdemona, someone who shared his historical and cultural background. The focus here lies entirely on her (and not on Mona – the modern day Desdemona), as she struggles to heal after being left by her common wealth husband of nine years.

Due to the three time periods, there are multiple angles in which Othello and Billie are portrayed, which craftily integrate themes of identity within the black community, personal racial identity, and the role these forces play in their relationship.

In an interview with The Daily, Neema Bickersteth, who plays Magi, the landlady and the comedic undercurrent to the play, and Liana Montoro, who plays empowered and loyal sister-in-law Amah, said that it simply was not a question when asked to audition for the play. “Janet Sears is a goddess, and Harlem Duet is a revolutionary piece of work. It was a great opportunity to bring it back and so I jumped on the opportunity,” Bickersteth said.

Harlem Duet was originally produced at Toronto’s Nightwood Theatre in 1977. After rave reviews, the play won the Governor General’s Choice award, four 1998 Dora Awards, and was shown again at the Canadian Stage the following year.

“It is a revolutionary thing that explores problems that we all deal with. It is a love story, but more, not only that,” Montoro said.

Photo Courtesy of Black Theatre Workshop

The play explores a struggle that is universal and relatable to all. “All the characters are trying to attain something that is missing in their lives,” Bickersteth explained. “When you think you’ve found something, something else sneaks up.”

I am sure that students and youth can relate to this as we wade the academic oceans to find our passions and figure out what exactly we are doing with our lives. This universal struggle nags at the essence of ourselves, desperately trying to convince us that there is something more, that we haven’t just quite finished yet.

“It will leave you beautifully perplexed,” Sparks said. “It is a play that

will leave you with many questions, questions on life, and is something that you need to see and feel.” Upon leaving the theatre, I felt the magnitude of his words as the lighting, heartwrenching scenes, powerful script, and talent completely captured and gnawed at my mind. I remember hearing the hauntingly beautiful sound of their voices, both in conversation and song, and the echoing sound of famous speeches, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream.”

Harlem Duet runs from October 24 to Nov 11 at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts, 5170 Cote Ste. Catherine.

Recently recovered Cohen documentary: Bird on a Wire

O

n a chilly October night, a friend and I, like many other McGill students, journeyed to Mile End, retracing a familiar, undulating route up Clark.

But I was not journeying home, nor to get food, nor to go to a warehouse party, nor to get bagels.

Instead, I was going to a screening of the long-lost 1974 Leonard Cohen documentary Bird on a Wire at the Mile End Chavurah, an event I had seen advertised on Facebook earlier that day. Given that it was Sukkot, the documentary was projected on the wall of the Chavurah’s sukkah. (For those unaware, Sukkot is a once-a-year Jewish holiday that is celebrated

by building a sukkah – or wooden hut in which people generally eat and sleep in for the duration of the week – which represents the way Israelites had to live in exile after fleeing Egypt).

Stopping at a dep to get cheap red wine – the price of which could not be found, which resulted in the proprietors’ telephone call to someone who might know – we recalled our favourite songs by Leonard to pass the time. Mine: “Bird on the Wire,” “Chelsea Hotel no. 2” and “Un Canadien Errant.” Hers: “Hallelujah.”

In an alley between Clark and St. Laurent, the sukkah was hard to find. When we did finally find the entrance, we were greeted by members of the Chavurah (a Chavurah, by the way, is a community-based, egalitarian centre of Jewish learning which focuses both on the

Searching for Sugar Man November 1 to 6 12:45, 3:00, 5:25, 7:40, 10:10 (all times p.m.)

Cineplex Odeon Forum (AMC) Atwater and Ste. Catherine

$13 This documentary follows the bizarre story of Rodriguez, who tried to become a popular American folk singer in the 1970s. Although Rodriguez never made it in the U.S., unbeknownst to him, he became a major success in South Africa, and an icon of the anti-apartheid movement. Meanwhile, Rodriguez has been working in construction in Detroit. The film reunites Rodriguez with his South African fans, and awakens the man to his legacy.

The Wooden Sky, Wildlife, The Sin and the Swoon November 3 8:00 p.m.

Il Motore 179 Jean-Talon West

Flawed, fragile, but authentic Peter Shyba The McGill Daily

CULTURE HAPS

Before Desdemona

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teaching of Jewish values). Before long, the projector was set up, guests trickled in, sat on transplanted kitchen chairs, and began to watch. The wind whipped the fabric walls of the sukkah, distorting the image at times, but adding to the overall experience.

