Vol102Iss27 by McGill Daily

Volume 102, Issue 27

January 24, 2013 mcgilldaily.com

McGill THE

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Protest the protocol

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News Elections

SSMU holds Intro to Quebec week Events cancelled due to miscommunication

Statement due

Jan 27 Rundowns and Election

Jan 29 news@mcgilldaily.com

Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

n January 21 SSMU opened its “Introduction to Quebec” week with a debate on Quebec sovereignty hosted by the McGill Debating Union. The week of events – a collaborative effort between SSMU and student organizations on campus – aims to better educate the student population about the unique cultural, historical, and political identity of Quebec. SSMU VP External Robin ReidFraser organized the week of events after conversations about the recent student strike made her realize that students didn’t know much about the history of the province. “It seems like one of the reasons that folks at McGill didn’t have as much of a connection to the strike is because they aren’t from Quebec, and don’t have the history and sense of the province

because of that,” Reid-Fraser told The Daily by email. “I’ve heard a lot of students saying that it can be really difficult to break out of the McGill bubble, and get involved in the greater Montreal community. That being said, there’s a real desire to get to know this province,” Reid-Fraser said. Reid-Fraser explained that SSMU aimed to create a mix of more traditional events, such as discussions on Quebec sovereignty and Bill 101, Quebec’s charter of the French language, and less explored topics, such as black history in Montreal and the historical relationship between Aboriginals and white settlers in Quebec. A workshop on Monday aiming to provide a basic introduction to Quebec, and a presentation on Tuesday aiming to explain the relationship between different regions in Quebec, were both cancelled due to miscommunications in scheduling.

02 NEWS

08 FEATURES

Universities use teaching money for infrastructure

Canada’s immigration system: One man’s tragedy

Dana Wray The McGill Daily

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TO STUDY. Wildlife and Habitat Management A broad range of wildlife protection-related expertise in the field of biology.

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Workshop against tar sands pipeline Dean and students talk about Arts classes cuts

06 COMMENTARY (Not) fitting in at Forever 21 The Readers’ Advocate on simplistic narratives

11 HEALTH & ED Exhbitionists do it better The best birth control is for men

13 CULTURE Our world in paper

Tuesday’s workshop on Montreal’s black history was cancelled as the presenter was ill. Wednesday’s events included a workshop by Paige Isaac from the McGill First Peoples’ House on the Aboriginal community in Quebec, and a workshop on the Quebec student movement. Thursday’s events are slated to include a workshop on Bill 101 and other legal issues in Quebec, and a francophone night at Gert’s featuring the Montreal band Les Lazy Lovers. On Friday, SSMU plans to host a presentation on the history of Canada from a francophone perspective, followed by a poutine crawl. Reid-Fraser was enthusiastic about future possibilities for the Quebec-themed week of events. “I would love it if this can be an annual thing…and bring in more speakers from outside of McGill to have even more of a diversity of perspectives, and a lot more from actual Québécois,” she said.

Rich and poor: The Bible and the U.S.

15 EDITORIAL Condemning McGill’s cuts to Arts classes

16 COMPENDIUM! University releases documents, access codes

Players’ Glass Menagerie

Being a twenty-something will be #hard

Igloofest

Crossword solutions

news

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 24, 2013 | mcgilldaily.com

University to adopt permanent demonstration regulations with no approval from Senate Province-wide union reps attend campus protest Lola Duffort and Michael Lee-Murphy The McGill Daily

he University will adopt a permanent set of operating procedures regarding demonstrations, despite statements to the contrary made just last week by VP (Administration and Finance) Michael Di Grappa. Anticipating this, campus unions staged a demonstration outside the James Administration building yesterday, two hours before the announcement was made at Senate. A proposed protocol regulating campus demonstrations was withdrawn last week by the administration following a condemnation from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and growing attention from the Montreal press, though its provisional version remained in effect. At the time, administration officials stated in an email to the community that “the McGill community will be best served by an agreed-upon statement of values and principles, rather than a protocol of operating procedures.” “We’re not surprised. This is exactly why we proceeded with the demonstration we had today. We strongly suspected that the administration was still committed to some sort of protest management policy,” Lilian Radovac, the president of AGSEM-McGill’s Teaching Union, told The Daily. “We knew this was a temporary respite.” Despite -30-degree temperatures, prominent representatives of province-wide unions joined students and campus unions to protest

the University’s recent attempts to police campus protests. This was more than a simple show of solidarity, according to Sylvain Marois, a vice president of the Fédération nationale des enseignants et des enseignantes du Québec (FNEEQ), which represents over 30,000 professors and teachers across the province. “We know for a fact that if McGill goes ahead with this, then other universities will do exactly the same,” he told The Daily, noting that similar rules are under consideration at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Jérémie Bédard-Wien, a spokesperson for the Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (ASSÉ), made a similar point. “The brilliant minds in the James Admin did not invent the kinds of repressive politics that are hiding behind this protocol. We are currently facing all across Quebec the systematic imposition of a culture of security on our campuses,” he told the assembled crowd. Representatives from the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the parent union of several campus unions, were also present at the protest, as were members of several Concordia and UQAM unions. Di Grappa announced at Senate that the protocol had been reshaped into two separate documents – a statement of values, and a set of operating procedures. The forthcoming “operational procedures” will be guidelines for campus security and disciplinary officers about how to deal with protests on campus. Developing a specific set of procedures was one of the recommendations of a report authored by Dean of

Photo Jessie Marie

Prominent union leaders rallied outside of James Admin. Law Daniel Jutras in response to the events of November 10, 2011, when riot police were deployed on campus. Di Grappa made only passing reference to the controversy the proposed protocol has caused on campus, saying that there was no “unanimity” on campus to the changes the protocol sought. “Over the period that the protocol has been in place, there have been many protests,” he said. Both the “statement of principles” and the new rules governing

campus protest – expected next week – will go through McGill’s now familiar consultation process, with two consultation fairs next month at both campuses, and a website to be launched next week. Though the statement of principles will be subject to approval by the Senate and Board of Governors (BoG), the operational procedures will not go before either body. In an email to The Daily, Di Grappa wrote that the new set of rules about campus protests is an “operational or

administrative matter.” For teaching assistant (TA) Sunci Avlijas, “it is completely undemocratic,” that the University plans on adopting these guidelines without Senate or BoG approval. “I don’t see how they think they can get away with this.” According to Avlijas, AGSEM’s TA unit plans on filing a grievance with the University under their collective bargaining agreement, arguing that these “operating procedures” would fundamentally change their working conditions.

Principal says education cuts permanent, more to follow Senate discusses re-reads of students’ academic work Michael Lee-Murphy The McGill Daily

n a number of recent meetings, Quebec government ministers have told Principal Heather Munroe-Blum that recent cuts to higher education funding are permanent, and that McGill should expect more cuts in the future. The administration will continue to campaign for more money from the government, but according to Munroe-Blum, Premier Pauline Marois refuses to admit any amount of reinvestment. That was the main message

communicated by Munroe-Blum’s opening remarks at yesterday’s monthly Senate meeting. The meetings she referred to were preparatory talks for February’s upcoming summit on higher education. According to Munroe-Blum, she attended meetings on behalf of the McGill community, as well as CREPUQ, the organization that represents Quebec’s university administrations. The provincial budget cuts represent a $19-million blow to McGill’s budget. It is the “third reversal” of government higher education funding policy since April of this year, Munroe-Blum said, referring to the

Charest government’s restructuring of tuition hikes last spring amidst student protests, and the Marois government’s subsequent cancellation of the hikes. “We also must stay the course,” in resisting the cuts, Munroe-Blum said. Munroe-Blum added that the Quebec Minister of Higher Education Pierre Duchesne told her there would be more cuts in the 2013-14 provincial budget. The Faculty of Arts’ recentlyannounced decision to cut 100 classes from next year’s course offerings has nothing to do with the provincial cuts, and had been in the works

long before the current government was elected, Munroe-Blum said. Other Senate business included the annual report from the University’s ombudsman, Spencer Boudreau. According to the report, the past 12 months have seen 271 requests for ombudsman support from the McGill community, 250 of them from students. The vast majority of students’ requests, Boudreau said, are about class grades. All McGill students are entitled to a re-read of submitted work after an initial grading. There is no definite procedure for the process however, Boudreau said, and he recommended

a clearer procedure across faculties. Boudreau also recommended that re-reads of submitted work should be conducted by a panel of three professors, rather than the single professor currently allowed for in McGill statutes. Associate Provost (Policies, Procedures and Equity) Lydia White said the last recommendation was unrealistic, especially in obscure fields where there may be only one or two experts in a given field. Boudreau held firm, however, saying that all other universities in Quebec have a panel of three professors for re-reads of student papers.

