Volume 100, Issue 3
September 13, 2010
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The McGill Daily | Monday, September 13, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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McGill stuck on deferred maintenance treadmill
Part three of a four-part series: admin using outside investments to pay for new property The McGill Daily
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f the roughly $1 billion McGill is projected to spend this fiscal year (FY), over $100 million is to be dedicated to infrastructure projects, according to the University budget. The money is funnelled into the Plant fund, which comprises all revenue specifically earmarked for the acquisition, construction, or renovation of McGill’s infrastructure assets. “There are a hundred different construction projects on as we speak,” said SSMU President Zach Newburgh. Jim Nicell, Associate VP (University Services), said that McGill currently has $142 million invested in renovation projects across campus. The provincial government has given the university $15 million this FY2010-2011 for the specific purpose of renovation and repurposing of existing space, such as the new Service Point on McTavish. However, the Plant fund’s major investments for the foreseeable future concern deferred maintenance. In 2007 McGill carried out a study that revealed $647 million worth of accumulated deferred maintenance. Other universities in Quebec discovered similar problems, and the provincial government responded for FY2008-2009 by initiating a 15-year program to catch up on deferred maintenance. McGill now receives $25 million annually from the provincial government to address deferred maintenance. “Some [renovations] get left undone, and we end up deferring things to a later date. ... Deferred maintenance is a huge problem for universities,” said Nicell.
With so many deferred projects building up, the issue for the University has become how to prioritize certain projects over others. Nicell said the top priority for deferred maintenance spending was to address health and safety issues, such as bringing decades-old buildings up to modern building codes. He identified the second highest priority as maintaining the proper running of facilities. Last was maintenance that halts the general degradation of buildings and facilities. However, while McGill pours money into fixing decades-old maintenance issues, less immediate issues are deferred and degrade to dangerous levels over the years. Pierre Moreau, Senior Advisor (Policy Development), told a legislative committee in the National Assembly last Tuesday that 80 per cent of McGill buildings were built before 1940. The federal government stepped in last year to try and bump Canada’s universities off the deferred maintenance treadmill by launching a massive stimulus package called the Knowledge Infrastructure Program (KIP). The federal government gave $1 billion, which the ten provincial governments then collectively matched. McGill received $81 million as their share of the package, and has until March 31, 2011 to spend all the money. “The University is having trouble doing everything to finish before the deadline,” said Newburgh. The three major KIP projects involve renovating the Macdonald Engineering, McIntyre Medical, and Otto Maass Chemistry buildings. However, as the stimulus is a limited federal project, Nicell doesn’t believe it will go far enough in completely solving deferred maintenance issues. “It was a one-time thing. The federal government went into
Legend 60 50
Renovation expenses MELS revenues Deferred maintenance expenses Deferred maintenance budget Total expenses Total MELS revenues
40
$ million
Henry Gass
30
20
10
Source: McGill University Budget FY2010-11
McGill’s 2010-2011 budget reveals an accumulated renovation deficit of $15,251,000. important debt to create the stimulus package,” said Nicell. “It’s part of the fundamental argument of the underfunding of universities. Hospitals are the same way, everything’s over-taxed.” Nicell said that universities at present don’t have the financial resources to completely erase deferred maintenance, and that with current funding models, he was doubtful that all of McGill’s pending maintenance work could be tackled. “That’s the trillion dollar question across the country,” said Nicell.
“Capital funding wasn’t sufficient [in the past], and it created deferred maintenance. .... If we haven’t corrected the base cause of deferred maintenance, we won’t solve the problem.” With so much of the Plant fund devoted to renovation and maintenance, McGill has to use other outside resources to buy new buildings. For the $12.3 million purchase of the Courtyard Marriott Hotel this past spring, McGill took out a bond to raise money. Such investments in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds are common for many
post-secondary institutions. “These [investments] are shortterm instruments that allow us to get income in those periods when our cash-flow is positive,” wrote Provost Anthony Masi in an email. The Budget conservatively forecasts investment income to amount to approximately $42 million in FY2011. “The University invests in wide array of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, like most private citizens,” said Newburgh, who also admitted that McGill is “taking risks in a volatile market.”
He cited recent polls, which suggest that the Conservatives would claim about 30 per cent of the popular vote in an election. Rae interprets this to mean that over twothirds of Canadians do not want Stephen Harper as their leader. Commenting on a recent visit to Canada by speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, Rae said, “She told us America was waiting for Canadian leadership on climate change. I told her, with this government, you’ll wait a long time.” After his speech, Rae and Liberal McGill President Kathleen Klein led a question-and-answer session with students. Reacting to Rae’s appeal for youth engagement, Klein said, “He
didn’t talk the general talk about getting youth involved. He talked to us as adults, as job-seekers. Innovation was a huge part of his chat today, and that’s something we’re all interested in, whether we know it or not.” Klein herself would like to see more student involvement in the political scene at McGill. “My biggest concern is getting people involved and enabling them to make informed decisions for themselves.” Jess Weiser, president of Conservative McGill, indicated that he was generally “impressed” by student engagement in federal politics, but added “the more the better.“
Rae rallies students around Grits Liberal MP visits Shatner, talks up party’s hopes in next election Bora Plumptre News Writer
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iberal MP and current foreign affairs critic Bob Rae visited the Shatner building Friday morning to lay out the Liberal Party’s policy planks to students. Rae used the event, hosted by Liberal McGill -- the official arm of the Liberal Party of Canada on campus -- to tackle a wide range of issues, such as post-secondary education, Arctic sovereignty, responsible industry, and the case for federalism. Rae was also Premier of Ontario between 1990 and 1995 when he was the leader of the provincial NDP.
“I want you to be angrier,” he told the audience, which was packed into Shatner B-29. “I want youth to be telling us more about what we should be doing, about what the issues are, and to help us define the policies and ideas of the next generation.” “A democratic country requires a democratic party,” Rae continued. “It requires a party that wants the participation and the ideas and the thoughts and contributions of its members. It’s very important that our universities and our student clubs become a base for that.” Opening with a presentation of about 20 minutes, Rae acknowledged public suspicions that a federal election could be brewing, and
made a pitch for why the Liberals should form Canada’s next government. “We’ve entered an interesting stage in the parliamentary life of the country,” Rae said. “We’re at a point when people are going to have to decide the kind of government they want to have, the sort of approach they want to take.” Rae’s visit comes as Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff finishes a cross-country bus tour designed to build up the Liberal support base. Rae remarked that public perception is what he views as the Liberal Party’s main challenge: “It’s not ‘Why should we defeat the Conservatives,’” he said, “but ‘Why vote for the Liberals?’”
4 News
The McGill Daily | Monday, September 13, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
McGill prof takes on euthanasia The Daily sits down with Margaret Somerville
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ast week, “Dying With Dignity,” a series of public hearings debating the issues of euthanasia and physicianassisted suicide, kicked off its province-wide tour in Montreal. Led by a National Assembly committee exploring citizens’ opinions on the subject, the hearings consisted of discussions with individuals, medical experts, and pro-euthanasia groups. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are both illegal in Canada. Margaret Somerville, a McGill professsor and Director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics, and Law, submitted a briefing to the National Assembly committee titled “Living with Dignity When Dying.” She spoke to The Daily on the issue from a palliative care conference in Australia.
McGill Daily: What are the differences between euthanasia and assisted suicide? Margaret Somerville: There are very much the same moral and ethical issues because they both involve somebody intervening in some way to help someone end their life. The technical legal difference is that in euthanasia, somebody – let’s make it a physician – gives a lethal injection. In other words, the act of the physician causes the death of the patient…putting it bluntly, the physician kills the patient. In assisted suicide, the physician gives the patient the means of killing themselves. That’s what suicide means: you kill yourself. And euthanasia is actually homicide; it means somebody else kills you. MD: What are the arguments surrounding the legalization of euthanasia? MS: The strongest argument for euthanasia is that you’ve got an individual, and that person wants it. They say, “it’s my life and I want to do this.” So that’s a strong argument for euthanasia; its autonomy, self-determination. The strong arguments against it are at the societal level. Once you institute this you can’t control it, and we’ve seen that…we’ve seen it in the Netherlands, who have the longest standing experiment in euthanasia, who have legalized euthanasia for
30 years. When it started off you had to be a competent adult who was in terrible pain that couldn’t be relieved, you had to be terminally ill, repeatedly ask for euthanasia, and then you had to give someone consent for it. Now, none of those conditions apply. Recently in the Netherlands they’ve broadened the law that parents who have a disabled baby can request euthanasia for the baby in the first month after it’s born, children aged 12-16 can with parents’ consent, those over 16 can consent for themselves, and those who are not terminally ill [can request euthanasia]. The [Dutch] courts just held that a seriously depressed woman whose psychiatrist gave her euthanasia was justified. As well as that, [the Dutch] government reports that at least 500 people a year are euthanized who haven’t given consent to it and don’t know what’s happening, they’re either incompetent or the doctors say, “well they asked for pain relief treatment and we take that as consent for euthanasia.” So all of those reasons. MD: In the parts of the United States where assisted suicide is legal [Oregon, Washington, and Montana], do you see the issue developing the way it is in the Netherlands? MS: I just heard a report from Oregon where physician assisted suicide was initially legalized. There’s extensive care, which can on average extend life between three and six months at the end of life, and people in Oregon [can apply] for the state to cover the cost of these drugs. The Oregon Health Authority, if they refuse to send the drugs, which they mainly do, send the patient a message that says, “we’re not going to send you the drugs but we’d like to remind you that physician-assisted suicide is covered by the health insurance and is not expensive.” And so, there is extension of what’s happening. The people who are most at risk are the elderly. And it’s even more dangerous when you implement things under a cloak of ethics and compassion. When doctors do things we often assume that it’s got to be ethical or else doctors wouldn’t be
Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily
doing it, so [by making] euthanasia a medical act [you make it] a compassionate act, and both of those things stop our normal intuition. One of the things I talk about in some of the lectures I give – and this is not my original suggestion – is that if we’re going to have euthanasia, we shouldn’t have doctors doing it because, first of all, it mixes you up as to whether it’s ethical – I call it putting a medical cloak on the act – and the other thing is that people actually become frightened of going to doctors, because people become frightened of accepting pain relief treatment. One alternative that was suggested was that if we’re going to have euthanasia we should have lawyers doing it, because they know how to strictly interpret the law and how to apply it. And most people have a complete freakout when you suggest that you have a lawyer. As one of the doctors who was for euthanasia said to me, “You’re crazy, Margo, you’d have lawyers killing people,” but it’s exactly the same thing when doctors are doing it, except we don’t see it the same way. MD: Will these hearings in Quebec move the debates in the province and country forward?