Directed by Tony Palmer, the documentary follows Cohen on his 1972 World Tour through the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, and Israel.

When it debuted in London in May of 1974, Cohen was reportedly unsatisfied, spending six months in England re-editing the film himself. According to the Chavurah’s Facebook page, the re-edited version was shown just once before being lost. “Almost forty years later, director Tony Palmer painstakingly

recreated Bird on a Wire from hundreds of decaying film reels found in rusting tins in a film vault.”

Bird on a Wire presents disorganized and technically fraught performances and an emotional Cohen, coming to understand his newfound fame and the pressure of recognition – as Cohen says in the movie, “success is survival.” By following the poet in this particularly stressful period of his life, the film portrays an obviously thoughtful and introspective artist in the context of a demanding tour with an equally demanding audience. The result is not an altogether flattering portrait of Cohen, although, perhaps, this is one of the artist’s biggest draws in the first place – a honest testimonial of his flaws despite a resounding belief in the power of family, life, and love.

Door $15, advance $13 Toronto-based folk-pop outfit The Wooden Sky have been playing together for a decade. A surefire hit for any fan of beards, flannel, and Fleet Foxes, these experienced musicians churn out pleasantly mournful acoustic ballads and midtempo anthems. It may not be the freshest sound, but The Wooden Sky nails it pretty well.

The Yellow Wallpaper and A Toast to Alex Henry November 3 to 4 8:00 p.m.

The Plant 185 Van Horne

$6 suggested donation Community space The Plant is showing two one-act plays this weekend, The Yellow Wallpaper and A Toast to Alex Henry. Based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist short story, The Yellow Wallpaper promises to be an interesting adaptation. A Toast to Alex Henry is an original work. This promises to be an opportunity to enjoy student theatre outside of the institutional confines of McGill.

15 Days of Fame November 3 to 18 8:00 p.m.

Galerie l’Art Au Mur 4230 St. Jean Suite 108a Free 15 Days of Fame, Art Mur’s series of pop-up installations featuring Montreal artists, begins with a vernissage on November 3 from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. Chrissy Cheung is the guest artist from November 3 to 18. A mixed media painter, Cheung creates wry, aesthetically complex works.

culture

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The McGill Daily | Thursday, November 1, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Of all the jazz joints in Montreal...

A foray into the city’s kitchiest venue Matt Herzfeld The McGill Daily

I

have never been to New Orleans.

This is beside the point, because there is a culturally constructed image of what that Southern belle must look like.

I imagine that if one is truly in New Orleans then they will inevitably be seen sipping sultry cocktails (like mint juleps) at a long oakpaneled bar in a gaudy oak-paneled room replete with oversized chandeliers but dim lighting, with some Dixie pumping out the bells of a tenpiece ragtag band. Maybe I’m wearing a plaid sports coat and conjuring up the next great Southern Gothic novel, a la William Faulkner.

As fate would have it, I found myself in one such (unfortunate) place a fortnight ago (I figure invoking the old South requires a bit of linguistic archaism, no?).

Sent by The Daily to review a local Montreal jazz artist, I hesitantly entered the heavy doors at the base of one of the faceless corporate towers on Union. This actually took considerable effort, as the doors seem to manifest an underlying desire of the place to keep the outside world out.

Fittingly enough, the place, La Maison du Jazz, is caught like a fly in amber between visions of a society house and a gawdy bordello. Here I am, a little old-fashioned music journalist just tryin’ to get by.

Beyond the low rumble of the leftovers from the cinq-à-

sept crowd, I hear a piano player begin to trinkle out the melody of Coltrane’s “Minor Blues” from an old baby grand on the sunken stage.

There are pictures of Montreal jazz greats airbrushed into the wooden bar I’m leaning against.

Above the trio trying to form a warm-up groove from nothing, the sounds of 1950s Oscar Peterson and his trio boppin’ away filter through the speakers, which are conspicuously smaller than aforementioned chandeliers.

And yet of all the jazz joints I had to stumble into, why’d there have to be such an uncomfortably overreaching jazz singer in this one? Like anything campy, it’s just too much. As a service to the artist’s humble intentions, I’ll refrain from giving her bad press by referring to her by name.

She starts off, “Here’s a soul tune,” as if that meant she would actually sing soul. What followed was her version of “It ain’t necessarily so,” but all that you need to know is that it “wasn’t necessarily soul.” It also wasn’t in tune, the rhythm section’s timing was halfway between Greenwich Mean and Pacific, and all the arm flailing and facial contortions in the world wouldn’t convince me that this music was compelling, let alone real soul, or real jazz.

