The McGill Daily - Vol104iss12

The Literary Supplement

Volume 104, Issue 12 Monday, November 17, 2014

PULLOUT INSIDE Future Leonard Cohens since 1911 mcgilldaily.com

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

THE BATTLE OVER SEX WORK IN CANADA PAGE 9 AND PAGE 19 (EDITORIAL)

copy@ mcgilldaily.com

3454 Avenue du Parc at Parc & Sherbrooke.

Like to take photos?

Contribute to photos!

Email photos@ mcgilldaily. com for more information.

News 03

NEWS

Sexual assault policy draft released Demilitarizing Remembrance Day GA online ratification and Fall referendum results

November 17, 2014 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Working group presents full sexual assault policy draft Survivor-focused approach central aspect

New literature minor this winter A conversation with Suzanne Fortier AUS responds to third executive resignation of the year

09 COMMENTARY How Bill C-36 harms sex workers

10

FEATURES

Your guide to food justice groups in Montreal

The Literary Supplement

12

Art Essay

13

SCI+TECH

Comparing the McGill App and MyMartlet

14

SPORTS

How stats are influencing your favourite team

16

CULTURE

Reviewing Players’ Six Characters in Search of an Author The must-sees for M for Montreal Reviewing Slight’s new EP

19

EDITORIAL

The Daily on sex work and Bill C-36

20 COMPENDIUM! University is a sham A crossword from a galaxy far far away

3

Igor Sadikov The McGill Daily

O

n November 13, members of the student-led Sexual Assault Policy Working Group presented a complete draft of the proposed university sexual assault policy to students. The group, which includes representatives from several student groups that deal with issues of sexual assault, has been working with Dean of Students André Costopoulos and Liaison Officer (Harm Reduction) Bianca Tétrault on the policy since March, and hopes to present the policy to Senate for approval by the end of the academic year.

Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP University Affairs and working group member Claire Stewart-Kanigan explained that four overarching principles guided the drafting of the policy.

“The four pillars that support this policy are a pro-survivor approach, a proactive approach, an approach that recognizes diversity of experiences related to sexual assault, and a university-wide commitment,” she said.

Following the preamble and definitions, the policy begins with what the presenters called “the non-negotiables” in the proposed University stance on sexual assault, namely a proactive approach in combatting the normalization of sexual assault, a focus on the safety and empowerment of survivors, and respect for the survivor’s articulation of their experience in the context of a consent-based definition of sexual assault.

The policy then outlines concrete proactive measures for the University to take. “The last thing we want is for this policy to be a kind of platitude without operational task-based assignments,” said Stewart-Kanigan.

Notably, the policy mandates the Office of the Dean of Students to run regular consent campaigns, to maintain a collection of resources on sexual assault, and to hold training to combat the normalization of sexual assault for members of the McGill community.

The policy also calls for the creation of a Sexual Assault Response Coordinator (SARC) position, to be charged with maintaining an office space dedicated to assisting survivors. The SARC

Andy Wei | The McGill Daily will also oversee the development of consent campaigns and provide resources to McGill groups wishing to conduct their own sexual assault sensitivity trainings.

“We haven’t really focused a lot on disciplinary measures for the perpetrator in this policy, because we want this to be purely in terms of the survivor’s needs.”

Megan Baiocco, Sexual Assault Policy Working Group member The “University Responses to Incidents of Sexual Assault” section formalizes the pro-survivor approach of the policy, focusing on “safety measures” that prioritize the survivor’s safety, convenience, and confidentiality.

“We haven’t really focused a lot

on disciplinary measures for the perpetrator in this policy, because we want this to be purely in terms of the survivor’s needs and them being able to dictate how to go forward,” working group member Megan Baiocco said at the presentation.

In response to concerns raised about the vagueness of the policy on response measures, working group member Kai O’Doherty explained that the policy was left intentionally vague in order to let the survivor define what measures they need to be safe.

“Something may happen to the perpetrator because of this, but ultimately we’re framing this in terms of what the survivor needs,” added Baiocco.

Procedures for responding to incidents of sexual assault, including the implementation of safety measures and disciplinary measures, will nonetheless be formalized in a separate document, the Sexual Assault Policy Implementation Guide.

The guide, which will detail how to put specific elements of the policy into practice, will be reviewed annually by a working group chaired by the Dean of Students.

One audience member asked whether it was possible for the policy to target specific groups with sexual assault sensitivity and consent

training, such as varsity athletes.

The presenters explained that, although it is difficult to find suitable language to target specific groups such as athletes or frosh leaders, the policy does provide for the possibility to conduct specific training “as deemed necessary by the Dean of Students and the SARC.” Presenters noted that the consultation on the policy will continue, emphasizing that, since the policy would apply to all members of the McGill community, the working group will make a particular effort to seek input from non-student groups, such as McGill unions.

Community members will be able to leave comments on the sexual assault policy working group’s website, and can also get involved by helping with the broader consultation and with lobbying Senate, presenters said.

“We do expect to get some resistance [from Senate] on some of the things, and that’s why we’re getting consultation with different groups and looking at how we can phrase things,” Baiocco told The Daily. “We want to get a lot more consultation and feedback.”

Visit sexualassaultpolicyatmcgill.com to read the full sexual assault policy draft.

Individuals with ICHTHYOSIS are needed for a research study in Montreal involving an approved topical treatment.

4

News

November 17, 2014 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Demilitarize McGill stages protest

Reimbursement will be $300 for four visits.

Group takes critical look at Remembrance Day celebrations

Contact derek.ganes@ganespharma.com

Demilitarize McGill holds a silent protest.

Igor Sadikov The McGill Daily

Sexual harassment and discrimination happen at McGill.

There is a complaint procedure.

We accompany and support any student, staff or faculty member.

Sexual Assault Center of McGill Students Society 3480 McTavish, B-27 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9 advocacy@sacomss.org

514-398-8500

mcgilldaily.com

O

n November 11, Demilitarize McGill held a rally on the sidelines of the Remembrance Day celebrations at McGill, seeking to raise awareness among onlookers of facts about the Canadian military that go unmentioned in the official celebration. Protesters stood in silence, holding posters and refusing to engage with bypassers. Messages on the posters touched on sexual assault in the military, weapons manufacturing, civilian casualty statistics, and torture.

During the demonstration, police officers approached the protesters and asked them to leave.

After the demonstrators refused to comply, the police did not press the issue and left the scene.

The protest proved controversial among members of the McGill community, with many saying that

Tamim Sujat | The McGill Daily

the rally was disrespectful and in bad taste.

“The enraged reactions from a number of people lend credibility to our basic claim about Remembrance Day, which is that it is an exercise in selective memory, orga-

nized to enforce the forgetting of any element of war that conflicts with the story the Canadian state wants to tell about itself,” Demilitarize McGill wrote of the reaction to the protest in a statement published on the group’s Facebook page.

“Remembrance Day [...] is an exercise in selective memory, organized to enforce the forgetting of any element of war that conflicts with the story the Canadian state wants to tell about itself,” Demilitarize McGill

News

November 17, 2014 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

5

SSMU GA, referendum results released All motions, questions receive a majority “yes” vote

Stance against austerity The Motion Regarding Solidarity Against Austerity passed with 82.6 per cent voting “yes” and 17.4 per cent voting “no,” and will result in SSMU releasing a statement against austerity measures and taking a stronger stance against austerity when interacting with the administration.

Moustaqim-Barrette, who, during the GA, condemned the passive response of the administration to recent provincial budget cuts, spoke positively about the results, told The Daily that the motion will help stregnthen SSMU’s ties with other universities in Quebec taking similar stances.

Stewart-Kanigan said that SSMU’s new stance against austerity puts her

Lobbying administration for biking on campus (plebiscite)

Biking on campus (plebiscite)

Preferential voting (plebiscite)

Black Students’ Network fee levy

No

Motion in solidarity against austerity

Motion regarding action on climate

SSMU GA online ratification results Motion against harmful military technology

Harmful military research The Motion Regarding Support of a Campus Free from Harmful Military Technology Development, which faced heavy debate, passed with 55.0 per cent of students voting “yes” and 45.0 per cent voting “no.”

SSMU VP External Amina Moustaqim-Barrette told The Daily that this motion would allow her to more effectively support groups that have been mobilizing against military research, such as Demilitarize McGill.