NEWS

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 24, 2013 | mcgilldaily.com

Universities using teaching dollars for construction

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Quebec profs report recommends more transparent financial practices

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uebec universities are funneling more and more teaching dollars into massive infrastructure projects with no oversight – a bad use of public money and a blow to students and faculty, according to a new report by a Quebec professors’ federation. Between 1998 and 2009, there was a 162 per cent increase in funding for capital projects – new buildings, renovations, equipment, and books, mostly – that universities siphoned off from other parts of their budgets, such as faculty salaries and student services, the report says. That amounts to $167 million. The 426-page report, authored by the Fédération québécoise des professeures et professeurs d’université (FQPPU), comes just a month after McGill and other schools publicly decried the provincial government’s $124-million cut to university funding, which administrators say will hinder core functions like teaching and research. While the FQPPU oppose the cuts too, their report is the latest salvo in a fight over how Quebec universities spend their money. Administrators recently claimed the province’s universities are underfunded by $850 million, mostly due to low tuition, while student and faculty groups say schools have enough money but are spending too much on unnecessary building projects. FQPPU President Max Roy concedes that there are good reasons for increased spending on university infrastructure. “The government isn’t giving enough money for capital expenses,” he said in French during a phone interview with The Daily. Between 1998 and 2009,

enrolment in Quebec universities jumped 23.8 per cent, forcing schools to make room for students by buying up real estate. IT costs have also skyrocketed over the past decade. But Roy says he doesn’t trust universities to determine which infrastructure projects are most important. “All administrations are going to say that projects are prioritized and urgent,” he said. In their report, the FQPPU calls for the creation of a university council to review spending choices and make recommendations to the provincial government. “We’re not saying that administrators are acting in bad faith,” Roy said. “But we’re saying if they’re acting in good faith, they’ll accept greater transparency around their decision-making.” The Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) went further last week, calling for a freeze on university construction until an external review of the schools’ finances is done. McGill, the eye of the storm No one in the McGill administration was prepared to comment on the report by press time. McGill alone accounts for 22 per cent of Quebec universities’ infrastructure expenditures, largely thanks to its huge medical faculty. Indeed, of the 18 universities studied in the report, the four with medical faculties – Laval, Sherbrooke, Université de Montreal, and McGill – account for $3.6 billion of the $6.1 billion in capital expenses across the system. The abundance of old buildings on campus makes maintenance expensive, too. 33 per cent of McGill’s total space is in buildings erected before 1940, against 5 per cent for the other Quebec universities. In its most recent bud-

get, McGill estimated that it has at least $647 million in “urgent” deferred maintenance work. Roy says he wants proof. “They have to prove it – they have to put it on paper,” he said. “There is a major transparency problem. We think there are projects that are not justified, but we can’t tell which ones.” FEUQ President Martine Desjardins attended a roundtable meeting on higher education with McGill Principal Heather MunroeBlum last week, and said MunroeBlum bristled at calls for oversight on university spending. “She kept saying, ‘Just keep giving us money and we’ll just decide how we spend it’,” Desjardins said in a phone interview. This fiscal year, McGill plans to spend $46.7 million on construction and renovation, out of a $717.4million budget. In competition for students, winners unclear The FQPPU report also calls for less competition between universities over scarce provincial funding, much of which comes on a per-student basis. Desjardins, who agrees with FQPPU’s assessment, believes that the roughly $7,300 subsidy Quebec universities receive per full-time student is driving schools to misspend money on buildings and promotional campaigns. “If you have more and more students inside your buildings, the government is giving you more and more money. This is why we see this competition,” she said. “We think it’s a good thing to have competition. It makes sure the quality of the universities is high enough. But it’s going to another level. We’re having a lot of expenses for publicity and construction that we don’t need.”

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The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 24, 2013 | mcgilldaily.com

Citizens join hands to stop the sands Enbridge Inc. pushing regulatory approval Madeleine Cummings The McGill Daily

everal hundred students, citizens, and environmental activists gathered last Saturday to find ways of preventing the reversal of a pipeline that could carry Alberta oil into the province of Quebec. Climate Justice Montreal hosted the day-long community forum at Concordia, which included workshops, panel discussions, and brainstorming sessions, among other activities. Free to the public, the event attracted a wide-ranging crowd, from eco-conscious CEGEP students to members of the Montreal Raging Grannies. The attendees discussed the Athabasca tar sands, a collection of oil deposits near Fort McMurray, Alberta, which the Environmental Defence organization has called the most destructive project on earth. The forum revolved around Line 9, a pipeline that would transport oil from Sarnia, Ontario to Montreal. According to Shona Watt, a professor at Champlain College who attended the forum, the pipeline would complete a series of pipelines flowing eastward from Alberta, giving the crude oil from the tar sands an uninterrupted path to the eastern provinces.

Line 9 was built in 1975 to carry oil eastbound to Quebec, but the flow was reversed in the late 1990s in order to carry imported oil westward. Enbridge Inc., a Canadian energy company, is proposing that the flow be reversed again, to bring Alberta oil to the Quebec market. The company argues that because the pipeline already exists, there will be minimal impact to the environment as a result of the flow switch. In 2008, Enbridge tried to reverse Line 9 back to its eastbound route as part of their Trailbreaker project. It halted its plans in 2009 due to sub-par economic conditions, and after several years of trying to revive the project, claimed, “the scope and objective of Trailbreaker, as previously contemplated, is no longer being pursued.” But Watt and other attendees said that the company has broken the project up into smaller pieces in order to get regulatory approval more quickly. Line 9 is one link in the pipeline which carries crude from Alberta to Quebec. According to Watt, because oil coming from the tar sands is more viscous and corrosive than the kind currently flowing through Line 9, it is more likely to cause pipe cracks, which could lead to dangerous spills. In addition, Enbridge plans to increase the capacity of oil being pumped from 240,000 barrels a day

to 300,000 barrels per day. Environmental activists say spills, such as the one in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 2010, which also occurred on an Enbridge pipe, cause massive damages to surrounding land and communities. If oil spills out of a pipeline, it sinks into the earth and can often go unnoticed. But Watt pointed out that residents near the Kalamazoo River experienced headaches, nausea, and breathing problems as a result of the leak. Watt became involved with Climate Justice Montreal after discovering that part of Line 9 is located a little over three miles away from her family cottage. “It’s something that strikes really close to home for me,” she told The Daily. “It just [seems] that if something happened, I’d be able to see it.” One pair of students also advocated encouraging universities to divest endowment funds away from big oil companies. “The university is a kind of beacon for what we want society to look like,” said workshop facilitator and McGill student Lily Schwarzbaum. “We’re creating these centres where people can generate a kind of future that is based on passage of knowledge. The endowment, in a sense, should reflect that.” Divest McGill plans to present a petition within the next two weeks to McGill’s Board of Governors, specifically, under the Committee

Photo Lindsay Cameron | The McGill Daily

to Advise on Matters of Social responsibility (CAMSR). Vanessa Gray, a youth activist from Aamjiwnaang, a First Nations community in Sarnia, Ontario also made a call against the project. Having grown up on a reserve beside refineries, Gray explained that even though oil projects may not take place on Native land, they still affect nearby communities by polluting the environment. She has lost many family members to cancer and most of the kids she grew up with use inhalers. “I’m not afraid to say that I feel this is wrong,” she said at the event. “It’s not whether a company will release something, it’s when.” Gray mentioned that the Idle No More movement has empowered

her community to come together for the first time against many of the issues – such as pollution and the environment – affecting life on their reserve. At the end of the day people broke out into smaller working groups and brainstormed ways to resist Line 9. Most agreed that a priority should be increasing awareness for the cause and attracting more members. Gaby Rimok, a student at CEGEP John Abbott College, attended the forum with classmates from the environmental club at her school. “I think we can all work together. All the people here have the same goals, so if we all show up the next time, then it could work!” she said.

AUS holds Town Hall on elimination of 100 Arts classes Dean of Arts stands by decision to reduce number of low-enrolment classes Juan Camilo Velásquez The McGill Daily

uring a Town Hall with students on Tuesday, Dean of Arts Christopher Manfredi reiterated his commitment to reduce the number of low-enrolment classes to give full-time faculty more time to teach large classes. The event was hosted by the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) as a way to allow students to raise questions and provide feedback on the subject of cuts in Arts classes. Last week, The Daily reported that 100 classes with low enrolment will not be offered in the coming year, as the Faculty of Arts tries to raise the number of larger classes taught by full-time faculty members. Any funds saved will be directed toward hiring additional TAs for those larger courses. Manfredi began by telling students that the main objective of

this move was to enhance the connection between research and undergraduate teaching by having researchers in classrooms, and to decrease the ratio of students to TAs. According to Manfredi, these objectives go as far back as 2006, when McGill Senate adopted the Strengths and Aspirations white paper, which regulates academic priorities at the University. Manfredi also pointed to a Town Hall meeting held in the fall of 2010 in which students expressed concerns about a disconnect between instructors and students. Associate Dean of Arts Gillian Lane-Mercier said that other solutions could include retiring courses, reducing the frequency of offering, redefining course objectives, or increasing the number of students in each class. Arts Senator James Gutman expressed dismay regarding the cuts. He said that while students were being promised more, they were actually being asked to set-

tle for less, and accused Manfredi of punishing course lecturers for unionizing. According to Gutman, accepting cuts to low-enrolment classes would leave course lecturers in the lurch. “If we accept this, we are going to be accepting an attack on these workers who are some of our favourite teachers,” Gutman told Manfredi. Manfredi responded that the allegations that the administration was punishing lecturers for unionizing were “completely untrue.” According to Manfredi, the faculty had been planning the course cuts before the union had been certified. Gutman also worried about the effects the cuts would have on students’ education. “Is school simply a conveyor belt, or are we doing something more? Are we trying to learn? Can we learn in a big class? Maybe you’re talking to your TA once a week, or do you want to learn in a small environment with people that really care about teaching every time you go to class,” he asked.

