The Concordian - January 30th, 2018

Concordia University’s weekly, independent student newspaper

theconcordian.com

VOLUME 35, ISSUE 17 | TUESDAY, JANUARY 30, 2018

 /theconcordian  @theconcordian

theconcordian

theconcordian

Aiming for a world title

How a third-year Stinger is continuing her journey at Concordia Sports p. 15

feature

news

TRAC opposes Bill 62 outright p. 4

Piecing together fragments of history — A part-time faculty profile

life

About more than just gaming p. 8

arts

Cinema success at just 19 p. 11

opinions

music

The revival of Japandroids

p. 13

p. 16

The meme culture Tide-al wave p. 19

news

NEWS EDITORS /// news@theconcordian.com CANDICE PYE & ETIENNE LAJOIE ( @candicepye @renegadereports)

STUDENT UNION

CSU housing co-operative may fail

Council also announces delays for new website and long-awaited daycare centre by about $200,000, which could jeopardize the entire project.

“Initially, when we made the proposal for a permit from the city, they said that if we didn’t have a facade of brick, that would be okay,” Riaz said. “Now that we’re in the final stages to approve the permit, they’re saying that it’s not okay.”

“Right now, we don’t The construction of the Concordia Student Union’s cooperative housing on Papineau have room for the Avenue may fail due to unforeseen costs. Photo by Alex Hutchins. $200,000,” he added.

According to Michel MATTHEW LAPIERRE HOUSING CO-OP Tanguay, the communications director ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR PERMIT WOES for the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough, Construction of the student the borough is asking the CSU to The construction of a student housing building on Papineau Avenue, simplify their building concept. housing cooperative may fail due across the street from Lafontaine “The borough approved the project to unforeseen costs, announced Park, was supposed to begin this in 2017. But the architecture has to the Concordia Student Union year. However, the Plateau-Mont- be revised before the permit is (CSU) in its annual mid-mandate Royal borough has not approved the delivered,” he told The Concordian. report presented at a regular project because it wants the co-opIn an April 2015 CSU referendum, council meeting on Jan. 24. The erative to have a brick facade, said students voted in favour of allocating CSU also reported that its long- CSU general coordinator Omar Riaz $1.85 million from the Student Space awaited daycare centre and website at the meeting. Adding the facade Accessible Education Legal Contingency are behind schedule. would increase the cost of the building Fund to finance the creation of the

housing project. That money finances approximately 13 per cent of the total cost of the $14-million initiative.

Funding for the co-operative also comes from government bodies, like the city of Montreal and the Chantier de l’économie sociale.

DAYCARE CENTRE AND WEBSITE DELAYS The CSU’s daycare project, which was set to open its doors on Concordia’s downtown campus in March, has been delayed because of new legislation issued by the Quebec government that requires all daycare projects approved after June 2017 to be re-submitted for approval.

“The good news in all of this is that the construction [of the daycare] is still on time,” Riaz told The Concordian. “All we’re waiting for is the permit.”

The student union has not set a new date for when the daycare will open.

Riaz was also questioned by council members about the launch of the CSU’s new website, which was initially supposed to launch in August 2017. In its mid-mandate report, the

CSU announced the website would likely launch by mid-February.

Councillors questioned Riaz and asked him to present a full report on the project, including costs and the reasons for the lengthy delay.

“The website is not a small project,” Riaz told The Concordian. “We’re trying to get something that’s functional and has information from all parts of the CSU.” TAX CLINIC FUNDING The CSU voted in favour of funding the John Molson Accounting Society’s (JMAS) annual tax clinic. The clinic, which offers free tax preparation services to Concordia students and eligible Montrealers (people who make $25,000 or less annually), is in its third year. According to the clinic’s organizers, it costs between $30 and $50 to file taxes with a professional firm, so they hope more Concordia students take advantage of the free service.

Last year, the clinic was offered the weekend of March 25, just over a month before tax returns were due.

JMAS has yet to announce a date for the 2018 clinic.

POLICY

President addresses sexual misconduct investigation

Alan Shepard denies reading 2015 letter detailing allegations, discusses new policy and guidelines MEGAN HUNT ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR Concordia president Alan Shepard shed light on the current investigation into the highly publicized allegations of sexual misconduct against multiple instructors in the creative writing program and reflected on what steps the university will take to address the issue of sexual violence on campus, in an interview with The Concordian on Jan. 25.

Shepard confirmed that a number of former students submitted a letter to the chair of the English department in 2015 detailing the allegations made

by Emma Healey in her essay “Stories Like Passwords,” which was published on the website The Hairpin. The letter also described what the signatories felt was a hostile environment. However, Shepard insisted he didn’t read the letter in 2015 because the dean did not disclose its contents to the president’s office after the signatories requested confidentiality.

“As I understand it, [the English department] immediately referred it to the dean in the Faculty of Arts and Science, and there were meetings

and discussions about their experiences,” Shepard said. “We take confidentiality super seriously, so the letter was not transmitted up the line to the provost or to my office.”

Shepard also discussed the university’s conflict of interest policy, and whether the policy will be amended to p ro h i b i t f a c u l t y - s t u d e n t relationships.

Currently, Concordia’s conflict of interest policy guidelines cover a range of circumstances, such as working alongside immediate relatives and situations that may lead to “real or perceived” preferential treatment, but does not explicitly mention romantic relationships. Shepard said that, while American universities are able to ban faculty-student relationships under a federal law called Title IX, the laws in Canada are different.

In Quebec, a piece of legislation called Bill 151 does require certain steps be taken to address sexual violence on campus, including requiring schools to “include a code of conduct specifying guidelines for […] sexual relationships […] between students and persons having an influence over their academic progress.” However, Concordia’s legal team concluded

that “an outright ban would be unlikely to withstand legal challenge,” according to Shepard.

Shepard also claimed the university had been working on a new set of conflict of interest guidelines before the allegations gained national attention in early January. The university’s new guidelines will require employees, but not students, to report any faculty-student relationships to their supervisors, and the couples would be unable to simultaneously engage in a romantic and professional relationship.

Despite the fact that the university will not be prohibiting romantic relationships between faculty and students, Shepard said he personally does not believe such relationships are appropriate.

“In my view, such relationships really can’t be equal relationships because you have a power differential,” he said. “So we’re strongly discouraging it, but we think that is as far as the law will allow us to go.”

As for progress on the investigation, Shepard said it is still in its early stages, and a number of students, graduates and staff members are being interviewed.

He added that, for legal reasons, the university would be unable to publicize the conclusions of the investigation or any potential disciplinary action taken against employees.

“As much as we might want to, we can’t,” Shepard said.

The university has also announced plans to create a task force on sexual misconduct In an interview with The Concordian, Concordia president Alan Shepard denied reading a 2015 letter signed by students and sexual violence to detailing allegations of sexual misconduct review current policies Photo by Étienne Lajoie. and address the Shepard added that one of the requirements of Bill 151. The university is currently looking for a mix of under- university's priorities is developing graduate and graduate students, as strategies, including better training well as staff and external members and stricter conditions of employto join the task force. This task force ment, to prevent future cases of will be in addition to the deputy pro- harassment and misconduct.

“It’s one thing to punish vost’s investigation into the university’s people after it’s happened,” he environment.

“It’s not like on courtroom TV where said. “It’s way better to minimize everything is wrapped up in 49 minutes the opportunities for this kind plus commercials,” Shepard said. “It’s of conduct. A fair bit of this actually a serious process, so it’s not can be stopped before it gets started.” super slow, but it’s not super fast.”

JANUARY 30, 2018

theconcordian

3

JOURNALISM

Applications open for Ryerson startup program

Facebook-funded project open to anyone with an idea to “disrupt” the news industry

Panelists explain the details of the challenge and answer questions at Ryerson University on Jan. 25. From left, Abdullah Snobar, the DMZ’s executive director; Janice Neil, the chair of the Ryerson School of Journalism; Kevin Chan, the head of public policy in Canada for Facebook; Charles Falzon, the dean of Ryerson FCAD; Richard Lachman, the director of Zone Learning at Ryerson; and April Lindgren, an associate professor at the Ryerson School of Journalism. Photo by Katya Teague.

KATYA TEAGUE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Five Canadian startups will each be given five months and $100,000 to develop a solution to a problem plaguing the news industry as part of the Digital News Innovation Challenge. The incubation program is a collaboration between the Ryerson School of Journalism, the Digital Media Zone (DMZ) at Ryerson— an organization that mentors and supports tech startups—and the Facebook Journalism Project.

“It’s open to everyone,” said Richard Lachman, the director of Zone Learning at Ryerson, a network of 10 incubators where startups can get technical and financial support. “You can be a student, you can be an independent, you can be an early-stage startup, you can be a collective.”

With the application cut-off set at $100,000 in revenue, the program targets small-scale teams. Applicants from across Canada can be eligible with little more than an idea, so long as it seeks to address a “scalable, viable, real-world problem” in the news

industry, according to Lachman.

In addition to the funding provided

by Facebook, the five selected teams—to be announced on March 29—will have access to coaching from entrepreneurs and journalists, workshops and networking opportunities, a workspace at Ryerson, as well as $50,000 in Facebook advertising space.

The seed capital and advertising space will be given to the teams incrementally over five months, as they achieve goals they set for themselves.

Acceptance into the program comes with an initial $20,000, and progress over the course of the five months will unlock two other “gates,” each worth $20,000, Lachman explained. At the end of the incubation period—lasting from April 23 to Sept. 28, 2018—teams will showcase their testable prototypes and receive the final $40,000 to continue developing.

“We’re very open-minded about what could emerge,” said Kevin Chan, the head of Canadian public policy for Facebook. He described the program as a first of its kind for Facebook, and admitted the anticipated result from this investment is “a bit of a mystery.”

The potential goals, however, are much less ambiguous. A half-day conference hosted at Ryerson on Jan. 25 in conjunction with the opening of the program’s application process highlighted the news industry’s numerous shortcomings and struggles.

“We need [journalists] to do a better job at telling us not just the stories we want to hear, not just the ones we need to hear, but the ones that maybe we didn’t even know existed,” said Jesse Wente, an Ojibwe broadcaster, producer and public speaker. His keynote speech focused on the gaps in mainstream media coverage created by a lack of diversity in newsrooms and the failure of many outlets to adapt to diversifying communities.

“When large institutions fail to be inclusive and, at the same time, their audience is rapidly becoming more diverse, you have a recipe for irrelevance,” he told the attendees. “The populous has shifted in ways that [news media] have not then reflected in their staff and in the stories they are reporting and the point of views they are reporting.

So then you’ve got this sudden

disconnect.”

Panels throughout the afternoon featured speakers from various journalism outlets, ranging from the BBC to Discourse Media, as well as representatives from Facebook, Ryerson and Journalists for Human Rights.

Several panelists identified a lack of trust, funding and inclusivity in the news industry as prominent issues in journalism today.

Despite the incubation program’s prominent digital component, many speakers emphasized the need for journalism to shift its focus back to creating high-quality content and reporting for the public good.

As Indian and Cowboy Media CEO Ryan McMahon put it, a media outlet can scramble to have a presence on every social media platform available, but “it’s all bullshit if you don’t have a community behind your work,” he said emphatically. “Twitter doesn’t give a shit about you. Your community does.

And if you deliver high-value stories, they will continue to give a shit about you.”

FACEBOOK’S INTENTIONS QUESTIONED During the opening panel’s question period, a Ryerson student asked Chan whether Facebook’s financial contribution to the Digital News Innovation Challenge was the platform’s way of “acknowledging that it is part of the problem that journalism is facing today,” making reference to Facebook having “basically stripped funding from many C a n a d i a n p r i v a te j o u r n a l i s m organizations.”

Chan responded by saying the investment is “an attempt to help the broader ecosystem” of the news industry of which Facebook is a part of. He

argued, however, that issues with the advertising-based business model in the news industry were being discussed in publications such as The Economist years before Facebook’s inception.

The Ryerson student’s question echoed concerns recently raised by media critic Jesse Brown. In the Jan. 8 edition of his podcast, CANADALAND, Brown discussed Facebook’s partnerships with the Canadian federal government, Ryerson and the Canadian Journalism Foundation, among others.

“The news industry has a responsibility to scrutinize Facebook,” he said. “All of these partnerships can get in the way of checks and balances.”

Although the Digital News Innovation Challenge’s selection committee has not been finalized, Facebook will not be involved in the final selection process of the five teams, according to Chan. “We have no interest in what emerges other than, hopefully, great ideas,” he said.

Fenwick McKelvey, Brown’s guest on the Jan. 8 podcast and an assistant professor of communication studies at Concordia, suggested that Facebook’s programs and investments in the news industry are a way for the platform to “get ahead of regulation.”

McKelvey also voiced concern about the effectiveness of the Digital News Innovation Challenge. “I think we’re putting all of our eggs into one basket with the $500,000 program,” he said. “It’s really ambitious and puts a lot of pressure on this one program to be successful.”

For more information about the Digital News Innovation Challenge and how to apply, visit https:// dmz.ryerson.ca/digital-news-innovation-challenge/. The deadline to apply is March 9, 2018.

4

theconcordian

JANUARY 30, 2018

UNION

TRAC votes to oppose Bill 62 outright

Contract negotiations for teaching and research assistants union to resume in February KENNETH GIBSON VIDEO EDITOR About 60 members of Teaching and Research Assistants at Concordia (TRAC) gathered to discuss the union’s priorities for the winter 2018 semester at a special general assembly held on Jan. 24.

The union is in the midst of negotiating a new collective agreement with Concordia and has been working under an expired agreement since April 2016. Bi-weekly meetings between Concordia University and TRAC’s bargaining team started at the end of October and will resume for the winter semester in February. TRAC is enter ing potent ially t he most contentious part of their negotiations , dealing with issues directly related to how much teaching and research assistants will be paid.

Prior to the general assembly, TRAC’s executive committee, led by president Alexandre St-Onge-Perron, distributed a letter to members updating them on the status of negotiations and the union’s mobilization plans for the semester.

Although the topics of bargaining and mobilization were

TRAC president Alexandre St-Onge-Perron speaks at the union’s winter 2018 general assembly on Jan. 24. Photo courtesy of Natalie Greenberg.

expected to take up most of the discussion time, it was the last item on the assembly agenda that garnered the most feedback and debate amongst those gathered—Bill 62.

As The Concordian previously reported, TRAC’s executive team decided to ask their members if they want the union to take an official position on Bill 62, the province’s religious neutrality law, which has been widely derided as openly Islamophobic.

Jonathan Vallée-Payette, the chair of the assembly and a labour advisor from TRAC’s parent union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), reminded those gathered that, as publicly funded institutions, universities and their employees would be subject to the directives of the bill.

The primary point of concern in Bill 62 is Article 10, the notorious clause which makes it illegal for anyone to give or

receive public services without showing their face. The bill also states that religious accommodation will be granted under certain rules to be determined

by Quebec’s minister of justice.

However, those rules have yet to be published.

