vol102iss36

Volume 102, Issue 36

February 25, 2013 mcgilldaily.com

McGill THE

DAILY

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

irish sports in montreal - pg. 9

e u sI s t

Th

r t e s r n i A l e ecia sp

The

Centre on Population Dynamics

SACOMSS

at McGill University presents

Gary King (Harvard University)

Sexual Assault Center of the McGill Students’Society

who will be giving a talk on

“Big Data Is Not About The Data!�

Between 3:00 and 5:00 pm.

Friday, March 1st, 2013 The talk will be given in the Faculty Club Ballroom (3450 McTavish) A reception will follow.

Free.

Confidential.

Non-Judgmental.

Please RSVP to Geneviève Brunet-Gauthier at genevieve.brunet-gauthier@mcgill.ca if you plan to attend.

We’re here to listen.

www.sacomss.org

514-398-8500 After the Wildside Festival and a successful run in Toronto — BLISS is back for only 5 nights in Montreal, don’t miss it!

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Editor elections for 2013-2014 are in mid-March. For more information: coordinating@mcgilldaily.com.

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For more information, please contact

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NEWS

The McGill Daily Monday, February 25, 2013 mcgilldaily.com

Access to education demanded for non-status immigrants

03 NEWS Online courses at McGill

Canada in violation of UN human rights charter, activist says

AUS Frosh turns profit Agriculture and Environmental Science prepare for cuts

06 COMMENTARY Fluorescent light and the degradation of institutional life Trans* people have nothing to prove

Letters from our readers

THE ART ISSUE

09 SPORTS Irish sports in Montreal

10

SCI+TECH

Seeking arrangements to make ends meet Why design matters in a technological world

12

CULTURE

Joelle Dahm News Writer

A

round fifty people gathered in front of the monthly meeting of the Commission scolaire de Montréal (CSM) on Wednesday to advocate for the rights of all children, especially those without immigration status, to attend primary and secondary schools in Montreal.

The protest was organized by the Education Across Borders Collective (EABC), part of migrant justice group Solidarity Across Borders (SAB).

According to SAB, there are 40,000 non-status families and thousands of children who are not currently able to attend school in Montreal. These children, many of whom have had difficult pasts, face isolation and social exclusion, issues that are exacerbated by not receiving a formal education.

Non-status children face many barriers to attending public schools in Quebec. They are required to pay up to $6,000 in tuition fees, which are unaffordable for many immigrant families. Non-status children without papers such as health insurance cards or birth certificates can also be rejected from enrolment. However, families often do not apply for this documentation in fear of deportation.

Romina Hernandez, spokesperson for the EABC, told The Daily in French that this is in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Canada is a signatory. However, she noted that that these types of agreements are not necessarily binding.

“If countries want to engage themselves internationally, in order

Album reviews: FIDLAR, Everything Everything, Homeshake, and Ducktails

Against the Summit #GGI

16 COMPENDIUM! A day in Saint Applestine’s life Water makes you smarter!?

to have a good image, but the people in their country that need the help, we usually don’t see any change,” Hernandez said.

Whether or not non-status children who manage to go to school are able to receive a diploma after graduating is uncertain. In order to get a valid diploma in Quebec, students need a permanent code – which are only given to people with legal immigration status.

“My son graduated from a secondary school in Montreal, but they won’t give him a diploma, so he can’t attend CEGEP....If there is no change, he will not be able to get a job in the future,” a father who was at the protest, and who preferred to remain anonymous, told The Daily in French.

During the demonstration, pro-

testers were invited inside the building, where representatives of EABC were given the opportunity to speak to the commission. Other people attending the demonstration were asked to remain in the hallway.

The EABC demanded that proof of immigration status should not be required in order to enrol in Montreal schools, and that primary and secondary education be made free for immigrants. They also asked that graduates be given permanent codes, allowing them to pursue their studies at CEGEP’s and universities.

“We also think that every child of school age in Montreal has the right to free education. It is not favourable that children stay at home, don’t learn French, and cannot integrate himself or herself in

a Montreal school or Quebec society,” Daniel Duranleau, president of the CSM, said in French.

However, members of the CSM said that they were unable to give children permanent codes.

Duranleau gave EABC the option of working out a precise solution to this problem, and told them to come back on March 27.

“This is a very urgent matter.

One solution for the problem could be a temporary permanent code, or the politics and bureaucracy have to change in such a way that the permanent code is not necessary anymore. The commission has been supportive, and we hope that they will use their power to change the situation next time,” Hernandez told The Daily in French.

New governmental body, indexation, and administrative fees included Laurent Bastien Corbeil The McGill Daily

EDITORIAL

Photo Hera Chan | The McGill Daily

Government releases summit discussion topics

Historiographical blanks at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

15

3

J

ust days before the start of the Parti Québécois’ (PQ) summit on higher education, the government released a document on Friday that outlines the summit’s program and some aspects of the government’s plan.

Four themes will be up for discussion, including the quality of teaching, research and collaboration, tuition, and accessibility.

The document, titled in French “Committed together toward a knowledge society,” proposes the

creation of a new government body to advise the minister of higher education and ensure “coherence in the development of the university system.” In particular, the university council would be tasked with harmonizing the delocalization of university campuses, but would lack the teeth to enforce its decisions.

In an interview with The Daily, President of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) Martine Desjardins said she was “not surprised” by the content of the document.

“We are only surprised by what the [document] does not say, [and] the absence of a plan of action,” she

said in French.

FEUQ and the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ) favoured a different approach, whereby the council would have the power to probe university finances and curb wasteful spending. The government, however, pledges to “ameliorate university accountability.”

The document also fails to mention free education, one of the goals of last year’s student strike and a key demand for the 70,000 members of the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ). Instead, the government will broach the topic of indexing tuition to inflation and university

administrative fees.

Administrative fees are additional fees that are added to tuition. At McGill, those fees amount to around $900 per year, compared to $63.45 per year at the Université du Québec à Montréal and $127.50 per year at the Université de Montréal.

As for accessibility, the government mentions increasing student aid and bursaries and reforming tax credit on tuition.

The government, however, does not elaborate on its propositions in the document, and plans to reveal the bulk of its plan the first day of the summit on February 25.

4

News

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 25, 2013 | mcgilldaily.com

McGill to offer open online courses Decision made without Senate approval

8AM M classe$ are painful.

Michael Lee-Murphy The McGill Daily

With an average student return of $1000, at least taxes are painless.*

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& free SPC Card*

hrblock.ca | 800-HRBLOCK (472-5625) © 2013 H&R Block Canada, Inc. *Average is based on all student returns prepared at H&R Block in Canada for 2010 tax returns. The average refund amount calculated for students was over $1,100, cannot be guaranteed and ǀĂƌŝĞƐ ďĂƐĞĚ ŽŶ ĞĂĐŚ ŝŶĚŝǀŝĚƵĂů ƚĂdž ƐŝƚƵĂƟŽŶ͘ ΨϮϵ͘ϵϱ ǀĂůŝĚ ĨŽƌ ƐƚƵĚĞŶƚ ƚĂdž ƉƌĞƉĂƌĂƟŽŶ ŽŶůLJ͘ dŽ ƋƵĂůŝĨLJ͕ ƐƚƵĚĞŶƚ ŵƵƐƚ ƉƌĞƐĞŶƚ ĞŝƚŚĞƌ ;ŝͿ Ă dϮϮϬϮĂ ĚŽĐƵŵĞŶƟŶŐ ϰ Žƌ ŵŽƌĞ ŵŽŶƚŚƐ ŽĨ ĨƵůůͲƟŵĞ ĂƩĞŶĚĂŶĐĞ Ăƚ Ă ĐŽůůĞŐĞ Žƌ ƵŶŝǀĞƌƐŝƚLJ ĚƵƌŝŶŐ ƚŚĞ ĂƉƉůŝĐĂďůĞ ƚĂdž LJĞĂƌ Žƌ ;ŝŝͿ Ă ǀĂůŝĚ ŚŝŐŚ ƐĐŚŽŽů / ĐĂƌĚ͘ ^ƚƵĚĞŶƚƐ ƉĂLJ Ψϳϵ͘ϵϵ ĨŽƌ ŽŵƉůĞdžͬWƌĞŵŝĞƌ ƌĞƚƵƌŶ͘ džƉŝƌĞƐ ϭϮͬϯϭͬϮϬϭϯ͘ sĂůŝĚ ŽŶůLJ Ăƚ ƉĂƌƟĐŝƉĂƟŶŐ ůŽĐĂƟŽŶƐ͘ ĚĚŝƟŽŶĂů ĨĞĞƐ ĂƉƉůLJ͘ ^W ĐĂƌĚƐ ĂǀĂŝůĂďůĞ Ăƚ ƉĂƌƟĐŝƉĂƟŶŐ ůŽĐĂƟŽŶƐ ŝŶ ĂŶĂĚĂ ŽŶůLJ͘ KīĞƌƐ ŵĂLJ ǀĂƌLJ͕ ƌĞƐƚƌŝĐƟŽŶƐ ŵĂLJ ĂƉƉůLJ͘ &Žƌ ĨƵůů ƚĞƌŵƐ ƐĞĞ ǁǁǁ͘ƐƉĐĐĂƌĚ͘ĐĂ͘

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cGill announced this week that in 2014, the University will join the growing ranks of universities across the United States and Canada in offering some of its classes entirely online, available to potentially thousands of students over the internet.