Stewart-Kanigan said that she would take into account the close margin by which the motion passed. “I am looking to do some outreach to make sure that those students [opposed to the motion] aren’t completely feeling left out by this stance, and [to] assure that we can take on the work of advocating for alternative sources of [research] funding.”

Fall referendum results TVM fee consolidation

T

he results of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) General Assembly (GA) online ratification and the SSMU Fall referendum have been released, with all motions and questions passing.

“In the interactions that we do have with the administration where we let them know what students’ priorities are, all of these motions are going to affect what that is,” SSMU VP University Affairs Claire Stewart-Kanigan told The Daily in regards to the GA ratification.

Climate change The Motion Regarding Action on Climate Change passed, with 78.7 per cent voting “yes” and 21.3 per cent voting “no.”

“The effect [of this motion] will be to show politicians that students will not be silent on an issue that will have a grave effect on our future if our government does not take action now,” Moustaqim-Barrette told The Daily in an email.

The motion also mandates SSMU to join Étudiant(e)s contre les oléoducs (ÉCO), or “students against pipelines.” According to Moustaqim-Barrette, ÉCO will represent around 90,000 students now that SSMU has joined.

“The motion also [will] give SSMU a lot of room to act in solidarity with Indigenous peoples resisting largescale extraction projects,” said Divest McGill member Bronwen Tucker.

Nominations to SSMU’s Board of Directors

Jill Bachelder and Subhanya Sivajothy The McGill Daily

Yes Rachel Nam / The McGill Daily

in a good position to push the University to take a more forceful message to the provincial government.

Fall referendum results The Black Students’ Network (BSN) fee passed in the Fall referendum, with 54.7 per cent voting “yes” and 45.3 per cent voting “no.” BSN will now be receiving a semesterly fee of $0.40 per full-time student and $0.20 per part-time student.

Overall, BSN representatives were enthusiastic about the results of the referendum.

“It says a lot about the McGill community that people are supporting us now,” BSN Co-President Melanie Enama told The Daily. “It’s telling

us that we shouldn’t be afraid to also reach out to more people.”

BSN will be working more with other services and branching out to the community. Enama noted that the fee will help bring Ta-Nehisi Coates, a prominent speaker, to McGill in collaboration with the McGill Debating Union. BSN will also be increasing the size of its annual Children’s Day, a community outreach event for elementary and high school students to learn more about university and Black History Month “to show them that university is something that’s possible for them.”

“It’s definitely positive, only positive vibes,” said Enama.

The TVM: Student Television at McGill fee restructuring also passed,

with 61.3 per cent voting “yes” and 38.7 per cent voting “no.”

The plebiscite question regarding a change to a preferential ballot voting system for SSMU elections saw 78.7 per cent voting “yes” and 21.3 per cent voting “no.”

Two plebiscite questions regarding cycling on campus also received a majority “yes” vote. The first, which asked whether cycling should be allowed on lower campus, saw 63.2 per cent vote “yes” and 36.8 per cent vote “no.” The second, which asked if SSMU should lobby the administration to allow bikes on campus, had 60.4 per cent vote “yes” and 39.6 per cent vote “no.”

—With files from Janna Bryson

European literature minor coming next term Students of foreign literature consider creation of new student council Arianee Wang News Writer

T

his semester, the Faculty of Arts saw the creation of a new minor within the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (LLC) set to be launched in January. The minor, entitled “European Literature and Culture,” requires students to take courses from various units including German Studies, Hispanic Studies, Italian Studies, and Russian and Slavic Studies.

The minor is meant to focus on “the development and interconnectedness of European culture, and its relevance for the comprehension of today’s world through the study of literature and the arts from the Middle Ages to modern times,” according to the program’s website.

Despite its broad focus on European literature, the minor does not have a language requirement. “[This allows] the student to go right away into the really interesting 300-level courses,” explained Stephanie Posthumus, a professor in the LLC department and advisor for the new minor, to The Daily.

Posthumus also mentioned that Andrew Piper, an associate professor in the LLC department, also worked to get the minor approved. Piper was very interested in how the department “could go beyond just our national boundaries and traditions,” said Posthumus, adding, “the minor is what we created as a first step [toward this goal].”

There is only one required introductory course for the minor, which will be offered for the first

time next academic year. The minor also allows students to take LLC courses, which, according to Posthumus, are cross-cultural and often concentrated on a specific topic.

LLC classes draw students from many disciplines, said Posthumus.

“They appeal to a larger audience.”

According to Posthumus, “the idea was to offer something outside of English literature” for students interested in studying literature who felt “stuck in the Anglo-American perspective.”

LLC student council The LLC department may be expanding in other ways in the future. Beyond the new minor, some students are working to create an LLC student association in order to better to represent the needs of students studying foreign literature.

“The creation of the LLC minor is a huge first step,” said Vincent Simboli, president of the Caribbean and Latin American Studies & Hispanic Studies Association (CLASHSA), in an interview with The Daily. According to Simboli, who is spearheading the initiative, the council would be “a specific legislative body that is pertinent to the interests of language, literature, and culture students.”

According to Simboli, a specific LLC association is necessary due to the special interests shared by students studying foreign literature and languages, such as the importance of studying abroad and the disproportionate impact of budget cuts. “If there are budget cuts to Arts, which there will be in the future, who’s going to get cut first? A

Portuguese language class or ECON 208?” posed Simboli.

“I’m not looking to splinter from the AUS [Arts Undergraduate Society], I am just looking for a sister council,” stressed Simboli.

According to Simboli, the new council has faced some barriers. “[There is] general apathy you come across whenever you try to organize students. [...] Convincing people that what we’re studying is relevant to a global world [can be difficult].”

“Whenever you try to get people to go anywhere, you basically have to provide free food,” added Simboli.

In light of these barriers, Simboli said that he is “likely not going to be a student when this actually comes to fruition,” and that the LLC student council may be created in two or three years.

6

News

November 17, 2014 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Principal sits down with campus media High cost of food on campus a surprise for Suzanne Fortier

Principal Suzanne Fortier takes questions.

O

n November 12, McGill’s Principal and Vice-Chancellor Suzanne Fortier sat down with campus media for an hour-long meeting in the Shatner building. She addressed student jounalists’ questions on McGill’s financial situation, accessibility of food and housing, divestment, and research regulations.

A lively discussion followed Fortier’s admission of surprise at students’ impression that the food options on campus are not affordable. Fortier was also unaware of the high cost of student housing at McGill, and highlighted McGill’s bursary program as evidence of the University’s accessibility as it continues to lobby for a tuition increase for French students.

The McGill Tribune (MT): About the recent discussion on the bilateral tuition agreement with France – how will McGill go forward with these adjustments? What is the University stance on straying from a long-standing precedent?

Suzanne Fortier (SF): I personally think that the agreement has to be revisited. [...] But there’s something that’s extremely important that’s true for every student, not just French students – it’s that we need to make sure that we continue to build on our bursary program. We’re not a university for rich [...] international students outside Quebec, we’re a university where we try to bring together people. [...]

We can be there to help those students financially.

Le Délit (DF)*: Would you maybe think of forming a new partnership with French universities if the partnership with France is cancelled?

SF: Yes, maybe. I have worked

Tamim Sujat | The McGill Daily

a lot in France. [...] There are possibilities outside of the government framework to establish partnerships with France. In fact, what we want is to be left a bit more flexibility, so that we can create partnerships [...] instead of being imposed a model that, as you know, isn’t used well at all. There are few Quebecois students who go to French universities. [...] Already we see that the program isn’t working too well.

The McGill Daily (MD): In 2013, McGill reacted to the Parti Québécois (PQ) cuts to education with strong condemnation. Why has McGill failed to take a similarly strong stance toward the current cuts to the education system, which are comparable if not worse?

SF: I do believe that it is important for this province to put its financial situation in order. I am not as a citizen opposed to a goal of reaching a balanced budget – I think it is important for the long term. [...]

I understand that it’s not an easy reality, it’s not something that we like to see, cuts after cuts. [...] Although I would like more money [flowing] into the university [...] fiscally, I’m afraid this is something we got to do in Quebec, so I won’t complain, as long as we’re treated fairly.

MT: Regarding McGill’s financial situation, one of the common concerns that we hear from students is that there are more and more costs that are being shifted to the students in the form of fees. What is the decision-making process for shifting costs? Does the University see these shifts as having an adverse effect on the environment at McGill?