This undetermined part of the bill led a judge to issue a temporary stay on Article 10 in December, which injected uncertainty into how the TRAC assembly wanted to proceed.

Some members thought it better to wait until the accommodation rules had been clarified before taking an official position.

Although that proposal was considered for a moment, a forceful call to oppose the bill outright from member Cameron McInt yre garnered audible support.

“I don’t think asking for clarification is tough enough for what this bill is,” McIntyre said. A second member followed at the microphone: “I think we should oppose this on the grounds that it is a shameful and racist practice.”

Tw o o t h e r m e m b e r s expressed similar sentiments at t h e m i c rop h on e b efore the general assembly voted in favour of opposing Bill 62 outright. However, the motion did not make specific mention of discrimination as the reason for the opposition.

TRAC’s official position is now more in line with its parent union, PSAC, which released a statement in October calling the bill Islamophobic and discriminatory toward Muslim women.

Disclosure: Kenneth Gibson is a teaching assistant for the Concordia journalism department.

JUSTICE

Woman assaulted by police wants justice Majiza Philip says Montreal police must be held accountable for their violent actions CALLIE GIACCONE STAFF WRITER Af ter being acquitted in December of assaulting a police officer, 29-year-old Majiza Philip wants justice now more than ever.

During a Machine Gun Kelly concert at the Olympia theatre in 2014, Philip was violently arrested for alleged misconduct against the police. The situation arose while one of Philip’s friends was being arrested at the concert for loitering and excessive drinking. CTV News reported that, when Philip knocked on the window of the police car to tell her friend she had his jacket, she was violently grabbed by an officer and a baton was used to break her arm.

Despite being acquitted, Philip said she believes her case should be reviewed in order to serve as a catalyst for change within the Montreal police department. “I feel like I can walk the streets a lot more comfortably, knowing that I was acquitted, but I am still very

fearful of the police because none of them have been held accountable,” she said.

Philip’s arm was badly fractured, and although no longer a physical restriction, she said the trauma from the incident follows her wherever she goes.

She is often asked about the seven-inch scar on her arm. “I can’t just say I was assaulted by the police and leave it at that,” Philip said during a press conference on Jan. 24.

Prior to being acquitted, Philip filed a complaint at the end of 2014, but it was eventually dismissed by the Police Ethics Commissioner.

According to CBC News , “Section 192 of the Police Act allows officers not to cooperate with the commission," meaning police can refuse to work with the ethics commission when a complaint is filed.

“We feel that this has to be corrected and has to be prevented,” said Fo Niemi, the executive director of the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR). “Not

only for her, but also for every other citizen who may have a legitimate complaint against a police officer.”

Philip and her family emphasized their strength and resilience over the past three years. Philip’s mother, Suzanne Bruneau, said their family is “very fearful but very hopeful with the precedence that Majiza’s case has set.”

Philip and her mother said they believe race played a role in this situation. “It also speaks to us as a black family, to not forget what’s important in our integrity and respect towards our people and our race,” Bruneau added.

Philip said she has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and has been coping with var ying degrees of depression. For months following the incident, she was not able to continue working as a tap

dance teacher, and she lost her job at a restaurant.

According to C T V News, “the police ethics commission still says the officers did nothi n g w r o n g .”

However, if the request to review Philip’s case is denied, CRARR will ask the Quebec minister of public security to revisit the file, CTV reported.

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth.

JANUARY 30, 2018

theconcordian

5

GOVERNANCE

Cease and resist

Former Concordia professor David Ketterer claims university diverted his emails

ÉTIENNE LAJOIE NEWS EDITOR On Nov. 27, 2017, former Concordia English department professor David Ketterer received a letter from the university’s senior legal counsel, Melodie Sullivan. “The university is in receipt of your [emails] sent to various members of the faculty and administration,” Sullivan wrote in the letter sent to Ketterer’s home in Liverpool, England. “As I have indicated to you on numerous occasions, no reply will be provided to your communications unless, in our opinion, a reply is required.”

Sullivan’s warning came six years after a cease and desist letter she sent to Ketterer, and multiple emails—some of which seen by The Concordian—were sent to Concordia administrators, including provost Graham Carr, by Ketterer.

“First, you have been informed that, other than communication required in the context of the legal actions you have taken against Concordia, the university does not intend to reply to your emails,” Sullivan had told Ketterer on June 13, 2011.

The legal actions Sullivan referred to were three claims Ketterer made on three separate occasions in Quebec’s small claims court. In September 2009, Ketterer, now an honorary research fellow at the University of Liverpool, was the plaintiff in a case against Martin Singer—the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science at the time—Barbara Harris, Singer’s assistant, and three other Concordia administrators.

Ketterer requested $7,000 from the five individuals, and blamed their behaviour for why he didn’t obtain the distinguished professor emeritus (DPE) title from the university. The former professor said he has been nominated by English department chairs twice for the title “on the basis of [his] research and publications.”

I n a re ce nt e m a i l to The Concordian, Ketterer wrote that he wanted the DPE title because he was entitled to it.

Ketterer’s accusations against the five individuals, according to court records, were based on a May 2003 email written by Harris, which explained that the professor hadn’t been recommended by

Former Concordia University professor David Ketterer claims the university have denied him the the distinguished professor emeritus and diverted his emails. Photo by Takayuki Tatsumi.

the Faculty of Arts and Science committee responsible for the DPE because “he had no department or university service here, nor had he ever supervised a single graduate student.”

Harris, who was the only defendant present at the September 2009 hearing, said the letter’s claim that Ketterer had no department or university service at Concordia was incorrect, and that there were other reasons Ketterer wasn’t recommended. According to Concordia senate guidelines, one of the three eligibility requirements for the DPE title is that the candidate “will have retired or will have chosen to retire from fulltime service to the university.”

Instead, the decision not to give Ketterer the title was based on a decision made by the committee in 2008, according to court documents. The committee wrote that it had considered Ketterer’s dossier and, “in light of the criteria 6:30PM - 8:30PM / MCGILL ARTS BUILDING established by the ROOM W-215, 8 5 3 S H E R B R O O K E S T . W . senate,” did not Free and open to the public. forward it.

RSVP at misc.iecm@mcgill.ca.

Judge Jacques Paquet, who presided over t he

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 21, 2018

hearing, sided with the defendants, writing that Harris’s mistake “had nothing to do with the committee’s decision.” A year later, in 2010, Ketterer was back in court, this time suing Concordia for an amount of $999.80, again referring to the Faculty of Arts and Science’s 2008 decision, contending that an award he received in 1996, “fulfilled the criteria of a ‘demonstrably outstanding contribution” to either teaching or research, one of the characteristics needed to obtain the DPE. In her decision, judge Eliana Marengo wrote that the matter would not go to adjudication because that would require reviewing the committee’s work, which the court did not have the authority to do.

Ketterer’s Sept. 12, 2011 court appearance was his last in court.

That day, judge David L. Cameron dismissed the proceedings, citing, among other reasons, Ketterer’s “series of small-claim cases.”

Cameron condemned Ketterer to pay the university’s judicial costs— $194 for the 2011 case—but more importantly, prohibited him “from bringing proceedings in the Court of Quebec except with the authorization and subject to the conditions determined by the Chief Justice of the Court of Quebec.”

In a series of emails to The Concordian, Ketterer defended his actions, claiming the university diverted his letters to administrators and violated two academic rules in 2008.

In her Nov. 27, 2017 letter, Sullivan wrote: “Note that all communications received from you, such as letters and/or phone calls, are forwarded directly to me.” Less than three weeks earlier, on Nov. 8, Ketterer described the diversion of letters to Sullivan “as a human rights violation” in an email to Carr.

In an email sent to Sullivan

on Dec. 17—in which Carr and Concordia ombudsperson Amy Fish were Cc’d—Ketterer claimed the “deliberate diversion” of his letters was illegal according to British law.

“It is not just a matter of censorship; it is a violation of my human rights,” he wrote again.

In an email dated June 10, 2011—three days before the cease and desist letter was sent—Ketterer made a reference to the university’s Code of Rights and Responsibilities formal complaints system, and the reason why the system was created: the 1992 Concordia shooting. “The functionality of this recourse is particularly important because is [sic] a result of the Valery Fabrikant incident,” Ketterer wrote.

In response, Sullivan wrote in the cease and desist letter that, “the reference made in your email to the Fabrikant affair and the murders of four Concordia faculty members may reasonably be considered to be an implicit threat made against Vice President [Bram] Freedman and his colleagues. Such threats will not be tolerated.”

“She simply invents the notion that I am making a threat,” Ketterer told The Concordian in an email.

Ketterer argued he didn’t do more than “relate the Code of Ethics Formal Complaint procedure to the Valery Fabrikant incident.”

According to Ketterer, the motivation for “a couple of Concordia’s senior administrators” to create the DPE title “seems to have been some kind of public relations angle. [The title] is just a synonym for retired (and thus a title to be applied to all retired Concordia faculty unless he or she was a Fabrikant, etc.),” he wrote.

The Concordian contacted Concordia University, but did not get a comment by press time.

etc

FEATURED CONCORDIA ARTIST

KLOE GAGNON My name is Kloe Gagnon, I am a 24-year-old landscape photographer from Montreal, Canada. I started practicing photography when I got my first digital camera in 2009, and I've never let go since. I am currently a university student majoring in Design.

However, I have never studied photography; I am a self-taught photographer.

During the past years, I have been traveling to some of the world's most stunning countries to capture the natural beauty of landscapes. These countries include: Iceland, Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and many other locations.

When I started as a photographer, many of my early photographs included the city and a lot of architecture shots. I quickly found out that my favourite subjects to photograph weren’t within the city walls, but rather, outside in the most remote parts of the world.

Mountains, nature and animals are what I’m truly interested in. I give a lot of importance to the way animals are treated and the environmental situations the world faces today.

For this reason, I try my best to illustrate my values in my photographs by shinning light on the beauty of our world.

Since this is my last year at Concordia as a Design student, as part of an Independent Study, I will be offering free beginner Adobe Photoshop workshops throughout the winter semester of 2018. These workshops will include the fundamental basics of layers, blending options, photo manipulation and more. Feel free to contact me at anytime by email at kloegk@hotmail.ca for more information.

Háifoss, Iceland

Alpnach, Switzerland

Krakau, Austria

Mount Pilatus, Switzerland

Schwangau, Germany

Dolomites, Valle di Cadore, Province of Belluno, Italy

Stokksnes, Iceland

If you are interested in purchasing my prints, digital prints or some accessories (such as mugs and tote bags) with my photographs printed on them, visit

For weekly posts, follow me on Instagram at

WWW.KLOEGAGNON.COM

@KLOEGAGNON

Etc is a space dedicated to showcasing Concordia artists!

Submissions can be sent to production@theconcordian.com

life

LIFE EDITOR /// life@theconcordian.com SANDRA HERCEGOVÁ

FASHION

Pursuing her dreams and giving back to youth

Canadian fashion model Stacey McKenzie spoke at non-profit Never Apart’s Legend Series

Stacey McKenzie is a fashion model and the founder of the Walk This Way Workshops and The Walk Camp. Photo by Sandra Hercegova.

SANDRA HERCEGOVA LIFE EDITOR “You have your passion, your dreams and your goals. Even if they are telling you no, keep going for it, because you never know where it’s going to lead you,” said Canadian fashion model Stacey McKenzie.

As a young girl living in Kingston, Jamaica, McKenzie said she never thought “in a million years” her dream of being a model would come true. She was bullied and made fun of because of her looks. However, her ambition, determination, drive and self-love led her to success.

In 2015, Vogue magazine named her one of the top five Jamaican models that have changed the face of fashion. She is also a model coach and mentor on the hit reality show series America’s Next Top Model and Canada’s Next Top Model. On Jan. 25, McKenzie was invited by the Montreal-based non-profit Never Apart to speak as part of their Legend Series, which hosts interactive panel discussions with inspirational guests.

As McKenzie walked on stage in her black stilettos, beaming with positive energy, the crowd applauded enthusiastically. She began by sharing how she pursued her career and the struggles she encountered along the way.

“Do you know how many people and designers would tell me ‘Hell no’? Tons,”

McKenzie said. Among them was British fashion designer Alexander McQueen.

According to McKenzie, he did not initially want her to model for him, but eventually changed his mind and hired her. “Don’t let them forget you. Keep going, and let them see you,” she said.

Throughout her talk, McKenzie highlighted the importance of never giving up. She described how she would go to castings and callbacks she wasn’t invited to. In fact, that’s how she got her first Calvin Klein campaign in 1995.

“I was never sent to the casting, but I was like, Richard Avedon is going to see me today,” she said. Avedon, a renowned fashion photographer, spotted McKenzie arguing with a security guard in front of the building where the auditions were being held. “I was trying everything under the sun to get in there,” McKenzie recounted.

When Avedon asked who she was, McKenzie replied: “Mr. Avedon, I am here for the callback.” He told her he had never seen her before, to which she responded: “Well, you are seeing me now.” To her surprise, he brought her inside. When Avedon asked her what she wanted, McKenzie said: “I want the campaign.” He gave her a 10-year contract on the spot for the Calvin Klein campaign, alongside fashion model Kate Moss.

“If I would have [waited] for my modelling agency to send me to some casting where they wanted black girls or light-skin girls, I’d be starving and I would have never gotten that Calvin Klein campaign,” she said.

Aside from modelling, McKenzie has also become an activist and youth advocate.

She is the founder of the Walk This Way Workshops, where she teaches aspiring models about all aspects of the industry.

McKenzie also created The Walk Camp in 2013, a free two-week summer camp where she invites 25 to 30 young girls from different communities in Toronto to meet mentors from the fashion, entertainment, arts, business and education industries. Each girl is paired with a mentor who shares the story of how they got to where they are today.

“I’m super excited about it. All of this started because I had to do everything myself,” McKenzie explained. “I didn’t have someone to guide me, to mentor me. I never had that, and I’ve always wanted that. I met a few models in my journey who didn’t have that as well, and I was shocked.”

According to McKenzie, the girls at the camp are from

neighbourhoods where these types of hands-on experiences and opportunities are not accessible. McKenzie said her goal is to teach the girls to love themselves.

“I want them to be empowered and to accept who they are. I want them to be inspired and to go after their dreams and goals with confidence,” she said.

This is exactly what McKenzie has done herself. “I never thought I would be able to give back,” she said. “It’s the ultimate [feeling] for me.”

Comic by Libby Hopkinson.

8

theconcordian

JANUARY 30, 2018

THEATRE

Concordia students learn to act from ACT The university's student-run theatre club casts for their second production MINA MAZUMDER STAFF WRITER Autodidacts Concordia Theatre (ACT) held three auditions from Jan. 23 to 26 for students interested in being part of this year’s student-run play.

According to Zoë Bujold, ACT’s co-president, the purpose of the club is to allow students from a range of disciplines to take part in a theatre production. “[It’s] a means for students to express themselves,” she said. “People can act, write or work backstage.”