“When doctors do things we often assume that it’s got to be ethical or else doctors wouldn’t be doing it, so [by making] euthanasia a medical act [you make it] a compassionate act.” Margaret Somerville Director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics, and Law MS: Certainly I think it’s good that we’re having the debate and I would hope that the outcome would be that we’d reject euthanasia but we’d understand how very important good palliative care is, and in particular how fully adequate pain relief treatment [is] for everyone who needs it…all of those things are essential and absolutely required, but none of them are euthanasia. I think the big divide is, should we allow doctors to kill people? And my answer to that is no, absolutely, totally not. And you know the question you have to ask is why are we debating this now? It’s not like new
reproductive technologies where we’ve never faced the questions in the past. There’s nothing new about euthanasia. So what is it that we think after thousands of years of saying this is wrong, suddenly think it’s a great idea? And I think what it is, is some values in society that have gone astray that we need to come back to and rethink. —compiled by Queen ArsemO’Malley
The full text of this interview is available at mcgilldaily.com
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The McGill Daily | Monday, September 13, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
What’s the haps
AUS Frosh in the red
Mismanagement, miscommunication cited as causes Erin Hale
The McGill Daily
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n an apparent breakdown of Arts Undergraduate Society communication and management, Arts frosh is believed to be in severe debt this year. The deficit was announced last week at AUS council, and the exact figure is expected to be released sometime this week. AUS VP Events Nampande Londe cited under-registration and unanticipated costs as the main reasons for the shortfall. Only between 1,450 and 1,500 students registered, despite an earlier increase in capacity by 300. “The reason we set an additional cap at 1,800 was so we made sure we provided any first-year or incoming student under the jurisdiction of AUS the opportunity to participate in frosh,” Londe said, explaining that first-year students from the Faculties of Education, Social Work, and Arts and Science in addition to regular Arts students – around 2,500 first years, according to Londe – were eligible to participate in Arts frosh. Casey Adams, one of six Arts Frosh coordinators, said the decision to increase capacity caused many planning and budgeting difficulties and went against the wishes of several coordinators. “The budget shortfall was caused in large part because food, clubs; all of that was budgeted expecting a max cap of 1,800,” Adams said. Frosh needed 1,600 students to break even. To cover costs, registration was eventually opened to all McGill students for four hours on the last day to cover costs. Adams and another frosh coordinator, Yusra Khan, took issue with this decision at Council. “The only motivation behind it was showing a profit margin and not giving a better event to the first years,” Adams told the AUS Council, noting that many of the more belligerent students he met were in the upper years. A frosh coordinator speaking on condition of anonymity claimed that some organizers, desperate to register students, allowed Concordia students to sign up. AUS President Dave Marshall has said this confu-
sion may be due to the fact that non-McGill students were allowed to attend night events as guests of actual participants. The same frosh coordinator also attributed last-minute planning and Londe’s four-day absence due to a family emergency in early August as reasons for budgetary problems. “[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. “Without refrigeration, all the food had to be delivered the day of, instead of being bought from a wholesaler like Costco and stored. Failures in organization like this abounded, and the increased costs were mostly a result of the rushed troubleshooting we had to do to cover failures,” the email read. Londe felt that belated purchasing did not pose a financial problem. “From my perspective, most of the things...would not have been any cheaper if we had bought them in advance,” she said. At Council, Londe attributed most of the planning and budgetary problems to incomplete information passed on from previous years, which meant frosh organizers incurred many unexpected costs. “When looking at last year’s budget, a lot of things in there weren’t explained – what they were, where they came from – so while they made money, we can’t entirely be sure,” she said. Many of the budgets included an incomplete list of receipts, or were confusing to follow. Initially suggesting to Councillors that the budgets may have been “falsified,” she later told The Daily that there was no evidence for that belief. Marshall also confirmed that none of the independent annual audits in recent years have ever revealed foul play. “There’s nothing to suggest it was falsified. What did concern me is there’s no way to really prove some of the numbers, and that’s really something that can’t continue,” Londe said.
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SSMU Council Thursday, September 16, 6pm Shatner Building, Lev Bukhman SSMU exec and 20 to 25 elected representatives from every Faculty, as well as other departments and clubs, will meet for the first time this week. All members of SSMU are welcome to attend, check up on what executives are up to, and debate motions that set SSMU Policy.
“I Crave Justice”: Campus for Christ and AUS presents Kim Phuc Monday, September 13, 7:00 p.m Leacock Room 132, 855 Sherbrooke O. “The Girl in the Picture,” Kim Phuc, shares her experience as a young girl during the Vietnam War and her subsequent journey of faith in Christ and forgiveness. Tickets will be $5 at the door.
QPIRG and CKUT Open House Thursday, September 16, 5-8 p.m 3647 University Meet and greet the friendly inhabitants of 3647 Univeristy, and find out how you can get involved with QPIRG and CKUT. Free food and drinks. Also, don’t miss QPIRG’s presentation of Films Under the Stars, with La Haine screening on Lower Field at 6:30 p.m. September 17.
SSMU Activities Night Also raised as an issue at Council was the fact that VP Finance Majd Al Khaldi was not involved in drafting the budget – which Marshall and Londe later explained was due to confusion over his jurisdiction. Khaldi, who was not mandated to stay in Montreal over the summer, was out of town while most of frosh was being planned, although his staff was present to help. “While I was skulking away in the desert, my book keeper was still keeping tabs on [Londe] and her team. So there was a sort of controlled situation, it’s just not as ideal as it could have been,” Khaldi told councillors. At Council, questions were also raised as to whether contracts were not in place until the morning of the pub crawl, and that other venues may not have been established until relatively late. “We had contracts signed with
Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily
the majority of the bars. Some of them we pulled in at the last minute, so we got them to invoice us, which is the equivalent of a contract,” Londe told Council. “Those [organizers] handling the pub crawl got switched, some people did some bars, some people did other ones. Sometimes there was a lack of communication and that’s how sometimes we ended up with invoices instead of contracts,” Londe explained further in an interview with The Daily. Londe has insisted that these are equivalent to legal contracts. However, a member of the operations staff – speaking on condition of anonymity because of a fear of damaging a personal relationship – felt this was still problematic for an organization as large as AUS. “Verbal agreements – frankly, given how much money the AUS handles – are not acceptable,” the staff member said.
MAN BITES DOG: Break news at The McGill Daily
September 14, 15, 4-9p.m. Shatner Ballroom Check out SSMU’s 200+ clubs and services at Activities Night, where you have an opportunity to sign up and get to know various associations.
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Commentary
The McGill Daily | Monday, September 13, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Why equity and social justice matter Emily Clare & Lynsey Grosfield The McGill Daily
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Grace Brooks for The McGill Daily
Think globally, eat locally The McGill Farmers’ Market will help calm your food anxieties Susanna Klassen Hyde Park
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ustainability, green, ecofriendly, food security, global warming, climate change – by now we’ve all heard the buzz words, and some have even begun to lose their meaning, or at least their sincerity. But all greenwashing aside, it is certain that we have a few major problems on our hands. One that hits home for me: it seems that everyone is feeling increasingly insecure about food. How much is that? What’s for dinner tonight? How many calories? Are these organic? Methyl parahydroxybenzoate? Beyond the pressing global issues surrounding availability, access, and action that affect such a large portion of the population, the food insecurities that surround us from day to day are almost as alarming, and disconcertingly ironic. Problems like food waste, eating disorders, farmers struggling to feed themselves, and the ecological destruction caused by the agricultural industry. Indeed, I am feeling insecure about food. And really, should it come as a surprise? With the way food is being marketed, produced, packaged, and sold, it is all too easy to become confused and disconnected. But fear not – urban dwellers are gaining more and more access to local-
ly-grown, fresh food, enabling them to feel connected to, appreciative of, and secure about the food they eat. Anyone who has visited a farmers’ market can attest that the experience is much more than just a shopping trip. You get to talk to other people in your community, interact with the farmers and vendors that produce the food you eat, and there’s often live music to set the mood as you peruse the local goodies.
the people that produce it? When you buy at a farmers’ market, you fuel the local economy and support sustainable agricultural practices. Choosing to buy your food there is not just a pleasurable social experience, it’s a step toward a more sustainable lifestyle. To begin with, the food itself is fresher, picked riper, and as a result, tastes better. By purchasing your food at the market, you are also supporting smallscale farmers, often organic, who engage in more sustainable agri-
Buying food at the Farmers’ Market is a step towards a sustainable lifestyle
The McGill Farmers’ Market allows the student body and the downtown community to experience such an event. The only market situated in the heart of downtown, this market gives the student body and the downtown community the opportunity to experience the beauty of a farmers’ market organized by some fellow McGill students. Now in its third year of operation, the market began this week and will be held every Wednesday in September and October from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. What better way to build a sense of community and security than to connect with your food and with
cultural practices and maintain the ecological health of the land they cultivate. Rather than supporting a grocery chain that carries mostly highly packaged, processed, and imported food, at markets you buy directly from the farmer, so more of your money is going towards a good cause. I think we can all feel very good about that. Susanna Klassen, U2 in Environmental Science, is a cocoordinator of the McGill Farmers’ Market. The Farmers’ Markets will be held in Three Bares Park every Wednesday in September and October. Write her at: susanna. klassen@gmail.com.