SF: In this province, as in many

provinces, auxiliary fees have to go to through a process of a referendum [...] so that’s a pretty clear process. Is there an adverse effect? [There is,] particularly for students who do not have the capacity to pay more than what they’re paying now. That’s why it’s important for us, when we can, to keep adding money to our bursary program. That’s where we try to mitigate the negative impact.

DF: At McGill, student housing prices have risen immensely in the past few years. We notice that this is an opposite trend to other universities, which tend to offer less expensive, more accessible housing. Should accessibility of student housing be a priority for McGill?

SF: I must tell you I was not aware of this, so I’ll have to do some research to see if there is a reason for this hike. [...] Do we offer residences of better quality than elsewhere? [...]

I think we have residences where it’s a bit less expensive.

DF: More generally, are you not a little bit afraid that McGill could become a university for rich people?

SF: I’m not afraid that it could become one, in the sense that I know we’ve put in place policies to ensure that this is not the case. We don’t look at a student’s financial situation when we offer a place at McGill; we have a bursary program that, I think, is the best bursary program in Canada per student. [...]

During McGill’s last fundraising campaign, I think it’s about 50 per cent of the collected money that was collected for student aid. [...] We’re right to take an interest in that, however – that’s not what we want to be, and we need to ensure that we put in

place the necessary measures.

MD: The replacement of the Tim Hortons with a Première Moisson has generated substantial backlash regarding lack of affordable food options on campus, which has only worsened with the recent cease-and-desist order on sandwich sales against Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) SNAX. What is McGill doing to ensure affordable food and what role does it reserve for student-run initiatives?

SF: The thinking behind the food offering is not price, it is more the quality of food. [...] So Première Moisson, I find it interesting. People say it’s very expensive – I went to eat there, I had a wonderful soup, very healthy, and they gave me two pieces of bread with nuts. It cost me $3.50. [...] I don’t know what you get at Tim Hortons, but it was a very good meal for the price. [...]

I eat mostly around the cafeterias on campus myself, but I do think there’s a lot of variety. [...] What I see on campus is that there’s plenty of places where you can go, you don’t have to spend a penny [...] you can bring your own food [and] eat with your friends, and I think that is very important as well. [...] Do you have a sense that a lot of people think that there’s not enough diversity?

MD: I don’t think it’s so much the diversity, as it is how expensive it is, because you have to spend $10 or so, unless you go to the Midnight Kitchen...

SF: Really? I’m surprised. [...]

Maybe you have bigger appetites. [...] I’m surprised that people think that it’s very expensive. Maybe I’ll just ask our Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning), I know they do a lot of surveys on food.

DF: Coming back to the budget, why not fund opening hours for the McLennan library between midnight and 7 a.m., as it’s obvious that there is a student need given that SSMU is funding it? Is it the role of the administration to finance these things, or do you think it’s superfluous?

SF: We may have simpler solutions, I don’t know if we’ve explored them. [...] It’s obvious that, for many users, the library is more of a space than a location to consult books. [...] Are we really talking about the library, or about a space that should be reserved? There may be an easier solution.

MD: With CAMSR’s terms of reference having been broadened after a community consultation, and students increasingly speaking in support of divestment from fossil fuels, how will McGill’s investment choices better reflect the opinion of the community?

SF: The committee [CAMSR]

has recently changed its terms of reference, has changed some of the definitions to include environment. [...] This was the first time last year that a committee of the Board of Governors, as it’s reviewing its terms of reference, decided to consult broadly. It’s the first time there was a public process of consultation. [...] The committee now has a role to meet even if it doesn’t receive a petition, to consider proactive measures, and the committee met recently, and one of the things that it has decided to do is to look at the range of practices with regard to socially responsible investments, and that, I hope, will start fairly soon. [...] I think it’s very difficult to avoid any footprint at all on the environment. [...] You start getting there into the zone of evaluation of what is the impact and at what point is it important to take serious action, it’s not a simple thing.

DF: For you, what is the importance of French on campus?

SF: I think that McGill is a university where the language of instruction is English, and it’s important that we preserve this language. [...] It’s good that we can support people who want to speak both languages at McGill. [...] I must tell you that I speak French a lot on campus, maybe sometimes a bit too much.

I’m surrounded with colleagues who speak very good French.

MD: McGill’s research regulations are soon coming under review, and many in the community are calling for stricter regulations. Will you heed the call and support measures to increase transparency and impose restrictions on military research with harmful consequences?

SF: This year, we’re reviewing policies relating to the responsible conduct of research, which has many areas, and a new one that we’re introducing is to look at all of the contract research that we do and pass it through a process to see if it meets the criteria of responsible conduct of research. [...] I believe we might be the first university to extend it to all of our contract research. [...] You asked specifically about military research [...] the important thing is to make sure that we have the right process, to look at the more detailed level – what is it exactly that’s happening? [...] That’s the kind of thing that I think we need for contract research more generally.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

—Compiled by Jill Bachelder and Igor Sadikov *Questions from, and answers to, Le Délit have been translated from French.

News

November 17, 2014 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

7

AUS to appoint VP Social without by-election following resignation Councillors hear presentation on student event accessibility Teddy Liptay News Writer

A

rts Undergraduate Society (AUS) VP Social Kyle Rouhani has resigned due to “reasons of extreme personal, academic, and emotional duress met during the role,” AUS announced last Tuesday. At the November 12 meeting of the AUS Legislative Council, councillors discussed the filling of the newly-vacant position, as well as the Arts Student Employment Fund (ASEF) and the accessibility of student-run events.

The AUS executive has undergone significant turnover this year, with former VP Finance Kateryn Kim resigning in August for personal and family reasons, and former VP Internal Leila Alfaro resigning in September as she will be away for the Winter 2015 semester.

Despite the disruptions, AUS President Ava Liu was confident in Council’s ability to perform its duties, noting that administrative transitions have gone very smoothly. “Things have happened, and we’ve dealt with them in a very timely manner, so nothing has left a gap in services,” said Liu to Council.

Council decided to forgo the

lengthy by-election process due to the time constraints with respect to upcoming final exams. Instead, the new VP Social will be appointed from a pool of applicants

by Council at its next meeting. In accordance with the AUS constitution and electoral bylaws, all members of AUS standing committees are eligible to be appointed as the new VP Social.

Liu and VP Finance Li Xue noted that students who wish to learn more about the details of the potential implementation of a student fee to support the Arts Internship Office (AIO), discussed at the last Council meeting, can attend a town hall discussion with the Dean of Arts at the next Council meeting on November 26.

Council passed motions to approve ASEF allocations, as well as to form a “yes” committee for the ASEF renewal referendum question, which was approved by Council on October 29. The ASEF supports academically-based employment opportunities for Arts students.

Councillors also submitted ballots to create a shortlist of possible choices for the renaming of the Jack Daniels and Champagne rooms of the AUS lounge. In September, Council decided to rename the rooms so as to not promote a drinking culture. All Arts under-

Smiles all around at AUS Council. graduate students will be able to vote for their favourite name after the shortlist is finalized.

Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD) Access Services Advisor Tanja Beck also gave a presentation to council on inclusivity in student events.

The number of students registered with the OSD has seen a sig-

Tamim Sujat | The McGill Daily

nificant increase over the past decade, currently numbering 1,600, compared to 400 in 2004. Beck stressed the importance of a social model of inclusion, shifting the focus from the disabilities of a student to awareness of the challenges presented to that student within a given environment.

According to Beck, this is es-

pecially important for student events, which can present unique challenges. Beck concluded her presentation by reiterating that successful and inclusive events require planners to “really think about the environment. Do not so much think about individual students, or individual barriers.

Think big, and outside the box.”

Do you wish this was your article?

Come to The Daily’s news writing workshop!

Tuesday, November 18 at 6 p.m. in Shatner B-24.

Weekly contributor meetings Thursdays at 6 p.m.

INTERESTED IN RADIO OR VIDEO JOURNALISM? E-MAIL

Č°

ǽ The Daily is looking for a Reader’s Advocate.

The Reader’s Advocate will write a biweekly column weighing student concerns against the Reader’s Advocate’s assessment of the paper’s performance. Any Daily staff member with six points can apply.