Like the tourist trap that it is, The House of Jazz offers a stylized version of something great and unique and inadvertently turns it into a mockery of itself. Indeed, Montreal has a thriving, cutting-edge jazz and underground scene, but it remains just that: underground. There are

Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

several reasons for this.

First off, the most publicized events and venues aim to be something other than what they are.

Besides La Maison du Jazz (which few Montreal or visiting jazz artists take seriously), there is Upstairs, a small and cozy jazz bar near the debauchery that is Crescent Street. At Upstairs one can find some truly sensational acts, established and up-and-coming.

In fact, Upstairs is doing many things right, including opening up the stage weekly to McGill and Concordia jazz combos, who must prove they’ve got chops before a rotating panel of “combo cops.” Though the venue succeeds on many levels, sometimes I wish Upstairs would stop playing itself off as an overpriced New Yorkstyle venue (like the incriminating pizza equivalent, “New York-style”)

rather than playing up its status as one of the best profitable jazz venues in town.

This is the problem with kitsch: you take a thing worthy of reverence and shape it into a cheap souvenir of itself.

House of Jazz is at 2060 Aylmer; Upstairs is at 1254 Mackay. Both have shows every night.

Poetry for the people Atwater Library offers popular weekly reading Luciana Pitcher Culture Writer

A

s a history student, my life consists mainly of hourly lectures filled with facts and opinions. Very interesting on occasion, but the constant deadlines and bombardment of readings don’t exactly leave time to think about much else. Combined with my attempt to cram in as many experiences in Montreal as possible as a yearlong exchange student, I struggle to remember the last time I could just sit for an hour without constantly thinking about the next thing on the agenda.

Marilyn Bowering and Gerry Shikatani’s readings of their latest poetry offered me that chance.

On October 25, the event was held

at the Atwater Library as a part of the Atwater Poetry Project, which began in 2008, and runs from fall to spring. The Atwater Poetry Project gives Canadian poets and writers an opportunity to present their work in a formal setting, apart from the relaxed nature of the typical cafe reading. Katia Grubisic, one of the coordinators of the event, explained to The Daily in an interview how this is one of the key aims of the project. During the readings, a respectful silence from the audience pervaded at all times – the library was the perfect setting to hear a pin drop. This formality proves popular for both poet and audience alike.

For twenty minutes, each poet provided insight into significant periods of their life. Shikatani’s poems moved through his months

of living at Port Stanley, Ontario, his poetry reflecting on the quotidian aspects of life. Bowering eloquently described her time in New York City, Naxos, Greece, and Vancouver Island, delving into themes of love, loss, and childhood experience. For a person who has never shown an acute interest in poetry, I was pleasantly surprised at how much their work affected me. When listening to someone’s emotional analysis of their past, you cannot help but delve into your own personal experiences.

In the past ten years, events at Atwater Library have become increasingly computer-oriented.

With programming such as teaching adults to use Facebook, the literary aspect of Atwater was sidelined due to the demands of a modern technological society.

The Poetry Project has sought to change this. Now in its ninth season, the series has had huge success and is growing in popularity.

One of the main goals is to allow for the community to experience various poetic styles and sensibilities. However, what struck me most was the way Canada as a country was represented in the poetry. After listening to Bowering and Shikatani illustrate the long sandy beaches, the snow, and “the life waiting at the window frame,” I was left with a real longing to visit such places. Shikatani’s merging of both French and English into many of his poems reflects the uniqueness of Quebecois culture. The poems serve as a beautiful reflection of the country, something that a history textbook doesn’t really offer.

The fact that the Atwater Poetry Project has gained more Facebook likes than any previous program at the library serves as a testament to its growing popularity. With writers travelling from all over the country to read at the monthly event, the series offers a place for audiences to hear and appreciate their favourite poets and discover previously unknown work. Grubisic said the event “slows us down and makes us listen.” For a student who is relatively new to the world of poetry, the readings are a perfect opportunity to do just this.

The Atwater Poetry Project’s next event is Thursday, November 1, at 6:30 p.m. It will feature readings from the poetry finalists for the Governor General’s Literary Awards.

The library is at 1200 Atwater.

compendium!

The McGill Daily Thursday, November 1, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

lies, half-truths, and nothing but racism, sexism, and classism

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Peanuts celebrate first wedding anniversary Couple hope to move out of SSMU vending machine soon John and Winona might seem like your average recently-wed couple.