“There is no direct correlation between the size of a class and the educational experience that it offers; it’s a combination of things,” Manfredi responded. “You can sometimes have a very poor educational experience in a very small-enrolment class.” Lily Schwarzbaum, a U3 Political Science and International Development Studies student, responded that there are more opportunities to have better learning experiences when classes are kept small. “You’re right, there’s no absolute correlation [between class size and learning outcomes], but the avenues with which you engage pedagogically with students are vastly increased when you have smaller class sizes,” Schwarzbaum said. SSMU VP External Robin ReidFraser compared the cuts to classes with the provincial government’s recent budget cuts. The government “just sort of impose[d] the cut,” she said. Reid-Fraser asked Manfredi why

the administration had chosen to cut a seemingly arbitrary number of classes. “I’m curious about why it was that you decided on the number 100, and now you are choosing to do the evaluation and figure out if that number is possible to achieve,” ReidFraser asked. Manfredi responded he chose 100 because it is “less than 25 per cent of the current number of smallenrolment courses, it’s a round number, it’s a number that could generate the level of freed-up resources that I think would make an important impact on the other things we want to do.” “This is not about cutting the faculty’s budget; it’s about spending our money in a different way. It’s mostly spending it on enhancing the classroom experience but also in the educational experience outside the classroom,” he added. Manfredi told The Daily that the process would be moving forward with a presentation to faculty at an upcoming meeting.

commentary

The McGill Daily Thursday, January 24, 2013 mcgilldaily.com

Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

Losing faith in Forever 21 How I learned to hate outlet malls and love myself Hannah Sinclair Commentary Writer

y mother calls herself a shopaholic. I know. Cringe. I hate that term too, but it certainly describes her and her sisters. As a child growing up in the Toronto suburbs, I often found myself dragged south to the glorious shopping deals just across the border. This became a yearly ritual that I grew to appreciate. Somewhere among the fervent consumerism, as corny as it sounds, we grew as a family. This is the story of the most recent of those trips and the time that I cried in a Forever 21. Okay. Embarrassing. I know. Crying in a Forever 21 – really? Standing on the sparkly stairs and being stared at by groups of mothers and their twelve-year-old daughters walking by? Not exactly a shining moment in my life. I’d arrived at this point

because I’d been eyeing beautiful long-sleeved sheer tops on the internet all summer. I knew that I wanted one and I also knew that my local Value Village would not fit the bill for this purchase. So this trip was about finding that perfect black button down. I loaded my arms with cheap shirts and skirts and dresses (because no one can resist a sundress for $6), and made my way to the dressing room. My sister had recently come back from a year in Berlin with probably less than $10 to her name, so she had decided that she would shop vicariously through me. When I walked out of the changing rooms with my head down and handed all my items back to the garishly dressed girl at the rack, my sister was pretty unimpressed. The thing is, I am not skinny; I never have been and probably never will be. I’ve spent a pretty long time coming to terms with this but sometimes it really blows,

and trying on top after top that refused to button over my boobs was one of those times. There was my sister – the ultimate McGill hipster, the reticent victim of CampuSPOT photo shoots, and someone who sends me Facebook messages laughing hysterically about being photographed for someone’s blog – and then there’s me, the girl who doesn’t fit a size ‘large’ at Forever 21. Walking down some stupid sparkly steps in the store, my sister suggested that we check the plus-sized section and I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. Never in my life have I seen myself as plussized. Yes, I always had boobs and hips and thighs, but I never thought that this meant I could never fit into what society deems a ‘normal’ size. How could I deal with the fact that I needed to shop in a ‘special’ section because I was so ‘abnormally’ large? The worst part was that I was in America – the land of the free and the ‘home of obesity’ – and I was

being told that I didn’t fit into their largest size. Are you kidding me? My sister’s response couldn’t have been more wonderful – “Fuck the patriarchy!” As much as she has the power to make me feel terribly inferior – the younger sibling complex in full effect – she knew just what to say to make me feel better. Fuck the patriarchy, and the patriarchs who run the fashion industry and choose arbitrary clothing sizes to categorize our bodies. Fuck this stupid store that told me that I was wrong and different and that I didn’t fit. My love affair with outlet malls is far from over, but I may just have grown out of my love affair with Forever 21. I’ll place it on file with the Claire’s and Rue 21s of my tween years and say a final ‘fuck you’ before walking out those glass doors for good. I’m moving on and deciding that just because Forever 21 made me want to crawl out of my skin for shame doesn’t mean that

there is anything wrong with me. I walked into that plus-sized section and found a sweet pair of leather shorts only to learn that they did not fit either. So, apparently I exist only in that weird parallel universe between what is ‘normal’ and what I have always been taught to see as ‘fat.’ I’m just going to have to let the fact that I can’t get the buttons to do up on that shirt that will surely fall apart in the wash stop defining me. I’m learning that maybe I’m not the problem. Maybe the problem is Forever 21 and their absurdly unrepresentative sizing, and a world that tells women that if they want to be beautiful they need to fit into a constantly changing standard of perfection. So I’m saying to everyone, “Fuck the patriarchy,” stop hating yourself, hate Forever 21 instead. Hannah Sinclair is a U2 History and English student. She can be reached at hannah.sinclair@ mail.mcgill.ca.

commentary

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 24, 2013 | mcgilldaily.com

Heroes and villains Losing sight of the whole truth in search of a narrative Austin Lloyd Readers’ Advocate

here’s something seductive about a nice, clean narrative. You know the story: the kind where the good guys are virtuous and deserving of victory and the bad guys are their evil opposite who must be vanquished. A story without much nuance, and not a particularly accurate portrayal of how things go down in real life. You might think that we, the cynical young adults of the 21st century, have moved past this sort of thing by now. But you’d be wrong; at least as far as some writers at The Daily go. Take Thursday’s News piece by Juan Camilo Velásquez on the decision to cut one hundred Arts courses for the 2013-2014 scholastic year (“100 Arts classes to be eliminated,” January 17, page 2). This story is, as you can imagine, a complicated one with longlasting consequences for McGill, and potentially worrying implications regarding staff-studentadministration relations, as well as McGill’s financial future. There are a number of angles from which this story could be approached, so I have to wonder what prompted the kicker “Arts senator alleges cuts are punishment for Course Lecturer unionization.” Actually, I don’t have to wonder; it’s a kicker that, though a relatively small part of the story, supports one of The Daily’s favourite narratives: the classic conflict between Good (unions, students) and Evil (administration). Rather than presenting the

Illustration Jacqueline Brandon and Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

story in a way that captures all sides of the issue, the paper tries to spin it toward this type of narrative by taking a particular opinion expressed in the article, and putting it out front. As a result, someone skimming the headlines will think that ‘admin punishes workers for unionizing’ is the main idea of the piece, which, frankly, isn’t the full story. The emphasis on the union side of the story, projects to

readers the sense that the writer was selective in which details he included in order to make the piece fit into a specific storyline. Though I feel that Arts Senator James Gutman’s claims regarding the motives of the administration may have an element of truth, I also feel that the situation is likely more complicated than he – and whoever wrote the kicker for the piece – are trying to portray it. Putting the story into simplistic

that superficially embodies that for which we stand, as doing so puts them beyond criticism. And if we want to make real progress, nothing should be beyond criticism.

good versus evil terms tends to force someone into the role of a villain, obscuring the actions of other actors or outside forces which may be equally deserving of criticism. And that’s the problem with this sort of spin; the confirmation bias that it generates can lead to authors and readers ignoring those details that don’t fit the story they want to tell. Ultimately, it’s not constructive to take the side in a conflict

Readers’ Advocate is a twicemonthly column written by Austin Lloyd addressing the performance, relevance, and quality of The Daily. You can reach Austin at readersadvocate@ mcgilldaily.com.

Gert’s, go vegan

Explicitly (wrong) content

Letters Substance or appearance Dear Daily, Courses at McGill can be very difficult, and they can only be made harder the larger the enrolment. By cutting 100 classes in the Faculty of Arts, the administration is demonstrating that if it had to choose between being ranked the best university in Canada and being the best university in Canada, it would choose appearance over substance. Some of the most engaging classes I have taken, classes with professors who were available to talk through difficulties, have been with course lecturers. The worst class I have taken was with a long-tenured faculty member. The supposition that faculty are better than course

lecturers has not been true in my experience, nor I expect is it the case for many others. While the employment status of the professor might not have much of an impact on students, class size certainly does. Smaller classes allow for more dialogue and discussion, for engagement in the process of learning; yet even when teachers who do not take advantage of this opportunity – when they use the same lecture style they would in a 500-person class – the small class size means that professors or TAs are more available for personalized help and to build relationships with students that can help in the future. The pursuit of “excellence” as

measured by Maclean’s or the U.S. News and World Report should be replaced with the pursuit of excellence as experienced by students, faculty, and staff at this school. Community members are hard at work pushing for this better, more inclusive vision of McGill. Some of us are promoting divestment from the Tar Sands, fossil fuels, and the Plan Nord, others are working to oppose military research, while still others fight for a pluralistic, democratic administration. We deserve better than these cuts. We deserve substance over appearance. —Christopher Bangs, U3 Political Science and Economics

Dear Daily, As an aspiring alcoholic, Gert’s is my second home. But as a vegan, I find my drunken self endlessly tempted by their animal protein pub fare. It’s time I took a stand, stumbled around, and mumbled the word. If people demand a prominent vegan dish besides a salad and appetizer, the establishment will introduce one. Capitalism! With love, —Marcello Ferrara U1 English and Geography

Dear Daily, While extolling his love of hip hop in the article “Parental advisory: explicit content,” (Commentary, January 21, page 3) Davide Mastracci incorrectly identifies the name of the famous Biggie song: it is “Big Poppa,” not “Big Papa.” Respectfully submitted, — J. Oliver Conroy U4 History and Political Science

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The McGill Daily Thursday, January 24, 2013 mcgilldaily.com