quity is a mainstay of a wellrounded university education. In our wider society, different dynamics put certain groups at risk of discrimination and harassment. McGill’s campus is diverse, and participating in productive discussions here means recognizing that students come from vastly different standpoints and levels of privilege. Equity is implemented on both an individual and institutional level. It is a lens through which we conduct our relations in a bid to create an atmosphere of respect and safety. It is the responsibility of educational institutions to develop clear policies to deal with these issues and generate an atmosphere of respect. A safe academic environment allows individuals to realize their potential. As such, equity is a fundamental responsibility of SSMU. There is an important distinction between free speech and equity. While the two can coexist peacefully, there are often definitional tensions. Integrated within equity is a support for discussion and dialogue. The very concept of equity is negated if individuals are limited from “engag[ing] in the open discussion of potentially controversial matters,” as SSMU’s Equity Policy calls for. Social justice discourse demands of its participants respect for others and their struggles, historical and current; it does not call everyone to fall in line with a pre-approved, rubber-stamped PC lexicon. All rights have attached responsibilities to ensure community balance and cooperation. Free speech is no different. Clubs are student funded and thus must be held accountable to SSMU council and its legislation. The equity policy and equity complaints procedure guarantee students that their money is being used responsibly. Free speech is not contravened when a club is held accountable to the organization that funds it. Every student and member of SSMU has a right to participate in an environment that, according to SSMU’s proposed new equity policy, “exceeds social norms of equitable treatment, creating a safe haven for...members where collegial debate and marginalized ideas can flourish in a culture
of respect.” Last year yielded a few highprofile cases that highlighted the importance of equity on campus. Choose Life, a pro-life campus club, had been criticized for disseminating false information and displaying graphic images related to abortion. Several equity complaints were filed and SSMU Council suspended Choose Life’s club status. The Student Equity Committee worked with Choose Life to ensure that the club’s future activities were aligned with SSMU’s equity policy, allowing them to regain their status. More recently, the Management Undergraduate Society (MUS) chose a “tribal” theme for this year’s frosh. After realizing the negative connotations that the theme evoked for indigenous populations, MUS quickly and respectfully resolved the issue by changing the theme to “superheroes.” Equity is about ensuring that such a situation does not arise again. This year, Lynsey Grosfield and I were hired to be SSMU’s equity team. Lynsey is the Social Justice Days coordinator and I am the SSMU Equity Commissioner. Together, we will work on spreading awareness on campus about equity and other social justice issues. We will be providing support for QPIRG during Culture Shock, a two-week event in October focussing on how migrant and racialized communities navigate multicultural societies. Additionally, I will be chairing the Student Equity Committee and working with other equity officers should any complaints arise. What we learn on campus, or in any other microcosm, is often orphaned from application in the greater society, outside the campus gates. Ideally, McGill will cultivate an understanding that will yield positive results outside of campus walls. Emily Clare, U4 Political Science major and Race and Ethnic Studies minor, is SSMU’s Equity Commissioner. Send her a shoutout: equity.com@ssmu.mcgill.ca. Lynsey Grosfield, U2 joint honours in Anthropology and Women’s Studies, is SSMU’s Social Justice Days Coordinator. Send questions, comments, and event ideas to sjd@ ssmu.mcgill.ca.
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First contact
September 13, 2010 B-24, Montreal
Reflections from a freshman half-way through September Adam Banks Hyde Park
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s someone who has lived in the suburbs of Ohio for most of my life, I cannot fully describe the joy I felt at being left at McGill by my parents in August. The beauty of the skyscrapers’ towering shadows and the sinful nature of certain side streets are proof that the city of Montreal is indeed a living, breathing organism. The sheer amount of activity and people in this city is simultaneously gratifying and overwhelming. I feel like I can’t sleep because something more interesting is going on somewhere else in the city, outside of my cluttered, trash-strewn dorm room. At times, it seems as if the only problem on earth consists of figuring out what bar to go to on Friday night. Obviously, this is not the case. I’ve lived among kids with moderate amounts of money for all of my 18 years on this planet, and I always thought that I knew what the term “diversity” meant because I had friends who were into obscure authors and underground hip-hop. Of course, this was not the case. I am not going to pretend that I’m wise. I know very little about real diversity. And I suppose this is why McGill is the place for someone such as myself – someone who does not yet know the realities of life. McGill University, in case you missed the “we’re super international!” sentiment of its brochure, is pretty goddamned diverse.
Clara Syme for The McGill Daily
Coming to university is all about learning – outside class. We have Muslims, Christians, students of both rich and poor backgrounds, and everything and everyone else not mentioned here.
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Unfortunately, we also have ignorance. Ignorance – my own included – runs rampant in residence. The sheer number of semi-racist,
Dear Reader, crudely misinformed comments one hears during pub crawls and meals is enough to make a stomach turn. This is not to say this year’s entering class at McGill is a bunch of racist douchebags. In fact, quite the opposite. The people here are amazing; there are kids from France, from Canada, from Kenya. From broken homes, from gated communities. From everywhere you could imagine. The thing is, sometimes we don’t realize that many people are unlike ourselves. Call it narcissism, naiveté, or something less negative, but a crucial part of attending university is the process of becoming more experienced in more important areas of life – like interactions with street people or navigating the maze-like collection of cultures at McGill. It’s nice to learn about political science and Italian and such, but perhaps it’s more important to learn how to look a homeless person in the eye, for example. In short, it’s important to make (and correct) mistakes while it is still acceptable to do so. Of course, becoming more open-minded is not something that occurs overnight. However, in four years, perhaps this place can change all of us for the better. If not, I don’t know what can. After all, I – and many others – came to McGill to get an education not only in the Faculty of Arts, but also in the art of growing up. Adam Banks is a U1 Arts student. Share your first-year experiences with him at adam.banks@mail. mcgill.ca.
The case of Claude Robinson
I know you’ve been busy. School starting and all. And I know you’ve made an effort to be in touch. I mean, look at page nine. You’ve done pretty well. But it enough.
is
not
I need you now tonight. And I need you now, more than ever. And – if you’ll hold me tight – we’ll be holding on forever. I don’t want to be some creep, trying to monopolize all your time... But seriously, just read me and respond to me, okay? Write soon. I miss you.
The Quebec judiciary is inaccessible to people who aren’t well-connected or wealthy Julien D.-Pelletier & Marc-Antoine Cloutier Hyde Park
I
t goes without saying that the Claude Robinson legal affair lifts the veil on a fundamental accessibility problem of Quebec’s justice system. The television cartoonist Claude Robinson just won a 14-year battle to recover his right to the legitimate property of his creation, Robinson Curiosité. Long story short: the Cookie Jar Group – formerly known as Cinar – stole the piece from Robinson at the end of the 80s, and turned it into a TV series, Robinson Sucroë. The latter have now asked to bring the judgment to the Court of Appeal. However, Robinson is not afraid and is determined to win this second battle. A spontaneous group of people from artistic and other communities has collected around $400,000 to pay for his defense. Even though all the facts proved the
artist right. Even though it was proven that the Cookie Jar Group acted in bad faith. This raises a question: without the access Robinson has to mass media and the financial support it entailed, how could he have paid such astronomical legal fees? Something underlies this affair, something much more salient to the common citizen: accessibility to the justice system in Quebec. In 1972, the government passed the Loi sur l’aide juridique, seen as a revolution since it promised poorer citizens access to the courts. Nearly 40 years later, though, all one can say is that the law has become nearly useless. Usually, a lawyer asks for $150 an hour for legal advice. A single person is eligible for legal aid when they earn less than $18,303. The question is: what if that same person earns just one dollar more that amount? Can he really access decent legal aid? The question is the answer. As a matter of fact, an average of 40,000 people are refused legal aid each year. Forty thousand people who are
faced with the tough fact that they’ll have to forget about those rights. Forty thousand people for whom the laws designed to protect them are merely empty words. Solutions exist, however, and have already been put forward by diverse political and judicial entities. Of course, admissibility criteria for legal aid could be improved. However, our society has many more things to think about. Means of remuneration for legal aid lawyers could be modified. Small claims courts could raise the litigious amount of money admissible to its instances. Fiscal incentives could be implemented for those who wish to defend their rights. Financing could be provided to organizations, like the Clinique juridique Juripop, that promote social justice. Alternative ways of solving legal conflicts could be put forward. It is clear that the actual situation makes a great number of people lose confidence in their laws and the way they are applied. The future
might hold Claude Robinson as a symbol of that problem. The principles behind the current legal aid system are indeed admirable. It is nonetheless unfortunate that they remain beyond the grasp of most of the people they were intended to help, due to the level of financial distress they require. Marc-Antoine Cloutier and Julien D.-Pelletier are law students at UQAM and the president and vicepresident, respectively of Clinique juridique Juripop. During fall 2009, they started the legal-aid clinic, which provides free legal services to those those who are ineligible to governmental legal aid, but unable to pay for a lawyer. Louise Boyd works with Juripop as a lawyer. The clinic is presently looking for law students to get involved, as more and more people are now asking for such services. Visit Juripop’s website (French only): juripop.org or call them (French and English): 450-845-1637.
letters@ mcgilldaily.com
Errata The illustration for the article “Raising tuition, really?” (Commentary, September 9) was misattributed. The illustrator’s name is Clara Syme. The Métromètre in the September 9 issue (Compendium!) was misleading. Some, not all, varsity sports teams have been demoted to clubs status. The Daily regrets the error.