The ideal candidate will be passionate about The Daily and reader response, and will have an understanding of and/ or willingness to learn about The Daily and its Statement of Principles (SOP). Possible tasks include reader surveys and interviews, thematic columns, critiques of how The Daily lives up to its principles, and judging the relevance of the SOP and The Daily to the student body.

Each applicant must submit a sample column of 400-500 words and a short statement of intent. Submit applications or questions to commentary@mcgilldaily.com.

Commentary, Culture, Sci+Tech, and Sports are still looking for columnists!

Commentary, Culture, Sci+Tech, and Sports are still looking for columnists!

Each applicant must submit two sample columns of 400-500 words and a short statement of intent. Columnists are expected to have a unique theme within their section. No experience necessary, just enthusiasm!

Now accepting rolling applications.

Submit applications or questions to commentary@mcgilldaily.com, culture@mcgilldaily.com, scitech@mcgilldaily.com, or sports@mcgilldaily.com.

Commentary

November 17, 2014 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

9

Toward (in)visibility On being a student and a sex worker David V Commentary Writer *The information presented in this article and by Scarlet Solidarity is not intended to influence anyone to commit an illegal act. Scarlet Solidarity is a tool offered to sex workers so they may improve the quality of their lives and their working conditions.

T

he truth is we are everywhere: in bars, on the street, on TV, in the personals section of Craigslist. But you probably don’t think you know someone who would do this. I mean, who in their right mind would choose to sell themselves to random people?

Who in their right mind would actively seek out strangers and offer their bodies for a quick buck? Who would degrade themselves in that way? Who would choose to be a sex worker? I did. And will likely continue to do so.

The truth is, sex workers are your friends, your coworkers, your past and future lovers, and maybe even your future late-night companions. We’re also your fellow students, and like many students, we sometimes find it stressful to balance work and school. Add in a dash of illegality to that work, and you can begin to understand the precarious situation of sex workers in Canada today.

Many well-intentioned people agree that, in order to make sex work safer, there is a need to decriminalize the industry. However, many fail to take into account the reality of those they are seeking to support and ‘protect.’ We are pushed toward invisibility even by our ‘allies.’ We are pushed toward working in secret, and navigating the shaky boundaries between what is legal and what is not.

It is important to acknowledge, though, that the solution to being silenced is not necessarily a monolithic push toward visibility. Indeed, many in the industry prefer to remain anonymous.

And frankly, I do feel like my work is shameful. We can, and should, attempt to be as sex workpositive as we can, but after centuries of shaming and degradation, sex workers can’t help but internalize some of that shame. This is why I prefer to remain anonymous, even to some of my closest friends.

If we truly are going to switch to a sex work-positive attitude, then answer me: would you consider purchasing sex from some-

Jonathan Reid | The McGill Daily one? Not everyone would want to.

If you wouldn’t either, would you demonize those who do so? We all need to question how far we are willing to go in order to be truly pro-sex worker. You don’t have to buy sex, but you do at least have to support those who do, and those who sell.

I entered the industry online, mainly working through the M4M (men for men) section on Craigslist, and in gay bathhouses, in both cases dealing mainly with male clients. In the beginning, I was trying to find someone who could help me pay for school, as well as other things. University tuition is pricey, and I really do enjoy sex and spending time with people. That makes this kind of work perfect for my skill set. I’m still very new to the scene, and, to be honest, the biggest surprise is how much work it is. Sex work is a job, and it’s one that is about making someone happy, and providing a space for people to explore their own and someone else’s body.

I’ve talked to clients who really wanted to lose their virginity but were too intimidated to seek that experience out in the usual way. They wanted to take the pressure off by hiring someone to help them with their first time. I’ve talked to clients who wanted to

try a new fantasy, but couldn’t find a partner who was interested in doing it. I’ve talked to clients who really just wanted to connect with someone who wasn’t in their life in any other way. I’ve also talked to clients who were dealing with past sexual trauma and wanted someone who would take the time to guide them slowly through another sexual experience.

But as with any other job, there are certainly aspects that are less than desirable. There’s no question that it can be a little scary sometimes: sketchy clients, people not wanting to pay upfront, having to go to gigs alone. On top of this, many of us feel shame from even our closest friends, allies, and partners. What’s much scarier, though, are the ways that the current Canadian government constantly seeks to make our work more dangerous.

Sex workers engage in an occupation whose main source of income (our clients) is criminalized. Furthermore, active efforts to make our work safer are also criminalized. What I do is largely illegal, and this makes my job increasingly more dangerous.

This is the reason why, last year, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down laws that prevented sex workers from living off the avails of their work and working

out of brothels. The laws essentially made sex work unsafe, which is why the court asked them to be amended. To much disappointment, the amended legislation put forward in Bill C-36 criminalizes the advertising and buying of sexual services, while decriminalizing the sale of sexual services. This includes interactions between pimps, johns, and sex workers themselves, This is an affront to our work and and our lives.

How are we supposed to continue our work if our revenue streams are cut off? How is making our clients fear persecution from the police supposed to make sex workers safer? Making our clients fear being arrested puts our negotiations with clients in a dangerous and precarious position.

We need space and time so that we can negotiate agreements with our clients and ensure our safety.

Bill C-36 is not what we want, and yet it’s supposed to ‘protect us.’ These so-called progressive laws are meant to help ‘victims’ of the sex trade get out of the industry. But in reality this only acts to cut off our source of income, by effectively putting us out of a job.

The irony is that the state wants you to have a job, but only so long as you’re not selling blowjobs for $100. The state is not, and never

was, interested in us or our protection. To survive, we have to help ourselves.

Luckily, there are resources available to McGill students affected by Bill C-36. Scarlet Solidarity is a for-us-by-us peer support group for sex workers who are also students in some capacity. We want to create a community of support for our fellow sex workers, so that we can protect each other, help each other, and support each other.

Sex workers all over Canada are pulling up their bootstraps, tightening their corsets, and lubing up for the post-Bill C-36 world. It will be tough, but we are resilient, strong, and here for each other.

And trust us, if we’re half as good at helping ourselves as we are at keeping you company at night, sex workers will continue to thrive in whatever oppressive conditions we are put in. Until sex work becomes decriminalized, we will continue to prosper in an environment that constantly seeks to punish us and deny our right to engage in this work.

David V is a pseudonym used by a student who works with Scarlet Solidarity. If you are interested in finding out more, or have any other questions, please email scarletsolidarity@gmail.com.

Features

November 17, 2014 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

10

Food justice in Montreal Written by Myra Sivaloganathan Illustration by Sean Miyaji and Allice Shen

M

ontreal is a city that is incredibly culturally diverse, offering different culinary options on every block.

Head up to Jean Talon and you’ll find yourself in Little Italy, with a pizzeria and trattoria at every block. South on St. Laurent is Chinatown, with dim sum and dumplings galore. Finally, high up on Parc, you can get your fix of poppyseed rugelach and intricate babkas. Food is a pathway to many different social and environmental movements, and hits close to home as one of the primary ways in which we interact with our environments. Tied into the beauty and diversity of food are issues of food justice, accessibility, and security.

Food justice can be recognized as disparities and inequities in the current food system, as well as tackling and challenging the process of production and consumption of food.

This includes where food is from, how it is grown, as well as the transport, processing, and accessibility of the food. It’s about looking beyond promising labels – such as “local,” “organic,” and “fair trade” – and understanding what these mean in a meaningful way.

The organic food movement can be considered part of the food justice project. Organic food definitely has its place in affecting environmental change; however, it can also produce social barriers to food because of its inaccessibility. Organic food companies have been widely criticized for producing food that is exclusively accessible to upper-class individuals.

Similarly, fair-trade products – another project within food justice – also share an upper-class predisposition. In some cases, fair trade certification is only available to farmers who pay fees upwards of $10,000, privileging wealthier farmers.

Food justice often aims to fight for integrity, accessibility, and sustainability. So, for those who are curious about food justice in Montreal, consider the following a guide.

Knowing where comes from

the

food

Sustainability is a fundamental concern of the food justice movement. Interest in local food is growing across the province, and this is reflected in the many community-supported agriculture initiatives. Farmers markets are increasingly offering baskets of local organic produce on a weekly basis.

Such initiatives are a good opportunity to familiarize oneself with local foods and where they come from, as well as to gain

access to high quality, fresh goods.