When the club was first founded in 2016, it primarily hosted weekly workshops “that focused on different aspects of the craft, such as acting, stage presence, voice, projection, improvisation and dance,” said Alexander Luiz Cruz, the club’s treasurer and assistant director.

Last year’s student-written and student-produced performance, titled Swimming Solo , combined comedy and drama, Bujold said. This year’s play, however, will be more serious, centred on life, death and moving on.

“Twelve different souls try to make their way to the afterlife or away from it while stuck in an otherworldly

limbo,” Cruz explained.

“It’s basically a meditation on the human experience, memory and the finite nature of life, with a dash of hilarity. It’s something that we’ve never done before, so we are really excited.”

According to Cruz, all the proceeds from the per formances will go to the Theresa Foundation, a nonprofit organization that helps grandmothers and orphaned chil- Autodidacts Concordia Theatre (ACT) welcomed students from all programs to audition for roles in this dren of AIDS victims in year’s student-run theatre production. Photo by Kirubel Mehari.

Malawi. This includes Matias Rittatore, the club’s secretary “ It ’s more acce s sible,” adde d providing funds for school bursaries, wells, bedding and medicine, among and assistant stage manager, said ACT Dexter Lavery-Callender, the club’s other necessities, according to the is an opportunity for students to pre- co-president and assistant director. pare themselves for the professional “We hold each other’s hands, and we organization’s website.

“It’s about giving back to the theatre world. “It’s one of those things guide you.” community, not only in Montreal where you need to get experience to by helping students acquire the- get experience, so we offer people an T h e Au to d i d a c t s C o n c o rd i a atre skills but also a world-wide opportunity to get that first step,” he said, Theatre production will be percommunity,” Cruz said. Last year’s adding that the club gives participants formed from Wednesday, May performance raised about $1,200 in the chance to learn and make mistakes 16 to Saturday, May 19 at 8 p.m. at the Mainline Theatre. ticket sales and donations, he added. in a low-stakes environment.

GAMING

Diversity and inclusion in video games Game Curious Montreal aims to break stereotypes about dominant gaming culture MINA MAZUMDER STAFF WRITER The purpose of Game Curious Montreal’s events is to “build bridges between different communities … and create a space for people who feel excluded or marginalized in dominant gaming culture,” according to Carolyn Jong, a collective member of the organization.

Attendees of the latest event, held at Café Aquin on Sunday, Jan. 28., played video games and munched on snacks, but the conversation quickly became a discussion about how the games they played addressed real-life struggles, such as oil mining and the loss of native languages due to colonialism.

In the video game Idle No More: Blockade, for example, players fight stereotypes about Indigenous people rather than physical monsters. “It’s empowering because it shows counter-arguments and ways to push back against those stereotypes,” Jong said. “[The game is] about gathering people to fight back against a corporation that’s trying to put a pipeline through Indigenous lands. I think that’s a good model and message to be shown through games.”

Game Curious Montreal is a working group of the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) at Concordia, a resource centre for student and community research that promotes awareness of grassroots social and environmental activism, according to the QPIRG’s website.

Gersande La Flèche, another collective member, pointed out that Game Curious Montreal events also aim to eradicate stereot ypes about gamers. “We are trying to reach out to people who don’t consider themselves 'gamers'.

We want p e op le who don’ t know what video games can be or should be,” La Flèche said, emphasizing the importance of keeping an open mind.

“Even if you think you’re bad at games, you’re probably not,” she said. “You just probably haven’t found the game that’s made for you.”

Similarly, Jong advises students and gamers not to give up if they feel constrained or excluded from the dominant gaming culture. “You’re not alone. There are lots of other people who probably have felt that way,” she said. “It’s the culture that’s trying to enforce the boundaries.

There are a lot of different kinds of skills when it comes to games. Being good at games doesn’t matter.”

La Flèche said she believes supporting video games about resistance is a concrete way to fight back against colonialism. “The game My Grandmother’s

Lingo is about [a native language] that colonialism was trying to eradicate,” she explained. “Sharing a game about your grandmother’s language and sharing words is a step of resistance as well as bringing awareness to the issue.”

However, L a Flèche encouraged people to show support for Indigenous communities in the real world as well by volunteering and making donations to Indigenous resource centres and homeless shelters. “Supporting murdered and missing Indigenous women is also a big one,” she added. “[We have] women’s marches that draw so many people, so why aren’t we drawing the same amountsof people to marches for murdered and missing Indigenous women?”

For Moustafa Chamli, another Game Curious Montreal member, it’s important to support video games that fight against oppression by giving representation to minority groups. “In video games, you rarely get the First Nations or black person perspective,” he said. "The barometre of standard media has been set as cishetero-white-male, so any differing view becomes anathema or too different.”

Chamli emphasized the necessity of giving Indigenous people space in society and the gaming world. “They have things to say. They have an anger and sadness that need to be expressed,” he said. “Understand that other cultures deserve to exist and help them grow, not by taking their space but by giving them the space that they should be having.”

Graphic by Zeze Le Lin.

JANUARY 30, 2018

theconcordian

9

PHOTO ESSAY

Being a tourist three hours from home

Moments captured at the Quebec Winter Carnival amongst friends MIA ANHOURY ASSISTANT LIFE EDITOR When my best friend moved to Quebec City this winter, I knew I had to visit her as many times as I could. What better time to do so than during the Quebec Winter Carnival?

Quebec City has a special spark. There is something about the friendly people of this city that makes you feel warm and cozy while navigating the narrow streets. Everyone smiles at you.

As my two best friends and I headed towards the carnival in Old Quebec last Saturday, a father of two sitting next to us on the bus asked where we were from, since we were speaking English. His name was Moussa Sarr. He has a PhD in sociology and is the ex-deputy for the federal minister of transport, infrastructure and collectivity. Sarr emphasized the importance of education and embracing different cultures when we told him we were there to explore the city.

He asked us about the languages we speak. We determined that all four of us could speak French, English and Spanish. “I know a language you don’t know,” Sarr added enthusiastically. The language was Wolof, which is native to Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania.

Once we arrived at the Grande Allée near the Château Frontenac, a snow sculpture caught my attention. Made by local artists Charles Fleury, Blaise Carrier Chouinard and Péïo Éliceiry, the sculpture was called Toboggan . It depicts d a man sliding down a hill on a toboggan. Dressed in a bulky coat and mittens, he seemed immune to the cold, despite being made of snow. His open-mouth smile showed he was amused by the imaginary ride.

Little did we know, the imaginary ride was real. Despite the cold, dozens of people waited in line further down the street for a chance to slide down the hill on a bright red sleigh. Tourists and locals alike were enjoying themselves as they used selfie sticks to captured the fast, slippery moment on camera.

Near the base of the slide, the Bonhomme Carnaval snowman stood behind a frame with a colourful background, creating the perfect photo opportunity for families and friends. Although no one was skating on the rink nearby, the laughter from kids running—or, should I say, gliding—on the ice filled the air. All afternoon, people took turns huddling around a small fire pit near the skating rink, trying to stay warm.

My friends and I decided to end the day by going skating at a dif ferent rink where we could rent skates. As we glided around the rink — my friends showing off their skating skills while I tried to catch up — we bumped into our new friend Sarr from the bus. A big smile broke out on his face when he spotted us on the rink.

“I knew I was going to see you girls again,” he cried out. We told him about our day at the carnival, and he said he would be headed there the following day.

Throughout our excursion, my friends and I spoke English to one another, which prompted many people to ask us where we were from. Being a tourist in your own province is quite an experience, and it’s funny to be able to respond: “I only live three hours away from you!”

The Quebec Winter Carnival runs until Feb. 11 in Old Quebec.

Photos by Mia Anhoury.

Moussa Sarr pictured with his two children.

arts

ARTS EDITOR /// arts@theconcordian.com MAGGIE HOPE

EXHIBITION

Painting with intuition and reason Concordia alumna Sylvie Adams exhibits three series of serendipitous paintings

Concordia alumna Sylvie Adams exhibits three series of serendipitous paintings in The Time, the Mark , the Space. Blueberry Lime Sorbet (left), Portrait de Genre IV (centre) and Winte r Day at the Lake (right) illustrate two of the three series. Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

CHLOË LALONDE ASSISTANT ARTS EDITOR

When it comes to abstraction, the eye tends to search for familiar shapes. Each person’s perspective and interpretation of an abstract work will be different. Concordia alumna Sylvie Adams’s solo exhibition, The Time, the Mark , the Space, is no different.

Adams chose the title of her exhibition to be representative of her artistic process, which relies on time and gravity. The artist allows the initial application of paint to drip down the canvas, letting physics create her underpainting.

The colours mix without the artist manually affecting the nature of the paint. Once Adams feels ready, she will make intuitive markings with acrylic paint, India ink or spray paint. She lets the piece speak to her; the universe pulls her towards making specific marks on some pieces and not on others, she explained. It is in this phase that the image begins to take shape.

The artist graduated from Concordia University in 1987 with a major in design and a minor in visual arts. At the time, Adams did not spend much time painting, but when she did, she preferred creating realistic depictions.

It was Marilyn Rubenstein, an abstract artist, who encouraged Adams to begin her abstract

practice. When the two met, Rubenstein was a drawing and painting teacher at the Saidye Bronfman Centre School of Fine Arts, now the Visual Arts Centre.

Today, Adams practices lyrical abstraction, a form of abstraction that uses softer, looser brushwork. The practice is largely based on the artist’s painterly intuition. “I start with a neutral, black-and-white background, and I start to play with different mediums, experimenting with their fluidity. Some parts I will wet, others I will not,” Adams explained.

She said she also likes to leave some sections untouched, exposing the raw canvas to create a balance between the strokes, dripping paint and sprays of colour. The artist uses a paper cut-out to shield sections of the painting and isolate some elements, enforcing the negative space between one part and another.

“When I start painting, I don’t know what it will look like, I don’t know what colours I’ll use,” Adams said. Intuition and reason are key in her practice. She must be sure the mark she will make is the right one. Some abstract work is created chaotically, but Adams’s isn’t.

Her paintings are carefully crafted, just as a realistic painting would be. Yet unlike realism, Adams has no set subject matter.

Adams forms a dialogic relationship with her work. Each mark she makes utters a response, leading the artist to her next movement. “It is as though the painting is saying something to me,” she said. “I just have to be open to it.”

The final result is a painting symbolic of a conversation the artist has with herself and her work, bringing her intuition, dynamic actions and personal thoughts, feelings and emotions into play.

The dialogue Adams holds with her work is a meditative one, which she admits can be quite frustrating. Some pieces, like Cookie Monster, are kept in the studio for a few months before the artist realizes the mark she is compelled to make. In its early stages, Cookie Monster was without the two strokes shaped like the number six. Adams recognised the body of a monster in her application of dark paint as it dripped in a way that illustrated teeth. To highlight this idea, Adams felt the need to give it eyes.

Despite the monster appearing in Cookie Monster, Adams’s paintings are comforting and can be relatable to viewers who look closely. Individual experiences draw people to different pieces and change what people take away from her work.

The Time, the Mark , the Space also features

a series of portraits. The artist uses a combination of warm flesh tones, black and white to create a hidden visage. In Portrait de Genre I, Adams saw the face of an old man, while one viewer saw the face of a baby wrapped in a pink blanket, and another recognized U.S. President Donald Trump.

Adams uses three distinct colour palettes in The Time, the Mark, the Space: a series of warm tones (pinks, beiges, oranges, browns) as seen in the Portrait de genre series I-IV and Cookie Monster; cool tones ranging from blues and greens in Frostbite, Cri Primal, Winter Day at the Lake and Blueberry Lime Sorbet, and finally a series of rich burgundy, orange, green, and red tones in Close Call, La marche du temps, Chemin en Mutation and Mango Chutney.

The exhibition’s 13 paintings were all created last year, and each one symbolizes the creation of a world, as stated in the galley brochure.

The Time, the Mark , the Space is open from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, until 6 p.m. on Thursdays and until 5 p.m. on Friday and weekends.

It will be displayed at Maison de la culture Marie-Uguay (6052 Monk Blvd.) until March 25.

TWO HANDS, TOUCHING EXHIBITION

KNITTING / CROCHET CIRCLE

The works of six students are on display in the VAV's first exhibition of the year. According to the show's statement, "the works in this show beg the viewer to embrace their sense of touch by incorporating a range of highly sensual, textured imagery.

Pulling from their own embodied experiences, these artists seek to explore how this oft-forgotten sense has contributed to our modern modes of communication and commerce."

Le Milieu, a co-op art studio and vegan café, hosts a weekly knitting and crochet circle to encourage people of all levels to improve their skills in a warm, welcoming environment.

Volunteers are on hand to guide participants through their creative endeavours, but attendees are also encouraged to bring their own projects to work on. The event itself is free, with a “take some, leave some” policy for materials.

WHERE VAV Gallery, VA building WHEN Now until Feb. 2

WHERE Le Milieu, 1251 Robin St. WHEN Every Tuesday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

JANUARY 30, 2018

theconcordian

11

PROFILE

Sharing stories of family and cultural identity

Concordia student Carol Nguyen shows self-discovery and reflection in captivating films CHARLES DUQUET CONTRIBUTOR Carol Nguyen is the director, writer and editor of eight short films—she is also 19 years old. The undergraduate student at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema found success at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) as a three-time winner of the Jump Cuts award for young filmmakers in 2014, 2015 and 2016. Nguyen is also an ambassador of the Share Her Journey campaign, a TIFF initiative to raise awareness about gender equality in film. Additionally, she attended the 2018 Sundance Film Festival as an Ignite fellow to establish and develop connections in the film industry.

The common thread among the Torontoborn filmmaker’s notable works, like How Do You Pronounce Pho? (2014), This Home is Not Empty (2015) and recently, Every Grain of Rice (2017), is her use of distinct aesthetic forms and voiceover presences.

Born from personal struggles and understandings, the films don’t adhere to traditional documentary mediums, varying in their use of live action, animation, archives and miniatures. Nguyen’s work plays with the way we perceive reality and embraces creative techniques that are truthful to the filmmaker’s stories. She is a committed filmmaker and returns to consistent themes throughout her body of work.

As a child who grew up in a hybrid Vietnamese-Canadian household, Nguyen’s cultural identity is a prominent feature of her films. In one of her first shorts, How Do You Pronounce Pho?, she explores this hybridity.

Told from her perspective as a teenager, the film shows Nguyen as she realizes the cultural differences between her school peers and herself. “Food was a metaphor for me trying to blend into another culture,” the filmmaker explained. “When you are young, you don’t think about complex ideas like that, and it comes out in the most simple things,

The Toronto-born filmmaker has received three awards from TIFF. Photo by Charles Duquet.

like your school lunches and comments, as microaggressions.”

In this work, Nguyen shows her interest in the topic of hybrid culture. Her narration describes her experience tasting “culturally unstable” Western concepts of ethnic cuisine versus authentic Vietnamese meals cooked by her mother. The film empowers the candid young voice while still considering it in the process of learning about cultural hybridity.