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Letters
The McGill Daily | Monday, September 13, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
9
The administration sees campus space as less a central part of the student community and more a spiritless, sterile asset to be fully utilized Jesse Sutherland BA 2004, History and English
Hillel McGill: part of a wholesome diet of Israel-Palestine conflict information Re: “Student Groups” | Disorientation Guide | September 1 I am voicing my concerns about the description of McGill Hillel in the Disorientation Guide’s description of student groups on campus. To reduce an organization that has coordinated a citywide food drive for needy students, various social action fundraisers, Holocaust Memorial Week, along with meals for Jewish students during the holidays to actions surrounding a controversial SSMU General Assembly motion seems unjustified, to say the least. It is an insult to the countless dedicated student volunteers who engaged themselves with Hillel McGill in the past to promote student life on campus, and a disservice to Jewish students truly interested in the options available to them. Moreover, your description of SPHR as the “go-to” group for information on the Middle East is misleading. McGill Hillel hosts’ world-class speakers and insightful conferences throughout the entire year, open to all students, to inform them about the IsraelPalestine conflict as well. I would even encourage any student to learn from both parties in order to form a more wholesome and accurate view of this pressing issue. Finally, Tadamon! was listed as an anti-Israel student group. Tadamon! is not a student group at all. It is outrageous that with over 200 student groups, The McGill Daily has chosen to grant exposure to a group with no campus affiliations whatsoever. There are many deserving clubs who work tirelessly to expose their cause and would have appreciated to have a truthful description published. I am confident that my concerns will not be taken lightly and that The McGill Daily will live up to its reputation as an honest and trustworthy news source by treating this matter effectively. Dann Bibas U2 Finance Co-president, Hillel McGill
Student groups list too powerful, biased Re: “Student Groups” | Disorientation Guide | September 1 It is unfortunate that in its guide to student groups, The Daily has chosen to mislead both Jewish and other students about the merits of Hillel McGill. In the September 1 issue, the review of Hillel McGill was incomplete and biased. The review was slanted in such a way as to lead readers to believe that Hillel McGill is a one-issue, pro-Israel club. The Muslim Students’ Association is labeled as a hub for Muslim students on campus, while Hillel is only mentioned in connection with last year’s controversial GA. Like the MSA is for Muslims, Hillel is a centre for Jewish life on campus and provides a place for Jewish students to hang out, eat, and learn about Judaism. The group gets involved in Israel advocacy when required to, but that is certainly not the be-all and end-all of Hillel. On the politics side, however, labeling SPHR as hip and as the cats to “[s]ay hey to if the Middle East... turns your crank” is completely one-sided. There are many points of view in the Middle East, and both the pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel ones are legitimate. In the future, students should be able to choose who to seek out based on their own personal beliefs, and should not be directed to a particular side by the campus media. Let’s stick to unbiased reporting. Adam Sadinsky U1 Political Science VP Outreach, Hillel McGill
Corpo-McGill’s closure of Arch Café is contemptible
Closure affronts us, says one bummed alumnus
Well, guess I shouldn’t be surprised that once again the Architecture Café is under threat. McGill seems to be continually consolidating and ruining the places on campus that actually mean something to students. The bland uniformity of Chartwells first arrived when I was a student sometime before 2004, and soon enough a Subway took up residence in the Arts building (Subway!?), the Arts Lounge was long closed, and even the computer labs in Leacock were replaced. Step by step, the McGill campus that I enjoyed seems to be fading away, as the administration sees the campus space as less a central part of the student community and more a spiritless, sterile asset to be fully utilized. When I was a student at McGill, one of the great things about the school was the physical grounds, the services, and the general vibe on campus – which was so good, and very welcoming, especially when compared to other universities in the city. I hope that this continues to be the case. New students should be able to expect more than massive, franchise corpo-food when they arrive on campus: they should be able to relax, have a meal, know what exactly they’re eating, and share in the convivial spirit that places like the Architecture Café provide. I pity the students that are starting their McGill experience this fall; unless things change, McGill will become a boring, staid (more so), and dreary campus – which is hardly the atmosphere they expect, and certainly not the one they deserve.
So McGill hires a prison caterer to take over our university’s food services. And it decides that the only student-run café on campus must be turfed. according to Morton J. Mendelson. After two years in the hands of the admin, the Architecture Café is just plain broke. At a university that routinely hosts thousand dollar receptions (I know this from experience) this explanation rings hollow to me. In any case, we are dealing with an administration which needs no excuses. The University has a long history of taking over or shutting down student-run operations. In the 1990s, we had half a dozen student-run cafes on campus, overseen by various Faculty student associations. Of these, only the Arch Café remains. But shutting down this last student-run café will be a big mistake. The Arch Café was crucial to my education at McGill, not simply because it provided high-quality, affordable, local or organic or fairtrade food and coffee. Every year I spent at McGill, we lost more and more student space – to research labs, professors’ offices, and the Administration’s conniving (for example, SACOMSS and Muslim students’ prayer space evictions). As a student-built and student-run space, constantly filled with dynamic, interesting peers from across all disciplines, the Arch Café was one of the few remaining places on campus to have real conversations, academic and otherwise. Grad students have their offices, people looking for silent study have the libraries. But as an undergrad who actually wants to discuss and interpret and argue and inquire with your fellow students, where are you going to go? You need on-campus, amenable, inviting, social space. That’s exactly what the Arch Café provided. That’s precisely what we should fight to preserve.
Jesse Sutherland BA 2004, History and English
Can I have extra dicks with that? I have been told recently that The Daily has had to enact restrictions on content due to certain advertisers, by a friend who had his “art” censored due to the presence of a “dick” or “penis.” Since everyone in the student body now has to give an extra dollar to make sure that The Daily doesn’t have to compromise content in order to appease “the Man,” I just have to say that I am disgusted and outraged that there have been dick restrictions placed on content in The Daily. I could say that this is “sex-negative” or “not chill,” but mainly all I have to say is
that unless I see some dicks in the McGill Daily in the next month, I will personally draw dicks on every copy. Well, actually, no, I won’t but pretend I will and get some dicks in there. Like, 8====D or c====3 is fine. Also, if these restrictions expand to vaginas and breasts then I just don’t know what the fuck is going on in the world anymore, because it has just gone to shit. And if they don’t, then I’m confused. And if this isn’t true, then I’m just a rumour mill. Love, Stefan Campbell U3 Geography: Urban Systems
Trevor Chow-Fraser BA 2008, East Asian Studies and English
Sorry, SACOMSS! Re: “Student Services” | Disorientation Guide | September 1 Hey, McGill Daily, we read your last issue and we were sad to note that we weren’t included in your list of SSMU services. This is a shame because the Sexual Assault Centre of McGill Student Society (SACOMSS) is an incredibly crucial student service. We provide support to survivors and their allies through our four branches: Crisis Intervention, the Accompaniment Branch, Support Groups, and the Outreach Program. Our goal is to offer an equal service to people from all walks of life, including survivors of different and unique genders, races, orientations, abilities, and economic statuses. All our services are provided free of charge. How could you forget to mention us? :( We’re located right across the hallway from your office – room B-27 of the Shatner building! SACOMSS will be recruiting new volunteers for its Outreach and Support Groups branches this fall. Please visit sacomss. org for more information, or call us at 514-398-8500. Kayan Hui U3 Sociology External (co-)coordinator, SACOMSS
Mental illness is no laughing matter Re: “Student Services” | Disorientation Guide | September 1 I have to tell you that I am frankly appalled by your blurb on McGill Mental Health Services in your orientation guide last week. I live with a major mental illness every day. It’s more than doing drugs or staying up all night, and it’s certainly not something the average McGill student will ever have to experience. Your blurb trivialized the experience of all of us living with these serious conditions. We are so often rendered invisible. If a mentally ill first year read that blurb, they might never know that tons of McGill students share their experience. Some of us really are “’round the twist” – even at McGill – and we matter, too. The writer of this letter wishes to remain anonymous.
The Daily wants nothing more than to print your reactions to its content. Send your letters to letters@mcgilldaily.com from your McGill email account. They should be 300 words or less and include your year and program. The Daily does not print letters that are racist, homophobic, or otherwise hateful.
10 Features
Estudiantes conectados en b Katie Marney examines computer literacy and the challenges
“T
he computer is more useful than a library,” said Oscar Galindo, 31, before taking a sip of yerba mate tea. “As I learned, you find everything. There is everything: searching, information for research, music, games, and connections. The computer and Internet provide the possibility for strong and open connections between different countries.” Oscar was hosting us for dinner. We sat in his one-room brick house with a rusty roof over our heads. I could see the cloudy, wintry sky through the small holes pierced in the corrugated steel. A cool, damp coastal breeze swept through the foot-wide gap in the walls. Oscar’s wife Gloria walked through the red plastic door with a large pot of chicken soup, potatoes, and rice that she had been cooking outside over a naked fire to save gas. “My first motivation was to learn to be able to teach my kids,” continued Oscar in Spanish. Before May 2010, Oscar had never used a computer. The first time he did, he attempted to move the pointer by picking the mouse up off the computer desk and moving it in midair. He did not understand what it meant to click on an icon. Now, through his own efforts and classes through Proyecto Conectados, he uses email, writes formal letters, and searches Google on his own. Matt Jeppesen, a 21 yearold from Wisconsin, a 19 year-old Peruvian named Joseph Vargas de la Cruz, and I were in La Libertad, Peru, working on Proyecto Conectados (Project Connected) for a local grassroots NGO, Wasiymi Wasiki.
“I want to specialize and enroll in a technology institute to learn more about computing,” said Oscar. “I want to learn to type formal documents, and [catalogue] my family history.”