Santropol Roulant is one of the places to start. It offers community-supported agriculture baskets, sourced from its farm on the West Island, and also funds urban gardening programs across Montreal. In the past, it grew vegetables on a garage rooftop in Rosemont, and it currently has urban gardens set up on the rooftop of its main office on Roy and on McGill campus. Interested in their work, I spoke with Kateri, an employee of Santropol Roulant. “[The] urban agriculture program is about linking the public to the source of their food,” said Kateri. “Seeing food in the aisles of a grocery store is completely different than seeing it rooted in the soil, and we want to link the public to the source and production of their food.”

In 2011, the collective grew and harvested nearly 1,500 kilograms of vegetables. The harvesting season lasts from April to October, and the organization is “in the midst of planting garlic and harvesting leftover chard and kale.”

Santropol Roulant is also in the midst of creating a new program called “Transformation: Programme à Santropol.”

“All the crops they’ve grown, that weren’t sold and used in the baskets or mini-markets on the street, are transformed into products by volunteers,” Kateri told me. It has also opened a small store, in which it sells tomato sauces, pickles, jams, and various other conserves and canned goods. In the same vein, Santropol Roulant has recently started an urban agriculture program called “Les Fruits Défendus” which involves urban food picking. “[We] approach people who are tree owners, but don’t have the time, tools, or mobility to harvest the fruit of their various trees (apples, pears, grapes, cherries, et cetera). The owners of the trees, as well as volunteers, are recruited, and the food is split amongst the owner of the tree, the volunteers, and Santropol Roulant.” This program is meant to raise awareness of urban agriculture. “There is food grown in town, and we want people to notice that,” Kateri added.

The People’s Potato is a campus-oriented, collectivelyrun soup kitchen that provides by-donation vegan meals and also supports local, mindful community initiatives, such as the Jean Talon market. This student-run organization used to source food from a vendor named Elaine Darcenie who sold cheap bulk vegetables, but now the initiative or-

ders food from Moisson Montréal, a non-profit organization in the Saint-Laurent borough that provides for many food banks across Montreal.

Initiatives such as local farms, community-supported agriculture, and urban gardening are meant to raise awareness of food grown in the heart of the city. The slopes of Mont Royal once housed many farms, and organizations like Santropol, People’s Potato, and others are attempting to revive this image. Supporting local farmers and discouraging the transport of chemically preserved foods from abroad helps our local farmers and food systems. By integrating urban gardens into our landscapes, we can have access to fresh food on a daily basis and lead more mindful, sustainable lifestyles.

Midnight Kitchen (MK), McGill’s own food justice collective that offers free vegan meals in the SSMU building, also problematizes issues within sustainability. One collective member I spoke to, Vince Tao, told me that “while environmental justice is certainly an important political front for MK, in many ways the call to ‘eat local’ or ‘buy organic’ eschews a broader anti-capitalist perspective that would include migrant justice struggles, anti-globalization movements, and labour organizing in the fight against the destruction of the planet.” MK posits that the political scope of green activism is limited to changing individual consumer choices, whereas food justice goes beyond one’s personal lifestyle toward forms of collective action to confront major political and social problems.

Food Security

According to the People’s Potato’s website “Montreal rates second in terms of Canadian cities where food insecurity is an important concern.” Food security often relates to one’s access to income, and one-third of Montrealers are said to be low-income earners. A study by the Direction de santé publique (DSP) in Montreal on food accessibility revealed that forty per cent of Montrealers live in food deserts, meaning they do not have access to fresh fruits and vegetables within walking distance of their homes. The best-served sectors are central neighbourhoods. However, such studies do not take into account depanneurs, specialty stores, and smaller independent grocery stores which provide other points of access

THE LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 2014

– Galit Sandaev

Want more fiction? Check out our Stranger, Then podcasts! 5 minute stories about strangers. www.mcgilldaily.com/podcast

2

LITSUP 2014

Soft Towns Soft towns and weary colours all draped and drab Hanging in the mist above a drenched ground Where the people run around, erring Less for purpose less for want less for less.

About as much as a circle, plodding through it all Beaming up their eyes, they form a unity of their mass Illuminating in the daytime, the heavy fog pervading The noon sky, they light up. Radiating in the heat.

And those soft houses watch over, they themselves worn From the humidity, an obscure film of intangibility As the fluorescent lights shower the people, drizzling dust and stuff, Lopsided, chunked planks fall and fall.

There’s so much noise in this mute day Those gentle hues of blue and browns and reds and yellows and grey.

Colours! Colours! Colours!

Rolled over by people, people, people

All fallen, all empty in October, faint remains of where

Trivialities

The people were, what they did when

Nobody ever mentions the F sharp of the

Something, anything, they was.

telephone dial tone.

The Town has a field, a store, and a school

Or how hard it is to flirt with an evergreen.

Tiring, darker, shining through

Trivialities that mock the custom concern

Anything, they don’t know, confused dazed

of a lonesome eternal sleep.

Pieced together as a pastiche, all detached,

You can toss the key for this one or your back pocket works too.

Felled well past fixing.

Either are history to a martyr like me.

Realize that Hell always prevails when limbo

All lost in the dark, unable to light, only black on black,

calls upon an armistice.

Darkening the already abject light up top. And

Red waters run deeper and darker than blue.

These houses already asleep, inert, wait for the new light to support

it’s hard to drown in a soul so shallow,

Them and them, abiding overtop in the stifling haze.

I know you’ll manage, you always do.

– Weiyu Dang

LITSUP 2014

– Natalie Coffen

3

S. Words from you: the springtime rains flooding forgotten waterways that wind and curve within my chest earnest drops sluicing through to the depths of the emergent cracks, until the sticky earth (that once coughed dust) sighs rejoices soundlessly for the recovered memory of saturation.

– Brooke Nancekivell

– Galit Sandaev

Droplets Of greater warmth do water drops aspire to, To be dry like the surface they invade, To impose explosions of heat,

Tiny flickers that engulf like rivulets and rivers, Constantly, missing, and singing somewhere else Singing that empty song of consummation.

And of the gross rain they come, They look away, forward from where they came Finding that desired warmth in front

Of those cold orchards, autumn darks All blind and replete of apples Rosy flesh, desecrated fruits in the cold.

– Weiyu Dang

4

LITSUP 2014

TO, ON “It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love.

This is how the whole scheme of things works”

The first time I saw the CN Tower it was with you.

The night air froze the tips of my contused fingers as we walked down hand in hand some dark busy street the fast cars whizzing past red and blue city lights.

I missed you more than home, more than my mother my father my dog. And more than all the street urchins playing cricket on the broken streets in search of some profound happiness.

The building it appeared, out of some immense darkness. As we turned a corner you said it was beautiful. Its purple glow blanketed the entire sky and we stood before it insignificant and in love, or at least in something exceedingly close.

We rode the TTC back, your head resting in my lap, your eyes shut, you yourself exhausted. Other people watched this curious scene having aroused their suspicion. The women giving you dark grins, the men me

– Galit Sandaev

wide smiles. And still I wonder whether even now you recall that single moment and think of me with unkempt fondness.

– Zain R. Mian

LITSUP 2014

5

Phantom Limb And when I awoke, absent from your arms my heart transfigured – a diver poised on the precipice of a springboard Toes flexed and, departure plunging deep into arctic waters oxygen evicted from my lungs.

And I am left flooded.

A dream: ears ringing like a swimmer’s hands, reeking of algae; I recall our bodies, enclosed in the ransacked tomb of a city plagued by insomnia Where clattering trains lug their hollow frames along rusted tracks worn over by sleepless decades At midnight, the battered corridors echo with the shivers of passing ghosts; we inhabit a netherworld encased in tile.