Deported How bureaucracy and bad judgment undid a Canadian dream Text: Franç ois Sabourin | Illustration: Amina Batyreva

fter ten years of trying to become Canadian, Zsolt Hossu’s efforts seem to be coming to an end. It’s August 28, 2012. He’s about to be put on an economy class flight to Budapest by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). His removal order from Border Services, delivered in the mail several weeks earlier, tells him in precise detail how to proceed when he arrives at Pierre Elliot Trudeau International: “Once at the airport, proceed to the international arrival level (ground floor) and follow signs, which will direct you to the Canada Border Services Agency-Customer services-Immigration. Locate the black phones, situated along the wall, and press button ‘G’ (Citizenship and Immigration Canada). This will put you in contact with a Border Services Official from the Immigration Section.” They will then make sure that Zsolt is good and deported. Or so he thought. Yet when he walks through the terminal at Trudeau Airport and presents himself to the immigration counter, no one knows about his case, or even who he is. He waits three hours for a Border Services agent and then leaves. Seems like he’s got a week of respite. This is about the least surprising thing that has happened to Zsolt in the last ten years. It would be an understatement to say that he has a complicated relationship with Citizenship

and Immigration Canada (CIC). Zsolt is Hungarian (hence the ticket to Budapest). After coming to Canada in 2001, he succeeded in passing himself as Gypsy, got married, had kids, almost got deported, got deported, illegally crossed the border back in to Canada, was detained by CIC and is now in Budapest. Put simply, Zsolt is a Hungarian who tried to be a Canadian, and failed. *** I heard about Zsolt through a math professor in CEGEP that I’ll call Daniel*. I ran into Daniel on the street one day, and he told me he was shooting a documentary about his neighbour, an illegal immigrant he had been helping out over the last few months. If he was interesting enough to make a movie about, I thought, he was someone I wanted to meet. I met Zsolt in bizarre circumstances. It was 7 a.m. on a rainy Sunday, and we sat on two balconies next door to each other. I got there early because apparently Zsolt talks more in the morning. He also talks more when he’s stoned, which he was that morning. I was expecting to interview someone who looked like a helpless victim of the system. Zsolt, as it turns out, is short, muscular, and has clipped blonde hair and a strong

jaw. He looks about as helpless as Bruce Willis. As we went through the first minutes of our encounter, he waved at people walking by, and chatted a little with a neighbour. Despite his calm demeanor, I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable interviewing a sleepdeprived, drugged immigrant across the railing of a balcony. The story Zsolt told me on that balcony was, to say the least, confusing. Even though Daniel had convinced me of his neighbour’s honesty, I was unsettled by the fact that Zsolt had let me use his real name. Understandably, a lot of people aren’t comfortable commenting on their immigration file while it’s making its way through the system. The rest of my – and my editor’s – doubts came from the absurd details in his story. But, then again, as I write this, he’s in Budapest and not in his apartment in Côte-des-Neiges. Verifying this story would prove tricky, an odyssey in its own right. But, for the record, here is Zsolt’s version of events: He was born in communist Romania, under Nicolae Ceaușescu, one of the most vicious tyrants of the late Communist era. In 1966, to drive up population growth, Ceaușescu made abortion illegal, leading to notorious orphanages packed with unwanted children. When his regime fell in 1989, he and his wife were executed on live TV.

Zsolt’s family were ethnic Hungarians born in the Romanian province of Transylvania. His father, at odds politically with Ceaușescu’s regime, was forced to leave for Budapest, leaving his children and wife behind. After some time, Zsolt’s mother and the other children left to join their father in Budapest with only small luggage, all that Ceaușescu government would allow. They arrived in Budapest only to find their father with a new family. When you know Zsolt’s story, this bit of early misfortune fits in snugly with the long comedy of errors that plagues his life. As an adolescent, his dream was to be a fighter pilot in the Hungarian air force. Prior to entering aviation school, he came to Canada in 2001 to learn English, and fell in love with a girl. So in love that he wanted to stay in Montreal. After spending the six months in Canada his travel visa allowed, Zsolt was faced with a choice: either leave, or find a way to become Canadian. Zsolt’s wife was a “protected person” – a refugee – and a Romani (a Gypsy). Like Zsolt, she was from Hungary. According to Zsolt, a lawyer he knew gave him an idea: try to pass as a Gypsy. The lawyer told him that Romanis have an easier time getting refugee status. Zsolt’s ploy sounded absurd, even made up, when I heard it. But, like the average

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The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 24, 2013 | mcgilldaily.com

Canadian citizen, my knowledge of the refugee application system’s ins and outs is pretty limited. So I called up a law school course lecturer – who wishes to stay anonymous – to get some insight into the claims process for refugees. *** The lawyer, whom I’ll call Gagnon*, explained the possible ways of successfully achieving refugee status. Hypothetically, a refugee arrives in Canada, and, at a border point, asks a CIC agent to be considered for refugee status. If they haven’t already been given refugee status in another country, rejected in Canada before, haven’t been convicted of a crime, and haven’t passed through “a safe third country” already, they would receive the first authorization and move on to the next step. Next, the refugee has to have to prepare a file – often with the help of a lawyer – to present in front of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRBC). If they’re Hungarian, they might have a more difficult time than if they’re from, say, Somalia. The harsher the conditions of the refugee’s country of origin, the better the applicant’s chance of convincing the court. If our hypothetical immigrant succeeds, they are granted refugee status or “protected person” status. If the first claim did not succeed, they can then apply for a review in federal court, and start over from scratch with the IRBC again. If the first claim does not work, there is always the “Pre-removal risk assessment.”

If our hypothetical refugee candidate has been rejected and is about to be sent home, the people at CIC may consider that it is too dangerous to send them back to the country they came from. The criteria for “risk” are as follows: if your life is endangered, if you are at risk of torture, at risk of persecution, or at risk of cruel or unusual treatment or punishment. A successful “pre-removal risk assessment” also grants the status of a “protected person.” Of course, if that last decision is negative, you can still appeal to the federal court to have that decision overturned, too. However, you have to leave the country (for often a year or so) while your file is being reviewed, which is alarming considering you claim that returning home would endanger your life. Potentially due to his blonde hair and blue eyes (uncommon physical traits for someone of Gypsy background), Zsolt claimed, his refugee claim was rejected by the IRBC. Unlike many refugee applicants, Zsolt’s situation was not dire: his family lives in Budapest and he had the possibility of a future there. He could become a Hungarian fighter pilot and settle down. Hungary, after all, is not Somalia. But there’s a catch: Zsolt’s lover was in Montreal, and she was five months pregnant. *** According to Gagnon, having children doesn’t guarantee a successful application, so Zsolt received his removal order from Border Services during his lover’s pregnancy.

The removal order was the first of three he received during his ten years in Canada. The language of the immigration enforcement bureaucracy is a curious thing, authoritative yet evasive. An excerpt reads: “If you do not leave Canada as instructed the Canada border services will make arrangements to enforce your removal from Canada.” At that point, in April of 2002, when he was told to leave the country, Zsolt’s file was being managed by a caseworker, whose job was to handle the immigration bureaucracy and push Zsolt’s file through the system. On the morning before his planned deportation, he received a call from his caseworker – she said if he wanted to stay in the country, he had to get married within the month. That way, his wife could sponsor him as a refugee, a process that requires her to support him for a year, he told me. He had to pay for the wedding and for the caseworker, whom he had been paying $300 a month for several months. Zsolt said his expenses ran up to $7,000 for May alone, in order to have the right to keep living in Montreal. Pretending to be a refugee was getting to be expensive. I asked Gagnon if any of this made sense. Firstly, he clarified that it would be under Border Service’s purview rather than the CIC’s. Secondly, sometimes Border Services push back the date of deportation for compassionate reasons, but usually not by a month. Gagnon was surprised that despite the marriage Zsolt didn’t get deported, he put it this way: “When you get your removal order in the mail, there is not much recourse left.”

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 24, 2013 | mcgilldaily.com

*** Against the odds, Zsolt was allowed to stay in Canada. Though, ‘allowed’ might be too strong of a word. Zsolt had a refugee claim with his wife as a sponsor somewhere in the cogs of the CIC, but didn’t hear from immigration officials for two years. In the meantime, he lost his job, found another, had a second child, and moved to another apartment. Then his caseworker disappeared. Just vanished. No phone call, no warning. If he had been more attentive, Zsolt would have been aware of his pending sponsorship application and would have given CIC a call, just to make sure they had his or her new address. Zsolt did not, and sure enough, trouble came. His sponsorship application was accepted in 2004, but the CIC couldn’t reach him. Gagnon says the CIC generally calls twice, and then closes your file. The CIC tried four times. At some point after 2004, Zsolt’s file was closed. It was only in 2006, four years after he applied for sponsorship status, that he found out that he was back to square one. So, he filed a “Pre-removal risk assessment” application, undeterred by the fact that he was a Hungarian from Hungary, and was under no threat back home whatsoever. “After that, I had to go to the immigration office every week, say hi,” he said. This might not sound so bad, but for Zsolt it was excruciating – each Friday night he could have been told to leave Canada by the following week. “I didn’t go to the bank because I was afraid that one time they would find me through the bank and they’re gonna take me from the kids,” he told me. By 2007, he couldn’t take it anymore. One Friday he decided not to show up at the immigration office. After that, he had to lay low, he couldn’t receive treatment at the hospital, and he had to avoid the police. In June, knowing he would be deported, he decided to stop avoiding the inevitable, and left for Hungary.