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asiymi Wasiki was formed in 2007 by Isaac Pucllas Tello, Jorge Merma, and Matt, and aims to transform children’s lives by engaging with them, their parents, and their communities. Conectados was its first initiative. After raising $16,000 in funding for Conectados, Wasiymi Wasiki installed two computer labs in elementary schools in La Libertad and Villa María del Triunfo. As volunteers, Matt, Joseph, and I ran classes and workshops for the elementary and secondary school students, teachers, and parents. By the end of the project, the kids had mastered basic Word and Powerpoint, and learned about using Google, email and other tools on the Internet. We tracked their progress through weekly projects, reflections, interviews, and drawings. Matt and I combined this work with our own journal entries to create a website profiling the project and showcasing our students’ work. We lived with Peruvian families in La Libertad, which was fitting, given that Wasiymi Wasiki in Quechua means, “My house is your house.” La Libertad is a rural cooperative agrarian community just outside Lima known for its rich farmland and spring-like climate. The weekly average salary there is 125 soles ($45) earned by working on the farms or in the haciendas of Lima’s elite. One hundred
metres down the road, the average price for a hectare of land is $2.5 million. As a result, most migrant families do not have a permanent residence. Living in La Libertad is a temporary solution. Oscar’s own experience demonstrates this reality. After immigrating to the coast, Oscar settled in a house on the school grounds in La Libertad. Once there, he traded his job as a farmer and prominent community organizer to work as a gardener on a lavish threehectare hacienda. Matt and Joseph lived with Oscar for the duration of the project. “It is not easy,” said Oscar. “I can’t offer everything. … I was afraid they wouldn’t like the food, my family, my wife, my house because we are from the ‘country.’” I lived with Marlene and Max, who faced a similar situation as Oscar. When Isaac asked for residents to host the three volunteers, said Marlene, “most in the town replied, ‘Me, with my poverty, I can’t offer her any amenities.’” She and Max had been the only others to volunteer their house. “My house is small, I don’t have a lot space, but that doesn’t matter. The most important thing is that you are here,” she said to me in Spanish. Max works on a construction site, building luxury condominiums that were on pre-sale for $1 million. Marlene cannot work because she has suffered severe migraines ever since she was exposed to toxic fumes while working in a factory in Lima without a facemask. At the time she had to support her newborn daughter Estefany. With only one source of income, Marlene and Max face high doctor’s bills, unsteady paychecks, low savings, and one to two meals a day.
Living in the town allowed us to temporarily share the reality of the people we were teaching and working with. It meant a diet of rice and potatoes, little meat, and few fruits, vegetables, or dairy – the cause of pervasive malnutrition among children in the town. It meant doing laundry by hand and being at the mercy of the cool, damp weather. It meant limited access to health care, with one health clinic nearby and the nearest hospital two hours away in Lima. It meant two light bulbs in an entire house, one outlet, and an ungrounded power supply. It meant no indoor heating or hot water throughout the winter. In fact, it meant no running water and frequent shortages lasting about three days per week. We learned that around 80 per cent of families in La Libertad get their water from a water truck or get access to rationed water through a hose three times a week.
O
ne day in the town dashed any romantic ideas I may have had about the lives of rural Peruvians. The children in La Libertad face a wave of changes as metropolitan Lima expands at a rapid pace – from 0.5 to 9 million people in the last 60 years. “The kids in the town are becoming more urban, the jobs in the town are very rural, but their daily life is urban,” said Isaac Pucllas, president of Wasiymi Wasiki. The majority of this growth has been migrant-driven and has resulted in an urban explosion of pueblos jóvenes, or informal slums, along Lima’s hillsides. Yet Lima’s universities and better-paying jobs appear increasingly more accessible to young peo-
The McGill Daily | Monday, September 13, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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All photos by Katie Marney for The McGill Daily
barrios pobres facing Peru’s rural poor ple in places like La Libertad. For many of them, moving to the city seems like the only option. At our second location, this disparity was already clear. Villa Maria del Triunfo is an urban slum on the periphery of Lima. Rapid migration has pushed its population to over 350,000 with the majority being under 35 years old. This trend leads to problems where the local government cannot provide basic services such as water, sanitation, basic health care and education, or jobs to support the local economy.
I
n our first week as volunteers, we held a meeting with around 35 parents in La Libertad offering free classes. Our first class, however, was only attended by seven people – and therein lies another reality in Lima and in Peru as a whole. Despite the demand for skills and the desire to acquire them for career advancement or to support one’s children, the challenges of daily life in La Libertad present tremendous obstacles. The average worker in Lima works 12 hours a day, six days a week in agriculture, factories, transportation, construction or the informal service sector. “For the adults, [computers] offer a large benefit because it helps us and teaches us a lot, but sometimes our work doesn’t let us take advantage of it,” explained Marlene. “Max comes home tired; I have to cook and take care of Estefany. … There are many other things to do.” Conectados seeks to teach computer skills to parents and kids in the community, but our impact was limited in this respect.
Despite parents’ recognition of the importance of these skills for their children, their daily lives impeded their own learning. Isaac explained that these pressures prompted the NGO to invest in computers over other learning tools. Beyond the obvious economic benefits and opportunities for breaking poverty cycles, the computer as a learning tool requires less direct support by teachers and parents, and offers more possibilities for the student. “Kids find a thousand ways to use a computer,” said Isaac. He added that the objective of the project was getting teachers and parents to participate in the project inside and outside of the classroom.
A
s many were starting from scratch, we chose to focus on basic skills. “We started with, ‘This blue space is the desktop. Move the mouse and push the button on the right to see what happens,’” said Matt. We also wanted to offer an alternative to the traditional rigid classroom environment that pervades the Peruvian state school system. It is a system where the curriculum remains static and urban-focused. The typical classroom experience in Peru is one of dictation, repetition, and copying; critical thinking remains an afterthought. With high demand and little funding, especially in areas like Villa María del Triunfo, the system reverts to this model. The approach we proposed borrowed from our own experience to promote a sense of selfconfidence in our students. We were forced to compromise as well. The resource constraint we faced was clear: three teachers with an average of 26 kids per
class across nine classes and ten computers. Beyond that, 40 per cent of all the students had never used a computer or clicked a mouse. We realized that our initial plan could not work in this context, at least at the start. With few computers and fewer teachers, we encouraged students to work in pairs on their weekly projects. As our classes progressed we saw a change. Marlene told me, “In Peru, the schools are very weak. … Only recently were most secondary students learning to use a computer.” Our students were predominantly in their first years of elementary school. At first, we began with a static teaching method that the kids were comfortable with. It was familiar. Matt had asked them to change the background colour of their Word document to their favorite colour. They all changed the background to the colour in the example. Joseph, a Peruvian from the area who grew up and was educated in this system, explained that the kids were taught that unless they picked the specific teal blue as in the example, they would fail. I ran into this again when I had to explain to the kids countless times during one lesson what it means to have a special talent, other than their best subject in school. As the weeks progressed, we shifted to a looser teaching method and kids were answering questions, changing fonts, colours, and exploring computer menus without the same level of hesitation. And as we engaged them we heard their stories – stories that are often ignored by the system. During one lesson in Villa María del Triunfo, I met a student named Hugo, who
wore tattered clothing and unwashed hair. After a power outage, I helped him rewrite the weekly assignment, a personal profile. His ambition was to be businessman because, he said, he wanted to make something of himself. His one wish was for his parents to come home. His superpower of choice was strength, so he could finish building the roof on his house. Stories like Hugo’s highlight the full scope of the project, beyond increasing computer literacy.
L
iving in the community and teaching the classes were complementary; without one, the other would have suffered. Dinners with Marlene and Oscar taught to us meet the needs of the communities and the importance of flexibility. Those dinner conversations were reflected in our weekly lesson plans. Oscar once explained it: “The volunteers don’t say, ‘You can’t’ but rather, ‘What do you want, what do you want to learn?’ … That’s the most viable way to teach.” Conectados directly introduced 300 people across the two communities to computers and opened up access to hundreds more. The computer labs had an economic impact by lowering the cost of internet access per student from $1.50 per hour to $1.75 per month. Next February on the first day of school at each location, 100 more students will be connected to computers for the first time. Wasiymi Wasiki will install a third computer lab at a more rural Andean school in Pucará this fall, and two other projects are in the development stages. Wasiymi will be looking for volunteers to work on those projects and run activity programs.
Science+Technology
The McGill Daily | Monday, September 13, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Luke Thienhaus | The McGill Daily
Painting, writing, and surviving Why did humans evolve the capacity to make art? Serena Yung
Science+Technology Writer
T
he field of evolutionary psychology is forever aiming to explain how human behaviours relate to survival and reproduction. If a behaviour cannot be explained as an evolutionary advantage, it may be a by-product – a useless side effect left over from evolution: this could be what art is. On a brighter prospect, art could be explained instead by sexual selection. When an individual has a cumbersome trait, one on which it lavishes time and energy – such as the love and creation of paintings, music, and poetry – it shows that
the individual is fit enough to afford such extravagances. This advertises the quality of its genes to attract mates for reproduction. There is, however, a new explanation for art that isn’t reduced to mere mate attraction. Denis Dutton, a philosophy professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, proposes in his book The Art Instinct that art is neither a by-product nor just a fancy tool for courtship. The ability to make art is a feature functionally connected to evolutionary adaptation. Various forms of art are enhancements, extensions, or intensifications of traits that helped our ancestors survive and procreate. In the same way that shivering and sweating are
parts of our body-heat regulation system, romantic feelings extend from and intensify our drive to find the ideal mate. Humour and wit enhance our desire to quicken, sharpen, and enliven our language to fashion more efficient and powerful ways to communicate. Dutton has a particular set of explanations that strikes my fancy for the uses of fiction. Fiction allows us to imagine scenarios that we’ve never experienced before, or never will: this is a low-cost and convenient method to learn and create new strategies for survival. Stories provide templates and concrete cases to give us ideas for coping in ambiguous, complex situations. Fiction also encodes knowledge in
our senses and emotions – a form far more vivid and easy to memorize than raw facts. My favourite explanation is that fiction, especially novels, grants us the power to understand different points of view, and gain insight into different human minds. We can use fiction to develop our interpersonal, social faculties in the struggle to survive and flourish together as an entire species. Thinking about my own enjoyment of literature, I want to add an additional point to Dutton’s: stories can offer us a profound reassurance, a feeling that we are being understood. Reading Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingstone Seagull was one such heartfelt experience: the
poignant ardour of the protagonist to rise above his species, to strive for something more, to elevate his superficial existence, simply stirred within me an unspeakable emotion. In feeling understood, we are more connected with other members of our kind, and we are far happier to bond with them in our common cause to thrive in the world. As a final way to explore why art may have evolved, I suggest we ponder on this thought experiment: what would happen to us if art never existed? What if we never had paintings, music, dancing, or literature? Would we even be the same people we are today, would humans be an alive and thriving species?