Hands in pockets, you whisper proclamations on mortality, dub the soul a “useful fiction” But the footprints have snowed over on the front path and your arm, a phantom limb But I find bruises on my skin though I have not fallen – Brooke Nancekivell

– Galit Sandaev

6

LITSUP 2014

Untitled if i could write poetry i would write about the incongruity between the steadiness of your voice and the trembling of your fists you have never known fear of the stage but you fear what the stage cannot do you fear your ideals will fall upon apathy you fear that like me they will not know how to

but i cannot write poetry and so instead i’ll bury my words in a bottle and toss them out into the painless sea of numb intoxication for some poor shipwrecked soul to bear leave the real ones to the poets who still know how to use them and instead spend the last of my minutes lashing violent splotches of red across innocent canvas relishing in the beauty of the carnage that is your vision of glory, of victory

rage as you do for a single storm cloud will not bring down enough rain to wash away the sins of a land gone rotten no matter how much it thunders

but when all is said and fought who will be left to adopt your orphaned faith in liberté, égalité, fraternité who will console dear Patria as she stands mourning at your grave who will be left to heave

if i could write poetry i would write about the way i can see no light in all the world save the spark in your eyes

your broken flag when the maggots eat away your arms when there’s no more you have left to offer except a palmful of ashes

as you shout of throwing Molotov cocktails and cobblestones until the streets understand what it means to burn (and to shine)

and darling, you are the closest thing to a phoenix i know and yet not even you can rise again and they will all weep but i will not cry

and if i could write poetry i could make you see your new world cannot rise like a phoenix from its ashes

you see, i won’t go to your funeral i won’t go to your funeral

the phoenix is but a fever-dream, a phantom drowned in its infancy by the soundless tears of a nation

(i will be there by your side.)

choking in its own toxic fumes – Jenny Zhang

LITSUP 2014

7

Damp Cloth I know you didn’t mean it but your words rang through my body: blunt mallet striking copper bell Vibrations quaking through my ribcage threatening fractures.

Lower lip chewed raw, salt on my tongue.

Stillness, a boulder in my belly I grip with shaky fingers.

Like a child raised on the tracks, the rumbles of locomotives are forgotten by morning, Swept away, the sleep from our eyes.

But our skin reborn in tremors.

The family friend guzzles beer slurs words crows his hate over the din of scraping plates.

I wasn’t there, but you tell me anyway.

– Galit Sandaev

You define safety: unbroken bones, streetlamps, the goodnight click of the front door – solemn blessing for dreamless sleep.

Not the feeling in your gut like a mouth swallowing its tongue.

– Brooke Nancekivell

8

LITSUP 2014

Features to fresh food. Even from a purely geographic perspective, supermarkets are not the only food retailers where fresh and healthy food can be bought.

I spoke with McGill Sustainability Studies alumni Jane Zhang to learn more about food security. Jane told me that she has a depanneur on the corner of her street that serves fresh, relatively cheap vegetables, and while this is a viable option, she also asks herself, “[Is it] enough to serve an entire neighbourhood?” Jane argues that this would mean “a completely different question.”

Vince says that food should not be seen as a commodity.

“Put very simply, global capitalism creates a topography of ‘haves and have-nots.’ From a food justice perspective, we see a jagged divide between the perpetually full and the perpetually hungry. All people deserve to have access to food for the simple reason that they are alive.”

Many food deserts often affect specific demographics.

“The environmental movement – and especially the food justice movement – [is] led on by white environmentalists. What does it mean, and what does it mean for the people who are excluded?” Jane asked.

Jane carried out her honours research project on urban agriculture, and through her research has confronted issues of social equity in the physical and ecological factors of food production. These problems of social equity are tied into colonial history, Jane said, and how landscapes have changed over time. In Montreal, there are more and more communitybased gardening initiatives like Santropol popping up, but simultaneously we see a lower level of private gardens. Jane tells me this is mainly because of changing demographics. “In the sixties, there were a lot of Italian and Japanese families installed in Montreal who would run these private gardens because of their socioeconomic status, as well as their respective histories of food heritage, and being used to growing food on their own. Now we see less of that, because their descendants are aging and are less inclined to do that type of work – perhaps because they’re simply not interested, or maybe because it reminds them of that struggle.”

The People’s Potato focuses on food access for students and the surrounding community, creating more control over the food system, and fighting environmental and food-related issues. They work through education and collaboration, and support projects that work toward environmental, and social justice. According to a People’s Potato collective member, this includes working “[against] factory farming, security in access to drinking water, and fighting the pipelines which poison the natural environment, and decimate animal populations,” on the one hand, as well as “Indigenous justice, feminism, migrant justice, and fighting racism and homophobia.”

It’s a “ridiculously large project or goal,” but these are the two primary types of interests of the organization, and threats or oppression that overlap with these two sectors are targeted and prioritized (for example, for events on Indigenous justice and pipelines, the People’s Potato volunteers come to support and bring food to those events).

Santropol promotes food security through Meals-onWheels, “a food delivery service for fresh and healthy food to seniors or people with less autonomy and who have trouble accessing food,” according to Kateri. Santropol Roulant has about 300 clients a year that use Meals-onWheels. “There’s service five days a week, save Thursday and Sunday.” Clients are grateful for this since Saturdays are usually days in which food accessibility becomes particularly cumbersome. However, Kateri finds that there isn’t enough awareness of this program, and that there is a need for “those who are socially isolated and don’t have networks to get involved, and reclaim their right to fresh food.” With Meals-on-Wheels, Santropol Roulant works with food banks to “decrease loss of good food” and make use of readily-available resources in Montreal.

Jane posits that “if you think about the end goal of food security, what is it really? It’s that we want everyone to have access to healthy, fresh food. Food banks are symptomatic of a larger problem. The people who rely on food banks have to take whatever is given to them, and it is never guaranteed that what they have in stock that day is fresh or healthy. Being in a position of not being able to choose one’s food, especially culturally-appropriative food, is a big problem. I think

November 17, 2014 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

ultimately, the end goal should be institutional, we should be looking at what is the government not doing that’s being addressed by food banks, that they need to do in the future.”

Food Accessibility

McGill and Concordia are among the few Canadian universities in which students have managed to win space for such projects. Midnight Kitchen and the People’s Potato are very successful models, however, according to Vince, “in Halifax there’s a group called ‘The Loaded Laddle,’ at the University of Victoria there exists a group called ‘the Community Cabbage’, and there are a myriad of other initiatives. Sadly, these projects have not been incorporated in the universities.

Perhaps the administration at these campuses are more resilient and opposed to the projects. The creation of these initiatives definitely reflects an activist spirit and political climate similar to that of Montreal.

The People’s Potato asserts that “the key to starting nonprofit food justice work in an institution is to learn to speak their language and follow their rules.” The group must have a mandate, a non-profit number, hired employees, and insurance for volunteers and the board of directors. “You try to create this perfect system, so that when the administration tries to knock you down, your foundation is solid and policies seamless.”

The choice of vegan food is a choice tied into the issue of food accessibility, but also a choice rampant with presumptions and implications. Jane states that she became a vegetarian four years ago and eventually a vegan, but is considering re-incorporating meat or fish into her diet. Her reasons for going plant-based are “the ecological side of things – being in these primarily white environmental movements in North America is one of the pathways to change that’s identified as counteracting climate change and other issues.”

However, Jane asserts that there are several elements missing in this ideology, such as the personal cultural basis to our diets. Becoming a vegetarian is taking a stance against “the meat-heavy, North-American diet,” which is not what she grew up on – she grew up on a Chinese diet, primarily based on vegetables and legumes, with a small amount of meat. Jane asserts that striking a balance would involve “considering your personal background in tandem with the political agenda you’re trying to advance.” She acknowledges that she has friends who are people of colour who are also vegetarian or vegan. “This is how it should be seen, a diversity of cuisines, which have a diversity of approaches to the plantbased diet, rather than needing to eat raw cashews and green smoothies to be a vegan.”

11

The People’s Potato acknowledged when I spoke with them that veganism “can be colonial and racist. There’s a lot of friction between environmentalism, animal rights, and globalization, and this idea of a baseline human dignity.” For the People’s Potato, it’s about removing barriers for access to the space. By not serving any animal products, “[the People’s Potato] can nourish Muslim students, since they won’t have to be concerned with how the meat was killed. Similarly for people with kosher diets and for vegetarians. [They] always post their ingredients on the board, so if anyone is soy – or gluten – sensitive for example, they can know.”

They continued, “It’s about speaking out against the racism, colonialist ideals, and cultural imperialism that happens with ‘white ways’ of knowing the world. It’s a challenge, because our user base is mostly white, Western, middle-class, and university-educated, but I feel like we confront that, and because we do this feels okay with me. We’re aware of the socio-cultural implications.”

In this way, one can get a sense of the condition of food justice in Montreal. Montreal is a city endowed with a political climate and activist spirit, which has enabled such initiatives as Midnight Kitchen and the People’s Potato to be successfully integrated into institutions. Alternative sources of food are emphasized, such as local farmers markets and urban gardening.