But Budapest simply didn’t feel like home anymore. He missed his wife and his children in Montreal. In 2008, they joined him in Budapest, but his wife was constantly judged for being Romani. “We would go to the restaurant, and people at the next table would start saying things about Gypsies,” Zsolt explained. So he tried briefly to live with her family, in a Romani settlement in the outskirts of the city. The new living situation proved even more difficult. According to Zsolt, the Romani way of life is pretty much impossible to sustain for anybody except Romanies. Zsolt emphasized the lack of showers: “It’s pretty freaky the way they live; I can show you on YouTube.” Thus the Hungarian adventure was a failure. Zsolt’s wife moved back to Montreal with their sons. In 2009, desperate to see his family, Zsolt flew to the U.S., and tried to spend Christmas with the family in Plattsburg, New York, about 100 kilometres south of Montreal. When his family couldn’t make it into the States, Zsolt tried to get across the border illegally. After two failed attempts, he managed to get into Canada. “I was back, like Rambo, you know?” Back in Canada, he had to hide again. But if that was the price to pay to stay with his children, he was willing to do it. If the law prevented him from seeing or protecting his children, he would break it. He successfully hid for two years until a fight broke out at a party in April 2011. The police came and identified him. He was taken to a detention centre in Laval. When he was released, he received a removal order. For good measure, Zsolt filed one last “Pre-removal risk assessment.” It was promptly rejected. *** Between me and Zsolt is a gap about one foot wide. It’s not much, but enough to make me feel more comfortable. On the day I interviewed him, Zsolt’s wife and his two boys had left

because, as he tells me, “she was mad.” He was losing weight, and surviving on instant coffee, cigarettes, and marijuana. I extended my arm over the railing to hand him a cup – it seemed like the peak of empathy on that morning. Daniel asked me in French: “Have you ever met a guy in such deep shit?” I had seen people in deep trouble, but I have never come face to face with someone that seems so “normal” – a word Zsolt uses a lot – but, because of bureaucracy and a few poor decisions, is in such a bad spot. Zsolt knew he would lose his family. Soon after, Daniel played with his daughter on the balcony, and Zsolt looked away. After many hours of being interviewed, Zsolt started to crash from the instant coffee. Zsolt didn’t look angry, but his frustration was palpable. He’s in the prime of his life, resourceful, gregarious, but the government of Canada won’t let him work. He kept stressing how he wants to be an active part of society, but keeps encountering obstacles. “There is a lot of people like me who cannot really advance with their future because they try to have normal jobs and for some reason, by law I always get pushed away,” he said. When I spoke to him, he was working as the janitor in the building he lives in – under his wife’s name. He recalled an immigrant he had befriended a couple years back. “We worked together in construction and renovation, he started his company and now he has a house in Dollarddes-Ormeaux,” a wealthy enclave in the West Island. I asked him why he couldn’t fulfill his own sort of North American dream. “I can’t have a driver’s license,” he replied. He sees himself as the man of the family, but he’s impotent in face of a larger system, and procedures that take time and money. He spent his entire twenties trying to have the right to stay here. “Since 2001, all I did was try to work and try to raise my children.” He told me one of his last dreams: if he had a driver’s license, he would take his wife on a road trip to Niagara Falls for the hon-

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eymoon they never had. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, but talk of the honeymoon was enough to make him weep. Two days after the botched deportation in August, Zsolt received a new removal order, telling he had to leave the country in a week. This time the Border Services agent showed up. Zsolt was finally deported on September 6, 2011. His family decided to follow him. On September 28, Daniel escorted them to the airport, treating them to a final meal at East Side Mario’s. Zsolt’s family joined him in Budapest on October 3. *** Is Zsolt a victim of a flawed system, a casualty of indifference? Certainly, he’s made mistakes. But for him, like droves of other immigrants, the Canadian immigration system is an expensive labyrinth. I encountered that system in trying to verify Zsolt’s story. I called the CIC multiple times before speaking to someone – sometimes they put me on hold, sometimes the automated system just hung up. When I finally got the form filled out by Zsolt to allow me to look at his file, I delivered it personally to the CIC’s office on Saint-Antoine. A security guard took the form, scanned it, and dropped it in a basket. For my inquiries, he encircled the phone number of the CIC’s call centre on a small handout. I came out thinking the CIC was probably what Max Weber had in mind when describing the iron cages of bureaucracy. The consequence of this bureaucracy is that Zsolt has given up on Canada. “This is how they create criminals. The difference between me and criminals is that they make money.” It is safe to say that the cost of this large, tangled system is paid in part by numerous small tragedies. *Name has been changed.

Health&ed

The McGill Daily Thursday, January 24, 2013 mcgilldaily.com

Sex and exhibitionism Emery Saur All that Naked Business

hen my roommates and I moved into our new apartment, there was a weird black stain on the tile in front of our toilet. We put a mediocre amount of effort into attempting to remove it, but to no avail. However, the man who came to clean my apartment naked got it off. I originally discovered Ben* in the personals section on Craigslist. He moved to Montreal from Toronto, and studied Social Work at McGill. Mitchell,* another man from the personals section, moved to Montreal from Edinburgh, Scotland, also as a teenager. He now runs a moving business that frequently works in the Milton-Parc community. Both men are exhibitionists. I interviewed Ben in my home as one roommate did homework, and the other sat in his room and nervously smoked with a friend. He came wearing sunglasses and sports clothes. He had trouble finding parking. “I usually sit them down, undress; it’s usually a strip-tease kind of thing. And then, after that, it all depends on what they’re looking for...you know, sometimes they like to touch, sometimes they don’t.” On my recording I can hear the rustle of his clothing as he strips it away; piling his shirt, then his pants, neatly on a kitchen chair. He adjusts his testes, and then gets to work. “If I were doing this for someone who was getting off on it, you’d have me on all fours [and] not with a mop.” *** Mitchell and I sat across from one another at a café, corralled by three other tables full of people. He was more explicit with his recounts than Ben, but his voice got lost in the din, and nobody noticed us. “I met this girl that lived in the next building over upstairs and we’d go to each other’s place and have a glass of wine, that sort of thing, until we watched a movie called The Story of O, It’s a 1970s, early 1980s movie about this woman who was dominated by this man.” After the movie, Mitchell told her that he’d always had a fantasy about being dominated by a woman. “So the next night I was there, and she told me to stand up and take my clothes off. And nervously I stood up in front of her on the other side of the coffee table and I took my clothes off, and she asked me to masturbate in front of her, and I did that, and through the rest of our get-togethers it started to progress.”

They moved through oral sex, rimming, and cock-and-balls-torture, into water sports, scat play, and humiliating scenarios in public. “We opened something up inside each other.” *** “I guess I was brought up pretty sheltered; I was pretty conservative,” Ben mused as he reached to get the grime behind the toilet. “After university even, and then I started experimenting, trying different things.” It all started when a girl walked in on him mistakenly in the shower, and “[that was] kind of exciting, and I fantasized about that, then I would go on chat lines. That’s how it started.” For Ben it’s about being exposed and vulnerable. He likes being naked around strangers because “it’s kind of an adventure. It’s never the same experience twice.” “I’ve had people like I said, couples who[m] I entertain; I masturbate in front of them. It turns me on when I’m there for that. I’ve had men wanting me to be a slave, do different things in front of a woman. I’ve had women hiring me to be their toy, girls who have never seen a guy naked, never seen a guy masturbate, even never seen a penis before.” Ben’s main scene is Craigslist. He gets a fair number of responses, but only ventures out maybe once a month. He’s been doing this for about ten years. And he’s never had any negative experiences. “Most of the people I meet are male. About half are male, about 20 per cent are male/female couples. Almost nobody your age. Mostly older; in their thirties, forties.” He doesn’t do windows. That’s pretty much it. “Organizing stuff, moving stuff. I had one lady who made me re-plaster her bathroom. [It took] two days. But it was a sexual thing too. It usually is, right? She’d watch me and get turned on and then we’d take breaks.” Afterwhich he asked me, “You get a lot of naked people in your bathroom?” *** Mitchell has had almost no responses to his online postings. “I had one ad [up] that was exhibitionist only, and they were always young girls that responded, and I went to one, but she didn’t show up, which I understand. In the email she sent me she was really interested and she wanted to do this. I was supposed to go out into the woods somewhere in a park. She told me where to go, it was private, and it was near a road, but nobody could see us. I was supposed to take my clothes off and masturbate in front of her, but it never hap-

Illustration Catherine Polcz

pened; she never showed up.” “That was the only one. I’ve kind of backed off a bit, I think if I’m [going to] get a response I’ve got to go to a paid website; there’s more safety there,” Mitchell continues. Mitchell has a girlfriend, and though he would never have intercourse with anyone else, he wants to fulfill his fantasies. “She knows about my fantasies, but they’re not of interest to her. And as far as she’s concerned, I’ve never lived out my fantasies. She only knows what interests me, that’s it. Like the domination, stuff like that. She doesn’t want to get into it; she’s more vanilla.” Yet the exhibition, humiliation, and pain are not things that Mitchell is willing to throw vanilla sex away for. He characterizes sex with his girlfriend as romance, and his fantasies as playtime. And though he’s not ‘playing’ right now, he’s found other outlets. Like walking in the parks of Westmount naked at 4 a.m., or, when he was a trucker, driving nude. “When I was on the road, sometimes early in tmorning I’d get the urge to stop, like if there [was] a

little wooded area. So I’d pull over, strip down, and have a coffee and a cigarette. Just me in the woods. But around here, no, it’s disrespectful. If someone sees you who has no interest [in seeing you], you’re actually forcing them; you’re forcing yourself on the public. I’d rather find someone and do it indoors,” Mitchell explains. For anyone with similar sexual inclinations that doesn’t know where to begin, Mitchell advises watching soft-core films and starting the conversation slowly. “If it doesn’t open up within six or seven get-togethers, I don’t think anything’s [going to] happen, but give it a couple meetings. If you meet someone, start off very slowly; don’t come right out with it. Stick with one partner. “If you’re gonna be having [penetrative] sex, ‘cause you know the world today, water sports, let’s say, before you do something like that you[‘ve got to] make sure no diseases are involved, Hepatitis A and B for scat, you know.”