Massively open online courses, or MOOCs, are a growing trend across North American academia, and allow for thousands of students to enroll in college courses online, sometimes paying tuition for credit. McGill has joined a consortium called “edX,” which describes itself as a not-for-profit based in Cambridge, Massachusetts focused on the goal of educating one billion people in the next ten years.

In a press release, Provost Anthony Masi wrote that “Membership in the edX consortium ensures access to massive datasets that provide unprecedented opportunities to study how students learn in digital environments, to develop assessment tools for these broadly distributed platforms, and to improve technologysupported learning on campus.”

The decision, announced late last Wednesday, has caught a number of professors and students off guard as the decision was made without Senate approval, and with little faculty or student consultation.

At Senate on January 23, Masi gave senators an informational presentation about various MOOC consortiums. The presentation was followed by a discussion among senators about whether or not McGill should join such a consortium.

As the presentation was billed as merely an informational session, no vote was taken by the Senate, and MOOCs were not discussed at last week’s Senate meeting.

During the open discussion, senators raised questions about how potentially large numbers of students would be assessed.

In an email sent to Senate by

senator and political science professor Catherine Lu, and forwarded to The Daily by another senator, Lu questions the process by which the decision was made.

“I am wondering if someone can help me to understand governance processes at this university.

As far as I am aware, Senate had an open discussion about MOOCs on January 23rd, and there was no agreement about proceeding with this initiative,” Lu wrote.

Lu’s email goes on to ask why there was “no effort” made to

that McGill has chosen to join, but was surprised to hear about the decision last week.

“I don’t think that they made a bad choice. I think that they did put the work into it. But, just like a lot of other things at McGill, they grade-A failed at communication.

Just no word about it. I’ve been here for six years. I’ve been in positions of leadership roles…. And I have never heard of [McGill’s plan to join a MOOC consortium],” Redel said.

The SSMU president went on to say that he recently learned of two

“It is more than mildly ironic that McGill is climbing on the MOOC bandwagon at the same time as it’s putting hundreds of undergraduate courses and the lecturers that teach them on the chopping block.”

Lilian Radovac AGSEM President inform senators of the decision at the February Senate meeting, and questions how McGill can afford such a program of development as budget cuts are expected across the University.

According to SSMU President Josh Redel, the executive committee of the Board of Governors voted at some point during the last month to join the MOOC consortium, following a positive report from the Board’s finance committee. Redel said he was bound by confidentiality and was not allowed to say exactly when the vote took place.

Redel, through his position as SSMU president, is an observer on the Board’s executive committee, but has no vote.

Redel, who also sits on Senate, said that after the January Senate meeting “what everyone said to me is that it sounded like we were a year or two off [joining a MOOC consortium].” He did say that he was excited about MOOCs and about the particular consortium

“large working groups composed of very broad constituency representation,” involving University deans and members of the IT community, that have been working on the issue of MOOCs for as long as two years.

In an email to The Daily, AGSEM–McGill’s teaching union president Lilian Radovac wrote: “It is more than mildly ironic that McGill is climbing on the MOOC bandwagon at the same time as it’s putting hundreds of undergraduate courses and the lecturers that teach them on the chopping block.”

Alvin Shrier, president of the McGill Association of University Teachers (MAUT), declined to comment, saying that the MAUT has not had a chance to consider the decision.

The McGill administration did not return a call and an email seeking comment Friday afternoon.

MOOCs reportedly have a dropout rate of approximately 90 per cent, according to an article in the New York Times.

news

5

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 25, 2013 | mcgilldaily.com

Arts Frosh makes $17,000 profit Lower costs and better training cited $ 2,634.91

$ -36,170.14

$ -1,700.00

20112012

$ -35,000.00

20122013

$ 17,844.30

Graphic Rebecca Katzman | The McGill Daily

20092010

Frosh Net Income

20102011

T

he Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) announced they turned a profit of $17,000 for its August 2012 Arts Frosh at a council meeting on February 13. This came as good news; for the past three years Arts Frosh has been a financial burden for AUS. In 2010, McGill decided to withhold $90,000 from AUS as a result of two missing financial statements, $18,000 of unpaid taxes, and a $35,000 budget deficit resulting from that year’s Frosh.

The AUS VP Events at that time, Nampande Londe, cited underregistration as a reason for Frosh’s deficit. In that year, the participant cap for Frosh was raised from 1,500 to 1,800, and only around 1,400 students had signed up. AUS needed 1,600 to break even.

An anonymous organizer at the time cited Londe’s absence in the planning process of Frosh as one of the essential causes of the budget deficit. “[Her] absence caused me to be late on food deposits, and [Frosh coordinator Brock Clancy] to be late on deposits for pubs and club night venues. A large Provigo order had to be done in three days because the SSMU and

OAP refrigerators were unavailable after [Londe’s] failure to give them advance notice,” the coordinator wrote in an email to The Daily in 2010.

Miscommunication and failure to report unexpected costs were also cited among the reasons behind the deficit.

Consequently, this event resulted in Londe’s resignation from the position, although the AUS executive had said at the time that her resignation was due to an unrelated personal matter.

The following year was marked with the theft of $12,000 of Frosh money from the AUS office.

According to the current AUS VP Finance Saad Qazi, Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) gave AUS $8,000 to lighten the burden.

The remaining $4,000 has not yet been made up.

Qazi stated that the University and the AUS were two different legal entities and therefore the police report was filed by AUS only.

“The fact that we have received the money from the University doesn’t make any sense,” said Qazi.

Last year’s AUS VP Finance Marlene Benavides, reported that Frosh had produced a profit of $6,000, however, according to current accounting information, there was a deficit of $1,700.

According to Qazi, Frosh gets sponsorship from many

20082009

Cem Ertekin The McGill Daily

-40000 -35000 -30000 -25000 -20000 -15000 -10000 -5000 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 Source: AUS VP Finance Saad Qazi companies, some of which provide direct goods instead of money. Coca-Cola, for instance, provides crates of Coke, which are not reflected in accounting statements. However, the value of goods and services obtained from sponsors that do not give money does not exceed $4,000.

When asked how AUS managed to make profits this year, Qazi said that costs were lower than anticipated. But that was not simply an issue of luck: they had built up a buffer, and the budget was ready to absorb unexpected costs.

Another issue with the previous years, Qazi claimed, was that

the VP Finances before him did not stay in Montreal over the summer to help with the planning of Frosh.

“There is a really steep learning curve,” said Qazi. “The incoming VP Finances did not have the experience to be efficient.”

The profit will be put into the AUS’ savings account.

Agriculture and Environmental Science faculty prepares to cut courses Next year’s course lecturer budget likely “zero” Juan Camilo Velásquez The McGill Daily

W

ith the continued threat of budget cuts throughout McGill, the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (FAES) is preparing for a reduction of classes.

In an internal memo addressed to Program Directors and Specialization Coordinators, FAES Associate Dean (Academic) William Hendershot pointed to the likely possibility of the faculty receiving a directive to cut low-enrolment courses, and to create a preemptive plan to manage the down-sizing “in a less damaging fashion.”

The memo reads that “in light of the severe financial situation of the University, it is quite possible

that we will be faced with the need to decrease the number of courses we teach. I expect that the directive will focus on low-enrolment courses, without any consideration of the effect that this would have to our programs.”

Hendershot asked department heads to evaluate the relative importance of certain courses in programs, to rank the complementary ones in their programs and to identify those that are not essential.

Attached to the document was a list of courses described as “less important” to each program, which, as the document states, could be dropped with the least impact. These courses include those that are not prerequisites or program requirements.

Natural Resources Sciences Department Chair Jim Fyles told

The Daily that the memo was the most recent part of an ongoing discussion, which has been taking place for at least five years.

“This is in part preparation.

We expect there to be budget cuts, really serious budget cuts to be coming down shortly and over the next few years. This kind of prior reflection on these courses when we get into that position these are courses that we would look at to say, could we amalgamate those courses with other courses? Do we really need them to be taught?” Fyles said.

“In our case, [the memo] raised a lot of questions about how the offering of those courses link to government funding.

Because we know that different courses have different government funding weight…if we

decide we are going to close courses, we should have some sense of what that means in terms of its attachment to government funding,” he added.

The document also states that in all probability the budget for course lecturers will be zero in 2013-2014. “That means that other members of the teaching staff will be expected to teach courses that would otherwise be taught by lecturers,” reads the document.

According to Hendershot, teaching fewer courses will increase the time faculty members have to do other tasks that could increase revenue, like writing grant proposals and working on recruiting materials.

There are currently ten course lecturers employed in FAES, who are paid $7,200 per three-credit course.

In an email to The Daily, AGSEM-McGill Teaching Union’s Communications Officer Stefana Lamasanu wrote that AGSEM had not heard about courses being cut, but is “outraged that such decisions continue to be taken without discussing them with the course lecturers,” Lamasanu said.

“The administration is clearly not interested in consulting with those primarily affected by these cuts; this is unacceptable and worrisome.”