However, inherent in local food movements are questions of social equity and of who’s carrying out the work – whether it involves cultural imperialism, colonialist ideals, and the exploitation of migrant workers, or whether equal participation from community members, volunteers, and organizations.

Veganism is tied to the notion of accessibility as well as progressive politics – and the struggle for both environmental and animal rights – but it can also be a colonialist and racist ideology, which ignores cultural particularities and sensitivities.

As the People’s Potato asserts, “Food aid should offer its services in the absence of any social, cultural, or economic judgement.” Fresh, healthy food is a human right, and such a vision is emphasized by Santropol Roulant, in its urban agriculture initiatives, and People’s Potato – as it democratizes access to food for the student body. So while you stroll up the streets of Mile End, or down the cobblestone of Old Montreal, embrace the richness and diversity of choices you are presented with – it’s a luxury of living in such a multicultural city. But likewise, be an engaged consumer, and remain aware of where your food is coming from – and whether, with your choices, you are supporting the exploitation of workers or white supremacism, or whether you are promoting an ideology of cultural diversity, sustainable local foods, and social justice.

Art Essay

Confusion The piece aims to address the underlying tension between the church and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) community. It also seeks to raise awareness of the confusion experienced by Christians who also identify with queer sexualities.

November 17, 2014 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

12

Jasmine Wang | The McGill Daily

Sci+Tech

November 17, 2014 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

13

MyMartlet versus the McGill App Which one should you choose?

Marc Cataford Sci+Tech Writer

O

ver the last few years, higher education-oriented mobile applications have been booming. Corporations and student-led groups have been developing software to make students’ lives easier by combining useful campus information and other goodies pulled from web portals, and making it all instantly available at your fingertips.

Keeping McGill on your homescreen McGill is no exception to this trend, having placed an order with Oohlala – a successful student startup that creates customized mobile apps for universities. In early September, Oohlala released the “McGill App” and it became the official McGill mobile app, available for free download on both Android and iOS devices. At around the same time, Appvelopers, a group of McGill student developers, released MyMartlet, which has no official affiliation to the University.

The apps have created a social media buzz over the past few months, but how do they compare, and more importantly, which one really deserves a spot on your phone?

Reviewing the two contenders One intriguing aspect about the MyMartlet app is that it works directly with the MyMcGill portal. This implies that after you’ve provided your McGill email and password, it can pull every last bit of information from your detailed course schedule to your eBill history and push it to your screen. It’s evident that the developers really put a lot of effort into making the interface as user-friendly as possible, resulting in a simple-to-use piece of software that will get you where you want to be in a fraction of the time you’d spend on the official MyMcGill portal.

The app also features an efficient course registration system that allows you to swiftly search through the available courses and register, or add them to a “course wishlist” for later reference. Every search returns a list of course sections that includes the course identification number, the schedule, and the number of credits, which is a great upgrade from the sometimes messy search results obtained through Minerva. Also, note that the schedule system mimics Google Agenda, and includes information (such as the instructor’s name, the location, and a link to the Docuum

page for the course) in each entry to save you the trouble of searching for it on Minerva or elsewhere.

While MyMartlet focused on seamless integration with the student portal, the McGill App went the social media route. No direct communication is ever made between the application and the University’s website; instead, your information is kept on the developer’s server as a profile. The app also serves as a 411 directory, with listings to different services and offices. The main perk of this approach is that you can chat and share your schedule with your friends if they use the app, but the inevitable price is that you have to enter your schedule manually. Moreover, Minerva or MyCourses data is only accessible through the classic desktop version of the MyMcGill login page inserted in the app’s window.

In that respect, the McGill App is more of an attempt at building a social network than making the student portal more accessible. Usability is greatly reduced by this, as it really is a hybrid between Facebook and a regular agenda widget with a link to the University’s website. However, the app makes it easy to search for exam schedules, a feature currently not available on the MyMartlet app.

In terms of usefulness, MyMartlet comes out as a clear winner: it downloads the data you need and lets you access it in a fast and easy fashion.

When reviewing these apps, it becomes evident how incomparable they are. The choice to make is much simpler than listing the features in each one: it depends on whether you want yet another social application or a fully integrated portal app that lets you access the data you need, while leaving the social aspects to other well-established apps.

In terms of usefulness, MyMartlet comes out as a clear winner: it downloads the data you need and lets you access it in a fast and easy fashion. If you want a simple, purified MyMcGill portal experience, MyMartlet

is the way to go; for those seeking Facebook-esque functionality, the McGill App will suffice.

Unfortunately for the iOS users out there, MyMartlet is currently only available on Android, while the McGill app is present on both marketplaces. However, iOS and Windows Phone versions of the app are on the way.

Meeting the developers While Oohlala did not respond to The Daily’s request for an interview, the team behind MyMartlet agreed to a face-to-face meeting to talk about their experience producing the app from the ground up.

Their project started out as a course project for a Software Engineering Practice class. At first, they recall, the features to be implemented were driven by one question: “what do students need?” Julien Guerinet, the “Android guru” of the group, said, “At the start of the semester, what do you want to know?

You need access to your schedule because you are forgetting that constantly, and a map of campus with markers for the main buildings can help new students go around without getting lost. Then, access to eBills becomes handy and by the end of the semester, you want to keep an eye on your transcript.” Nearing the end of the spring semester, the developers had a basic version of MyMartlet that they thought would primarily be a tool for them to simplify their McGill lives.

Over the following eight months, they gathered information from their pool of beta-testers and from their growing user base to add more and more features, up until the moment where the app was ready to go public and be published on the Android app store.

Being a not-for-profit group, they had to synchronize their busy schedules, but managed to meet regularly to discuss the next fixes or features.

Moreover, being unaffiliated with the McGill administration meant that they had one large challenge ahead of them from the very beginning: pulling data from the portal without having access to the official API (code which is used to build apps for websites). They worked on the MyMcGill portal tirelessly to figure out how it functioned, and ended up solving that problem without ever having to ask McGill for the keys to the kingdom. Anyone who knows about app development knows that is an extremely impressive feat to accomplish in such as short amount of time and, more importantly, with very limited resources.

From the team’s point of view,

Sandy Wong | Illustrator apps geared toward institutions are very important for the educational ecosystem. While mentioning social media-related features to be implemented in the future, they stressed the importance of building a solid community. Apps such as MyMartlet can contribute to the togetherness of a school by providing information about opportunities given to students and keeping everyone in the loop on what’s happening around campus. A club or student organization is gaining traction among students? Let’s notify everyone so that anyone interested can join up!

Tips for aspiring developers Concluding the interview, the team came up with advice for aspiring developers out there. First, set yourself a goal. It may be small and only for your own benefit, “like an app that displays your Facebook pictures.” Through these sets of small goals, you learn the development process bit by bit, and, at some point, you can gather what you know and make something great. They also mentioned a thing or two about running into problems, the most valuable of which was, “if you have a problem, someone else probably had the same exact issue in the past.” That’s when development communities like StackOverflow come into play, as they provide tons of useful infor-

mation. In the same spirit, Google is your best friend! Countless tutorials are available online to get you through the basics and even through some of the more complicated stuff.

The students of Appvelopers also hold regular office hours during which they work on the app, listen to feedback, and make their knowledge available to the curious.

The location and schedule for these office hours are available through their Facebook page.

If you have to make the ultimate decision between the McGill App and MyMartlet, definitely go for MyMartlet. Not only is it extremely well-made, but it gathers all your data for you, allowing you to check information swiftly before moving on with your busy schedule. As students, we should really embrace these apps because, if anything, they have the potential to make our daily grind a thousand times simpler.

Once they become popular and their user base grows, they could increase our connectivity as a community by improving campus communication and thus making sure that opportunities on campus will never go unnoticed. Finally, if anything, the success of MyMartlet should serve as a lesson to McGill: the community always produces the best initiatives because it knows more than anyone else what it needs.