SCI+TECH is looking for columnists! submit: • a brief statement of purpose • 2 sample columns (~500 words each) • 1 additional writing sample to scitech@mcgilldaily.com by midnight, Friday September 24th
Science+Technology
The McGill Daily | Monday, September 13, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
McGill math profs weigh in on shelling out for the latest edition of a textbook Alex Bratianu-Badea
Science+Technology Writer
Lecture: “The American Kestrel: to Eat a Mouse or to be One” Tuesday Sept. 14, 7:00-8:30 p.m. Raymond Building, Room R2045 (Macdonald Campus)
Lecture: “Causes and Consequences of microRNA Dysregulation in Cancer” Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily
Fluffier new editions often come bundled with supplementary learning resources, CD-ROMs, online passcodes, and various other bonus materials. The real question is whether students consider these new features a substantial improvement in the learning experience. When books go into later and later editions, the changes can be more subtle. “The fifth and sixth editions [of Stewart’s] are virtually identical. Maybe the sixth has more colourful diagrams,” said A xel Hundemer, also a math professor at McGill. Publishers revise their books every few years in order to maintain their revenue streams. While it is difficult for us to get publishers to curb such practices and rein in persistently higher prices, it is not impossible. All we need to do to ward off these unnecessary newer additions of textbooks
is decrease our demand for them. The mathematics department does nothing to hamper our potential to do so. Drury explains, “I tell the students in class that if they can find any reasonable calculus textbook, it will do because I do not assign problems from the textbook. I tell them this in the first lecture. So that if they don’t want to spend an arm and a leg, which is what it costs to buy a textbook these days, they don’t have to.” While professors often recommend a textbook, and the McGill bookstore stocks the latest edition, there is never a requirement that the students purchase it. Hundemer explains, “Our books are never compulsory. We just tell students ‘Okay, this is the text that we recommend. If you don’t buy it, no one will do anything about it.’ It’s just the student’s responsibility to learn
the material that is equivalent to whatever I assign. That’s all.” Such words are comforting to hear from faculty, but the battle against new editions and mounting prices has yet to be spearheaded, as new math texts are produced and available for sale at the bookstore. Next year Stewart’s Single Variable Calculus is coming out in the seventh edition. This means that if you currently hold the sixth edition, you’ll be able to sell it for half the sticker price tops, as hapless first-years scramble to get the latest version fresh off the press. Seeing as there isn’t much that I can do to patch up the $50 wound if you already own the book, and nothing I can say to subdue exorbitant prices, if you’re going to buy the new version, I apologize for your loss and hope that you can find comfort in the fact that I too still hold the sixth edition.
Cosmic Microwave Background radiation sheds light on big questions Science+Technology Writer
I
n the beginning, God said “Let there be light,” and there was light. This may not mirror the current story that science gives us today, but in both accounts the formation of the “first light” features prominently. What is remarkable about science’s Big Bang version, however, is that this first light still exists and is out there in the universe, now as “Cosmic Microwave Background” (CMB) radiation. We can, with the right equipment, still see it. For the past 15 years, Gary Hinshaw of NASA’s Goddard Flight Centre has been the man in charge of this equipment. As the principal investigator leading the Cosmic Background Explorer and Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite missions, he is often the first person to “re-witness” the earliest visible moments of the universe. When Hinshaw vis-
Everyday from Monday Sept. 13 - Friday Sept. 17, 11:30 a.m. Redpath Auditorium, Redpath Museum Learn about reasearch at McGill, and eat free lunch!
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Fourteen billion years later... Iain Martyn
Soup and Science
Energy Oil Sand and Sustainable Development Lecture
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McGill math professor once announced on the first day of a calculus class, “If you can find a calculus textbook for a quarter at a garage sale, buy it and use it for this course.” The idea behind his advice is that calculus, no matter the age of the textbook, is always the same. The most recent revision to introductory calculus occurred in the early 18th century when Isaac Newton lost the notation battle to Gottfried Leibniz – and that was just notation, not content matter. So, why do publishers produce new editions of textbooks every three or four years? The answer that comes to mind is profits: if publishers don’t keep coming out with newer versions of textbooks, students will turn to used books, which cannibalize profitable new edition sales. While this is true, newer editions aren’t just old versions of the same text printed on shinier paper – are they? To get to the bottom of this matter, I chatted with some math professors here at McGill. The outcome was a sweeping consensus: no need to shell out upwards of $100 for the latest edition. McGill math professor Sam Drury discussed Stewart’s Single Variable Calculus, the textbook used in calculus one and two courses at McGill: “The new books have a lot of additional material, to access some of it you have to go online, but I tend not to go for that.”
SCI-DE BAR
Out with the new
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ited McGill to give a public talk on Friday, September 3, entitled “Observing the Cosmic Microwave Background: A Unique Window on the Early Universe”, it was to no surprise that he was welcomed deferentially by McGill’s community of physicists, many of whom, like other scientists around the world, rely heavily on the data from Hinshaw and his team. Hinshaw started off the talk by explaining how it is possible to still be able to see the “first light” of creation. “Modern cosmology,” he explained, “dates back to Albert Einstein and his 1917 theory of General Relativity.” In 1929, Edwin Hubble observed that the universe is expanding – this is the so-called “red-shift observation.” The universe was once, as Hinshaw explained, an “infinitely massive and infinitely dense singularity.” This is the pretext for the Big Bang, and, because everything originated from one single point, is why one can see this light anywhere in the universe. It is important to realize though that this light was not created con-
jointly with the “bang.” After the universe expanded at a speed far faster than that of light, it slowly cooled into a soup of sub-atomic particles. This trapped all the photons and rendered the universe opaque. Hinshaw explained that it was only after 379,000 years that the universe expanded and cooled enough for the “light to be liberated and clearly propagated across the universe, unimpeded.” Today, roughly 14 or so billion years later, the universe has expanded and cooled to such an extent that this once high-energy burst of light has shifted into the microwave spectrum, thus giving rise to the CMB. So why do physicists get excited about it? There must be more than just a pretty picture out of this, right? Hinshaw admited that if you want practical results from your science – a cure for this or a solution for that – the CMB may be disappointing. It is instead just the best tool we have for pursuing answers to not-so-small questions:
where everything in the universe come from? How did the moment of creation happen? The same way that ripples in a pond provide information of the rock that caused the disturbance, CMB preserves information about the structure of the early universe. Through careful analysis it can tell us, for example, the proportions of dark matter and anti-matter in the universe, the geometry of the universe (disappointingly a boring flat space, by the way) and a whole host of other important quantities that theorists use to test their ideas. Hinshaw has stepped down now as chief purveyor of the CMB, but there are many new experiments beginning operation that plan to further refine the picture he and his team obtained over 15 years. There are still many competing hypothesis about events immediately after the moment of creation, and CMB will be needed to illuminate new physics for decades to come.
Wednesday Sept. 15th, 3:00 p.m. Room 521, McIntyre Medical Science Building
Lecture: “If the Shoe Fits: Early Steps in Vocabulary Acquisition” Wednesday Sept. 15, 3:00 p.m. Leacock, Room 232
Lecture: Chemical Interactions between the Mantle and the Core Friday, Sept. 17, 2:00 p.m. FDA, Room 232
Special Live Concert with Virtual Acoustics Friday, Sept. 17, 7:00 p.m. Music Multimedia Room, Strathcona Music Building
Documentary Film: An Ecology of Hope Sunday Sept. 19, 3:00 p.m. Room 200, Redpath Museum Suggested donation $2, but you get a muffin.
Lecture: “The Question of Immune Boosters” Thursday Sept. 23, 6:30 p.m. McIntyre Medical Science Building
Documentary Film: Lords of the Nature: Life in the Land of Great Predators Sunday Sept. 26 3:00 p.m. Room 200, Redpath Museum Suggested donation $2, but there are free muffins.