“There is no question that it will affect, we don’t currently have a budget line item for course lecturers, but we use a variety of funding sources, some of which are freeing up money from other locations that we use for teaching some courses and those will have to be taught in different ways,” said Fyles in response.

commentary

The McGill Daily Monday, February 25, 2013 mcgilldaily.com

6

Fluorescence and the death of shadows On the inhumanity of our interior spaces Jacqueline Brandon and Farid Rener The McGill Daily

F

luorescent lighting creates spaces devoid of humanity. Everywhere, we coexist under fluorescent lights and have become accustomed to entering and exiting cold, bleak, and desolate buildings. Fluorescent light removes shadows and deprives us of our depth perception; it detaches us from our surroundings. Our three-dimensional reality is transposed into a twodimensional dreamworld.

We are alienated by the fluorescence that lights our institution. The phase out of incandescent light bulbs has consequences wider than the empty arguments repeated in the defense of institutional efficiency. This is not just an issue of personal preference: this is the stark reality of how our emotional well-being and our physiologies are bound up with the physical processes of producing light.

Between 1938 and 1941, General Electric patented and sold the first commercial fluorescent bulbs. Their prevalence can be traced back to World War II, when wartime efficiency required productivity on a new scale. More recently, lighting has again become a political issue.

Countries like Brazil, Russia, and Canada are phasing incandescent bulbs by banning their production and purchase. In our opinion, this is abhorrent.

Light is created in fluorescent bulbs by exciting highly toxic mercury vapor. Fluorescent bulbs, unlike the sun and incan-

descent bulbs, often cast a diffuse light. Rooms lit by fluorescence are devoid of shadow, destroying our ability to perceive depth.

Diffuse light also reduces the contrast of everything around us, which causes everything to blend together. How could this not be disorienting? Our shadows are integrally connected to earthly existence – without them, we are only a projection.

Mercury, also known as quicksilver – that metallic substance which used to be found in old thermometers – is highly toxic; exposure damages the brain, kidney, and lungs, causing sensory impairment and lack of coordination. The amount of mercury in fluorescent bulbs is significant – the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends that rooms should be evacuated for at least 15 minutes if a fluorescent bulb breaks.

Compared to inert, non-toxic incandescent bulbs, which work by heating a filament wire, fluorescent bulbs are much harder to dispose of. They are considered hazardous household waste and require a specific recycling facility to prevent the toxic heavy metals from polluting the environment. While, technically, fluorescent bulbs are more ‘efficient’ at converting electricity into light, the environmental rhetoric surrounding the calls for switching to fluorescent bulbs is moot – especially in Quebec, where we heat our homes for a large proportion of the year. In other words, in cold climates, the heat from incandescent bulbs is not wasted. The sentiment behind switching to the more energy efficient fluorescent bulbs is a band-aid solution in a system that is fundamentally flawed – environmental change will only come from massive shifts in lifestyle.

Is dehumanizing our collective

spaces worth the minimal ‘efficiency’ gains?

Certainly there is science that justifies our hatred of fluorescent lights. However, this is not a problem of numbers. For us, this is about interpersonal interaction, this is about being conscious of your self, and feeling grounded in your environment.

Ultra-lit spaces prioritize the visual; our other senses, which we use to connect with each other are left on the sidelines. Professor Conor Sampson, who teaches lighting design in the School of Architecture, described incandescent bulbs as essentially balls of fire. Like the sun, the bulbs emit a broad spectrum of light giving a richer perception of the colours around us. On the other hand, fluorescent lights have a narrow spectrum which turns purples into greys, and blankets everything with melancholia.

McGill rigidly defines the kind of lighting that can be used in its buildings: standardized environments cannot take into account that individuals have varying reactions to their surroundings. Those who just can’t deal with fluorescent light have no place to go; we are pushed into dark corners of the institution.

There are alternative solutions that exist – task lighting, for instance, provides individualized and appropriate illumination depending on the task and the space. In libraries, this would take the form of reading lamps, giving people the autonomy to control their own environment.

There are many rooms at McGill with an abundance of natural light – why disregard the life-giving potential of this by flicking on the overheads?

What we lose through fluorescent lighting is an ability to

Illustration Akanksa Chaubal | The McGill Daily

navigate through darkness – our perception of other people becomes centred around image.

We lose the ability to relate with each other through our non-visual senses. Direct, natural light allows us to experience each other fully, as human beings, not just as bodies in an institution.

Farid Rener and Jacqueline Brandon are News and Commentary editors at The Daily. They wrote this by candlelight and the opinions expressed here are their own.

Reach them at farid.rener@mail. mcgill.ca and jacqueline.brandon@mail.mcgill.ca.

commentary

7

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 25, 2013 | mcgilldaily.com

Pass/fail Navigating a world that doesn’t believe your gender exists Wong Kar Tsai* The McGill Daily

I

have a favourite jacket. It is a rather ugly thing, shapeless and grey, with the brand’s letters stitched varsity-style into the upper left arm.

It does not flatter me – too big in the shoulders, lumpy through my torso, and my hands don’t quite make it all the way out of the sleeves. It’s my favourite because when I wear this jacket, I can be read as something other than female.

The idea of ‘passing’ for trans* people, like myself, is often a fantastical ideal – a world without long stares or awkward bumbles around the words ‘ma’am’ and ‘sir,’ without slurs muttered by a passing stranger, or sometimes shouted from moving cars. A world where nobody has to take a few minutes to ‘figure out’ what gender you are.

The challenge can be insurmountable, even for those who pursue hormone therapy, surgeries, and painstaking hours spent self-teaching gendered gaits and mannerisms.

Even after all that, a person may still take a glance at a trans* body and see nothing but the gender that body was forcibly assigned at birth – the body does not ‘pass’ as the gender of the person inhabiting it; does not ‘pass’ as the desired product of days, months, or years of work and practice. And as students know well, the opposite of passing is failing.

Having to ‘pass’ as one’s true gender puts the onus on the person whose body is being judged, willfully or not. As though nothing is as final as the word of the outsider. ‘Passing’ implies that if a trans* woman is called “sir” when her waiter takes her order, she has somehow failed as a trans* person. A femme trans* man may struggle desperately to be read correctly in light of his gender presentation, and harder still are the questions from friends and family who ask him, “Why don’t you just be a girl?”

It falls on him to be ‘manly’ enough to ‘pass,’ before being allowed to express himself as he chooses.

‘Passing’ necessarily makes ‘failing’ the fault of the trans* person who doesn’t try hard enough to fit into a stereotyped role of the ‘opposite’ gender, rather than the fault of the systemically and unfalteringly transphobic society that only believes in binary genders, and dictates a very certain, very narrow way for trans* people to be accepted as one of those two genders. The struggle is enough for trans* men and women, but what of the few people who don’t want to be seen as either female or male? *** The metro empties at LionelGroulx, and I find an empty seat, shrugging off my backpack as I sit down. I feel a tap on my shoulder and

Illustration Alice Shen | The McGill Daily

I turn to see a man smiling, holding a small business card toward me. He gestures at the side of my head as he pushes the card closer to me. I take it. It’s a card for a barber shop near Atwater and it reads “Haircuts for men.” I smile and open my mouth, about to hand the card back and explain, “I cut my own hair,” but hesitate, and decide to pocket it instead.

Haircuts for men.

I am not a man. I thought (or knew, maybe) as a child and well into my teens that everything would be easier if I were a man. I resented my body for what I saw as weakness and unattractiveness in its soft curves and small shoulders, but even when I first encountered the idea of trans* men – “boys with pussies,” as it was so eloquently first described to me – I knew that wasn’t me.

I also never felt like a girl. Being a girl, or even trying to be girl-like, seemed like such a farcical act that I assumed every girl and woman around me was just making a show of it too. I spent years of my life thinking they must all resent the femaleness

imposed on them, the way I did.

When I finally learned the words for myself and people like me, in those nights spent poring over my laptop while my roommates slept, they felt awkward and bulky in my mouth as I whispered to myself. Genderqueer.

Non-binary. Androgyne. Neutrois.

But I felt just as awkward and bulky in my own skin, pretending for a lifetime to slot nicely into the smooth, simple category of ‘female.’ *** I am 3,500 kilometres away from my mother, and over the phone she is telling me that she’s seen pictures of my new, shorter-than-ever haircut on Facebook. She tells me I look unfeminine with such short hair, and in my collared shirts and unfitted sweaters.

“Why do you want to look so much like a boy?” With nothing to say, I force a weak laugh.

She tells me she’ll be here when someday I decide to learn to be a girl. She tells me that she already has one son, that she doesn’t need

another. On the other end I hold the phone far away from my ear so she doesn’t hear the ugly sob that fights its way out of my throat. *** In line for the cashier in the Redpath cafe, I have my head turned to look out the window. As the person in front of me takes their receipt and leaves, I hear the cashier call, “Next? Sir?” As I turn around and approach, the “sir” falters and turns into an awkward “er...ma’am?” I shrug, and not knowing how to explain, say, “Both are good.”

Nobody ever looks at me and thinks instinctively that I must be genderqueer, or that my preferred pronouns are neutral. And they never will, no matter how much effort I put into androgenizing my body, my voice, my wardrobe, or my personality. It’s impossible for me to be read as the correct gender. When I’m making a first impression on anybody, I am male or I am female.

The closest I get is being read as

male, because it is the only societally provided alternative to being female, the square one of my efforts to ‘transition’ – though really, nothing is transitioning or changing about my gender or my identity. What I am trying to change is other people’s perception of it. But there simply is no androgynous ideal for people to perceive, no stereotypical concept that my body can ever conform to that would make people read me correctly.