Both young professionals starting out on their careers, they are apprehensive about the current state of the world economy (but hope their man Barack ‘Boom’ Obama will turn things around in a second term), are struggling to find money to pay off their student debt, and trying to find a wholesome work-life balance. John and Winona, though, are not your average couple; they are peanuts.

And they live in the 25-cent vending machine outside Gert’s. The Twice-aWeekly caught up with the pair for an interview after they celebrated their one-year anniversary on Tuesday.

The Twice-a-Weekly (TW): So, first question, because I guess there’s no dodging it really, so we may as well cut to the chase, but you two are peanuts, aren’t you?

Winona Peanut (WP): Hello!

Yes, we are peanuts. Salted peanuts.

John Peanut (JP): Living the peanut lifestyle! Livin’ the peanut-loca!

WP: Okay, shh now John.

JP: Yes, sorry. Just love the peanut lifestyle!

TW: Tell us about the life. How did you come to peanut lifestyle? What was attractive about being a peanut?

WP: Well, it’s funny you mention that, actually, because it’s not something we get asked a lot.

JP: Yeah, we live exclusively with other peanuts now, so I guess we’re all normalized to the lifestyle

now. No questions asked, really.

WP: I guess that’s one of the attractions of the lifestyle, now you mention it. It tends to attract mostly non-judgemental types; everyone seems to be quite a freethinker, and very accepting, yeah.

JP: We came to the life after seeing an advertisement in a paper, the Montreal Mirror (RIP) actually.

WP: Yeah we we were just sitting in Santropol one day, trying to catch up on our essays for school, and we saw this advert in the Mirror. It just said: Wanted. People who want to be peanuts. We thought it was a joke, obviously. But we called up for fun.

JP: We called up the number, and they told us to come in for an interview. So we went, and the interview was in a surprisingly legit building downtown – on Peel, I think – and we were just all giggles weren’t we?

WP: Oh, we were the worst! We had dressed up as peanuts, just for fun, and we were really looking forward to meeting the people behind the adverts. We thought anyone who puts an advert in the Mirror for people who want to be peanuts would be fucking hilarious!

TW: So how did you realize it wasn’t a joke? How did you end up becoming peanuts?

WP: Well, they weren’t hilarious at all. That was the first surprise. They were just not funny. The second surprise is that they were peanuts. That they were peanuts who were talking

to us. Also they seemed kind of pissed.

JP: Yeah it turns out about a dozen people had turned up in peanut costumes that day. I think they were just about to pack it all up and go home when we turned up, but they figured they’d give it one last shot.

TW: So they gave you a pitch about why you should become peanuts?

WP: Exactly. I’m not gonna pretend our jaws didn’t drop at first.

But, then, well, they said we should at least consider it. And to be honest we just hadn’t thought about becoming peanuts, so we felt like we should at least hear them out.

JP: And they were so persuasive!

I mean, I can still recite the statistics to this day. Peanuts have no concept of property ownership in their culture – everyone shares everything; peanuts all work according to consensus and mutual-aid; and peanuts only listen to good music!

TW: Wow. Who’d have thought peanuts have a great taste in culture?

WP: Please don’t use that word.

TW: Which one?

WP: Taste. It’s a very sensitive issue in the peanut community. We just don’t use it. Peanuts can be very judgy about their taste. Very.

TW: So, anyway, you became peanuts. Was that an easy transition, from being non-peanuts? How did you adapt to the lifestyle?

JP: Oh. I mean it was hard at first.

We missed our limbs for a while.

WP: And clothes. It does take

Photo Hieronymus Chanski | The Twice-a-Weekly

time to get used to the nakedness.

JP: Yes. But after a while you do adjust. And, well, they weren’t lying to us in the pitch! Peanuts do have the best life! To start with, peanuts are literally the nicest things on earth. We all live in a wonderful naked commune.

We’re all very open about our issues, and we try to solve problems within the community before they boil over.

TW: That sounds wonderful.

How has it been being married, in a community like that?

WP: Oh, no problem at all.

Everyone respects each other’s boundaries and heritage, but we all still manage to have a deep love for each other.

TW: And yet you want to move out of the commune, out of the vending machine?

JP: Well, yeah. We’ve loved our time. But there is a right of passage with peanuts. After a while you just accept that it’s your time. You have to go to the bottom of the box and wait until the Key of Destiny is turned and we fall down and into freedom.

WP: It’s something every peanut dreams of! The moment you drop into freedom, to start a new and long phase of life.