Lecture: “Gene Regulatory Network Underlying Neural Crest Formation Monday Sept. 27 4:00 p.m. Jeanne Timmins Amphitheatre, Montreal Neurological Institute
Seminar Series: “Corticocentric Myopia: Social Darwinism and Victorian Bias in Modern Neurosciences” Tuesday Sept. 28 4:00 p.m. De Grandpré Communications Cetre, Montreal Neurological Institute
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Sports
The McGill Daily | Monday, September 13, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Trick play Leaked documents reveal fraud in Major League Baseball Nader Fotouhi Sports Writer
M
ontreal has known it all too well – a cash-strapped Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise forced to relocate due to poor revenues, poor results, and poor ownership. In 2002, former Montreal Expos (and current Florida Marlins) owner Jeffrey Loria sold the franchise to MLB after his demands for public funds to build a new stadium weren’t met – demands that were made even as Montreal had yet to complete payments for the Olympic Stadium, a debt finally settled in 2006. After selling the Expos to MLB, he proceeded to buy the Marlins while securing a zero-interest loan from MLB for the $38.5-million difference between the Expos’ sale price and the Marlins’ price tag. If this doesn’t sound right, it shouldn’t. According to Yahoo! Sports writer Jeff Passan, Loria’s net worth as an art dealer is in the hundreds of millions. Loria is hardly someone who should be reliant on public funding for his baseball franchises. Yet according to MLB financial documents recently obtained by deadspin.com, he is fresh off of misleading the local government to secure public funds, thus extorting the taxpayers of Miami-Dade County for a sum that will total $2.4 billion by 2049. Loria and other owners have experienced huge returns from public funding in the form of new stadiums either built or proposed. Additionally, they have used creative accounting and falsified earnings reports to receive a larger cut of revenue-sharing from MLB. Arguably the most progressive program initiated in commissioner Bud Selig’s tenure, revenue-sharing allows teams without the fan base of the Red Sox or the Cubs to field a competitive lineup – the posterchild of the program being the 2008 American League Champion, the Tampa Bay Rays. Like anything, however, revenue-sharing is not without its flaws. The current system dictates that each team pay 31 per cent of their local revenues into a fund, which is then split evenly among the 30 teams in the league. Additional measures include giving a substantial amount of national broadcast revenues to small-market teams. On paper, the goal is accomplished – for instance, the New York Yankees paid out $76 million in revenuesharing in 2005, with small market teams each pulling in at least $30 million. The failure comes from the propensity of most near-billionaire
owners to pocket the vast majority of league welfare instead of investing in their on-field product. Compounding this grievous misuse of charity are the pleas of poverty from owners, citing an incapacity to foot a majority share of the price tag for new state-of-theart ballparks. This places the financial burden of these new stadiums on multiple generations of taxpayers. For instance, the Expos – now called the Nationals – have relocated to Washington, D.C.; one city deemed fit by both lawmakers and baseball officials to support such an undertaking. The problem, however, is that Washington is a city with a relatively tiny tax base that is now forced to foot the bill for a $611million stadium. When one considers that the Nationals are lucky to reach half-capacity when Stephen Strasburg isn’t pitching, it becomes clear that there are better uses for tax dollars as scarce as these. While it is understandable for MLB and its small-market owners to seek new stadiums on the cheap, it is wholly inexcusable to deceive local governments in the interest of public funding to accomplish that goal. Why should the cost of such an excessive luxury rest with taxpayers simply to bolster the profits of an entertainment industry? Certainly there are ways for a multi-billion dollar corporation to finance new stadiums that don’t include cheating schools, police departments, and hospitals out of funding that is urgently needed. As deplorable as MLB and its owners’ business practices have been, they have been enabled by their local governments. In his article on Yahoo! Sports, Passan puts the situation into perspective, noting that “come 2012, [the Marlins will] be free to reap their revenuesharing, Central Fund, and ballpark profits while [Miami-Dade] county prays enough tourism-tax dollars pour in to help pay off the loans” – an almost impossible order for a county dependent on state funding in one of seven states to not impose income tax. Almost as startling as the extent to which MLB has gone to secure public funds is the lack of outcry by the media over a situation that should transcend ongoing pennant races. While some of MLB’s print and broadcast media are owned by the league or the teams themselves, there has been an uncomfortable silence overall regarding the consequences of these transgressions. The status quo is unacceptable, yet it seems that nobody is holding MLB’s feet to the fire to alter
Erinn Acland for The McGill Daily
MLB owners produced falsified earnings reports and extorted taxpayers for public funds. their practices. Considering the league’s lucrative broadcasting deal with ESPN, the story is unlikely to resurface on SportsCenter any time soon. Since it’s becoming increasingly clear that politicians at the state and county levels are simply not equipped to handle taxpayer money when a new baseball stadium is at stake, measures need to be taken to prevent future deceptions like these. These changes could include
a percentage limit of government funds used to build stadiums, an outright ban on the use of government funds for stadiums, a stadium fund financed with revenue-sharing dollars for small-market owners, or a combination of these. The league has suffered a black eye in light of the leaked documents, but their practices are unlikely to change. While it is the responsibility of representative government to allocate taxpayer funds
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judiciously, the exploitation of tax bases to aid a corporation like MLB in selling their product is arguably the ugliest untold story in sports. Accountability for their fraudulent behaviour isn’t being demanded by MLB’s media coverage as a whole. Will fans and local governments take a stand against the League for wringing every penny possible from their coffers, or will the national pastime continue its pillaging of the people who support it?
Culture
The McGill Daily | Monday, September 13, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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CULTURE ESSAY
The little black book How Moleskine cashes in on the cultural capital of history
Aquil Virani | The McGill Daily
Sarah Mortimer
The McGill Daily
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ver the years, Moleskine notebooks have gained an almost religious consumer following. On Moleskine’s website, thousands of devoted fans send in pictures of their artworks and write in comments offering their praise for the product. Illinois-based photographer Armand Franco represents a more extreme brand of fanaticism. In 2009, he started a fan blog for Moleskines, where he explains: “Not all notebooks are created equal. … Moleskine is not my obsession; it’s an attitude.” At McGill, a similar kind of dedication can be found among staff and students. In the Faculty of Architecture, at least five professors require that their students use Moleskine sketchbooks, while come September the majority of McGill students who buy their writing supplies at Papeterie Nota Bene (3416 Parc) choose Moleskine’s daily planner. Given the notebooks’ visual simplicity and exorbitant price, this type of devotion among students and creative types (often among the most financially hardup members of society) is surprising. No-name hardcover notebooks, perfectly suitable for the average scribbler, are available at any drug store for well under ten dollars. Retailing at as much as $23 for the regular large hardcover, Moleskine notebooks are
overpriced and lack the tinsel and flare that typically adorn generic products sold at non-generic prices. The notebook’s smooth black cover and wrap around elastic speak to a very simple function: helping you store personal information, ideas, and sketches in an easy and portable fashion. Why, then, all the brouhaha? Originally nameless, Moleskinestyle notebooks were invented over a century ago by small French bookbinders who supplied the notebooks to various station-
inside every notebook, the company states that its product is the “heir and successor” to the notebook that once belonged to such renowned creative figures as Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, and Ernest Hemingway. This statement – which makes the implicit claim that if you scribble in a Moleskine notebook, you’ll become a part of this creative legacy – is the main thrust of Moleskine’s extremely successful campaign. A passage about Hemingway’s use of the Moleskine featured on
“They market it that way. Spend twenty bucks and you’re like Hemingway” Jacob Siefring McGill Alumnus ary shops in Paris. One supplier’s version in particular became the favourite notebook of English travel writer, Bruce Chatwin, who gave the generic product its legendary name in 1986. By the mid1980s Chatwin’s small manufacturer had gone out of business, but the brand was appropriated by a publisher in Milan in 1997. Now known as Moleskine SRL, the company markets its notebook to consumers by obsessively boasting its connection to an impressive literary and artistic history. On the small pamphlet tucked away
the company’s website illustrates this point vividly. By recounting Hemingway’s reflections in A Moveable Feast on writing in his notebook at a Parisian café, Moleskine lays an explicit claim to Hemingway’s creative talent. In addition to referring to Hemingway’s comment that he “belong[ed] to pencil and notebook” elsewhere on the website, Moleskine emphasizes that Hemingway was hard at work on his most famous novel, The Sun Also Rises, at the same time he wrote A Moveable Feast in Paris. Using these details, Moleskine
mounts the far-stretching claim that the notebook itself played an active role in making The Sun Also Rises a great piece of literature. This notion, it later claims, should be “unsurprising” to “those that have come to know and love Moleskine.” At McGill, those students who have come to know and love Moleskine, self-consciously admit to being influenced by the spellbinding effects of its absurd marketing claims. After intelligently explaining the way Moleskine manipulates the aspirations of its users by advertising its connections to great artists and writers of the past, former McGill grad student, Jacob Siefring, sheepishly admitted that at the time he bought his Moleskine address book, he was endeared by the product’s romantic mythology: “I immediately read that history and was taken in with it. … They market it that way. Spend 20 bucks and you’re like Hemingway.” Anne Haldane, a U3 science student, also acknowledged the sway of Moleskine’s historical argument: “I got my Moleskine planner because it’s a really specific format…[But] typically I wouldn’t spend 20 bucks on a notebook. … I think Moleskine is definitely for a certain subculture.” Marketing itself as a product for ambitious students and members of the creative classes, Moleskine’s empire is built on the willing gullibility of its consumers. In 2009, Forbes writer Helen Coster reported that Moleskine was recession-proof. In her article,
Coster writes that Moleskine – which Marco Beghin, president of Moleskine America, describes as “strongly profitable” – increased its global sales by 14 per cent in 2008, to reach a total of $210 million. “There’s no price for unlocking creativity,” Behin explained to Coster in the article, “we always positioned the product as a book you write in yourself.” But describing Moleskine as “a book that you write in yourself” hardly explains the fanatical appeal of the notebooks to young creative types. “Brands are these interesting and fascinating high-minded people that you want to assign to who you are,” Lee Chow, the man behind Apple Computer’s marketing campaign in Doug Pray’s award-winning documentary on advertising, Art & Copy (2009). Using Chow’s logic, college students can choose Moleskines as a way to assign Hemingway and Picasso’s successes to themselves – and hence, perhaps as a way to block out the terrifying possibility that they may not achieve the goals they set out for themselves at age 20. At its most basic psychology, then, choosing Moleskines over generic brands can be considered another way of telling ourselves that it’s all going to work out okay. And given the choice between envisioning myself as Picasso or an uncertain and under-accomplished 22-year-old, I’d definitely choose Picasso.