Sometimes invisibility is the worst thing in the world. But sometimes it feels like liberation, like having a card hidden up my sleeve.

Sometimes it feels like I can slip away with a secret too big for the unimaginative rigidity of the genders that have always felt like two doors slammed securely shut in front of me. * Name has been changed.

Wong Kar Tsai is a U2 Biology student. To reach them, email commentary@mcgilldaily.com for a contact address.

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commentary

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 25, 2013 | mcgilldaily.com

Letters Jesus: We were fans before he was cool

Yay! We’re alive! And there’s still some air left.

Dear Daily,

Dear Daily, The Daily easily passed its referendum, implying that the McGill community largely believes campus is better with The Daily. In order to explain why this is so, examine one of the sole critiques The Daily received during the referendum period, from Leacock’s writer Christopher Wang.

The main argument in Wang’s article was that The Daily is too controversial. The Daily has a duty to “depict and analyze power relations accurately in its coverage.” In comparison, Leacock’s only duty seems to be depicting the latest trends in studded heels. When a paper is dedicated to examining serious issues, controversy is unavoidable.

In Wang’s article, Bull & Bear executive editor Dan Novick was quoted as stating, in reference to The Daily’s articles, “In terms of The Daily, they are sensationalist and they are crafted to attract attention.” The Daily receives attention because it launches attacks on norms many do not realize they carry. Most attention the Bull & Bear has received this year has been due to posting blatantly racist and sexist articles. Novick claimed the problematic articles were removed due to an outcry from the readers. Unlike the Bull & Bear, The Daily does not need an outraged student body to realize that publishing articles which compare women to animals is inappropriate.

Yet the most crucial aspect of The Daily is its status as a campus watchdog. The McGill administration rarely escapes criticism from The Daily. With the exception of the odd editorial, the Tribune usually acts as a slightly more popular version of the McGill Reporter.

The Daily is the best paper on campus because it covers important issues, is largely free of racism and sexism, and monitors the McGill administration. This is not to say The Daily is perfect, but rather that The Daily is the only paper crucial for a better McGill.

In her recent article, “The good, the bad, and God” (Features, February 14, pages 9 to 10), Hannah Edmondson refers to a study in which “only 2 per cent of Montrealers profess to having a personal relationship with Jesus” and mentions that “Catholics are excluded from this study, considering that they do not personally connect with Jesus, nor share the gospel with other denominations.”

This characterization of Catholics is false; many practicing Roman Catholics do claim “a personal relationship with Jesus” and are actively engaged in advancing the Christian Gospel. It is a mistake for Protestant Christians (though we disagree with our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters on many points of doctrine and practice) to be dismissive of them, especially in the context of a Quebec in which Jesus is so unknown and in which partnership between Christian churches is so necessary.

— Josiah Henderson Recovering anti-Catholic and a member of the McGill Radical Christian Students’ Association

Tell me; help me

Dear Alex McKenzie, As a white person, I applaud you for your most recent article on white privilege (“Of race and privilege,” Commentary, February 14, page 7). It was personal, respectful, well-written, and, unlike some of the other articles published on that topic over the past few months, didn’t make me feel like I was guilty of some sort of hate crime because I happened to be born white. If your goal was to provide a firm starting point for a discussion on ridding our school of racism, I would say mission accomplished.

Unfortunately, a starting point is all it is. You repeat the oft-heard refrain that whiteness and racialization need to be “deconstructed,” as if all white people are supposed to know exactly what that means and how to accomplish it.

I’ll let you in on a secret: we don’t.

The average white person would probably guess that it involves moving toward a “post-racial” or “colour-blind” society, but you make it abundantly clear that that is not what you want. If Christiana Collison is to be believed, even the “safe space” policy is oppressive (“Complicating Space,” Commentary, February 4, page 7).

Clearly, white people don’t know what people of colour want.

As such, you’re going to have to tell us. I know that sounds patronizing, but if you really want white McGillians to start challenging privilege, you have to at least point us in the right direction. I’d love to ally myself with you in this struggle, but I honestly don’t know how.

—Brody Duncan U2 Chemical Engineering

—Davide Mastracci U2 History and Political Science

Do students bleed?

Responding to the cuts Dear Daily,

Smite the gods, before they smite us!

My Dearest Masi, HMB, and other ‘gods’:

We believe that responding to the provincial budget cuts by doing away with course lecturer positions is destructive to the educational mission of the university. It is sadly what we’ve come to expect from an administration that has increasingly shown itself to be penny-wise and pound-foolish, cutting programs that contribute to McGill’s growth and prosperity while adding layer upon layer of upper administration and management.

Course lecturers are teaching professionals that have consistently provided high-quality education and diversity to this university. Unfortunately, our role in the life of the university has yet to be recognized, particularly by this present administration, which prefers a top-down approach. Our members are on the ground every day, and thus know the reality of the university. It is high time that we be invited to participate in the decision-making process.

For example, our union only found out about the recently announced cuts in the Faculty of Arts indirectly, and after they were made. As Dean Manfredi has clearly indicated, these cuts will primarily affect course lecturers. Of course, we needn’t mention that students in Arts will have less course offerings, and full-time faculty who are already over-burdened will have a heavier teaching load. If we had been consulted, we could have worked with Dean Manfredi to find a more sustainable and less destructive solution to his budgetary problems.

What is most infuriating about this recent news is that VP (Finance and Administration) Michael Di Grappa had promised AGSEM that he would consult with us and the other unions on campus before implementing any cuts. These recent events have confirmed for us that this consultation process is merely a means for McGill’s upper administration to save face, to provide the illusion that they are interested in building consensus on campus. We will not participate in their dangerous charade, nor will we sit idly by as this administration hurts our members and harms our university.

Why does Masi only mention 5 per cent cuts to his and his colleague’s salaries? (“McGill $200 million in the red by 2015,” News, February 21, page 4) Why not start with 50 per cent cuts? He, along with his comrades, contributed hugely to this present funding crisis by awarding themselves $300,000 to $500,000 salaries, hiring friends and paying them the best salaries, and paying millions for top administrators who they later fired. Why has McGill spent millions on ‘beautifying’ certain buildings and offices if the finances are so bad?

In this way, little by little, you contributed to a growing disrespect of universities in our society. Now it is easier for the ruling party to introduce major educational budget cuts with the silent approval of other social sector and groups that are happy to look like less spoiled recipients of public money, for once.

Don’t worry! After 50 per cent cuts to your salaries you will still be able to buy good lunches at McGill ‘restaurants’ and give tips to poor cashiers! I, and many others who are still hard at work at McGill, are not able to eat in those luxury places (haha!) and must bring our own lunches in plastic boxes and patiently wait in line to warm it in a few dirty microwaves.

You changed your God and now pray every day to Mammon. It is time to return to your parents’ values. Yes, start to be truly religious.

It will stop your mouths from talking dirty, tricky politics. Yes, somebody is watching us from above who can see our double standards.

On your knees, my dear friends.

Instead of barking at the present governments (as you always do), look at your own sins.

Amen.

—Slawomir Poplawski Former McGill staff member

—AGSEM Unit III, the course lecturers and instructors’ union

Dear reader,

Stop whining, start writing.

Love, letters@mcgilldaily.com

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The Art Issue The Immortal Martyr Ralph Haddad photograph The War was Fought but no one Learned Ralph Haddad photograph

(left) Creating Adam Celine Seta Rahme 2B pencil on sketch-paper (right) Class Doodle Series: Il-Head Study Celine Seta Rahme rollerball pen on paper

February 25, 2013 | The McGill Daily

Harsh Blush Tanya Kirnishni ink and watercolour 30cm x 21cm

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The Art Issue Selfie #1 Maya Richman manipulated photographs, pencil sketches traced with vectors 18cm x 24cm Selfie #2 Maya Richman manipulated photographs, pencil sketches traced with vectors 12cm x 11cm

February 25, 2013 | The McGill Daily

Sunrise Over Cantagalo Jason Behrmann digital photograph Place for Play Jason Behrmann digital photograph The Chaos and Order of Cantagalo Jason Behrmann digital photograph

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The Art Issue Roadkill Bill Matthieu Santerre ink and pen 18cm x 18cm

333 Wacker Drive Ben Grill photograph 17cm x 23cm

February 25, 2013 | The McGill Daily

(left) Butterfly Celine Seta Rahme oil on canvas (right) Copying Klimt Celine Seta Rahme oil on canvas

(left) Knowledge I/O Farid Rener watercolour on paper (right) Ponty’s Brain Farid Rener watercolour on paper

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sports

The McGill Daily Monday, February 25, 2013 mcgilldaily.com

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Photo courtesy of JHolden

Community through competition Hurling and Gaelic football in Montreal Marcello Ferrara The McGill Daily

“

The sports are kinda spreading,” Larry Greene, the director of the Montreal Shamrocks Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) club, told me on February 16, while we watched the Montreal women’s Gaelic football team run back and forth over the AstroTurf field. Under the Complexe Sportif Val-des- Arbres in Laval, the Shamrocks were squaring off against the Ottawa Gaels. One of the Shamrocks’ players picked up the ball and ran straight past two defenders; she took three strides and dropped the ball, kicked it back up to her hands, and lobbed it to her teammate on the far left side of the net. Three Gaels swarmed her as soon as she caught the ball. Within a second, she kicked it over the net.