*** An older man at a table adjacent looked at us over the rim of his coffee, at which point Mitchell leaned in for more privacy, and said: “Actually you’re the first one I’ve ever told about this. Everybody has a fantasy, you, her; whether it’s a vanilla fantasy or something like mine or heavier, everybody’s got something they’re not telling.” There are a lot of people in our society who would look to Mitchell and call him sick, or weird, for what he is doing. He only has one reply: “You know, no. I’m not weird, you’re not weird, these are sexual fantasies. Sex is the most powerful need that we have, whether it’s vanilla sex or wherever you want to go with it. If it makes you feel good, go for it.” *names have been changed All that Naked Business is a column on sex. Emery can be reached at allthatnakedbusi ness@mcgilldaily.com.

health&ed

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 24, 2013 | mcgilldaily.com

Turning the tables: a contraceptive for men The best birth control in the world is not for women

Illustration Tom Acker | The McGill Daily Julia Tsybina Health & Education Writer

or decades now, the onus of contraception has largely been placed on women; they are still, for the most part, expected to singlehandedly deal with the consequences of sex. For a topic that carries a stigma to this day, contraception affects a large majority of us. Yet slowly, more and more men are actively taking part in preventing unwanted pregnancy. Advances in the field of contraception are quickly making it easier and more socially accepted for men to take their reproductive health into their own hands. One such new discovery is a male non-hormonal contraceptive, delivered by means of a one-time injection. The product could potentially be a great alternative to problematic female contraceptives that have been circulating the market for years. Reversible Inhibition of Sperm

Under Guidance (RISUG) is a polymer – a mixture of chemical compounds – developed in India, which has been under testing for several decades as a long-term male contraceptive. When injected into the vas deferens (the part of the penis that transports sperm for ejaculation), it turns into a gel that does not allow sperm to pass through. Pursuing this product’s development is the Parsemus Foundation, a U.S. non-governmental organization focused on advancing lowcost medical discoveries which have been neglected by the pharmaceutical industry. In early 2010, the Parsemus Foundation obtained the rights to start studying the RISUG technology. A new U.S. version, called Vasalgel, is currently being developed, with clinical trials beginning this year. The foundation’s focus is to make the contraceptive available and affordable worldwide. If everything goes as planned, Vasalgel will be accessible to the public by the end of 2015. Vasalgel, after being injected,

blocks most of the passageway leading to the opening of the penis. Complete blockage is not necessary, as the polymer quickly solidifies and kills any sperm that come into contact with it. This is achieved by the combination of positive and negative charges on the polymer surface that causes the sperm’s membranes to burst. As a result, important enzymes leak from the sperm, rendering them useless. This form of contraceptive is so powerful that clinical trials have shown regular doses of RISUG can be effective for about ten years, though this procedure does not have to last that long. If at any point the man wants to restore his fertility, the polymer is simply flushed out with an injection of sodium bicarbonate. As far as the prevention of STIs (specifically HIV) go, neither RISUG nor Vasalgel can provide that benefit. Though RISUG was initially believed to have the potential to reduce the transmission of HIV, it was merely a hypothesis.

With this in mind, it’s upsetting to think about what this means for the spread of STIs. While, ideally, condoms protect users from infections as well as unwanted pregnancy, the Vasalgel procedure is only a contraceptive. Rumours surrounding the product need to be dispelled before it reaches the market. Today, what most consumers want is an inexpensive, long-lasting but non-permanent contraceptive that also protects against infections, but we have to take what we can get at this point. However, there may be a contraceptive developed in the near future that delivers on these promises. Nicknamed the “clean sheets” pill, a male birth control option is undergoing research in the United Kingdom. The pill, which inhibits the release of any semen, is the first to have the potential to stop the spread of HIV from infected men to their partners. Unfortunately, the product is at a fairly early stage of development and lacks the resources

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needed for further research. As with many experimental drugs, the pill is going through a funding dry spell, having been struggling for over six years. One thing it won’t have trouble with is being picked up by pharmaceutical companies, since a temporary pill has the potential of making big bucks, just like the female contraceptive we all know so well; this is precisely where Vasalgel differs. Though it seems to be an incredibly simple and affordable product, it’s taking some time for it to reach the consumer. In fact, the reason the Parsemus Foundation is behind Vasalgel is the product’s lack of appeal when it comes to the pharmaceutical industry. Its longlasting effects, combined with its low price, are not the signs of a big money maker. But the rest of us see an affordable, safe, and longlasting non-hormonal contraceptive with virtually no side effects. For now, when it comes to Vasalgel hitting the market, we can still hope for a happy ending.

Applications due

Sunday, January 27

culture

The McGill Daily Thursday, January 24, 2013 mcgilldaily.com

The fear between reality and illusion Thomas Demand’s photorealistic paper sculpture Sebastian Grant Culture Writer

s soon as I walked through the doors of DHC/ART in the Old Port my uncertainty transformed into something new. This new sensation moved through me as I heard a haunting motif from the legendary unfinished Beach Boys’ album Smile play on a constant skittish loop. I walked into a dark room, unsure of what I was feeling, and saw a screen with a projected image of an 8-track recorder, constantly spinning, and playing the unending melancholy melody disjointedly through the pitch-black room. After a few minutes of observing this projection, the security guard standing nearby whispered to me, “Remember, everything is made with paper.” It was then that I recognized this emotion that had appeared when I entered the gallery, and had been my constant companion since: fear. Fear, courtesy of German artist Thomas Demand’s new exhibition Thomas Demand: Animations, which features various films and photographs that depict his paper sculptures. He creates sculptures of everything from recorders and escalators to cruise ships. These paper images capture extremely realistic visions of the common objects of our daily lives. They distort the distinction between reality and illusion, creating the fear that

captured me and filled me with wonder throughout my whole trip through the exhibit. What fascinated me the most were the films of these lifelike paper deceptions in motion, created by Demand and his assistants with the use of stop-motion technique. The films were shown with projectors of various vintages, from grainy 35mm to modern digital. He uses stop motion to create visions of things as unlikely and surreal as rain (for which he employed translucent candy wrappers). I was beginning to lose my sense of reality: if an artist can create such realistic images out of paper, who’s to say that the world I inhabit is not itself artificial? Something created from paper by a master craftsman? These were the thoughts that caused the feelings of terror creeping through me as I saw the loops over and over again, and wondered at the unexpected mysteries of each film. What entranced me the most was the film component of Yellowcake, a mixed-media piece that also utilized sculpture. Like the other pieces, Yellowcake had an entire floor of the gallery to itself. It depicted the Ethiopian embassy in the Vatican, from which stolen stationary was used as false evidence against Saddam Hussein, and used to promote President George W. Bush’s agenda to involve the United States in the Iraq War. The film showed surveillance images of an outdoor room with stairs and

Pacific Sun, Thomas Demand, 2011. Still from stop-motion animation. an elevator. I stood in a room, dark except for the projected image of the embassy, filled with expectation. Above me, sounds of night filled the room, and every now and then, bumps, bangs, and moans echoed through the darkness. “Someone is coming,” I immediately thought. Suddenly the room turned on, and was flooded with

light. Suspense reached a new level, and for a moment my hands shook. Yet the climax never arrived, and I left the scene before its power of constant suspension could take full control of me. Demand powerfully shows his viewers how easily reality can be created with the common media that surround us, such as paper. He

Photo courtesy of Pacific Sun

establishes novel distortions of reality that challenge the viewer’s preconceived notions of what is possible in a contemporary exhibition, and uses the lightest of materials to tackle the heaviest subjects.

DHC/ART is located at 451 SaintJean.

A Williams for the modern era? Players’ The Glass Menagerie Nathalie O’Neill The McGill Daily

n the next installment of their “Season of Classics,” Players’ Theatre takes on Tennessee Williams’ semi-autobiographical The Glass Menagerie. Director Rowan Spencer approached Players’ with a “reading edition” of Williams’ work, keen to produce the most authentic version of Williams’ tale. Although this drive for textual authenticity results in an uneven quality, Spencer still manages to convey Williams’ essence of remembrance, regret, and chilling hopelessness. The reading edition of Williams’ play is less formally linear than the traditionally performed acting edition. Spencer admits that the choppy aspect of his production can be “jarring,” but maintains that this construction conserves the feeling of

what is, at its core, a memory play: disjunctured parts coming together to form a common narrative in retrospection. The rough transitions take a while to get used to, especially since Players’ relatively bare staging doesn’t hide much, if any, of the actors’ movements in between scenes. Some of the unpolished elements, though, are quite successful, such as the anachronisms in Williams’ text that were purposely retained, emphasizing the way imperfections and inaccuracies melt together in human memory. The reading edition’s main distinction lies in the extra-literary devices speckled throughout the play. Tom, the play’s frustrated young protagonist, addresses the audience directly, intermittently playing an active part and standing aside as narrator, offering his own commentary to the audience. His direct interpellations of the audience are the most hard-hitting elements of Spencer’s production. Tom’s play-book-end-

ing monologues are chilling in the timelessness of their prose and the clarity of the delivery, conveying the pressure of making decisions and confronting us with the haunting power of regret. McGill student theatre societies tend to select and interpret plays in an effort to deliver productions relevant to their audiences. This often translates into misguided attempts to update texts to suit students’ perspective. Laura, played by Arlen Aguayo Stewart, poses a particular challenge in this regard. With her stubborn focus on minor pastimes – pathetically fretting over her glass menagerie and her phonograph collection – she strives to isolate herself from the outside world. When her gentleman caller, Jim, arrives in the second act, Spencer’s production largely glosses over the difficulty of representing Laura’s reliance on a man’s support in a manner relevant to contemporary student audiences. Spencer sticks to Williams’

original text, failing to add any tones or mannerisms that would have made Laura less flat and more engaging for a student audience. The main attention-grabber is Andrew Cameron’s multifaceted portrayal of Tom, as an eye-rolling, bantering opponent to Ingrid Rudié’s Amanda, who often simply fails to understand her children. Rudié’s affected Southern drawl and flourishing mannerisms are sometimes over the top, making it more difficult to perceive her as a multi-dimensional character. Cameron occasionally struggles to traverse his character’s dynamic range when he abruptly transitions from placidity to emotional outburst. Yet he still manages to aptly convey emotion as he surges from rude teenage rebellion to compassion for his differently abled sister. We navigate the various pressures Tom feels when faced with limited choices in his search for a way out of his rapidly deteriorating family life.