How Do You Pronounce Pho? reflects on the process of learning not to limit ourselves to certain groups and languages. For Nguyen, it’s important to interact, collaborate and share ideas with others in a multicultural society. “Not to do so would mean missing enriching and

Nguyen’s film, Every Grain of Rice (2017), explores the relationship between food and cultural assimilation.

impending stories and experiences,” she said.

As beautiful as hybrid culture can be, it can also be frightening. Three years after making How Do You Pronounce Pho?, Nguyen explored her fears in Every Grain of Rice, a film that delves into the relationship between food and cultural assimilation. She addressed the cultural assimilation that follows each generation. While emotionally attached to some of her parents’ Vietnamese traditions, the young filmmaker doesn’t substantially continue them, but holds the last tie with Vietnamese culture in her family.

“When my parents die, everything that goes along with my Vietnamese culture will die with them,” Nguyen said. “I’m not going to carry the recipes and the stories that they have.”

Thinking of topics for her films wasn’t always so clear for Nguyen. In 11th grade, Nguyen experienced a bout of writer's block and became extremely uninspired. “I was stumped. I didn’t know what to make a film about,” she said. “Something that helped me was my teachers getting me back to the roots of film, back to my personal roots, asking questions like: ‘Why are you making this type of film? Why does it matter to you?’”

What followed was This Home is Not Empty, in which Nguyen tried to portray her nostalgia for childhood. Using paper, she created a highly detailed miniature of

her childhood home. The small-scale house is abandoned, sitting in a studio. Shots of the replica are contrasted with lively family photographs. The miniatures are constrained to dark grey tones on an insignificant scale.

Objects are on the ground, her childhood fish tank is smashed and food is left out on the miniature table. With this film, Nguyen builds a paper collage of archives and reconstructions. She compares the photographs to the paper replica so the viewer can interpret their nostalgic relationship.

The filmmaker confronts the audience with a unique approach to represent her thoughts. The film’s universe isn’t constrained to fictionalized memories. In a delicate way, the viewer is brought outside the paper house.

Nguyen presents her work while embracing the process of making it. The filmmaker shows the hands that place the objects of the paper house, and the studio in which it is lit. The film presents her memories with honesty.

Nguyen's films depict her internal explorations, and their highly controlled aesthetic gives a sense of restrained emotions. This February, Nguyen will direct her ninth film, the second to be produced within the Mel Hoppenheim film production program.

You can see This Home is Not Empty and How Do You Pronounce Pho? on Nguyen’s Vimeo page: www.vimeo.com/ carolnguyenfilms.

CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET? CONVERSATION

CTRL+V COLLAGE PARTY

PERFORMANCE ART AS RESISTANCE DISCUSSION

The VA building will host a conversation between curator Matthew Hyland and artist Aleesa Cohene about the role of consent in artist-curator relationships. According to the event’s description, the two will discuss their experiences with power imbalances in the art world, among other topics.

The event is in collaboration with Art Matters and the Fine Arts Student Alliance (FASA).

Local art event collective CTRL+V will host another installment of their collage parties featuring performances by local artists Saxsyndrum, Strangerfamiliar and Romantic Weekends. These events encourage attendees to create their own collages with musical accompaniment in the social atmosphere of a party. Materials are provided in exchange for the $10/pay-what-you-can entrance fee.

Kim Simard, a faculty member at Dawson College, will lead a discussion with “local drag queer legend” Manny Cortez Tuazon and Ken Antonio Rillo, Tuazon’s lead dancer and choreographer. The pair will discuss “how performance arts like drag are a crucial part in expressing identity, resistance of discrimination and creating a safe community space,” according to the event’s description.

WHERE VA 323, VA building WHEN Feb. 1, 6:30 p.m.

WHERE Brasserie Beaubien, 73 Beaubien St. E. WHEN Feb. 2, 9 p.m.

WHERE Room 5B.16, Dawson Peace Centre, 3040 WHEN Feb. 5, 4 p.m.

Sherbrooke St. W.

music

Quickspins

MUSIC EDITOR /// music@theconcordian.com CALVIN CASHEN

1

ROUND-UP

Upcoming albums of 2018 Some of the best records to look forward to in the new year CALVIN CASHEN MUSIC EDITOR MIGOS

The famed Atlanta trap trio released the companion piece to last year’s smash-hit Culture on Jan. 26. Members Quavo and Offset stated last year that the album would be released in October 2017. Now that the album is out, the shaky details are crystal clear. The album is a veritable who’s who of rap, including guest spots from Drake, Big Sean, Gucci Mane and 21 Savage. “MotorSport,” an October collaboration with Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, was included among the cuts on the album. Expectations are undoubtedly high, as a followup to the group’s platinum career-maker “Bad and Boujee” is what’s really on listeners’ radars.

PORCHES

Porches’s 2016 debut on Domino Records, Pool, mingled minimal synth beats with colourful production flourishes. Released Jan. 19, Aaron Maine’s full-length, The House, features a plethora of gold-standard guests, including (Sandy) Alex G and Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes.

In terms of the album’s sound, Maine told Pitchfork he wanted to capture the quality of a home-recorded demo. The record’s lead single, “Country,” is a true testament to this approach, gentle and drenched with reverb.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE

According to front man Kevin Shields, shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine will release an album in 2018. “A hundred per cent,” Shields confirmed to Pitchfork last year. As both a followup to 2013’s mbv and a rare release from the group, the project will reportedly be “more

Ephorize (CupcakKe, 2018)

Rapper CupcakKe has come out with a steller third album, Ephorize, filled with exciting, vibrant wordplay and creative beats. CupcakKe covers a wide range of topics, from sex, acceptance and support for the LGBTQ+ community, to sexism and self-analysis—all with confidence and self-assurance. One of the best songs off the album is “Self Interview,” a reflective song about the double standard women face, played over a soft-sounding piano beat. Her commentary isn’t anything I haven’t heard, like: “Females have sex on the first night, they get called a hoe for that one-night stand / Men have sex on the first night, ‘Congratulations, you got around her bands.’” However, her performance really amplifies and enhances the lyrics. The album is lively yet sharply written, and mixed with danceable beats.

all over the place” than its predecessor.

According to Shields: “This one is like if somebody took that and dropped some acid on it or created a dimensional clash or something.” The band also released analog remasters of Loveless and Isn’t Anything on Jan. 18.

NO AGE

More than a decade ago, Randy Randall and Dean Spunt emerged from the grimy gutters of Los Angeles’s DIY punk scene, releasing five EPs and two albums of noisy, hyperactive rock music. After regular stints at legendary DIY venue the Smell, they secured a record deal with Matador Records. This gave them the professional backing to hone their unique hybrid of nihilist punk energies and ambient noise across a decade-spanning career. On “Drippy” and “Soft Collar Fad,” the first two singles from their upcoming record on Drag City, the band sounds revitalized, tapping into vibes that made them a formidable force to begin with.

CUPCAKKE

11 Trial Track: “Self Interview”

a somber single that further expanded the reaches of the singer’s experimental sound. This year will see the release of the singer’s first set of material since 2015’s surprise-released EP, M3LL155X. Recently, she has teased “Trust in Me,” a new collaboration project with ambient producer Oneohtrix Point Never. With this release, the prospect of new material in 2018 isn’t too much of a stretch.

7.9/10 — HUSSAIN ALMAHR, ASSISTANT MUSIC EDITOR

2

M A XO KREAM

FRANK OCEAN SKY FERREIRA

Following a series of cryptic tweets and hushed word-of-mouth hype, Sky Ferreira’s followup to her excellent 2013 debut album, Night Time, My Time, has been in a stagnant state of production hell. The release has been delayed for several months to make room for Ferreira’s budding acting career. Her acclaim as a singer has been put on the backburner in exchange for film and TV roles, including appearances in Baby Driver and Twin Peaks: The Return. Though Ferreira opened up about the album’s progress, teasing in April that new music would be released “very soon,” this is one we’ll have to see to believe.

FKA TWIGS

In February 2016, still fresh off her 2014 debut masterwork, LP1, FKA twigs released “Good to Love,”

The reclusive Frank Ocean released a small number of singles in the middle of last year. And after vowing to release a followup to 2016’s Endless and Blonde, Ocean went to Tumblr to clear the air. In a post, he indicated he has two mixtapes in the vault that would count as his third and fourth full-length albums. “I JUST AIN’T PUT THAT BITCH OUT!” he posted in November.

EARL SWEATSHIRT

Earl Sweatshirt’s last album, the spacey I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, was the rapper’s last public release. Aside from sharing a guest verse with Kendrick Lamar and Ab-Soul on Danny Brown’s menacing “Really Doe,” Earl’s activities in and outside the music industry have been few and far between. He has also been performing a fair share of new songs live. The idea of a new LP could point toward a proper return for the Odd Future provocateur.

Maxo Kream (TSO/Kream Clicc, 2018) A skim through Punken, Maxo Kream’s first mixtape since 2016, listens like a comprehensive autobiography. Laced with expert storytelling and southern-fried production, the record holds a variety of aggressive instrumentals over which Kream delivers some of his most compelling bars. The narratives here aren’t shaded by cocky assertions or hyperbolized brags; rather the Houston rapper divulges a series of dark revelations with blunt sincerity. It’s an uncompromising peer into Kream’s life, chronicling his ascent from an amateur drug pusher to occupying a position of power before his incarceration in 2016.

This is a project also informed by communal bonds between friends and family. The rapper treats loyalty like an ancient proverb.

His approach is unflinching, as is his faith to the hustle and his glock.

11 Trial Track: “Grannies”

8.5/10 — CALVIN CASHEN, MUSIC EDITOR

JANUARY 30, 2018

theconcordian

13

PROFILE 3

JONNY G R E E NWO O D

Revived and ready to go

Phantom Thread

(Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

(Nonesuch Records Inc., 2018) Jonny Greenwood, known for his work with Radiohead, composed the soundtrack to the Paul Thomas Anderson movie Phantom Thread. Similar to the film, the soundtrack has an old-school vibe reminiscent of the 90s. Greenwood uses the dynamics of a large orchestra well. From percussive strings to the emotional violins and expressive cellos, the sound is impeccable. My favourite track off the soundtrack is the slow “Never Cursed.” The track manages to be atmospheric and express emotions just through the orchestra's performance. Watching the movie is not required to fully enjoy this soundtrack; the work stands on its own. This album is perfect for a stroll out in the countryside on a brisk day.

11 Trial Track: “Never Cursed”

8.2/10 — HUSSAIN ALMAHR, ASSISTANT MUSIC EDITOR

FOR EDITOR’S PICKS S THE BEST SONG WEEK RELEASED THIS

From left, Japandroids members Brian King and David Prowse. Photo courtesy of Japandroids.

Canadian duo Japandroids sound refreshed on their latest record CALVIN CASHEN MUSIC EDITOR

Recently Added

Recently Added 11 WORK Maxo Kream (TSO/Kream Clicc) 11 HOW SIMPLE Hop Along (Saddle Creek) 11 T N BISCUITS Slowthai (Bone Soda) 11 GOD’S PLAN Drake (OVO) 11 DISGRACED IN AMERICA Ought (Merge/Royal Mountain)

It had been five years since Canadian duo Japandroids graced the world with a new record, and fans of the heartland revival band were more than eager. After fusing classic rock bombast and punk urgency on their 2012 record, Celebration Rock, the band aimed for an even bigger, crisper sound on their latest album.

"We were pretty silent on social media,” said Japandroids drummer Brian King.

“People are like, 'Now that your hiatus is over, are you excited to be back?' and it’s like, what hiatus? We played 250 shows and then wrote and recorded a new album.”

Following that short break, the band released 2017’s Near to the Wild Heart of Life, a record that feels more polished, yet somehow contains the gratifying immediacy of their last album. Compromising that rawness may register as a cheap trade-off to some, but the record is just as successful in retaining the fast-paced, youthful energy of the band’s early work.

The Concordian spoke to King about his writing process with bandmate David Prowse, and how they found inspiration to release their first bit of material in five years.

Over the phone, King said the process as a whole was very overwhelming. “When you’ve spent the last four years working on an album, you’ve just got to go at your

own pace,” he said. “But once it’s finished and out of your hands, you try to make the most of it.”

Though daunting, this process wasn’t a new undertaking for Japandroids. “We went very quickly from being a local band to an internationally touring one,” King said.

“With each album, it just gets a little bigger each time.”

To a lot of people, it seemed like the Vancouver legends had vanished into thin air. And in indie rock, that can either make or break a career. “We weren't on social media updating a lot of the time. David was busy with his girlfriend, and I had met mine.

We've actually been very busy in that time,” King said. “We released the last record in 2012 and toured all throughout that year.

We toured almost all of the next year. When we got home at the end of it, we were just totally burnt out, both physically and mentally. It came to the point that, despite how much we love playing in the band, we just needed a break.”

According to King, the band hadn’t taken a serious break in five years. The initial recording sessions for the new album started after the band’s last tour. They took about six months off to detox before writing and putting new ideas to work. “It’s hard to lead a normal life when you’re in a band. After six months off, we both really started to miss it, and that's when we started writing again,” King said. “We probably spent about one

year writing and then recorded the whole thing by the end of 2015.”

Working with producer Peter Katis on the new record was a good move for the band, as he is well-known for his work with groups like The National and Interpol.

Mixing the record turned out to be a long and arduous process, but the end-result undoubtedly sounds more polished. And apparently, it’s more polished by design.

According to King, when the band started about 10 years ago, they aimed to replicate the raw and untutored sound of garage rock bands emerging from Vancouver at the time. “That’s the kind of band vibe we were going for,” he said. “That's the kind of record we wanted to make.”

The band achieved that vision on their sophomore record, Celebration Rock. “Of course, we could have just continued doing the same thing, which I know a lot of our fans would have liked,” King said. “We really like that record, but it didn’t interest us artistically anymore.”

With that in mind, it’s clear the band made a conscious effort to execute something different. The transition from self-recording to making a real studio album wasn't a matter of trying to sound more professional.

Those aspects became an afterthought. But considering how much better they sound in the studio, expect nothing but improvements from here. “It’s uncharted territory for us,” King said.

sports

SPORTS EDITOR /// sports@theconcordian.com NICHOLAS DI GIOVANNI ( @n_digiovanni)

WOMEN’S HOCKEY

A chance to become role models for young players Stingers signed autographs and took photos with fans on Minor Hockey Day

The Stingers women’s hockey team invited young players to join them on the ice after their game on Jan. 21. Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

MATTHEW COYTE ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

A young skater waits to join the Stingers on the ice during Minor Hockey Day. Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

The Concordia Stingers women’s hockey team held their annual Minor Hockey Day at the Ed Meagher Arena on Jan. 21. The team invited parents and kids, especially minor girls’ hockey players, to attend their game against the Carleton Ravens. The Stingers also invited all the kids in attendance to skate with the team after the game and get the players’ autographs.