In Ireland, Gaelic football and hurling are as popular as hockey is in Canada. Games in Ireland regularly fill up 80,000-person stadiums. “You can’t grow up in a Canadian town without hockey,” Greene said, “and you can’t grow up in Ireland without either hurling or Gaelic football.”

I turned my eyes back to the game. The players were running back and forth without break. Each time a goal was scored, the goalie threw the ball back into the mix within seconds. I understood why some say Gaelic football is the fastest sport on grass.

The object of the game is to score into the opposing team’s net,

and there are two ways to do this.

Getting the ball over the bar (imagine a field goal post in American football) lands one point, and getting the ball in the net gets three.

The players run with the ball, like in football or rugby, but every four steps they have to do something with the ball. The player can drop it and kick it back up, bounce it, or pass it – and you can’t ever repeat an action. Players pass the ball to one another by lobbing it, like in volleyball. The whole sport feels like a mesh of the most popular sports on Earth. Despite all these rules, the women never once fouled.

In Ireland, your town is known for either hurling or Gaelic football.

“I started hurling when I was six,” Greene told me. “Lads stick hurls in babies’ hands – they’re obsessed over there.” In 1884, the English tried eliminating hurling, trying to stamp it out and ‘civilize’ the Irish.

The various hurling groups got together and formed the Gaelic Athletic Association, where the rules were formalized, teams decided, structures arranged, and the game maintained. Today, Greene is one of the many Irish immigrants spreading the game.

Greene came to Montreal a few years ago. In Ireland, he tells me, “the story there is either you’re on unemployment or, yaknow, [struggling].” Just last year, the Irish government offered several thousand work visas overseas, and they were gone in two days. But the Irish have always been on the move.

After the Seven Years’ War, Irish immigrants established a small foothold in Montreal and Quebec.

Almost a hundred years later, Irish labourers were hired to build Canada’s earliest industrial feats, like the railroads and the Victoria Bridge. Sharing the same Catholic beliefs, Irish immigrants often married the local Quebecois, resulting in many mixed heritage families.

Today, the Irish are the second-largest ethnic group in Quebec behind French Canadians, and tolerance. ca estimates that almost half of Quebecois have Irish ancestry. Irish communities around the world are, once again, growing. Despite the numbers, Greene explains, “The Montreal Irish community is so small,” most of them are not aware of their own heritage. Hurling and Gaelic football, he sees, are a way to reassert that legacy and introduce it to foreigners.

When Greene arrived, he didn’t have any friends, but when he saw that there was an amateur Gaelic football league, he dove in. Suddenly, he had connections all over the city.

“It’s not just [that] we play sports,” he says, “It’s a community ... There’s a huge social side to the games.”

When his girlfriend moved to Ottawa, he posted an ad on Kijiji to start a hurling team there. Initially, five people responded and they began playing. It’s been a few years since Larry has lived in Ottawa, but there is now a hurling and Gaelic football league thriving there. In Toronto, St. John’s, Quebec City,

and Vancouver, there are teams that compete nationally. They are comprised of players from a variety of backgrounds. For instance, almost all of the players on the Quebec City team are Quebecois, save for one Irishman.

Greene stresses that the community they’ve built, however amateur, is dedicated. “They work nine to five and they play at night like soccer players,” he says, “except no one’s getting paid.”

The whistle blew and the game ended. The Shamrocks patted each other on the back, smiled, and talked about how later that night they would all get together for a much needed pint at Hurley’s, an Irish bar. Greene suited up for his hurling match. He took out a long wooden club, straight on the shaft and curved like the root of a trunk at the tip. It looked like a warrior’s weapon. “Hurling was originally a sport warriors would play three thousand years ago to unwind,” he says, lifting the club, showing me the detail of the hand-made woodwork. Eventually, if there was a dispute between warring villages, they would settle the matter over a game of violent hurling. The violence remains today, though now with plenty of jollity.

The rules of hurling are quite similar to Gaelic football, with the main difference being the actual hurlers. A person can handle the ball as much as they want before they aim at the net, but no one would because everyone would be swinging clubs that would have

made Vikings flee at other peoples’ heads. There is a distinct pop each time the ball collides with a hurler that sounds like champagne being uncorked. The players scrounge with their fingers for the tiny ball of death while the bone-crushing clubs swing freely. And it is even faster than Gaelic football.

On the sidelines, the girls were stretching and speaking. I spoke to two Montrealers, Lindsey and Veronique, and an Australian, Kate.

The three girls, usually Australianrules football players, tried their hand at the Gaelic variety and loved it. “It’s so continuous, there’s no stopping,” Lindsey said. Looking at her teammates, Veronique added, “all the girls are so encouraging.”

Kate’s life, in particular, was dramatically changed by her involvement in amateur leagues. She first came to Canada for school in British Columbia, but it was only until she made friends through sports teams that she fell in love with the country.

“We’re a team,” she says, “the sense of community, the friendship – it’s more than just a sport.”

As I saw the women of the Gaelic football team excited to go to the bar together, Kate’s words solidified: “We’re a team.”

The Montreal Shamrocks GAA membership registration night for the 2013 season takes place Friday, March 1 at 8:00 p.m. at Hurley’s Irish Pub. Beginners are welcome.

Email montrealshamrocksgaa@ gmail.com for more information.

sci+tech

The McGill Daily Monday, February 25, 2013 mcgilldaily.com

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Finding love (and tuition) online How technology caters to the modern-day relationship Diana Kwon The McGill Daily

T

he last decade has seen not only rapid advancements in technology, but also its increasing integration into almost every aspect of our lives. Ten years ago, almost no one owned a mobile phone. Today, not only do most people own one, but many cellphone users own smartphones, providing them with the power of the internet at their fingertips. Because of the ease of access to the internet, online dating has become an increasingly popular method of meeting people for dates, relationships, or even friendships. As popularity has bloomed, so has the number and variety of websites.

One particularly interesting online dating phenomenon is the development of websites designed to bring together sugar daddies or mommies (‘generous benefactors’) and sugar babies (‘attractive’ young men or women). There are quite a number of these out there, with names such as: Myrichsugardaddy. com and Sugarbaby4u.com. Of these sites, one of the most popular is SeekingArrangment.com, a site founded in 2006 by Brandon Wade, an online dating entrepreneur.

As with any other dating site, the members fill out a generic profile questionnaire with their physical characteristics, personality traits, and interests. The only major difference is that sugar babies list their expected monthly allowance and sugar daddies the amount they are willing to spend.

In recent years, the number of users on college campuses has increased significantly; the average sugar baby is between the ages of 18 and 26, and the average sugar daddy between 35 and 45. (The site has sugar mommies as well, though much fewer in number.)

One might ask the question: is this exchange of money for a relationship a form of prostitution? Leroy Velasquez, public relations manager at SeekingArrangement, insisted that this was definitely not the case. “On SeekingArrangement, you need to have a relationship.

Money is involved, but it is not a necessity or a requirement.”

Velasquez referred to various types of relationships facilitatd by this site. “People try to create relationships to cater to their individual needs, whether it’s monthly allowance in exchange for someone to travel with, go to events with, or spend time with once or twice a month. These are mutually beneficial relationships, and in no

Illustration Julia Boshyk | The McGill Daily

way prostitution, because it is not simply an exchange of money for sex.” In fact, the exchanges don’t necessarily need to involve any sexual component. Reportedly, one of the recent relationships developed on this website was established between a homosexual male agreeing to pay a heterosexual female for a mutually beneficial friendship. Elizabeth*, a University of Toronto student who is a sugar baby on the website, said, “it’s very much like any other kind of dating. I won’t do anything I don’t want to do. I’m very set on the limits I’m willing to put on the relationship.”

It may appear that this site is giving rise to otherwise unlikely interactions. However, Velasquez stated that “these types of exchanges always existed. We simply provide a forum to allow for this to happen….This website has helped these relationships to propagate, but we are just meeting the demand.” Indeed, the rich man seeking a younger woman is

a trend that has existed throughout history. Although such relationships would be established regardless of the existence of sites like SeekingArrangement, these sites provide convenience and ease of access. Whereas previously, individuals would go out to a bar, a mixer, or some type of social event to meet someone to start a relationship, online dating sites allow individuals to meet people from the comfort of their homes.

It even allows a chance for the shy and soft-spoken introvert to more easily ask for what they want. In fact, Wade confesses on his personal website, AskBrandonWade. com, “My shyness and lack of a dating life during my teenage years is also the motivation to my current business, why I…spend so much of my time using technology to level the dating field.”

The site initially began to grow in popularity among young people in North America, and the number of users in the college student cohort has increased rap-

idly over recent years. According to Velasquez, there was a 58 per cent increase in enrollment from the college student demographic to the site from 2011 to 2012. The site’s statistics revealed that college students now make up more than 40 per cent of the population of users on this website. McGill is ranked fourth out of the top Canadian universities for site enrollment, with 148 students enrolled by the end of 2012. Université du Québec à Montréal, Université de Montréal, and Université Laval all make the list of top twenty fastest growing “sugar baby schools” in Canada. And the site appears to be more popular for sugar babies than sugar daddies – sugar daddies are outnumbered 12 to one (and sugar mommies outnumbered 100 to one).