He raises his arms to the sky, he rolls his eyes, he cradles his head in his hands – his exasperation is palpable through his gesticulations. The idea of the glass menagerie encapsulates the world of Williams’ play. On Spencer’s set, it is right in the centre of the stage: a small cabinet with transparent panels in which Laura keeps her collection of miniature glass animals. Fragile and breakable figures, Willams’ characters are imprisoned in their own cabinet. Although Spencer’s production falls short of drawing us completely into the powerfully effecting realism of Williams’ original characters, the claustrophobic tinge to the Wingfield’s situation is well-conveyed and draws an interesting parallel to contemporary experience. The Glass Menagerie runs January 23 to 26, 30 to 31, and February 1 and 2 at 8 pm. Tickets are $6 for students and can be reserved online at ssmu. mcgill.ca/players/reservations.

The McGill Daily | Thursday, January 24, 2013 | mcgilldaily.com

culture

Preview: Igloofest Hype and hypothermia Kaj Huddart, Christopher Webster, Ceren Eroglu, Hillary Storm The McGill Daily

January 24 (Thursday) –“Girls in the House” This year Igloofest has invited serious female DJ talent to an almostall-girls night on Thursday, January 24. Local producer Alicia Hush will initiate proceedings with a techhouse set at 6:30 p.m., followed by

Miss Kittin’s throwback electroclash, and finally, the good old techno of Germany’s Ellen Allien. If we were comparing the festival’s female DJs, Russia’s Nina Kraviz would certainly come out on top (she would also stack up well against any of Igloo’s male picks). She plays on Friday with the excellent Pan-Pot. For Thursday’s fest, our favourites are still our hometown heroes, Nymra & Sofisticated, who’ve held down Piknik and Salon Daomé for years with their rock-solid house sets. January 26 (Saturday) – “(We) Beez in da Trap” In some circles, this is shaping up to be one of the bigger nights at Igloofest, with a hip-hop theme that will likely attract a massive crowd. On at 8 p.m. is Kaytranada, who has been making a name for himself with an array of beats that are fantastic to funk to (funk to, guys). His remix of “If” by Janet Jackson is a particular highlight. After him comes the celebrated duo of Hudson Mohawke and Lunice, also known as TNGHT, whose music looks to be a great fit for the open spaces and contagious energy of Igloofest. Trap music, polarizing as it may be, is their calling card, and the combination of minimal melodies with in-your-face bass can only result in what many are so eloquently terming “a massive party”. This is one you don’t want to miss.

Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

ontreal dies a little bit every winter. Rodents freeze; plants stop inhaling our carbon emissions; our citywide hobby of drinking outdoors becomes a fatal pastime; our genitalia shrivel. Salt encrusts our boots, and the tiny hairs in our nose uncomfortably fuse to one another. Fortunately, we are a city of strong people. Despite our constant complaining about the weather, we’ve invented half-crazy celebrations to brighten the season for those who don’t hibernate or migrate south. If you’re not busy hiding in Iqaluit, Nunavut; Nuuk, Greenland; or Hammerfest, Norway – all of which are warmer than this frozen patch of concrete – then revel in the folly of city founders de Maisonneuve and JeanneMance by heading down to where it all began in the Old Port for Igloofest. Montreal’s most recent largescale festival is a stunning display for both the eyes and the ears. Three stages make up the grounds, where ice sculptures and mulled wine can be found at every turn, backed by the thump of ever-present basslines. Don’t let the cold turn you away, even if heated wine isn’t in the budget; the body heat from the crowd is a wonderful thing, and leaves you feeling

like you’re (at least) at room temperature without the buckets of sweat that accompany a trip to an indoor venue. Plus, if you’re too cheap for the mulled wine or not clever enough to sneak your own alcohol past the bouncers, you can take drugs (but say “no” to drugs). Watch out for the early start, as the first acts are on by 6:30 p.m., and the evening wraps up by midnight. While this may shift your pre-drink by an hour (or three), it’s a small price to pay, and who doesn’t have drinks with dinner anyway? Tickets are $20 “at the door,” $18 with an online purchase, and $16 if you go to a listed boutique (such as Off the Hook or Moog Audio). Igloofest has officially begun and we’ve heard good things about the last weekend. To help the Igloofest-naive navigate the many nights of revelry still ahead, we’ve written a few short blurbs about the most promising nights coming up. The cheesy titles we gave to each evening reflect The Daily’s interpretation of Igloofest’s lineup, and are not endorsed by Igloofest.

February 1 (Friday) – “Acid/Techno/ UK garage/insertgenrehere” How better to avoid hypothermia and satisfy your MDMA-induced dance-lust than a night of UK garage? Going over the classics, we’re forced to ask ourselves, was dubstep ever necessary? Anyway, local garage heads Lexis and Dr. Love will be holding down the “Virgin Mobile Igloo” while a killer trio – Montreal’s Vosper, Berlin’s Ewan Pearson, and Detroit’s Magda – will be spinning various flavours of techno and house on the main stage. This is the mixed-bag night where you’re certain to find some-

thing you like, and probably something you’ve never heard before. February 9 (Saturday) – “Techno über Alles” Deutschland is coming to the main stage: Tommy Four Seven and Chris Liebing will be rounding off another year of Igloofest with crisply produced minimal and tech-house beats, timed to exactly 134 BPM (just kidding). But we are not kidding about the seriousness of this night: it’s a chance to catch a glimpse of the Berlin club culture without the price of Stereo or a plane ticket.

Stratification nation Inequality, from the Bible to now Elena Dugan Archiving the Arcane

veryone and their grandmother knows that the United States is economically stratified (or, at least my grandmother does). I might hope that we’ve progressed past visions of the wretched poor cavorting about with face sores, like in Les Misérables. It is not terribly uncontroversial to say poverty means something is out of order, but what? Claiming, as the U.S. would, that all are created equal, why do bad economic circumstances happen to theoretically equal people? I have no economic answer, so everyone pop your monocles back in. It’s just that this question of inequality has been posed in a thousand different spheres, including back in ancient Israel. The Wisdom Literature of the Bible – and here I will only be presenting Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes – is more than anything

a series of speculations on cosmic order and disorder, seeking to understand and live in harmony with the underlying principles of the universe. I find it curious that the metaphorical lenses they offer on why the universe is out of sync tally very well with some of the louder sectors of American politics on the issue of poverty. The Book of Proverbs is essentially a collection of pithy rules for leading a moderate life in accordance with the cosmic order – be righteous, humble, upright, honest, hard-working, prudent; don’t mouth off to your father, you dumb kid, and so on. It’s often written with an if/ then structure – if you are righteous, then you will prosper. It follows that if you are not prosperous, you are not righteous. Proverbs is infamous for implying the poor deserve their lot in life (19:7 and 22:7 are pretty egregious), because if you follow the wise exhortations of Proverbs, how could you not be rich and doing great? God has created such a synchronous universe that so long as you live in accordance with its laws, you will be the top of the tops.

But if you’re not swimming in pools of honey and milk, that’s really your own problem. The modern school of prosperity theology, which implies that the rewards of God are primarily financial, owes much to Proverbs in this respect. If this rhetoric sounds familiar, it should. The assumption underlying American free-market ideology is that the market rewards innovation, hard work, and perseverance, and is absolutely impartial. There are a million rags to riches stories embedding this narrative in our consciousness, and to “work your way up” is as American as a white-picket fence. Thus, the elite super-rich are there because they worked hard, because they lived in accordance with the laws of the invisible hand, because they are the wisest. Questioning the invisible hand would be tantamount to questioning the cosmic order governing Israel. And yet, in Israel, people did question it. The Book of Job deals with a poor guy who was really just in the wrong place at the wrong time. God allows one of his henchmen to make Job’s life miserable in

order to test Job’s righteousness. Job laments his lot in life, while his so-called friends patiently explain to him that he is obviously wicked, and that he really should stop whining, because he deserves it. At the end, God comes in and tells Job that it’s really none of his business, and that He knows lots of great and terrible things that Job will never know. Then, He gives him a lot of sheep, and the now-redeemed Job lives on. But not everyone is so happy to cede this power to a being that is great, but not necessarily good. Another school of American political thought maintains that it is the duty of the government to recognize that the social order is out of whack. Calling itself “liberal” or “progressive” government, it seeks to find and correct systemic inequalities, to prevent against there being an entire class of Jobs running about, being punished through no fault of their own. Both liberal and conservative views hold that something is fundamentally unfair. The variation is whether those who are suffering trust the system to fix itself. Finally, Ecclesiastes instructs

us to forget it. It thinks the notion of cosmic order is idiotic, and that time and chance happens to everyone. The world is crooked, God is unknowable, so we might as well just live out our days chasing pleasure and drinking an awful lot. Similarly, with artists like Ke$ha announcing we’re all going to die young and we might as well get drunk, Drake reminding us you only live once (and kindly suggesting we party hard), and Lana Del Rey announcing we were born to die, it seems like American youth don’t care much whether things are fair or right. So there is a culture for which the cosmic order – the classic American narrative – holds no promise. It’s not even that the if/then statements implied in these structures are unfair, but that they’re irrelevant. This is not a narrative of decline; America is not morally bankrupt. This voice has been speaking for at least two and a half millennia.