TW: And do you know what happens in that life? Have you ever talked to any peanuts? Do you know what actually happens to peanuts once they drop through the hole?

JP: Honestly, no. But, judging by peanut life so far, it’s sure to be wonderful and free!

—Compiled by Euan EK

EDITORIAL

volume 102 number 17

15

Safe space not blackface

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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Carla Green, Matthew Herzfeld, Jamie Klinger, Justin Jek-Kahn Koh, Zach Lewsen, Tamkinat Mirza, Luciana Pitcher, Bracha Stettin, Ryan Thom, Jordan VentonRublee, Kira Walz

It’s that special time of year: trick-or-treating, pumpkin carving, and overtly racist costumes. Costumes are acts of creative expression that often come with baggage. Are these the manifest skeletons in the closet of our collective psyche?

Photographs of SSMU’s 4Floors Halloween event, published by the Bull & Bear on Facebook last Saturday, showed at least one attendee dressed in blackface. The practice of darkening one’s face, as done predominantly by whites for the purposes of comedy, has a loaded racist history. Blackface was a form of theatrical makeup popularly used by minstrel performers in 19th century America to popularize cruel stereotypes of a black people. In addition to blackening their faces, performers exaggerated their lips and wore wooly wigs. This form of demeaning entertainment – of overlooking individuality and pigeonholing black people as lazy, childish, and foolish – was deemed unacceptable long ago. With the exception of some black artists who have re-appropriated blackface, this practice is unacceptable in the mainstream due to its overt racism. Apparently, Halloween is seen as an exception: a time when mindlessly offensive practices need not be questioned.

4Floors was not the only recent instance or example of a costume entrenched in racism. In September 2011, students at the Université de Montréal’s (UdeM) business school, Hautes études commerciales (HEC), dressed in blackface as part of costumes characterizing Jamaican sprinters for Frosh festivities. McGill law student and witness to these festivities, Anthony Morgan, stated to the press that he had considered filing a human rights complaint. The university said they did not tolerate racism, but did not see racist intent behind blackface. The failure of theoretically trusted institutions to condemn such acts serves to empower the already-privileged and further marginalize the minority. The problem lies not in these individual instances, but rather in the fact that our peers en masse do not see the underlying racism in such behaviour.

Just as UdeM could have done more to regulate and prohibit this racism, SSMU could and should have regulated their Halloween party. SSMU aims to create a safe space in our community: a space that is open, accepting, and intolerant of discriminatory behaviour, and where all individuals are supposed to be treated with “human dignity and without discrimination,” according to the Equity Policy. Yet SSMU did not regulate the costumes at 4Floors that threatened the safe space. A Bull & Bear press release stated that the SSMU executives were unaware of the explicitly racist costumes.

It is their responsibility, however, to call out such discrimination and ensure that safe space is respected – and this absolutely necessitates banning blackface and other racist caricatures such as the various indigenous costumes and ethnic stereotypes that were also present at 4Floors.

With students donning such explicitly offensive garb, it is clear that our university education has failed at teaching basic critical thinking skills when it comes to recognizing racist behaviours. McGill University, self-proclaimed as “an internationally respected institution for higher learning,” perpetuates racism through its eurocentric curriculum, which holds white history and culture as standard and everything non-white as the “other.” Charmaine Nelson, a professor of art history at McGill whose research interests include racial politics, said in an interview with the Montreal Gazette in March 2011 that “the underrepresentation of blacks in these positions (as professors, teachers, and upper administration) and [their] mistreatment within educational institutions, needs to be urgently addressed on a national scale.” Canada has branded itself as an all-inclusive society. The implicit erasure of Canada’s history of segregation and racism discourages racial discourse, and further silences it through the belief that Canada is a post-racial society. This only holds true if a “post-racial society” means a white normative society which is willfully blind to the racism still endemic within it.

As Nelson professes, “we are socialized into a racist society.” If the current framework will not teach us how to question our racial portrayals, we as students need a heightened sensitivity to the choices we make and the ways our socialization affects our behaviour. Sometimes it is about what you wear more so than how you wear it.

Errata In “Expenditures of Principal Munroe-Blum’s Office 2011-2012” (October 29, pullout, page 8), The Daily listed the expenditures of the principal’s office as dating from 2011-2012 and wine data as dating from 2010-2011. In fact, the expenditures of the principal’s office dated from 2010-2011 and wine data dated from 2011-2012.

The Daily regrets the errors.

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