Could increasing tuition fees be a potential reason for the increasing popularity of this website for young people in North America?

According to Velasquez, such statistics have not been collected as of yet, but he believes that the

large influx in enrolment onto this website may be attributed to the recessive economy and resultant increases in tuition fees, which cause students to seek ways to make ends meet. Elizabeth stated, “I’m a starving student, so I decided to give it a try. Although it’s not always money they give you – they give gifts, pay for trips and dinners – any extra allowance goes to tuition and living expenses.”

The online dating trend has exploded over the last couple of years, and at the peripheries, we see sites like SeekingArrangment appear. Technology is not only providing easier access to information, it is also providing easier access to people. This ease of contact will allow for unconventional relationships to occur at greater frequencies than were possible before.

And it is likely that more of these trends will appear as relationships evolve with changing social and economic pressures. *Name has been changed.

sci+tech

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The McGill Daily | Monday, February 25, 2013 | mcgilldaily.com

Design everything From presidents to cereal boxes, aesthetics matter Sean Reginio Science+Technology Writer

T

hanks to our brand new virtual world, more ways keep popping up to convince someone to come to your house party or start an entire social m ovement. So how would you do it?

Are your colours going to be bright, bland, or balanced? Is your font going to elicit fear, triumph, or a sense of melancholy? Choose a simple concept for a sense of comfort and calm, or an overwhelming array of objects that would evoke something more unsettling?

Design is still an art, and just as a good ‘art’ should, it requires no right answers. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get better at it. As Ellen Lupton, the curator of contemporary design at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, told the New York Times, “Experiencing good typography is like walking into a well-lit room. You may not stop to analyze it, but good lighting makes you feel better, and if it makes a sudden change for the worse, you will know it.”

In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, both candidates selected fonts that they thought would represent themselves and their platforms.

Barack Obama chose Gotham, a font that elicited hope and courage. In his book Just My Type, Simon Garfield suggests that this font, more contemporary in look than the original choice of Gill Sans, was selected to represent forward thinking while not scaring away the moderates. John McCain chose Optima, a relatively traditional, no-nonsense font. The New York Times ran an opinion piece that described his typeface choice as

an odd attempt at portraying bi-partisanship, a 20th century modernity, and his war record. Some of the type design critics interviewed for the piece called Optima “[one of] the worst precomputer typefaces ever designed,” “a seventies nerd,” and “a rather bland face used in a rather bland way.”

Elsewhere in the font and typeface world, there exists the ubiquitous Helvetica. This font has pretty much taken over the world. As the introductory scene of the documentary Helvetica points out, a brief stroll around Manhattan proves that American Apparel, Bloomingdale’s, Gap, Knoll, BMW, Jeep, Toyota, Kawasaki, Panasonic, Urban Outfitters, Nestle, Verizon, Lufthansa, Saab, Oral B, The North Face, Energizer, your iPhone, and many other organizations use Helvetica. You’re probably wearing Helvetica right now on the tag of your t-shirt or shoes. It’s everywhere, more everywhere than you think, and it’s not by accident.

In an interview with The Daily, local freelance graphic designer Eliot Edwards said, “though some of it is personal, I feel that there are still certain fonts that are so damn clean.

Helvetica is the one.” Analyzing the elements of the font further, Edwards pointed to “the whitespace between the letters, the connectedness about them: they all look like they belong to the same family. The letter ‘a,’ the whitespace within the curve of the ‘a.’ [Type designers have] thought not just about the shape of the black but also the shape of the white within the letter.”

More and more research is being done on how these aspects of design are influencing us. With the speed with which technology develops now, fonts can be created, altered, and dis-

Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

seminated within minutes; they are more accessible now than ever, and more influential too. Fonts talk, and we should start listening.

If you don’t start listening to fonts and graphic design, you turn into Myspace. Oh, Myspace. Among many other issues, Myspace didn’t understand that design matters. Sean Parker, the founder of Napster and founding president of Facebook, said that Myspace “… was basically this junk heap of bad design that persisted for many, many years. There was a period of time where if they had just copied Facebook rapidly, they would have been Facebook.” In contrast to Myspace, Facebook has not only made their platform easy to use, but has controlled its basic template, such that it can never be overpowered by sparkles and ponies.

Almost everything we touch today has been designed to look a certain way (even if it’s been designed terribly). Through exposure, we have been implicitly studying design since birth, and are already very well edu-

cated in the discipline. The beautiful thing about this built-in education is that it is shared. There are so many of us that have grown up looking at the same commercials, the same websites, the same off-white walls, the same MSN Messenger interface (R.I.P.), the same cereal box covers, the same lots of stuff! As Jessica Helfland notes in Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture, “from television screens to computer screens to movie screens … their presence in our lives is ubiquitous, seamless, endless. What we see on screen is obviously an issue of considerable importance to communication designers.”

It is important that we consider the context within which we communicate, because we have more shared symbolic language than we think.

If you’re not familiar with the Steve Jobs story, he made Apple different because he knew that people like shit that looks good. He went to school for calligraphy, and hand drew Apple’s logo and drafts of the original comput-

er’s design with a calligraphic pen. The reason that I’m not walking around campus with an Acer in my backpack is that MacBooks are aesthetically pleasing, and using them is a beautiful experience. Steve Jobs designed that experience, and all the other computer nerds who didn’t think aesthetics mattered got left behind.

So don’t be a computer nerd, or a C.E.O., or an activist, or a social worker, or a sales representative, or a carpenter, without thinking hard about design questions. The importance is not in knowing the right answers, but rather in being curious enough to ask those questions. Well-designed communication will make sure your opinion is heard. Show the world that you’re not just another runof-the-mill Cambria or Times New Roman robot, but you are a beautiful, thoughtful, creative young person who uses Johnston Sans or Geo Sans Light! We all want things around us to look different, so know how to communicate well. Learn how to communicate well. Design is your voice.

Daily Publications Society’s

STUDENT JOURNALISM WEEK 2013

9 2 !

I D S B N !

N P O E BZ

2 3 !

I D S B N ! z b e t s v i !UP!u

The tradition continues, panels and discussions with professionals from the world of media, here at McGill. Watch out for further announcements! www.mcgilldaily.com/sjw/

le délit

culture

The McGill Daily Monday, February 25, 2013 mcgilldaily.com

i2

The Daily Reviews FIDLAR, Everything Everything, Homeshake, and Ducktails

FIDLAR – FIDLAR Mom & Pop Music It’s impossible to describe anything as being made for ‘a certain audience’ without sounding insulting. That said, LA punks FIDLAR’s self-titled debut fulllength is exactly that, no slight intended. FIDLAR are self-consciously aligning themselves with a visible, tried-and-true tradition of California punk music. The only reason that these guys are an ‘indie’ band in 2013 is because the last wave of LA surf-punks to hit the mainstream have

Homeshake – The Homeshake Tape Fixture Records “This is central control,” repeats Reverend Short, in a low tremor, “we are ready to transmit.” Within seconds, the white-haired, ‘UFO channeling’ Reverend begins to speak with an alien from planet Jupiter, all in the comfort of his Midwest American home. For occult enthusiasts, the warping of a classic clip is what gilds the jangly guitar-laden track “Northern Man” in Homeshake’s debut album, The Homeshake Tape.

Following in the footsteps of hip hop artists MF Doom and Wu-Tang Clan, Homeshake’s tracks pay tribute to childhood relics by sampling the likes of Dragon Ball Z, intergalactic sound effects, and stoner double-entendres into his grunge rock aesthetic. This collection of nine soul-inspired, home-recorded jams creates the ideal downbeat soundtrack for twenty-something nihilists.

either traded in their membership cards for their creative ambitions (blink-182, Green Day) or settled into respectable semi-obscurity (the Offspring, the Vandals, and pretty much all of the rest of them).

That isn’t to say that I’m not glad to find FIDLAR under the mainstream’s radar, as their incessant and anthemic declarations of their love for weed, beer, cocaine, and cheap sex probably wouldn’t move a whole lot of units in Idaho, even if anyone was buying CDs anymore.

There’s no poetry here, kids (“Why did you go betray me/you’re such a whore”), but if you’re one of the thousands of post-alt kids who torrented the entire Black Flag discography before going to the Wavves show, there’s plenty for you to love in FIDLAR. Singer Zac Carper has a pleasing early-Westerbergian yelp, and as cliché as it sounds, there is a charmingly unrelenting energy to the whole affair. There may not be much to set FIDLAR apart from the storied lineage they claim, but it does the heart good to know there are still dirty kids playing punk rock in the basements and skate parks of middle America.

Everything Everything – Arc Sony RCA Everything Everything are riding back into town upon the electro-synth-and-guitar stallion that they broke in during their first album. While the horse was easily spooked, Jonathan Higg’s falsetto vocals were a masterful rider, and, after crossing the river of Mercury Prize nomination, the

water is steaming off its back in the midday sun. This new album is a more refined entity with the guitars thrown in sparingly and songs more reliant on vocal arrangements, synth, and drums.

Lead singles “Cough Cough” and “Kemosabe” open the album in familiar territory, but about halfway through the record it becomes clear that there has been a change of gear.