The energy in the building was incredible, and the stands were packed full of young fans ready to watch the Stingers take on the Ravens.

While the Stingers won the game 4-1 off a two-goal effort from forward Marie-Pascale Bernier, the most popular moment of the night happened after the final buzzer. Many kids rushed down to the bench to strap on their skates and jumped on the ice with the players.

As young skaters of all levels got onto the ice, the Stingers were quick to skate over to a young player to sign autographs and take photos.

For head coach Julie Chu, it meant a lot to be part of the community in this active manner.

“We’re all here because we had great role models and people who got us into hockey,” Chu said. “When we can give our young players someone to look up to, someone to want to emulate, that’s huge. Having these players come out here and be engaged with these young skaters, whether they’re hockey fans or just young kids, that’s critical.”

Chu also helps coach several girls teams who practice at the Ed Meagher Arena, and she had several of her players at the game.

For many parents, this kind of community outreach is a way for their daughters to build a relationship with positive role models. Julie Tytler, one of those parents, said her daughter was excited to see her coach in action.

“It’s fantastic,” Tytler said. “It’s really great for [the players]. This shows kids that you can play until you’re an adult and have fun. [The Stingers] are out there smiling all the time.

They’re having a blast, and it’s great for kids to see that.”

For Bernier, getting involved in the community is important to the team. “When you’re younger, if you have more role models, that’s the way girls are going to have that desire to keep playing high-level hockey,” she said.

The men’s hockey team hosts Minor Hockey Night on Feb. 2, and the basketball teams host Minor Basketball Day on Feb. 3.

PRO SPORTS

The Concordian staff previews Super Bowl 52 Tom Brady and Bill Belichick aim for their sixth championship together on Feb. 4 The number-one teams in the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC) are set to battle in this year’s Super Bowl in Minneapolis, Minn. The New England Patriots will aim to win a second-straight Super Bowl, and their third in the last four years. Their only roadblock is the Philadelphia Eagles. The Concordian staff previews the big game.

What the Patriots need to do to win MATTHEW COYTE ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR The New England Patriots are back in the Super Bowl (shocker). After winning against the Tennessee Titans 34-14 without much difficulty, and then beating the Jacksonville Jaguars in a thrilling 24-20 AFC Championship game, the Patriots will look to capture the sixth title of quarterback Tom Brady and head coach Bill Belichick’s regime against the Philadelphia Eagles.

The Patriots have been able to systematically beat every challenge tossed at them. No receivers to start the year? No problem. Brady getting 12 stitches on his throwing hand prior to the AFC Championship? He threw for 290 yards.

No matter the score, it seems when the fourth quarter hits, the Patriots hit another gear. Even with tight end Rob Gronkowski possibly injured, the team is finally healthy after struggling with injuries early in the season. You do not want to play against a healthy Patriots

team. They also have the league’s best coach in Belichick. That doesn’t hurt.

The Eagles are a good team, but the Patriots are the Empire. Brady is Darth Vader, Belichick is the Emperor, but the Eagles are no Luke Skywalker. The Patriots will win as long as Brady doesn’t break both his arms and legs, and the reign of terror will continue.

What the Eagles need to do to win NICHOLAS DI GIOVANNI SPORTS EDITOR Eagles quarterback Nick Foles is not as bad as everyone thought. When their starter and potential MVP candidate Carson Wentz tore his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in week 14, nobody thought the Eagles had a chance.

However, Foles took over from Wentz and played as if nothing changed. In the two playoff games, he has a 77.8 per cent passing completion, and has thrown for nearly 600 yards with three touchdowns.

Not to mention Foles completely tore apart the Minnesota Vikings defence in the Eagles 38-7 win in the NFC Championship.

Wide receivers Alshon Jeffery and Nelson Agholor personify the Eagles chant, “Fly Eagles Fly,” as they look like they fly on the field. With talented running backs in LeGarrette Blount and Jay Ajayi, their offence is a two-headed monster that could do serious damage.

Even though their defence, led by defensive lineman Fletcher Cox, linebacker Mychal Kendricks and safety Malcolm Jenkins, is capable of stopping good offences, they won’t be able to stop Brady, the quarterback who can pick apart any defence. If the Eagles want to win, their offence will need to do most of the work.

Predictions ALEXANDER COLE MANAGING EDITOR Okay, well we all know that no matter how close a team gets to beating the Patriots, they will inevitably

choke and practically give the game away at the last minute. It happened at last year’s Super Bowl, so I’m convinced it will happen again.

Will this be any different? It won’t be.

The Patriots will start with the ball, and Brady and his injured throwing hand will struggle out of the gate. The Eagles, who have played solid defence all season, will take advantage of this.

After the first quarter, Foles will have made some nice throws, and will have thrown for a touchdown. The score: 10-0 Eagles.

Throughout the second quarter, the Patriots will continue to struggle, but so will the Eagles.

Neither team will really get many scoring opportunities, and the first half will end 13-7 for the Eagles.

In the third quarter, the Eagles will get a touchdown, and with a quarter to play, it’s 20-7 for Philadelphia.

Then to the dismay of literally every football fan ever, Brady will wake up with 10 minutes to go, and score two unanswered touchdowns, including one with a minute left to play. He wins his sixth Super Bowl, and I cry myself to sleep.

STAFF PREDICTIONS

Graphic by Zeze Le Lin.

Calvin Cashen: 26-21 Eagles Alexander Cole: 21-20 Patriots Matthew Coyte: 30-21 Patriots Nicholas Di Giovanni: 27-24 Eagles Orenzo Porporino: 24-17 Eagles Candice Pye: 26-21 Patriots Katya Teague: 21-20 Eagles

JANUARY 30, 2018

PROFILE

Fighting for the Olympic dream Stingers wrestler Jade Dufour is aiming to win a world title

theconcordian

15

COLOUR COMMENTARY

BY NICHOLAS DI GIOVANNI

On Feb. 4, an old, rich guy will be presented with a trophy he doesn’t deserve. And no, it’s not going to be grandpa Billy getting a prize for winning bingo night at his lavish retirement home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Instead, National Football League (NFL) commissioner Roger Goodell will hand the Vince Lombardi Trophy to either Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, or Jeffrey Lurie, the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, before the rest of the players receive it.

Jade Dufour said winning bronze at the 2016 World Junior Wrestling Championship has been her proudest moment as a Stinger.

Photo by Brianna Thicke.

MATTHEW COYTE ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR Most kids play soccer growing up. For Concordia Stingers wrestler Jade Dufour, that didn’t really cut it.

“My parents saw that I was kind of done with it, so they figured they had to find something else,” she said. “They looked into karate. Since then, I’ve always been involved in physical contact sports.”

From mixed martial arts (MMA) to Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Dufour’s parents wanted their children to learn how to defend themselves.

“Thank God, because I wouldn’t mess with me or my brother,” Dufour said. “I was already used to being hit and being put into awkward positions.”

Making that transition from MMA to wrestling did take some time for Dufour because of the varying techniques and rules. However, once she finally committed to wrestling in high school in Windsor, Ont., she fell in love.

Even though she loved the sport, she hadn’t considered the “Olympic dream” to be a possibility until grade 10, when she attended the Canada Summer Games in Sherbrooke, Que., and met Martine Dugrenier, a three-time world champion wrestler from Montreal. Dugrenier is now a coach with the Stingers.

“She had come down to Windsor to train with us, and a few of [my teammates] stayed at my house,” Dufour said. “Martine was in my room. This was right after she had competed at the Olympics in London. I was freaking out. She asked, ‘Hey do want to start wrestling at the next level?’ She thought I had potential so I should continue.”

Dufour competed in the 43-kilogram weight class and won gold at that 2013 Canada Summer Games.

When it came time to choosing a university, Dufour said she didn’t hesitate.

“Concordia had the program I liked, which is exercise science, but I loved the technicality of the wrestling club,” Dufour said.

She liked the individual attention that head coach Victor Zilberman put into their training.

Working on individual performances while still training as a collective team was something that separated Concordia from other programs she visited.

As an exercise science student, Dufour said she feels like she has used her Jade Dufour didn't have an Olympic dream until grade knowledge in the classroom 10, and now that's her goal. Photo by Alex Hutchins. and has been able to translate it to her work on the mat. Her interest in the be competing at the National Championship topic really began when she fractured her in Montreal. ankle in high school. Dufour went through At the senior level, there are no beginners. her physiotherapy rehab, and thought Every athlete wants to make it to the Olympics, healing a body was interesting. She then and every athlete is competing for a spot on enrolled in a kinesiology class in her senior the national team. year of high school.

“Hopefully I’ll do well in my first senior “I can relate to this so much because I year,” Dufour said. “To make the Canadian am an athlete,” the third-year Stinger said. national team against all of the kids who have “I feel like I know what’s happening to been wrestling for 16 plus years, it would be my body better. I understand how to something else. I’ve been on the world team cope and prevent injuries myself. The at the junior level quite a few times.” two go together nicely.”

To make the senior roster and join Stingers Looking back on three years with the teammate Laurence Beauregard, Dufour Stingers wrestling team, she counts winning needs to make a smooth transition from bronze at the 2016 World Junior Wrestling the junior division to senior. Doing so would Championship in Macon, France, as one of require her to refine the technical elements her proudest moments. Not because of the of her game. In the 48-kilogram division she medal, but because of how she feels she usually competes in, Dufour is almost always responded to adversity after losing her first one of the smaller competitors. match of the tournament.

“I’m wrestling people who are bigger and “I had to do a 360-degree turn in my stronger, but if I put all the effort in, correct my attitude,” Dufour said. “Getting over that mistakes and basically give it my all, [I could] loss and the fact that I was able to get become a successful senior athlete and not myself prepared and in that zone—I didn’t just a kid who was good at the junior [level],” know if I was going to be able to wrestle. It she said, adding: “I want that Olympic dream.” happened, you can’t go back and change Dufour talked about what she needs to it, and to be honest, I wouldn’t change it.” practice this season, including attention to Even though this is her third season detail and total focus during her training. “I’m with the Stingers, outside of school, this going to try my [hardest] to make the team,” is Dufour’s first season wrestling in the she said. “However, I still have work to do. senior division against other wrestlers from I’m not just aiming for a national title; I’m across the country. In March, Dufour will aiming for a world title.”

So let’s get this straight. The owner of the winning team in the Super Bowl will get the trophy first? Yes, the man in the nice suit with a pretty face and a bloated bank account will get the trophy before his players.

Those players risk their lives every time they step onto the field, put their bodies through intense pressure all season and have little job security. Of course the rich man will get the trophy before them.

I get a bit disappointed every time I watch a trophy presentation in North American sports leagues. In Major League Baseball (MLB), Major League Soccer (MLS) and the National Basketball Association (NBA), owners receive the championship trophies before their players do.

The Super Bowl trophy presentation is probably the most frustrating to watch. The owner, the commissioner, some other important people within the league and winning team, as well as maybe one or two players are up on a stage with the trophy.

The rest of the team, including trainers, equipment managers and everybody who helped the team win, are down below on the field.

The NFL is basically treating the players as second-class citizens compared to the men in suits.

They’re literally below them. How is this acceptable?

For me, as a hockey fan, this is not normal. In the National Hockey League (NHL), commissioner Gary Bettman presents the captain with the Stanley Cup on the ice. There is no stage or anything fancy like in other leagues. Then everybody— from the players to the people in the background of the organization—gets a chance to hoist the Stanley Cup above their head. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be—the people who worked hard for the trophy get to lift it?

It’s time for people to realize how stupid it looks for an owner to receive a trophy while his players, the ones who earned the trophy and sacrificed so much, watch from below.

feature

PROFILE

Piecing together fragments of history

Colleen Gray has been teaching part-time at Concordia since 2006. Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

Colleen Gray brings her experience as an editor, writer and poet to the classroom

Colleen Gray was flipping through books at the St-Sulpice Library, searching for a topic for her PhD thesis, when “this person’s voice just jumped out of the book and grabbed me.” It was the voice of Marie Barbier, a teaching nun from the Congrégation de Notre-Dame who lived in Montreal between 1663 and 1739. “I had this feeling I was going to write about this woman,” Gray recounted. “I felt that her voice needed to be heard by other people.”

The book in which Gray first discovered Barbier’s voice was actually written by a male priest who had collected the nun’s writings, inserted them among his own depiction of her story and then thrown away the originals. As with so many marginalized voices in history, what remained of Barbier’s work was fragmented and corrupted.

“That's what happened to women in history.

It's your classic paradigm of how we've lost our voices in history,” Gray explained.

When Gray began studying history at the undergraduate level in the 70s, it was not only the women in history who were being marginalized; little space was provided for the women seeking to study it. This was one of several factors that stopped Gray from pursuing a master’s degree at the time.

She also saw that the field of history was moving away from a narrative discourse and focussing more on quantitative analysis. As a writer and a long-time poet, it was a shift

Gray wasn’t willing to make. “That was just a little bit over the edge for me,” she said. “So I thought, ‘Well it's time for me to step outside of that area.’”

Over the next two decades or so, Gray traveled and taught English as a second language; she edited manuscripts, had children and worked for the Science Council of Canada. In the early 90s, however, something began to change.

“I started to feel like time was running out, and if I wanted to really do something in academia and poetry, I had to do it now,” Gray said. Even her poetry, which she had continued to write and publish over the years, focused on historical themes in Montreal and seemed to demand the footnotes that characterize scholarly writing.

When she returned to university to complete her master’s, Gray was surprised to find that, not only had narrative history made a comeback, but women had also taken centre stage in her field.

“I came back at just the right time,” she said. “The beginning of my PhD was a wonderful adventure, a wonderful exploration in women and women's voices and women's archives. It was just such a liberation for me to be able to do that and do that with integrity without hiding it.”

A few years after she completed her PhD at McGill University in 2004, Gray decided it was time to rescue Barbier’s voice as best she could. The process involved transcribing, translating and annotating the nun’s writings to give them context. Compiled in the latter

half of Gray’s book, As a Bird Flies, Barbier’s “It's corrupted, but the fact remains—and this writings tell their own story. For the last three is something that is difficult to prove—you years, Gray has been writing a biographical can hear her voice.” introduction for the book—an endeavour that Part of the challenge has also been has grown from an anticipated 10 pages to striking a balance between historical nearly 100. accuracy and an engaging narrative. “It's “It wouldn't have gotten bigger if I hadn't the hardest thing I've ever had to do,” seen, as I was doing it, ... how much more Gray said with a laugh. “I just reach a point real she became and how much more we where I can't do it anymore, and I have to could understand her life if it was presented do something else.” this way,” Gray explained.

For Gray, there is always something else Yet a comparison can be made between to do because the trajectory of her career has the priest’s appropriation of Barbier’s work and allowed her to remain “diversified,” as she put the way Gray is presenting the nun’s writings. it. Although completing her master’s and PhD In fact, it was a realization that slowed down the progress of As a Bird Flies. “I was very . e Lin judgmental with what he had done ze L e Z when I started the project, but by ic h p as the journey advanced, I ra realized that I have no right to judge him because that's what I'm doing,” Gray said.