Archiving the Arcane is a column about religion and myth in the modern world. You can contact Elena at arcane@mcgilldaily.com.

EDITORIAL

volume 102 number 27

Cut and dry disregard

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cover design Jessie Marie contributors Eric Andrew-Gee, Christopher Bangs, Lindsay Cameron, Madeleine Cummings, Elena Dugan, Ceren Eroglu, Marcello Ferrara, Sebastian Grant, David Huehn, Jay Knight, Michael LeeMurphy, Lucy Liu, Austin Lloyd, Jessie Marie, J. Oliver Conroy, Catherine Polcz, Nathalie O’Neill, Francois Sabourin, Emery Saur, Hannah Sinclair, Hillary Storm, Christopher Webster, Dana Wray

The recent news that McGill would cut 100 Arts classes for the 2013-2014 academic year was met with near-universal disdain. Many were quick to lament the decision as financially necessary due to the recent budget cuts enacted by the Quebec government. Unfortunately, this explanation does not hold water. This move, in fact, saves no money for the University. Instead, the money saved from cutting courses will be put back into hiring more teaching assistants (TAs), organizing internships, and advising students. The unilateral decision by the administration to cut 100 classes isn’t a cost-cutting move; it’s an ideological move that continues a popular trend for the administration: ignoring student feedback and well-being. The proposed plan would eliminate, as Dean of Arts Christopher Manfredi recently told The Daily in an interview, “lower enrolment courses” and replace them with “a more broadly defined slot course.” At the same time, these broader classes will be taught almost exclusively by full-time professors while part-time course lecturers are laid off. The administration would like to tout this as a move beneficial to students – more classes with full professors is better, right? What it really means is bigger classes taught by full professors at the expense of smaller, seminar classes. The benefits of smaller classes are well-established: unlike larger auditorium-style classes where the professor delivers lectures, smaller seminar-style classes feature professor-student interactions. In essence, a student is forced to participate in the learning experience, helping to shape it, instead of passively receiving information from the professor. This sort of discussionbased learning facilitates the kind of intellectual interactions that really enhance educational experiences. It also promotes a stronger bond between professor and student, as they are in constant conversation with one another during class. In this way, students can gain connections to their professors, giving them more opportunities to attain research positions or reference letters, among other benefits.

In larger classes, connections with professors are hard to come by, as the professors have more students to deal with and less in-class interactions with them. The benefits of small classes have been revealed by scientific studies, which show that in almost all cases, students learn more from smaller classes. In a 2008 study published in The Economic Journal, researchers found that students learn best in classes with less than 33 people, are negligibly affected by mid-size courses (33 to 104 students), and negatively affected by courses above 104 people. The Faculty of Arts’ proposed cuts would slash the most effective courses and leave either intermediate-size classes or large classes that negatively impact students. Students already have enough trouble registering for classes necessary to graduate; it’s tough to see how expanding intermediate-level courses will aid this problem. Under this model, the higher-level classes that are often needed to achieve a major will be less accessible, and those that remain will be harder to get into. The move to hire more TAs would be admirable if there weren’t already a dearth of TAs in many departments – these hires, while beneficial to grad students, will likely not have the promised effect of smaller conferences due to such large classes; they may, in some departments, create conferences in the first place. While conferences for bigger classes are in most cases a good thing, this move begs the question: Would you rather have more conferences, or participatory classes with your professors? Merely placing full-time professors in bigger classes is not a way to create better student-professor connections and better classes, no matter how much the administration plugs their ears and continues to say so. This move is not to the benefit of students. This move is not financially beneficial to the school. It’s not even necessary. Instead, it represents a deprioritization of the Arts program at McGill and a disregard for student feedback. —The McGill Daily Editorial Board

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All contents © 2012 Daily Publications Society. All rights reserved. The content of this newspaper is the responsibility of The McGill Daily and does not necessarily represent the views of McGill University. Products or companies advertised in this newspaper are not necessarily endorsed by Daily staff. Printed by Imprimerie Transcontinental Transmag. Anjou, Quebec. ISSN 1192-4608.

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compendium!

The McGill Daily Thursday, January 24, 2013 mcgilldaily.com

lies, half-truths, and getting a what what

Administration releases building blueprints, access codes Small, “lair-like” space discovered beneath SSMU building Euan EK The Twice-a-Weekly

n an unprecedented show of solidarity with Cancordia students currently embroiled in legal action over Access to Information (ATI) requests, the McGall administration has released blueprints to the entire McGall University campus, as well as access codes “to all the buildings.” Speaking at the release of the documents, McGall PR Mascot Sweetie Boy-Sweet said that the administration decided to release the documents “to show our support for, and solidarity with, the ‘Cancordia 21.’” The Cancordia 21 are a group of

students currently being taken to the provincial court over allegations that they “want to know too much.” In a motion filed January 12 to the Commission de telling de truth – the provincial body that oversees ATIs – Cancordia alleges that a “complex system” has been put in place by the 21 respondents named in the motion “as a retaliatory measure against Cancordia in the aftermath of the 2011-2012 food fights.” Cancordia alleges that the group, acting only at night and using advanced technology and “more than one password,” have made “upwards of ten” ATI requests, and that the “systematic” and “repetitious” nature of the ATIs “is abusive and hurtful.” Cancordia claims that the group’s “troublesome attempts to

break through the gates of knowledge using legal means and legally acquired tools such as laptops, pens, and paper [is] upsetting.” Boy-Sweet told The Twice-aWeekly that McGall decided to release the documents both to support the Cancordia 21, and because the administration had grown tired of Cancordia’s “deception and lies.” “Frankly, Cancordia have embarrassed us [universities] all. As institutions, we [universities] are meant to further humanity’s knowledge, not keep it locked away, or use it for bombing innocent people in other countries. We felt the only moral response to their attempt to close the gates of knowledge was to literally just give you everything.” “We could not, in good con-

science, continue to allow McGall’s extensive resources – two campuses, advanced research laboratories, and some of the finest minds alive today – to remain closed to students. The distribution of knowledge and resources are some of this University’s most mission-critical and pressing matters, and must be attended to,” McGall Secretary Admiral Stephen Swoopdown told The Twice-a-Weekly. The Twice-a-Weekly understands that the total number of documents released exceeds 100,000, something Swoopdown said “was remarkably easy to do because we have computers.” “We just search and then click print and then get the intern to put them in an envelope. It’s a very simple and cheap process, thanks to

computers, electricity, and unpaid labour,” he said. As well as access codes to all of McGall’s buildings, including what is described as HMB’s “extensive and fully-stocked wine cellar,” the release includes blueprints to the entire downtown campus. “I drew in the arrows pointing to the military research labs by hand,” said Swoopdown. The blueprints show that a small, “lair-like” space exists just below the room B24 of the basement of the SSMU building. “It’s difficult to tell what it’s for,” said U5 Architecture student Ian McBrickington. “But rooms of this type are commonly found in war trenches and medieval castles. [They] were often used for espionage.”

Where shall I row to? I’m not even twenty but being twenty is going to be so #hard Heaven Sent The Twice-a-Weekly

s I stared out of my window and looked out at another #hungover Saturday morning in the Ghetto, I had a very sudden realization. Out of all the problems in the world, I had to admit, being twenty in Montreal – yeah, THIS city – was going to be so tough. It’s like, what am I going to do with my life from here? My overly entitled years as a teenager are coming to an end. But what comes next? It’s just so worrisome. School feels like a trap, like I’m 2007 Britney

Spears, shaved head, waiting to get out of her car and face the paparazzi. What will I do? I want to write, but, beyond the occasional MeCock’s Thought Catalog rip-off, what else is there to do? The Twice-A-Weekly? Ugh, so #controversial. I couldn’t. But who will be able to hear my unique voice in these trying times for millennial twenty-somethings? My life on campus feels like a show on syndication – repeats over and over again. The same people you had that embarrassing one-night stand with at the same Sucka Frees, your same roommate quibbles, your same boring Poli Sci conferences. Where’s the

excitement that countless college movies promised me would come? Even my attempts to get spotted on campus in another fantastic outfit come in vain; if you wear a beautiful scarf, jacket, and boots combo (I matched the leather!), and MeCock’s doesn’t spot it, did I ever even wear it? I come home after a long day of looking so put together and fall apart once I get home, my taken-off clothes a pile of unmet expectations. Will this be my twenties? And, ugh, sigh at my love life. Where’s my partner that will lovingly stroke me to sleep during the cold winter months of my twen-

CampuSPOTspot

Photo Hieronymus Chanksi | The Twice-a-Weekly

Wonderful hues! Check out the ashen sweater and granite shirt combo.

ties? It’s like the more and more I watch When Harry Met Sally or The Notebook the less and less chance I find my own Ryan Gosling (#LOL, not Billy Crystal, amirite?). I look around the Ghetto and see guys in puke suits which is fun, but, you know, long term? No. I’m halfway through school but like, it’s so dark (these winters are so dark!) and I can’t see anything on the horizon. I know it’s somewhat pretentious to quote F. Scott Fitzgerald (American Lit what what) but I feel like the man in the rowboat, beating on against the current, back borne ceaselessly into the past. I feel like that sentence will

define me better than any attempt I’d ever make at writing something, but then again, I still have this urge to write. Unfortunate, right? It can only get worse. Maybe I’m never growing up, never moving past this teenage angst, these feelings. Like I’m in permafreeze during my twenties. I’ll still watch Spongebob and the Rugrats and go to increasingly ironic nineties nights just to feel at home. I’ll have to figure out a job (oops to my unemployable degree) and my love life and new friends, maybe a new place. Making mistakes. It may be a cliché, but: I’ll take it one day at a time.

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