“Duet” stands out as a track representing a new kind of confusion; a yearning love song set to strings, yet with lyrics littered with post apocalyptic imagery. By the end of the song, Alex Robertshaw is thrashing madly and semi-tonally at his guitar. As solid as this second album is (and for whatever it is worth, maybe even better than the first), I liked how nuts Everything Everything’s first LP was. It was called Man Alive. There was wittiness, guitars, and electro hooks in abundance. The wit, sadly, is gone, but as Arc rolls into its final track, “Don’t Try,” we are reminded that this stallion can run as fast as some of us remember.

—Daniel Woodhouse

—Cas Kaplan

Fading in from the outer recesses of Outremont’s dream-pop sound wave, Peter Sagar, the man behind Homeshake, crafts warbled yet eerily smooth guitar riffs that offer a languorous alternative to the Montreal scene. Displaying a penchant for lo-fi experimentation, Sagar cleverly blends dissonant chords and outof-tune vocals with spontaneous beats, and sets it to the syrupy hooks of his guitar. Though many listeners have noticed the similarities between the hazy harmonies of Homeshake and fellow Albertan expat, Mac DeMarco, the pocketed basslines that underline Sagar’s tracks hint at a stronger root in soul and hip hop. By trading in the raw and kinetic energy of Green and Burke for languid and groggy ballads, such as “Moon Woman,” his tape manages to push the boundaries of distorted soul.

Departing from his former solo project, Sans AIDS, an outfit that was reminiscent of a Guided By Voices record played at half-speed, Sagar’s recent release has shown significant development in quality and production. The tracks seem to explore interim states of lucidity that stir in the moments before his instruments wake to a complete melody, and dissipate by the time his voice drifts out of tune. At the end of the day, The Homeshake Tape offers a homegrown taste of moon rock for the dazed, the stoned, and the deluded.

—Mercedes Sharpe Zayas

Ducktails – The Flower Lane Domino Records With a title like The Flower Lane, you’d expect the cover of Ducktails’ newest album to be pretty much anything other than a plain black-and-white tile pattern. Yet these seeming opposites – poetic romance and precise technique – are exactly what Ducktails’ fourth album is all about.

The trendy, nostalgic, lo-fi style is appealing, but perhaps overused.

Ducktails’ minutely-produced aesthetic feels somewhat too clean-cut and predictable for the blurry lo-fi world the band usually inhabits, but The Flower Lane redeems itself with compelling instrumental passages. With this first studio album, Ducktails is leaning toward a more structured and lyric-centered pop style.

The new LP is guitarist Matt Mondanile’s effort to transform Ducktails

from a solo side project for his band Real Estate to a diverse collaborative endeavour. While collaboration means a greater variety of details – sax solos and synth riffs galore – it also subtracts from the contemplative, personal, and authentic style of Ducktails’ previous work.

Mondanile’s voice is constantly casual, à la Ariel Pink, while The Flower Lane’s bubbly electro-pop explorations bring to mind Cut Copy. The album’s first single, “Letter of Intent” – featuring ethereal vocals by Future Shuttle’s Jessa Farkas (think Au Revoir Simone) – is charming, but fails to deliver the unique punch a single calls for. “Under Cover” combines the album’s strongest elements in a single track: a soothing summertime feel, simple and effective instrumental riffs, and cheeky lyrics (“do you want to go under the covers?”) murmured in a detached and easygoing tone.

Ducktails’ greatest potential lies in the casual, almost haphazard, lo-fi folk instrumentalism they have previously explored.

Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics, Ducktails’ last album, had a more compelling, flowing depth to it, but The Flower Lane evidences a keener exploration of pop vocals, making for what is, at its core, a cheerful synth-pop album. While The Flower Lane has some interesting instrumental passages, Ducktails seem to be losing track of their charmingly casual style with occasionally repetitive and over-structured motifs striving to cover a lack of genuine passion.

—Nathalie O’Neill

CULTURE

13

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 25, 2013 | mcgilldaily.com

Skimming over Peruvian history Kingdoms of the Moon and Sun’s artistic survey leaves unanswered questions Lindsey Kendrich-Koch and Nathalie O’Neill The McGill Daily

T

he Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ newest exhibit, Kingdoms of the Moon and Sun, offers a survey of Peruvian art from the pre-Columbian era to the early 21st century. The exhibit includes a wide variety of media, with a strong emphasis on material history, in the form of everyday artifacts. The exhibit aims to explore collective Peruvian identity through artistic self-representations. However, the choice of artifacts does not reflect all facets of Peruvian history and lack some contextual information, detracting from a critical analysis of Peruvian identity in favour of a seamless presentation.

The time span of the exhibit is so extensive that the collection can offer only a cursory glance at best – a summary of a long and complicated history plagued with cultural tensions. The first room of the exhibit, presenting the initial discovery of Machu Picchu, offered a brief yet pertinent insight into the subjective archaeological process of uncovering artifacts of Peruvian history. At the time of its discovery, the site was a fact of life to locals.

They lived there and grew their maize on the ancient Incan terraces, but newly-arrived archaeologists put a stop to this, taking over the site in the name of excavation. This archaeological context, however, is somewhat glossed over in the rest of the exhibit, leaving the viewer to wonder how the specific pieces were selected and which factors determined their importance. The introduction to the exhibit claims these relics are symbols of “living cultural identity,” yet the multiple intersectionalities of culture fail to come across. In fact, the trajectory of the exhibit seems to reinforce an overly predictable colonialist narrative in which European conquest is presented as an inevitable turning point, something all of the area’s pre-Columbian history had been building to.

The first part of the exhibit focuses on artifacts of pre-Incan peoples – such as the Chavín, Mochica, Paracas, and Chimú – who predated European contact.

The second portion focuses on the Incan empire and its transformation by Spanish conquest. The third component of the exhibit features colonial art and works of the “Inca Renaissance,” followed by pieces of Indígenismo, a movement fueled by Peru’s 1821 independence, which extended into the 21st century.

The pre-Incan portion centres on material objects. These object – for the most part ritualistic – depict human sacrifice, war, sexuality, death, and the afterlife as embodied by human figurines, anthropomorphized agricultural goods such as maize, and feline and snake motifs. Unsurprisingly, gold features prominently both in this section and in the rest of the exhibit, reflecting the attraction Peru held for the Spanish colonizers.

After the many rooms of preIncan pottery and jewellery, the exhibit segues into artifacts from the Incan empire and the period of colonial contact, including eyecatching llama-fur textile tapestry.

Pre-contact Incan culture is only briefly presented before an unsettling and abrupt shift into Spanish colonial art. The lack of diverse perspectives is echoed by the paucity of artifacts which seem to truly represent indigenous Peruvians’ experience of colonization. In fact, the only colonialera piece accurately depicting the horrors of conquest is a series of drawings by Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala depicting the realities of indigenous oppression for the Spanish king.

The remainder of the colonial section marks a radical overturn of aesthetics. The works featured are, for the most part, neo-classical religious-themed oil paintings and ornamental metalworks. The minimal presence of authentic Peruvian subjects and artists in this section points to the missing voice in the narrative of colonialism, especially noticeable in the absence of any mention of the Mita, a forced labour system used to extract the precious metals for many of these artworks.

The exhibit shifts again in its last section, exploring a series of post-independence works. At this point, the variety of media grows, as the proportion of paintings diminishes in favour of photographs, engravings, prints, sculptures, and mixed-media works. The theme of Peruvian identity is reiterated in a somewhat mechanical fashion by accompanying audio of children singing the national anthem. This section showcases the hybridization of post-independence art, as traditional Peruvian art and Spanish influence converged to create a bicultural artistic movement.

The artworks bookending the exhibit reflect the intended message of fruitful cultural marriage.

The first artwork to greet visitors is Francisco Laso’s 1855 Europeanstyle painting Habitante de las Cordilleras, a portrait of an indigenous man holding a pre-Columbian artifact thought to embody

Illustration Erica Gregor

Peruvian identity. However, when related to the exhibit as a whole, this iconic painting’s meaning becomes more nuanced. One of the final pieces of the exhibit is an Arquebusier angel, a hybrid dolllike sculpture of a Spanish woman made from materials traditionally associated with indigenous culture. While this angel appears on the surface as a unified, victorious marriage of Hispanic and indigenous cultures, the sculpture also brings to mind the chilling incongruities of post-colonial culture.

The narrative of colonialism is a challenge to broach in a single exhibit, given its controversial and lasting legacy for Peru. Peru’s current indigenous population, estimated as between 30 and 45 per cent of the national population, still faces many struggles of social integration, economic opportunities, and political rights as discrimination carries on. The hybrid artistic identity expressed in this exhibit seems somewhat discordant with Peru’s current cultural reality. Kingdoms of the Moon and Sun strives to fold all

the pieces of Peruvian history into a morally satisfying, aesthetically pleasing result, but is this really a desirable objective? Although the artworks in this exhibit are worthy of appreciation in themselves, the survey of Peruvian art presented in this exhibit is overly broad, at times ignoring the lasting repercussions of historical narrative.

Kingdoms of the Moon and Sun will be on view at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from February 2 to June 16.

compendium!

The McGill Daily Monday, February 25, 2013 mcgilldaily.com

lies, half-truths, and at least 4 but probably 118 elements

i4

A day in the life of an apple Today’s apple: St. Applestine Euan EK The Twice-a-Weekly

I

love this feeling. I love this hanging feeling. Just me and my branch and a couple of pals.