The difference, Gray explained, is that she has preserved the integrity of Barbier’s writings in the second half of her book for people to read and interpret on their own. “I didn't throw her writings away, and I tried to be as true as possible to the original source as I encountered it,” she said.

G

KATYA TEAGUE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

JANUARY 30, 2018

later in life didn’t make her an ideal candidate for tenure, Gray said that path “wasn’t in the cards” for her anyway. Instead, she has worked as a part-time professor at Concordia since 2006, and also taught at Queen’s, McGill and Nipissing University in North Bay, Ont. Most of the courses she teaches—including her pre-civil war American history class at Concordia this semester—are what she refers to as “survey courses.” Typically assigned to part-time professors, these classes take a broad look at long periods of history and have allowed Gray to diversify her own expertise.

“Now, I'm no longer this 17th century PhD specialist,” she explained. “I have really a broad, expansive understanding of North American history—both American and Canadian perspectives—and history from women, from natives, from different ethnic groups.”

Unfortunately, cutbacks in education in general have significantly reduced the number of courses available to part-time faculty in the history department, Gray said. The last course she taught was in 2016. While her freelance writing and editing offer her other sources of income, “it's very difficult to rely on being a part-time faculty member,” she admitted.

“It's inconsistent and it's insecure, but it has its advantages too.”

Gray said she enjoys being able to teach and still have time to work on her poetry and her freelance writing and editing. “You get to develop yourself outside of that box,” she said.

It is this ongoing personal and professional development that can make part-time faculty members a unique asset to students.

“Many of us are not mainstream academics,” Gray said. “I have one side of me that is, but I'm a poet, I'm an editor. I have a lot of these different dimensions that I do bring to the classroom.”

She added that she feels her “roundabout journey” to the academic world is a valuable life experience she can share with her students.

“When they come to me for help with their essays, you can't help but talk to them about what they're going to do and what they want to do and if they feel they should be doing history,” she explained. What Gray said she hopes students can learn from her experience is to see the bigger picture.

“It looks so difficult when you're young. It seems so narrow, and there don't seem to be any openings,” she said. “Maybe at the moment [history] is not for you, but that doesn't mean 10 years down the line it's not going to be. ...

People change directions all the time, and it's

17

“A writer is a writer from day one, and how it develops is the journey,” - Colleen Gray

Colleen Gray reads an excerpt from her book, No Ordinary School, at The Study in 2015. Photo courtesy of Colleen Gray.

not looked down upon.”

Although these interactions allow Gray to mentor students to a certain degree, she said part-time professors are limited in the work they can do with students outside of the classroom. In particular, she said the fact that part-time faculty are not allowed to supervise a master’s or PhD thesis is “a huge restriction” for her.

“I feel I am very qualified to do so, and I feel stifled by that [restriction],” she said. “It's understandable, because I'm not working sometimes, but so what? I would continue to supervise somebody's work even if I wasn't teaching just because I'm interested in it.”

For Gray, being interested in the subjects she engages with is a driving force for her work. “Writing is always a headache,” she said. “But it can be so invigorating as well, if you get the right project.”

This was the case for a book Gray wrote in 2015 as part of the centennial celebrations of The Study, a Montreal private school. “It was like the Marie Barbier project,” Gray said.

“It jumped out at me that I wanted to do this project.”

The result, No Ordinary School: The Study, 1915-2015, “was a two-year, huge, under-the-gun project,” Gray recounted. The process involved sifting through old student newspapers and the school’s archives, as well as speaking with former students, teachers

c o l l e e n g r ay

No Ordinary School The Study 1915–2015

theconcordian

and headmistresses.

“There were 90-year-old women with wonderful memories, and they could give me the history of their school and what it was like during World War II,” Gray said. “One person could even go back as far as the 1920s.”

Part of what kept Gray engaged as she rushed to meet her deadline was the connection she felt to the women she was writing about.

“It was almost like reliving my girlhood as a privileged private school girl,” she said with a laugh. While some people may have perceived these students as snobbish, upper-class girls,

Gray didn’t approach it that way.

“I saw it as having a wonderful girlhood where you had the best education that was available for women at that time,” she explained.

“I looked at it from a different angle, and stepped into those shoes.”

For Gray, being able to put herself in her subjects’ shoes and immerse herself in the material is crucial. “I wouldn't take up a project unless I could do that, because it's fun,” she said. “If it's a project where you don't want to put yourself into it like that, then that's for somebody else to do; it's not for me.”

At the age of 10, Colleen Gray discovered poetry. It was the spark for her career as a writer. “[Poetry] is something I've always had, that I've always done,” she said.

Gray’s poems have appeared in literary journals such as The Canadian Forum, Zymergy and Fiddlehead, and she has performed her work at venues like the Yellow Door.

Consolidating her interests in history and poetry did not come naturally to Gray at first. “It took me a while to see the two of them merge,” she said. Although Gray has experimented with confessional and political poetry, historical topics often become the focus of her poems. “It's not strictly history—it's interpretive history,” she explained. “[The facts] are still there, but you can play with them a little bit more.”

Atironta, ca. 1650

1

(I am Atironta, son of mighty warriors) ... and in the silence of the night I pray to you my Holy Mother, Blessed Virgin my lighted candle flickers in wind howling through the bark of our longhouse and beyond the forests, above the pine trees rushing into the mist of a thousand cataracts I follow the wind to our home Huron Land (Holy Mother, Blessed Virgin, save us) ... our dead are strewn beneath the earth their groans echo in my prayers —

you have not released our souls to our Villages of the Dead

Atironta, mighty warrior

1. Loosely based on a historical person, Pierre Atironta, survivor of the dispersal of the Hurons by the Iroquois in the late 1640s, appearing in Reuben Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (Cleveland: The Burrows Brothers Company).

Published in Matrix: Writing Worth Reading 32 (Fall 1990): 37.

This article is part of a series of profiles on part-time faculty at Concordia. Our goal is to highlight some of the incredible work these professors do, while also shedding light on the difference in treatment between being part-time versus full-time faculty. This series came to life with the help of Laurie Milner, the chair of communications for the Concordia University Part-time Faculty Association (CUPFA), and Lorraine Oades, the vice-president of professional development at CUPFA.

opinions OPINIONS EDITOR /// opinions@theconcordian.com SANIA MALIK

Focusing on the problems in front of us We’ve all heard the comments about Canada being a safe haven for Americans.

We’ve seen Americans flee their country after electing President Donald Trump to avoid the heated political climate or deportation. Given our close proximity, comparisons are continuously made between the United States and Canada in terms of our politics, economy, healthcare, news industry and even entertainment. In most cases these days, Canada seems to come out on top.

Statistically speaking, Canada seems better than the United States on many fronts. According to Maclean’s, Canadians live 2.5 years longer than Americans; we’re also six times less likely to be incarcerated. In the United States, 46 per cent of the population obtains a college degree, whereas 59 per cent of Canadians have one.

The World Economic Forum ranks Canadians as the sixth happiest people in the world, whereas Americans rank 13th. The Cato Institute’s Human Freedom Index claims Canadians to be the sixth

freest people in the world, and Americans are 23rd—even though they boast being the “land of the free.”

When considering these factors, it’s hard not to argue that Canadians are living a better life than their southern neighbours. Yet this mentality can often result in Canada’s problems—of which there are many—being taken less seriously or even ignored.

Take Indigenous issues for example.

Canadians and Americans alike closely followed coverage of the Standing Rock protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which threatened Indigenous land and water supplies. Yet when was the last time we checked up on the progress of Canada’s national public inquiry into the murders and disappearances of Indigenous women and girls?

How often do we read news stories about the numerous Indigenous communities in Canada living without access to clean drinking water, adequate healthcare or accessible education?

Similarly, from the Ferguson riots in 2014 to the recent comments made by

President Donald Trump about “shithole” countries, news stories about racism seem to pour out of the United States, diluting any incidents happening here in Canada. This does not mean the treatment of marginalized groups in our country is any better.

As journalist Desmond Cole once said, “People in Canada generally will do anything to avoid talking about race.” But we need to talk about the fact that, between 2005 and 2015, the number of black inmates in Canadian prisons jumped by 69 per cent, according to The Guardian . In Toronto, 41 per cent of youth in the child welfare services are black, despite representing only eight per cent of the city's youth population.

In 2015, Canadian police recorded 159 hate crimes against Muslims, according to Global News. This was up from 45 in 2012—a 253 per cent increase.

So while Canada may seem better than the United States by comparison, that in no way absolves us of our many shortcomings as a progressive society.

We must peel our eyes away from the

car crash on the other side of the border, and focus on the road in front of us. We are so caught up in what’s happening on the other side of the highway that we’re creating traffic in our own lane.

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth.

JOBS

Why it's time to ditch your 'dead-trend' job Certain ‘jobs’ should be left behind in order to pursue more meaningful work ARASH SHARMA CONTRIBUTOR From off-the-cuff table talk to buttoned-down meet and greets, employees of all collars usually ask: Where do you work? Rarely, if ever, do you hear: What’s your job? The answer is simple—nobody dares to leave a bad impression.

We perceive this risk because ‘job’ doesn’t have the most exemplary connotation in our vernacular. In my opinion, a job is something we must endure for 40-plus hours a week to earn some pay.

Gradually, this became the norm, and an onslaught of punch-in-punch-out jobs erupted—although that may not be the case today.

This issue is all but simple. There are dead-end jobs, and there are “dead-trend jobs.” The latter, I believe, are lifeless from the start. Dead-end jobs are jeopardized by disruptive innovation, whereas deadtrend jobs temporarily pop in and out of the market.

At least with dead-end jobs, purpose is a matter of perspective. Take the story of the three labourers found smashing boulders with iron hammers. When asked what they were doing, the first one replied, “Breaking big rocks into smaller rocks.”

The second said, “Feeding my family.”

The last one said, “Building a cathedral,” which was in reference to the Cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris, the capstone of which was laid in 1345—182 years after the initial work began.

This means the first generation of

labourers may have spent every waking moment breaking rocks and, in turn, their backs. For posterity’s sake, the third labourer left no stone unturned. He was driven by the day his grandchildren would revel in the artistry of the cathedral, which would stand tall and proud for decades to come.

In my view, the same cannot be said of dead-trend jobs. With dead-trend jobs such as “chief visionary officer,” “influencer" and “brand warrior,” employees in our post-industrial economy are swinging their iron hammers into thin air.

Globally, a growing number of workers believe their jobs are pointless. In a 2013 survey of 12,000 professionals by the Harvard Business Review, nearly a half claimed their job had no "meaningful significance.” In fact, the same number of workers admitted they could not relate to the company’s mission.

Another poll, conducted by Gallup, the Washington, D.C. based polling organization, showed that of 230,000 employees across 142 nations, only 13 per cent of workers actually liked their job. A 2015 poll conducted by the market research company YouGov showed that 37 per cent of British respondents thought their jobs were invariably futile.

I believe this futility emerged out of a systematic failure of how jobs have been conceived. It’s little wonder that “job” was originally ascribed to demeaning wage work during the industrialization of 18th century England. Driven from their traditional work on the land and in crafts, these labourers were reduced to cogs in

a lean, mean, profit-maximizing machine.

For a century, these cogs were kept churning by economist Adam Smith’s tenet that people were naturally lazy and worked only for pay, according to The Atlantic.

Smith’s “division of labour” concept meant that workers would perform repetitive tasks while being responsible for a small contribution of the product. Unlike craftsman of the past, several labourers working this systemized line increased efficiency, as described in the International Encyclopedia of Ergonomics and Human Factors.

As such, I believe manufacturing systems became less reliant on meticulous skill and attention—competencies that otherwise wage-hungry labourers lacked altogether. Ever since then, work has been cast down as a mere money-making, GDP-generating, chore-like exertion.

The remnants of this histor y continues to shape our working lives. Take, for example, the teacher who aspires to educate young students, but realizes that only scores on standardized tests matter. Take the financial advisor who seeks to counsel sensible advice, yet recommends riskier investments to meet commission quotas. You won’t find any shortage of these examples in our labour force.

Nevertheless, there’s good reason to be optimistic. Researchers and managers of international corporations have shifted their focus to meaningful work. Recently, Globoforce and IBM released their most recent report based on a global survey of 22,000 workers. Findings showed that out of the six human workplace practices examined, meaningful work topped the list.

Meaningful work contributed the most to employees’ positive workplace experiences.

We shouldn’t try to continue “dead-trend” jobs. There’s no possibility of advancement from these jobs, nor can any level of technology save them. Let’s bury the dead for good.

All views are my own and not that of my employer.

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth.

theconcordian

JANUARY 30, 2018

19

SEXUAL ASSAULT

Aziz Ansari, welcome to the conversation The time has come to speak out, listen and change the discussion CALLIE GIACCONE STAFF WRITER When I f irst read the allegations about Aziz Ansari, I was extremely disappointed. He was supposed to a good guy. A feminist. A social activist.

An underdog. Yet, there he was being aggressive, inappropriate and supposedly unaware of his actions.

The allegations were written in an article titled, “I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life,” published on the website Babe on Jan. 14. After seeing Ansari with a “Time’s Up” pin at the Golden Globes, a writer using the pseudonym “Grace” was set off. She recounted a date with Ansari after meeting him at the Emmys in 2017. She wrote about how abruptly Ansari wanted to have intercourse, and how he continuously put her hands on his genitals even after she removed them.

In her story, Grace claimed Ansari ignored her “verbal and non-verbal cues” indicating how uncomfortable she was during their time together at his home.

Grace wrote that she still felt pressure to perform oral sex and allowed the unbearable experience to continue.

It would be naive to retrospectively say she should have just said no and left, because the pressures Grace faced are far more hidden, insidious and complex than they appear on the surface. This situation has brought up a discussion about consent, a long overdue discussion

that has exploded in our society.

To me, what Grace described is a situation that lacked consent and empathy.

However, this Ansari incident is so much bigger than the technicalities of sex being consensual or not. I believe arguing about consent in this situation should not be the focus, as it is clear Grace was feeling extremely uncomfortable, based on her recollection of the experience. We should be focusing on how to communicate during sexual encounters and how to encourage women to advocate for themselves in these situations.

Through my observations, I’ve noticed there was a great deal of hesitation to label this incident as sexual assault, by both men and women. To many, this situation may be all too familiar. This may be too close to home for women as it forces them to re-label personal experiences they thought of as just bad sex.

Similarly, men may hesitate to reconcile their approach and actions—they might not understand that their actions have made women uncomfortable. Others have pushed back because of a perceived dilution of what assault really looks like.

I’ve realized the movements #MeToo and Time's Up may be more complicated than I originally anticipated.

In my opinion, issues with consent and sexual assault begin because of the hypersexualization of women in society.

From a young age, men and women are taught to treat the female body like a sexual object. Men are taught about the

"chase" and winning girls over with effort and perseverance. In media, women are often shown as unsure in their sexual encounters, and it’s supposedly the men’s job to change their minds. Porn, social media, advertisement, music videos and countless other media perpetuate this narrative.