Culture
The McGill Daily | Monday, September 13, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
CULTURE BRIEFS Put on your multi-disciplinary shoes
In a city like ours, where the language barrier is a constant presence, it is refreshing to see a festival that can be said to be truly Montreal’s. Dance, by its nature, transcends language, and this is more significant today than ever before with the plethora of languages entering our daily lives. The festival in question is the yearly Quartiers Danses, a showcase of contemporary dance artists from around the world. The multidisciplinary festival, which runs from September 10 to 26, boasts 30 performances, six film screenings, and two art exhibitions. What makes this event unique is its mantra; according to the event website, the festival exists to “democratize and decentralize dance by taking it out of the downtown cultural institutions.” For this reason, many of the performances will be held outdoors and in public spaces, and all of them will be spread evenly throughout nine districts of the city. Many of the performances seek to investigate the more unspoken aspects of our day-to-day lives. On September 24, for example, a dance troupe led by Geneviève Bolla will be performing Others, an exploration of how people see themselves and their partners in relationships. Other events to look out
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for include Jane Mappin’s world-premiere multimedia performance “The Point at Which Movement Begins” at the Maison de la culture Maisonneuve, “New Creation” by Taafé Fanga at Place Pasteur in the Latin Quarter, and “Madness Tango” at the Maison de la culture Côte-des-Neiges – a crowd favourite from last year’s festival. Your best bet for finding more information on this and other events is the festival’s website quartiersdanse.com, which has an easy-touse calendar complete with brief summaries and maps to all of the performances, film screenings, and outdoor sites. —Tim Beeler
Saying 1,000 words Wartime photography reached its apex in Vietnam. Photojournalism helped the world realize the extent of the conflict, and drove the reaction against it. One photograph among all the others still stands out – the absorbing image of a girl running, naked and arms splayed, from a napalm bomb. This photograph, taken by Huyng Cong Nick Ut, remains to this day one of the most influential moments in photojournalism. Subjects of famous photographs are often left behind by history. The photographer takes the Pulitzer, while the subject remains unknown until coming out to the media decades later. Such is the case with National Geographic’s “Afghan Girl,” the nurse being kissed in Times
Courtesy of Campus for Christ McGill
A detail of the photo that turned Kim Phuc into the face of the wartime civilian experience Square, and the woman who became the face of the Great Depression. But Kim Phuc didn’t fall into the background – after being used by the Vietnamese government as a “national symbol of war” in propaganda films and interviews, she was granted asylum by Canada when she and her husband walked off a plane at a stop-over in Newfoundland. She was invited to the 1996 Veterans Day ceremonies in Washington, D.C., which led her to start the Kim Phuc Foundation to support children disabled by war, and to provide funding for similar organizations.
Now based in Toronto, part of her mission involves giving talks across the country, many of them at Campus for Christ events. This evening, McGill’s chapter will be hosting her. Andrew Williamson, a continuing education student and member of Campus for Christ, said “[Kim] is coming to talk about how her faith helped her to forgive. She ended up meeting…the man who bombed her village, and because of her faith she managed to forgive him.” There are many ways of dealing with war, and faith is one of these. Kim’s viewpoint is explicitly
Christian, and the talk will focus on her faith, but as a representative of the civilian perspective on war, she has garnered international and secular acclaim. Kim’s image came to define two decades of conflict in Vietnam, and her account of her experiences and the faith they engendered will not fall short of riveting. —Naomi Endicott Kim Phuc will speak tonight at 7 p.m. in Leacock 132. Price is $5 at the door, and refreshments will be served.
2010 mellon lectures Thursday 16 September at 6 pm
Robert Burley Senior Mellon Fellow Photographer, School of Image Arts, Ryerson University
The Architecture of Photography in an Age of Obsolescence in English
1920, rue Baile, Montréal
Canadian Centre for Architecture
Info: 514 939 7001 ext. 1408 www.cca.qc.ca/mellonlectures Paul Desmarais Theatre. Admission is free but seating is limited.
The CCA gratefully acknowledges the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Compendium!
The McGill Daily | Monday, September 13, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
Lies, half-truths, and comiXxX
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Mallory Bey for The McGill Daily
You can find more of Mal’s work at malbouge.blogspot.com.
Dan Hawkins for The McGill Daily
You can find more of Dan’s work at yourcorpuschristi.blogspot.com.
SHIT I FOUND
Above: from theguardian.co.uk. Right: from nytimes.com.
Pogo New for The McGill Daily
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1. Vocalized 5. Ado 10. Allergic reaction 14. Length x width 15. Impressive display 16. Actor’s part in a play 17. Occurring at the right time of year 19. Regrets 20. Head topper 21. Salk’s conquest 22. Feudal peasants 23. Teen’s preference 24. Moderately warm 26. Weaker 30. A surgeon, perhaps 34. Desolate 35. Backstabber 37. Turned into 38. Alpha’s opposite 40. Nourished 42. Trig functions 43. Juries 45. 40 winks 47. Borscht ingredient 48. Growled (at) 50. Issuers of invoices 52. Fellow students
54. Popular neckline 55. Piano key material 58. Kitchen apparel 60. “Help!” 63. 31-Across’ attire 64. Comfortable pullover 66. Appearance 67. Brief and to the point 68. In addition 69. Arrogant one 70. Equipped 71. Farm equipment
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1. Miss America accessory 2. Bodily chemical 3. “Cool!” 4. Neon, e.g. 5. German port city 6. Face-to-face exam 7. A planet’s path 8. Circles of light 9. Affirmative vote 10. Can’t be any simpler 11. ___ de force 12. Musical sign 13. Austrian-American Nobel physicist 18. Milky gem
22. Locations 23. Thing left behind at a crime scene, maybe 25. Stop on a frosh crawl 26. Summer shoe, with flip27. Resident of an ancient empire 28. “Gladiator” setting 29. British military branch 31. Hindu queen 32. Arab leader 33. Takes a break 36. Big ___ Conference 39. Back street 41. Apply gently 44. “Comprende?” 46. Turned 49. Bureau component 51. Contact, e.g. 53. ___ whale 55. Doctrines 56. Conceited 57. Cookie sandwich 59. Level, in London 60. Pie perch 61. About 62. Put in the attic 64. Metro stop, abbr. 65. Accident
The McGill Daily | Monday, September 13, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
volume 100 number 3
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dps board of directors
Emilio Comay del Junco, Humera Jabir, Whitney Mallett, Sana Saeed, Mai Anh Tran-Ho, Will Vanderbilt, Aaron Vansintjan, Sami Yasin (chair@dailyproductions.org)
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EDITORIAL
HMB’s university is not student-friendly In her letter introducing McGill’s budget for the fiscal year 2010-2011, principal Heather Munroe-Blum sets out her goals for the University’s spending. Topping the list – before research, before McGill’s reputation, and before student welfare – is slashing the University’s deficit. There’s nothing wrong about moving toward eliminating debt, but this reduction should not come at the expense of student life on campus. Other goals – protection of jobs, attracting substantial new investments, and increasing tuition and enrollment – are also emphasized, while statements about “boosting the quality” of McGill’s services to students are not backed up by any specific initiatives. Quebec’s recent budget report announced the unfreezing of tuition in 2012. The fact that Munroe-Blum describes the impending fee hikes as “optimistic” is indicative of the administration’s lack of concern for student welfare. She’s stated that she wants to bring McGill’s fees in line with those of other provinces – meaning a nearly 100 per cent increase for inprovince students in 2012. The base tuition for in-province students at the moment is $2,068 – the Canadian average is approximately $5,500. The administration argues that increased undergraduate enrollment will improve student life. But getting students into university is a far cry from giving them a good education and promoting their welfare. More likely, students will be faced with larger classes, more competition, and higher student-teacher ratios. Standards for keeping entrance scholarships are unrealistically high, and the requirements for achieving work-study positions exclude many students who need them. The administration posits that increasing tuition and financial aid will maintain accessibility and quality for all students. They insist that they will direct 30 per cent of net new tuition revenues toward financial aid. This works out to roughly $2.9 million, or 1.5 per cent of total tuition revenue, which comprises 27 per cent of McGill’s operating fund. However, only 25 per cent of financial aid from the operating fund is going to undergraduates. It seems doubtful that the planned tuition increases will affect student services, given the way the University’s finances are structured: the overwhelming majority of student services funding comes from students’ ancillary fees, not from tuition. Recent moves by the administration have demonstrated their lack of concern for students and have served only to monopolize student space and alienate the student body – like the unilateral ban of bikes on campus or the closure of the Architecture Café with no consultation, for example. Additionally, aiming to increase enrollment is irresponsible when faculties are already facing staffing problems and high student-teacher ratios. The burden of extra students will likely fall on TAs, who are already familiar with struggles against excess work and low pay. Even though Munroe-Blum calls for tuition hikes on “undergrads, not on grads,” and much additional funding will go to graduate research, grad students shouldn’t be without worries. The administration boasts about the amount of money it receives from the private sector. But this money’s not going where it’s needed, but instead to specific profit-making areas. Munroe-Blum’s plan for McGill’s future – which includes prioritization of that corporate-funded research, particularly in the Faculties of Medicine and Law, and a reduced numbers of TAships – would mean that resources available to grads in areas such as TA training and research opportunities may actually become much more limited. As representatives of every undergraduate student at McGill, and as students themselves, it is the SSMU executives’ responsibility to come out against the tuition hikes as soon – and as forcefully – as possible. But the student body also needs to take action: it is the prerogative of every individual to write letters, hold protests, and pass motions through the General Assembly (GA) and SSMU Council in order to make themselves heard. • For more info on GAs: ssmu.mcgill.ca/about/general-assemblies • For more info on SSMU Council, email Council’s speakers, Raymond Xing & Cathal Rooney-Cespedes, at speaker@ssmu.mcgill.ca • To write SSMU executives: • Zach Newburgh ( pres@ssmu.mcgill.ca) • Joshua Abaki (ua@ssmu.mcgill.ca) • Tom Fabian (internal@ssmu.mcgill.ca) • Myriam Zaidi (external@ssmu.mcgill.ca) • Anushay Khan (cs@ssmu.mcgill.ca) • Nick Drew ( fops@ssmu.mcgill.ca)
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