Swinging is a breeze when you have no need for knees. Or just no knees.

I just drift. Now I go this way. Now I go that. Dangling in the air like I just don’t care. I can see down.

And I can see up. No continuum.

No in front or behind; no late or on time. Space and time mean nothing because I just hang from my branch. Now I go this way. Now I go that. I have no hair.

What is that? Oh. It is my friend the other apple. He bumps into me sometimes. I don’t think he can help it. Because he is also an apple and so also lacking in nerves. And lacking in knees. And in arms. Just big and juicy juicy bellies mmm.

You wanna taste? No. No tasting.

Naughty. That would forsake me.

There is a lack of professionally-trained apple surgeons in the world today.

The black market gets dodgier every day.

Every day, another rotten core.

Another half-eaten belly. Think before you eat, dear humans.

What shall I do today, you ask?

Hush now! Did you not listen to what I just told you? We apples have no time. There is no such thing as time for us. What is time?

No idea. We have but one day.

One eternal day in the sunshine of eternal beauty.

Our eternal beauty. Our presence within the singularity. You

see it now, don’t you? You see that apples, we apples, are the truly devout? The truly holy? But still we are not glorified. We are not held up, aloft. We are not celebrated in the stained class. But we will be. We will be led to true glory. I am the apple to do this. I am Applestine. I am Saint Applestine.

Now I go this way. Now I go that.

But. Alas. I am a saint, as it is plain for all the world to see; no other apple shines like me. But I am also an apple. And, as so many saints before me have said: what does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men.

That is what love looks like.

You see my predicament.

I am a saint. But I am an apple.

What is that coming this way from over yonder field? I have no idea. And what is a field?

Real predicament.

But I would worry if I had a conception of time. I do not. So I do not worry. I shall continue to be in being.

Mmm. Shall I eat now? Yes. Ah, but did my question reveal itself to be a trick? Yes. Because I am always eating. My food comes down and right into my tubby belly ohhh so juicy it’s so juicy tasty tasty love nutrients. I am always eating. In my eternal day.

Love. You can be so in love with food when it comes into your very own belly 24/7. Oh juice.

Oh holy juice. I have tasted and I have wept. Oh juice. Everything,

Illustration Amino Acid | The Twice-a-Weekly

all of the time.

Perhaps that is where it lies.

My sainthood. It lies in my very apple-ness. Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.

We apples wander nowhere; the apple is true believer. The juicy believer.

It is clear to me now.

Juicy is to believe what you do not see – only what you taste. The

reward of this faith is to taste what you believe. I am Applestine. Saint Applestine. And you have tasted.

Renounce your earthly desires, oh human. Renounce earthly passions. Renounce earthly time. Renounce hands and legs.

Renounce everything but the belly. Become belly itself. Only then can you become juicy belly, and the juicy belly is the only truly free belly.

Human. Oh earthly human.

Remember the truth: if you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but your-

self. If you reject me, you reject only yourself. Become belly. Do not waver. 24-hour-a-day juice into juicy belly. Become.

But lo? What is happening to me? I am plucked! I am plucked!

Hands clasp me. I am come. It is the moment. The judgement.

Am I juicy enough? Will the one that plucked me from my juicy 24 hour juice stream deem me juicy enough? Am I juicy? Truly juice?

I am! I am juicy! I am juicy! I am juicy! Saint Applestine, for ever more, I shall be known as! I am become only juice! I am become juice itself. Juice, forevermore.

Does water make you smarter?

Fight futility and worthlessness – increase your GPA! E.k. EK The Twice-a-Weekly

A

s all people at the fine institution of McGall know, a person’s intellect based on entirely arbitrary measures – often measured in “grades” – is the most important thing about their existence. Students, most heavily subjected to “the painful inanity of it all,” have for centuries attempted to circumvent the selfassigned doom of giving a shit, but most invariably fail. Special Twice-

a-Weekly insider information on a new paper by McGall researchers in Futile Pursuits suggests an interesting solution to your pathetic GPA and the consequent self-doubt and angst that plagues you nightly: water.

The study investigates potential links between cognitive ability (“brain thinkin’”), and the giver of both life and death, champion of all that is holy and all that is destructive (“water”).

Present in “pretty much everything,” as McGall professor of Futile Pursuits and lead investiga-

tor of the study Albert O’Saurus explained by email, water has been implicated in many functions of life. “Breathing, reading, moving your arms around, pooping, self-hatred, you name it, water helps you do it better.”

O’Saurus makes a good point – hydration and the capacity to hate oneself enough to inflict higher education upon them are inextricably linked. The correlation may be strong, but caution should be exercised before taking a straw to the Atlantic Ocean in the name of your perpetual self-loathing.

Many other studies have shown a strong positive correlation between levels of water-inbody-ness and being alive enough to perform actions. However, they should all likely be taken with a grain of salt. Tara Dactile, associate professor in McGall’s faculty of Sad Number Crunching, points out that people who are alive enough to put water into their bodies are likely already full of water, creating a selection bias that goes unaddressed in most studies.

The figures used in the McGall study are also experimentally

problematic, as they draw on data from only two sources: the Canada Food Guide, and the unanimous, hollow fear of never reaching selfactualization.

It seems that while lying with your mouth open under the faucet of your bathtub before an exam will do nothing more than make you vomit pure water, it might, in the end, be preferable to the current options of insufferable ennui or stewing anxiety after years spent toiling ceaselessly for little more than a number rounded to the nearest tenth.

15

EDITORIAL

volume 102 number 36

editorial board 3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-24 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9

Welcome to the education summit, where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter

phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com coordinating editor

Queen Arsem-O’Malley

coordinating@mcgilldaily.com

coordinating news editor

Juan Camilo Velásquez news editors

Laurent Bastien Corbeil Lola Duffort Farid Rener commentary editors

Jacqueline Brandon Steve Eldon Kerr culture editors

Kaj Huddart Hillary Pasternak

Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

features editor

Christina Colizza science+technology editor

Anqi Zhang

health&education editor

Ralph Haddad sports editor

Evan Dent

multimedia editor

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Hera Chan illustrations editor

Amina Batyreva design&production editors

Edna Chan Rebecca Katzman

copy editor

Nicole Leonard web editor

Tom Acker le délit

Nicolas Quiazua

rec@delitfrancais.com

cover design Amina Batyreva and Hera Chan contributors Jason Behrmann, Julia Boshyk, Akanksa Chaubal, Joelle Dahm, Brody Duncan, Cem Ertekin, Marcello Ferrara, Erica Gregor, Ben Grill, Josiah Henderson, Cas Kaplan, Wong Kar Tsai, Lindsey Kendrick-Koch, Tanya Kirnishni, Diana Kwon, Davide Mastracci, Esther Lee, Michael Lee-Murphy, Nathalie O’Neill, Sean Reginio, Maya Richman, Slawomir Poplawski, Matthieu Santerre, Mercedes Sharpe Zayas, Alice Shen, Celine Seta Rahme, Daniel Woodhouse

The Quebec government’s two-day summit on higher education will begin on February 25.

Held ostensibly to discuss both the quality and the price of post-secondary education in the province, the summit has been dismissed by students and administrators on the grounds that the event will not engender productive debate.

Student federation ASSÉ – the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante – is boycotting the summit in response to the Parti Québécois’ (PQ) refusal to consider free education. A protest will be held on February 26, and 32,000 students have already already voted for a two-day strike mandate.

Citing the provincial deficit, the PQ, which campaigned on the promise of abolishing the previous Liberal government’s tuition hikes, is now considering the option of indexing tuition fees to inflation. While these increases – less than $100 a year – are less dramatic in numerical value, and thus may seem more palatable to the public, they are equally as entrenched in neoliberal austerity. A freeze exists for the purpose of eventually decreasing the relative financial burden on students; indexation would accomplish the exact opposite: it pretends to be financially neutral while allowing inflation to work against students. Indexation exerts all the burden of a hike, but in smaller increments delivered in perpetuity.

The PQ’s dismissal of the possibility of free education before the summit has even begun is remarkably closed-minded. In fact, free education has been demonstrated to be economi-

cally plausible, not only in practice in other nations, but also as a projected plan for Quebec.

Progressive provincial party, Québec solidaire (QS), has demonstrated that a five-year plan that shifts funding toward a zero-tuition model would not only be feasible, but would also not necessitate any cuts to university revenues. Given the economic feasibility, it appears the government’s refusal to consider the proposal of free tuition is rooted in ideology. This is the same ideology – one that believes education to be a private commodity rather than a public good – that drives the government to cut funding to universities in the middle of the academic year. While CREPUQ, an organization representing university administrators across the province, among other voices, has asserted that the focus of the summit should shift from free tuition to education quality (and the funding required to maintain it), the two issues are tied to the same blatant disregard of the PQ for the importance of education.

Although Quebec’s debt is a serious problem, it cannot be used as an excuse to impose austerity. The government’s effective rejection of ASSÉ’s proposal for free tuition before the summit has begun is indicative of their attitude toward post-secondary education. We, as students, should stand up for the value of postsecondary education within this province – in protest. The Monday demo will meet at 4:30 p.m. at Square Cabot, close to Atwater station and at Square Victoria on Tuesday at 2 p.m.

— The McGill Daily Editorial Board

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