Although sexual assault is a multi-layered, systematic issue, I think the media presence and the culture surrounding sex has acted as a catalyst for non-consensual relationships. We need to start thinking critically about how we can improve communication between men and women during sex. If we do not also examine the male perspective of the Ansari

issue, and of s e x ual a s s ault in general, we won’t be able to affect complete change.

For the first time in history, we are listening to and believing women about sexual assault allegations. It’s revolutionary, and it needs to continue. But I strongly believe we must include men in this conversation too. Not just by calling them out, but by making them understand their actions. Without trying to understand the complexities on both sides, we risk staying stagnant during this discussion and progress.

What Ansari did was bad. What others did was worse, and all of this is much too common, even among the “good guys” in our society. This is an opportunity unlike any we’ve had before. Not only are we calling men out, we are calling them in.

Welcome to the conversation.

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth.

INTERNET

Tide Pods: From laundry to brainwashing Social media challenges highlight a deeper issue within today’s meme culture THIBAULT BEUDIN CONTRIBUTOR Over the last three weeks, a new challenge has emerged on social media called the “Tide Pod Challenge.” It quickly became a meme online, as many people made jokes about eating the colourful detergent packets. Despite the danger and the laundry brand telling people not to eat the pods, many people—mostly teenagers—continue to videotape themselves eating Tide Pods.

The first time I heard about a challenge on social media was the 2014 Ice Bucket Challenge, and it was for a good cause.

Since then, many new dares have emerged on the internet, and in my opinion, many of them are stupid. With the Tide Pod Challenge specifically, teenagers record themselves biting into the packets in order to gain views, recognition and popularity on social media.

You’re probably reading this thinking the same thing as me: this challenge is just stupid and dangerous. People are ingesting toxins by intentionally eating Tide Pods. In 2017, before the challenge even began, more than 10,500 children under the age of five and 220 teens were exposed to Tide Pods, and about 25 per cent of those cases were intentional, according to the Washington Post.

P e r h a p s we c a n understand why very young children might b e at t r ac te d to t h e colour and the pleasant smell of T ide Pods , but I for one cannot understand why a

teenager—who can make reasonable choices—is compelled to do the same.

So why are they doing this? I believe I might have an answer.

Recently, our society has entered an era characterised by social media and meme culture. This facet of culture has been defined by Richard Dawkins, in his book The Selfish Gene, as “an element of a culture or system of behaviour that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means, especially imitation.” In today’s culture, memes and social media are the diffusers of ideas within the online world, and they are limitless. Anyone can f ind anything on any subject online. It is a beautiful and useful tool, or a dangerous one—especially for people who are easily influenced, such as teenagers.

The problem is that, in our era of social media, the border between public and private life is slowly being erased.

Every time we log on to a social media platform, such as Instagram or Facebook, we see people sharing idealistic pictures and videos of their everyday lives.

Even if most social media users understand that these perfect images do not reflect real life, I believe many teenagers can be influenced by these

people, which lead them to constantly pursue views, likes and perfection online.

These teenagers, therefore, will f o l l ow a t re n d n o t b e c a u s e i t i s something they think is valuable and useful, but because they think it is the first step to celebrity and popularity.

However, reality often catches up to them, but perhaps too late, when their lives are endangered. They hope to become celebrities, but often become known on a small scale, limited to their neighbourhood news or the emergency medical services.

Fortunately, Tide has quickly reacted to the challenge by creating advertisements that show the dangerous effects of eating their products. Yet it doesn’t seem to be enough as more intentional cases of Tide Pod ingestion are reported every day (already 39 since the beginning of the year, 91 per cent of which were intentional), according to the Washington Post.

I believe social media perpetuates meme culture, and teenagers in this culture suffer potential brainwashing from online trends. Unfortunately, most teenagers today cannot be themselves without thinking about what they have to do in order to be liked and loved in their virtual community.

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth.

20 theconcordian

JANUARY 30, 2018

20

MENTAL HEALTH

the con cor dia n

Neurological disorders and education FE

BR

UA R

Y

7, 2 017 it A student’s realization that help is offered at Concordia for those who need

ANISA SCEGO STAFF WRITER

University is a wonderful experience that allows you to grow mentally and emotionally. However, if you are living with a neurological condition, your time spent in higher education may be muddled by the difficulties of coping with your disability.

A 2017 Statistics Canada report shows that 31 per cent of Canadians aged 25 to 64 without disabilities have a university degree at the bachelor’s level or higher.

In comparison, less than 16 per cent of people with a physical or mental disability between those ages have a university degree. The report also indicates that “the percentage with a university degree decreased as the severity of the disability increased."

These statistics baffle me. I believe every individual has the capacity to succeed, given the proper resources. These figures make me wonder if Canadian universities, including Concordia, offer the proper resources for students with such conditions to reach their full potential.

This year, I learned about a neurological disorder I had never heard of: dysorthographia. My friend, Audrey Lamontagne, a first-year Concordia student in the Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) program, is affected by this condition. I asked her to speak candidly about how ED it impacts her learning and if she CRI ITORST IN e has benefitted from any resources ditor@INA SA-CHIE the N F co ZA at Concordia. nc MA ord ian G R N AG .co First, I wanted to know what mdysortEG IN m G O ana R E Y DI gin T hographia was in Lamontagne’s words.

T g@ OD OR

Vis it

PHOTO ASSISTANT ALEX HUTCHINS

ASSISTANT ARTS EDITOR MAGGIE HOPE

OPINIONS EDITOR DAVID EASEY opinions@theconcordian.com

LIFE EDITOR DANIELLE GASHER life@theconcordian.com

rs .

ppr ox i ma rd i te an. co m ly 3 h ou “Black His Graphic b OUR CO

O

VOL. 34, FEB. 7, 2

Concordi weekly, i student

hic

ASSISTANT OPINIONS EDITOR SANIA MALIK

ASSISTANT LIFE EDITOR MINA MAZUMDER

FOLLOW

UR

PHOTO EDITOR ANA HERNANDEZ photo@theconcordian.com

COME TO STORY M THE LOY CC-431 F 12 P.M.

ap

The Concordian’s team ER .com R ian O rd IT ED FE R LI DE T M U AZ

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF CRISTINA SANZA editor@theconcordian.com

ARTS EDITOR TIFFANY LAFLEUR arts@theconcordian.com

CONTRIBUTORS Elisa Barbier, Qasim Warraich, Romina Florencia Arrieta, Phoebe Fregoli, Nathan Leblanc, Hussain Almahr, Alicia Ardelli, Jeffrey Muntu.

Gr

MANAGING EDITOR GREGORY TODARO managing@theconcordian.com

IO om SA eco EGO ia Jx ASS nco LYAS in le EN FA FOR KN S N st y A rdia VÁ EM ISTAN Gra O RRO EEOUTA ISTA n.co ale b ILY phic NT T WW AT USN m US “ P h ot o S V I D MU S by R Pau P N G W PH U N M IC E P AL EOW line O O I L S DIT Sou A T SALV ALE TO A E C AT me OR S O AN EETDOITO E S t.

P X A F S Y OR NE HU ISTA T A LLYOMNRAY CM YORLS IDA .

T S N L CH EXA ED T IT new C SÉO ORA R I IT D N s N p s@ ST REALN 1 FIG S ort DE OR .E GR the H 4D 3 s E R @ A O. T TconC- M the COL ASS FLO PHIC co . UR- RI con W ASS WMA cor E ME ISTAN C 12 Prdian.c. A gra RENC S EDIT R ce e St. JAM6ISTAN dian H phic O E CH GAN H T NEW ITC om T .com k R s@ YEE R LÖE offi roo 431 B 1 ES KI SPO UN S EP the l Co E R G a 4 T DIT b con RA i RA n ER O .com RANA NS TS ED ORitor her CC C H 4 cor TH PHIC we cordia ITO LDI dian AG RL IN ian d S 1 S g , Q 42 O e E A N M R n .com stu kly, in Unive A PO IForEd E 14 ildi eal OP BEL SSIST -2IN 7 8 M r den c D D d L AN ITO ER S OR onAN ES Bu ont 8D4A 9 ION NT t ne epen rsity’s I T S I G c A R P E R E SE d HE ws M 14o) 49VID VO ST S helife@ LLNEAG O UI com N A pap ent SI IN the A INA Q n.

SI ZO @t (5 t.p7inio EASE DITO K A D CO m NO L. 34, er R ns@ Mco R S AS CH Y INH ia BU REN ess A TYA ex PY R V. 2 ISS .co the SSIS ING POncNoGrd corEdR n n i E TO HUT T O O A U s D a 9 E SSIS con O , 20 E 14 AG ITO IT u MIN TISTANOR ISI onian.co di C b H r c D X U O O T S R o 1 P LE E m S E E o 6 AN ANT rdia UR RA M P TRTL hec S YE onc K A PY E D R IA M O n.co CO A tE T VE ZOAVZEU IF BU IC T N VER m @ EDIT CTO E ALI PINIO H CE hec S REB ERIN ITORS AD REN AD ingM M DE “Pa TA K OR INES THIS A NS m AP EN @t R IREORAM IS O R rtis S VAL ECCA GAN ED Pho lestinia .co PH WE SS GR OR ics D FL bus ENZO MAN IT n G FO ve E L A h L O R a EK t U F O n cop ines ob A P F ap R R O LA IN IC di AN TO E ad IC L y A Day” y@ IA CO GER s@ ORPO GER O H EL gr A D IE EB EV cor lex the R the IT pho HER DITOR FO AP M B R Hut con I-MA con RINO AR L R C on to@ NA ED E LLO O O THA B SE OVA ec NN cor c c A GR O Y o h O N B IT D h r in t WU I dian OC P U dian hec DE t A V s.

CO TH N C O S K s@ OR ERTIS SO .com HIO onc Z .com CO CH C O AG Mo NTRIB N ord O JA ILO tor D TE RS G FO ENZO ING M N m n S TO M E TO ian.c O N M rec  R EA A Bar ica La UTOR IT GA ER AN .co om H ATY adv ADV PORP ANA bie T H RY M O U R u, D S di is a ED A UG I-M ian G l e T O r E E E K , W r e o E R E t E R A L Y N rli m isin R EEK OY m T , CC P RI A L OR ord g@ TISING INO Ma er, Ro mbre S inick O IN yk a , .co R R t the CO ATE CC A C onc 12 P 431 F LA C G AT LY u c a n n et a o, O O OLE dian Jeff thew mina F achet Lucyk, con INQU .M. RID AMP IT K EBE RI hec BO k L Ky rri ud ,K C r cor rey Coy lo E AY A ED R ALE @t R nco RS nic t, A na dian IRIES Mu te, A rencia yann lisa AT US NA RD O S P O mi che ncia Ra y o a n I T V .c T T T b t c p o a e CH u. om ega Arrie R il U JAC HALI F DIR co he O .W il R I B , D e S lo r g a RIT an a t a , SP S MIL OB SE E LAF ECTO T R au b r F b e T AN E. E u do L N c a L A m in a e, A , DIT dire OS KO REBI AMM RS Edit AN ER m CO oni ier, om oyt . .

E cto oria ST KI VAC N R C tu co R R . b 7 , M r S 141 l offi s@ EVI E ar lier ew un TO ian TO I t S I B h d c M h B r C eco h uild erbr e or ED ED Y Te att ey M n c in o c S S Mo ord g C oke M ffr N N SE con n ia C S t e n O I .com (514 real, - 43 t. W IO A e J N N E th PI PI D @ ext ) 848 QC H 1 O O AVI ons 4 . 74 T IK 99 2424 B 1R6 D ini AN AL op om ST M c I .

R E Z an S IA S O i A N IT ND rd SA ED NA nco TO R co O HE the PH NA o@ A ot ph

BUSINESS MANAGER ORENZO PORPORINO business@theconcordian.com

GRAPHICS EDITOR FLORENCE YEE graphics@theconcordian.com

MUSIC EDITOR SANDRA HERCEGOVÁ music@theconcordian.com

PITCH. W

eS

PRODUCTION MANAGER PAULINE SOUMET production@theconcordian.com

GRAPHIC ASSISTANT THOM BELL

ASSISTANT MUSIC EDITOR EMILY VIDAL

lin

PRODUCTION ASSISTANT PARISA FOROUTAN

ADVERTISING MANAGER ORENZO PORPORINO FOR ADVERTISING INQUIRIES advertising@theconcordian.com

HEAD COPY EDITOR KATYA TEAGUE

SPORTS EDITOR ALEXANDER COLE sports@theconcordian.com

Editorial o 7141 Sherb Building C Montreal, (514) 848ext. 7499

u Pa by

NEWS EDITORS SAVANNA CRAIG NELLY SÉRANDOUR-AMAR news@theconcordian.com

BOARD OF DIRECTORS NATHALIE LAFLAMME JACOB SEREBIN MILOS KOVACEVIC DAVID EASEY directors@theconcordian.com

n’s

ASSISTANT NEWS EDITORS MEGAN HUNT CHLÖE RANALDI

ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR NICHOLAS DI GIOVANNI

COPY EDITORS KATERINA GANG REBECCA LUGER VALERIA CORI-MANOCCHIO copy@theconcordian.com

.

.

et

umet

m ou

e So

ia n ’s te am

Paulin

am te

c by

nco

hi Grap

VOL. 34, ISSUE 14 NOV. 29, 2016

Concordia University’s weekly, independent student newspaper

OUR COVER THIS WEEK

FOLLOW US ON  

“Palestinian Day” Photo by Alex Hutchins.

VALERIA CORI-MANOCCHIO COPY EDITORS KATERINA GANG KYLEE ROSS REBECCA LUGER copy@theconcordian.com

MILOS KOVACEVIC DAVID EASEY GREGORY TODARO directors@theconcordian.com

Editorial office 7141 Sherbrooke St. W Building CC - 431 Montreal, QC H4B 1R6 (514) 848-2424 ext. 7499

Lin.

We are hiring a distributor for The Concordian

iso de !

am s te ian’

eco

ep

rd nco

• Access to a car is an asset

onc ord

Co The

BUSINESS MANAGER ORENZO PORPORINO business@theconcordian.com

PITCH. WRITE. EDIT.

COME TO OUR WEEKLY STORY MEETING AT THE LOYOLA CAMPUS CC-431 FRIDAY AT 12 P.M.

> Paid position. Must be available Tuesday mornings for approximately 3 hours. > Interested applicants should email managing@theconcordian.com

THOM BELL

HEAD COPY EDITOR KATYA TEAGUE

The Concordian’s team

ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR JAMES KIERANS

SPORTS EDITOR ALEXANDER COLE sports@theconcordian.com

ADVERTISING MANAGER ORENZO PORPORINO FOR ADVERTISING INQUIRIES advertising@theconcordian.com

ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR MATTHEW COYTE

MANAGING EDITOR R O EDIT GREGORY STODARO om ION ian.c Y E managing@theconcordian.com OPIN EAS concord R ID e ITO DAV ns@th S ED io ION opin PIN PRODUCTION MANAGER O ANT IK PAULINE ISTSOUMET ASS IA MAL production@theconcordian.com SA N R ITO EZ PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS ED om D OTO RNAN ordian.c PARISA PHFOROUTAN HE onc JEN FARROW ANA @thec to pho

COPY EDITORS KATERINA GANG REBECCA LUGER VALERIA CORI-MANNOCHIO copy@theconcordian.com

Editorial office 7141 Sherbrooke St. W Building CC - 431 Montreal, QC H4B 1R6 (514) 848-2424 ext. 7499

NICHOLAS DI GIOVANNI sports@theconcordian.com

NEWS EDITORS SAVANNA CRAIG NELLY SÉRANDOUR-AMAR news@theconcordian.com

OPINIONS EDITOR DAVID EASEY opinions@theconcordian.com

ASSISTANT OPINIONS EDITOR SANIA MALIK

BOARD OF DIRECTORS NATHALIE LAFLAMME JACOB SEREBIN MILOS KOVACEVIC directors@theconcordian.com

news_assistants@theconcordian.com

ASSISTANT NEWS EDITORS MEGAN HUNT CHLÖE RANALDI

LIFE EDITOR DANIELLE GASHER life@theconcordian.com

MATTHEW LAPIERRE

ev er y

ia n ’s t ea Concordian’s team m CONTRIBUTORS Monica Lau, Dominick Lucyk, Elisa Barbier, Ambre Sachet, Kyanna Terlier, Romina Florencia Arrieta, Matthew Coyte, Abegail Ranaudo, Jeffrey Muntu.

an.c

OR SHER EDIT A om LIFE IELLE G ordian.c c DAN econ OR th EDIT life@ IFE NT L DER M ISTA ASS MAZU A MIN

co rd

per pon able spa Res fort ds new com ute stan and strib an's time • Di ordi sible n at a onc spo e pers he C spa ed, r on T ivat new

VO 9, 2 EK E V. 2 IS W NO R TH OV E RC ” OU ins.

Day ian Hutch stin x “Pale o by Ale t RS Pho  ITO ARI N N S ED US O ART ICA KIN LEUR om KLY LOW F .c S T WEE FOL JES NY LA cordian TAN OUR AT A SSIS S TIFF thecon E TO TING US TO A HIN F @ CO M Y M E E C A M P PHO HUTC HIE arts R A X IN-C A m STO OYOL Y AT ALE A OR- SANZ ian.co L A EDIT ord THE FRID OR IN 1 IT R Á 3 T onc S ED om G OV thec DITO CRIS ER CC-4 . m .c E E G n . ia PHIC YEE or@ .M n.co SIC ERC O DIT ANA edit 12 P GRA ENCE concord MU DRA H ncordia E. E SS M RPORIN ian.com e R o OR RIT INE OR FLO ics@th SAN @thec EDIT H. W m BUS NZO PO concord h ic EDIT ING DARO ian.co ANT e PITC grap mus rd O USIC SIST ORE @th N AG S s s A e MA ORY T econco NT M e G busin PHIC GER offic ke St. W ISTA IDAL g@th GRE GRA BELL rial ANA ASS o o V agin M Y O GM IES Edit Sherbro 431 GER man THO 6 EMIL ISIN PORIN QUIR m R ANA R CC H4B 1R E RT IN o 7141 NM T DITO om R C ADV NZO PO TISING ordian.c ding TIO E ITO PY E ian.c Buil real, Q 24 c E D O E UM C DUC t ORE ADVER econ cord 4 COL n.com GUE AD RT S R th A PRO INE SO thecon E Mon 848-2 E H SPO ANDE oncordia L ) FOR tising@ YA T R X r PAU uction@ (514 499 KAT ITO ALE @thec 7 Soumet.

Graphic by tPauline adve TS ORS ORS ts S ED prod ex .

ARTS EDITORS TAN EDIT ANG EC T E sporEDITOR-IN-CHIEF O RT Y IR SSIS G P P D M S O A CHIO JESSICA KINNARI CRISTINA R C NA N OF FLAM ANT SANZA NS ERIN LUGE ANNO TIO TA RD LA SIST KIERA TIFFANY A KAT CCLAFLEUR DUC OROU I-M n.com ASeditor@theconcordian.com BOA ALIE BIN ES F PRO ia CO R EBE arts@theconcordian.com TH SERE R A ISA ROW VIC ian.com JA M N RIA concord PAR AC E rd OB R ALE e A V F JAC S KOV econco y@th JEN O cop lisa MIL tors@th k, E c RS RS Luc y nn a dire ITO AR MUSIC EDITOR UTO inick a S ED RAIG R-AM , ASSISTANT TRIB u, Dom het, Ky rrietaPHOTO SANDRA NEW NNA C NDOU .com CON HERCEGOVÁ o, HUTCHINS S ac A n ia A dALEX a La c u re ic n a music@theconcordian.com SAV Y SÉRA ncordia Amb Flore Ran M on L il r, a a ie g in ORS NEL @theco Barb r, Rom te, Abe s EDIT ASSISTANT e MUSICyEDITOR new EWS Terli hew Co .

GRAPHICS EDITOR EMILY VIDAL t NT N tu Mat y Mun FLORENCE YEE NT ISTA re ASS AN HU ALDI graphics@theconcordian.com Jeff M EG E R A N Ö CHL GRAPHIC ASSISTANT

.co M m/ isse the d a _c o n s how co rdi ? an for

Co n

..

t f rs . ds o e mo n hou pou ust b ly 3 ate • M o 30 xi m Responsibilities: set up t p ro n as r ap co m . ying o f dian r is a ngs carr i a n co r c • Distribute newspaper bundles on & off campus mor con to a the day u es a g i n g @ cess le T a n The Concordian's stands • Ac i l a b a i l mon a va m t be ld e hou M us ’s ts s ion. rsity • Must be motivated, responsible nive ent comfortable Uand os it p p l i ca n ordia depend r id p onc e C ly, in wspap ed a > Pa eek e t n w s ent 14 stud e re SUE carrying up to 30 pounds of newspapers at a time 4, IS 16 > I nt 0 L. 3

ud

9a

Ex c Sp lusiv Mu orts e int er v Bre sic iew a & m kin s g ore ne ws !

LIF Graphic by Zeze Le DA E E D life NIEL ITOR PR @t LE he PA ODU co GAS AS nc SIS n.c pro ULIN CTIO ord HER M om E du ian IN TAN cti SO N MA A .co T U on MA LI PR m @t ME NAG FE Z O T UM E D he PA DU ER OP c AR RIS CT DE ITO on co R A F ION DA I N I O R TIF TS E rdi OR D an. op VID NS E art FAN ITO OU ASSI co inio EA D NE s@ Y L R m TA STA ns@ SEY ITO W t A he N NT SA SE R AS co FLEU the AS V D A n S NE co co NN ITO SA ISTA MA SISTA nc rdi R N ne LLY S A C RS o N an.

GG NT IA rdi ws co an.

MA T OP IE @t ÉRA RAIG m co H O A RT S LIK INI he ND m AS O c P E P O o E N D M S H n U S I I c US OT TO ME STA ord R-A E A D SA I C O R N ian I MA T A CH GAN NT N ED OR ph .co mu NDR EDIT LÖ H oto HER ITO m R sic A H OR E R UN EWS @t NA R @t ED ER AN T N h P h eco DE H ITO AS eco CE AL nc Z DI AL OTO nc GO RS LIFE EDITOR EM SISTA ord ord VÁ OPINIONS EX EDITOR EDITOR-IN-CHIEF A ILY NT ian ian HU SSIS .co V .

M T c SANDRA HERCEGOVÁ SANIA MALIK T KATYA TEAGUE ID AN o U C m m H S AL T CO IC Concordia University’s I G N SP RA ED life@theconcordian.com opinions@theconcordian.com S editor@theconcordian.com E li N T R O P I F T sa LO H I C weekly, independent IBU A L RT S OR Co R B o ar gra REN S E T nc spo EXAN EDI ph Fre mina bier, ORS DI wstudent CEOPINIONS ord newspaper TOEDITOR rts i D T e ASSISTANT LIFE ASSISTANT EDITOR c F g Q O e s E R @t @t YEE Alm oli, lore as R st u kl y i a U GR i he R CO he AS ANHOURY de , ind niv Mu ahr, Nath ncia m Wa A MIA BURGER co MANAGING EDITOR co TTYSON e rs nt 35,ep nc LE Ar HO PHI nc ntu Ali an rra NI SISTA VOL. 17 o ne ISSUE r o C V cia L e iet ic h CH rdi .

M rdi CONTRIBUTORS O N A ALEXANDER COLE ws ende ity’s b a, P , an.

Ar BE SS an.

L l OL T S a .

F p n d nt IST JAN. 34 30, 2018. co L E c h PO c a A e B L o o , B l p S m U Thibault Beudin,li,Charles m eb AN managing@theconcordian.com . 7, , IS er D I RT S HE PHOTO EDITOR Jeff HussDuquet, e OR SINE T 20 SU GI in rey aGibson, OU SS Giaccone, Kenneth KA AD C ARTS EDITOR 17. E 1 OV E D I T bu ENCallie M TYALEX 9 R Z O AN OR HUTCHINS s O AN ine Mina COOUR COVER THIS WEEK A T PY Anisa Scego, NI MAGGIE HOPE ss@ POMazumder, VE EA ED CO “B R P AG E photo@theconcordian.com RT GU ITO the Sharma lac OR R Arash K A PY E arts@theconcordian.com G AD k PRODUCTION MANAGER HI E c R rap Hi on IN Sfor T D V E co O s“Aiming WE a world title” I RE E h O T t R i R o O r c R I LOREANNA LASTORIA dia r T EK E b y I A G RS ASSISTANTS S PHOTO VA BECC N y FO NZ Mo by Alex n.c I F F Photo Hutchins.

N O lor om RA OP G AN n ASSISTANT ARTS EDITOR co LERI AKIRUBEL L production@theconcordian.com t a L en MA h.”

LU dve O O G MEHARI D py BUSINESS MANAGER A c W eY @t CO GER rtis VER RPO NA C U ee O GE he MACKENZIE CHLOË LALONDE ing ORENZO SO T R LAD . co RI-M R ST ME T @t ISIN INOPORPORINO N FOLLOW US ON   nc PRODUCTION ASSISTANT O he GI BO  ord ANO T H RY O O c business@theconcordian.com N  A o ian QU nc M U CC RD N E HYACINTH WOURMS R A CC L O E E ord .co H T I W O R H IO JA m ian IES FD EE 12 -431 YOL TINGCOME TO OUR WEEKLY C A .co GRAPHICS EDITOR P.M FR A C MI OB LIE L IRE MUSIC EDITOR AT KLY m CT ID AMSTORY .

MEETING AT DA LOS SERE AFLAADVERTISING O A ZEZE LE LIN MANAGER PIT Y A PU CALVIN CASHEN dir VID KOV BIN MM RS S LOYOLA CAMPUS CH T THE ect EA AC E graphics@theconcordian.com NEWS EDITORS RUPINDER SINGH BAGRI . music@theconcordian.com WR E ors SE ITE CC-431 FRIDAY AT @t Y VICadvertising@theconcordian.com ÉTIENNE LAJOIE Ed he .E ito co DI 7 nc GRAPHIC ASSISTANT T. 12:00 P.M. 141 rial CANDICE PYE ord ASSISTANT MUSIC EDITOR Sh offi Bu ian e c i ALEXA HAWKSWORTH news@theconcordian.com .co Mo lding rbro e HUSSAIN ALMAHR m n PITCH. WRITE. EDIT. BOARD OF DIRECTORS (51 tre CC oke S a ext 4) 84 l, QC 431 t. W NATHALIE LAFLAMME ASSISTANT NEWS EDITORS .

8 H SAVANNA CRAIG 7499 -2424 4B 1 HEAD COPY EDITOR MEGAN HUNT R6 SPORTS EDITOR PHOTO EDITOR ANA HERNANDEZ photo@theconcordian.com

AN

xc lo

The

The

om GR AGIN AR E T ’s man GOR G ED JES S EDIT it y agin Y TO ITO rs nt TIF SICA ORS g@ DA R ive nde r K F R t n hec O arts ANY INNA U pe pe o @ a n PRO a i cor e the LAFLE RI rd d sp dian con PAU DUC 14 co ly, in ew .c cor UR o n T E L K m ION n dian I U Co eek nt EE produ NE S .com SS 6 W ctio OUM MANA MU w ude , I 01 IS n@ GE SIC ET 34 9, 2 H st . t S R .

T h s A E e L .2 DIT ND con R PROhin O E ” O R m c V ord V O y tc D V R usic A H ian.c ERC @t Da PHAuR UCT N CO h n  I

mi

ASSISTANT LIFE EDITOR MINA MAZUMDER

r

doing tests or exams, she is alloted extra time and given access to a computer with Word Q and Antidote—programs that help her identify and correct her spelling mistakes. Overall, Lamontagne said she is very satisfied and appreciative of everything the university has offered her.

I am happy to know that students who struggle with neurological conditions have access to resources that can drastically improve their situation in school. I am even happier to know that students are taking advantage of these resources. According to Statistics Canada, 14 per cent of the Canadian population aged 15 years or older—that's 3.8 million individuals—reported having a disability that limited their daily activities.

As someone with a mental health condition, I can empathize with those struggling with neurological conditions.

The weight of your responsibilities as a student anchor you down, and it feels extremely unfair that you have to deal with an extra infuriating hurdle. All schools should help their struggling students. After all, those students will be going out into the world with all the knowledge they acquired from school.

If you or someone you know is affected by a neurological condition, know that you are not alone. You deser ve help, support and guidance in order to perform to the best of your ability. Most importantly, you need to be kind and patient towards yourself. Take advantage of everything that is offered to you. Why struggle alone when help is available?

He ar.

A co RO nc ord ia

co

dysorthographia to store information in her long-term memory.

This all seems difficult to cope with, especially in an academic setting, so I asked her the burning question I had in mind: Does Concordia help you cope with your condition?

According to Lamontagne, the Access Centre for Students with Disabilities (ACSD) offers her 15 hours of free tutoring per semester for any class she struggles with, and a notetaker so she can focus on lectures better.

When

. to

the

n co

Th eC on Be sure co to tu on rdia ne in We dn to C n es JLO Ra da ys di 1 fro 6 m 90 8a .m

She explained that the condition makes her incapable of identif ying spelling mistakes and she has difficulty solving mathematical equations. It also impacts her social skills, notably her ability to understand sarcasm. Moreover, she said, "I practically don't have short-term memory,” meaning she quickly forgets what she studies.

In contrast, her long-term memory is above average. If she ingrains something in her mind, she will remember the information for the rest of her life.

However, Lamontagne said she needs to work three times harder than an individual without