Sports

November 17, 2014 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

14

The rise of sports analytics How numbers are reshaping the game Madison Smith The McGill Daily

T

his past Tuesday at 6:30 p.m., I almost drowned in hockey, thanks to a talk given by Michael Schuckers, an associate professor at St. Lawrence University and a big shot in the world of sports analytics. Statistical analysis in sports has been thrust into the limelight in recent years, undoubtedly partly because of the movie Moneyball, which recounts the story of the 2002 Oakland A’s baseball team. The general manager (GM) of the team, Billy Beane, had an unlikely rise to success due to a type of statistical analysis called Sabermetrics, a form of statistical analysis in baseball that measures player performance.

This talk was hosted by the Desautels Sports Management Club, a student group in McGill’s Faculty of Managment, as a chance for aspiring scouts, agents, GMs, and Sabermetricians to get a little wisdom straight from a guru instead of digging through dry papers or arcane blog posts to learn the craft. The event held at the Bronfman building, and was wellattended, with almost every seat in the small conference room taken. As Schuckers began speaking, his affable tone soothed my apprehension, and promised to deliver facts with a little side of entertainment. Then I registered the significance of his words and they chilled me to the marrow: this talk wasn’t just about sports statistical analysis, it was exclusively about hockey! And everyone else in this room knew a hell lot more about that than I do! And we were about to run a mock draft!

Sabermetrics is used to measure a player’s contribution to their team.

I guess I knew that as a sportswriter in Canada, my general indifference toward hockey would be punished someday, but I didn’t think I would be thrust into the deep end quite so quickly. Fortunately, the audience was split into teams of three to choose players, and I was gifted with knowledge-

able and understanding partners who made all the choices and delegated me to writing them down in my journalist’s notebook. The purpose of the draft was to try to pick the five most effective players possible, and our choices were rated based on Schuckers’ own analytical statistic, the Total Hockey Rating (THoR). THoR is, at least to the uninitiated eye, an incredibly complicated metric, which, in Schucker’s words, measures “every event recorded by the NHL, [then] assigns value to those events based on the probability that they will lead to a goal.” The number then takes into account such factors as the homerink effect, power plays, and the statistical reporting eccentricities at each stadium, to come up with a number that represents wins above replacement (WAR) for every player in the NHL. (Fun fact: blocked shots in New Jersey are underreported by 27 per cent compared to the league average!) WAR is a unit of measurement borrowed from Sabermetrics that is used to measure a player’s contribution to their team. I was surprised to discover that Sidney Crosby, the only current hockey player I’ve ever heard of, did not even lead his team in WAR, suggesting that he is not the most vital player on the Pittsburgh Penguins (although he does place toward the top of the league). Instead, according to Schuckers’ analysis, the most useful forward on the Penguins is Tyler Kennedy. Judging by the gasps of my fellow audience members, other players’ THoR ratings were surprising as well.

My drafting team did not win.

In fact, we only picked a single player in the top tier of THoR ratings, with our lineup including Jason Williams, Zach Parise, Jake Muzzin, Jimmy Howard, and our one star, Patrice Bergeron. The top non-goalie players according to THoR (apparently, statistical analysis suggests that goalies are the most replaceable players on any team) are: defencemen Kimmo Timonen and Drew Doughty; left wingers Ray Whitney and Alexander Steen; and right winger Patric Hornqvist.

Next we talked about the future applications of statistical analysis like this for hockey strategy. Right now, Schuckers is most comfortable using his numbers for player evaluation and personnel decisions, as the data does not yet exist for sophisticated gameplay analysis. He was clearly excited, however, at the prospect

Ceci Steyn | Illustrator of the NHL adopting technology similar to what already exists in the NBA, where the positioning of the ball and of every player on the court is recorded 25 times per second. This unprecedented level of data has already led to changes in the way NBA basketball is played, most dramatically in shot selection, with teams focusing on either getting to the rim or hoisting threes and leaving the poor two-point jump shot behind. The stats seem to show that mid-range jumpers just do not have the same expected gain as long-balls or layups in most situations. The same data can influence the NHL: for example, the Los Angeles Kings (arguably the most dominant playoff team in the NHL) base their game around puck possession. This decision has been influenced by the rise of the Corsi Number, another complex form of statistical analysis used in the NHL. Schuckers used his ThoR data to demonstrate that when NHL teams are losing toward the end of games, they should pull their goalies to start a six-on-five attack much earlier than they currently do. As Shuckers said, “Losing by four is the same as losing by two.

The risk of getting scored on is outweighed by the advantage of having an extra man on offence.”

This talk of changing hockey strategy made me think about how the rise of statistical analysis has altered the way other sports I love more dearly have been played in my lifetime. As one audience member pointed out, baseball – as a reasonably static, one-on-one sport, which was the first to be affected by the statistical craze – has gone through stages where previous pronouncements by statisticians have been proven wrong by the arrival of more data. Most prominent among these was the Sabermetricians’ mantra that ‘defence doesn’t matter,’ which probably lengthened the careers of power-hitters like Adam Dunn at the expense of more balanced players. Now that it is easier to measure defensive performance, suddenly defence matters again in baseball!

Statisticians and the coaches and GMs who listen to them need to remember to not get too confident about their numbers, especially in the early stages.

I also worry that the increasingly stats-driven approach to strategy will result in a dull sameness between all the teams in a given league, reducing the lovely

idiosyncrasies that made your team yours. It’s exciting to watch NBA players chuck threes all the time, but I also get a little nostalgic for the 76ers of my Philly youth, coached by the fundamentalist zealot Larry Brown. If you shot a three on that team, you had better have been either Allen Iverson, the untouchable superstar, or completely open with a teammate under the basket to rebound. Otherwise you got the death glare.

But I’m not a cranky traditionalist. Sometimes conventional wisdom is even more soul-crushing than math. I look forward to the magical day when American football teams start listening to the stats nerds and start going for it on fourth and short regularly, and I love that the Sabermetricians admire underhanded baseball pitchers, dismissed by the old guard as mere novelties. In any case, it is useless to argue with the takeover of statistics in sports. It is the way of the future, whether I like it or not. And judging by the mesmerised attention paid to Schuckers at this event, the Desautels Sports Management Club may produce some hockey statisticians not too long from now.

On

Thursday, December 4

The staff of

The McGill Daily

will elect the rest of

the 2014-2015 editorial board Because we hope you’re interested in joining the non-hierarchical team, here’s a quick intro guide on how to become a Daily editor, how the election process works, and how to get in touch with us.

the basics

becoming staff To be staff, you must have contributed six points.

Articles, photos, graphics, and illustrations count as one point each. Writing a feature or coming in for a production night counts as two points. If you’re not staff yet, there’s time before the election, so email an editor to get involved!

Unlike many student newspapers, our editors are elected by Daily staffers rather than hired by committee. To run for an editorial position or to vote in the election, you must be Daily staff.

the positions the editors

Twenty editors share equal voting rights on issues, and work together to produce the newspaper every week. Each editor receives a small monthly honorarium.

Features Multimedia Production & Design Community

For more information on individual positions, contact specific section editors (emails can be found on page 19 of this issue). You can also stop by The Daily’s office in Shatner B-24.

candidate statement

candidate rundown

election

December

December

December

2

4

4

11:59 p.m.

7:00 p.m.

8:30 p.m.

Submit a one-page application to coordinating @mcgilldaily.com.

All staffers who want to vote in the election must attend rundowns in Shatner B-24.

Candidates will interview in front of all voters at the election in Shatner B-24.

deadlines The Daily requires all candidates to submit a one-page application, including your qualifications and interest in running, as well as two samples of writing, photos, illustrations, or design.

Email your application to coordinating@mcgilldaily.com

by December 2 at midnight.

Culture

November 17, 2014 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

16

Not just another play within a play Players’ Theatre presents Six Characters in Search of an Author Christian Favreau The McGill Daily

I

f language is constructed based on individual perceptions of our surroundings, then how can subjective reality ever be shared? Anna Gordon wrestles with this tension between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ in her interpretation of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, presented

by Players’ Theatre.

Six Characters opens with a director and his actors during a play rehearsal. Before long, a masked family of six interrupts the rehearsal, claiming to be unfinished characters in search of an author. The six characters explain that they came into this near existence from the mind of an author, who then denied them full life when he abandoned them as figments of his imagination. The Director, played by Mal Cleary, allows The Characters to tell their story; The Director’s Actors become a second audience, and a meta play-within-aplay ensues.

The nameless Characters tell their family history to The Actors in the hope that they will perform their story, granting them full existence. They explain that The Mother (Julianna Astorino) and The Father (Nicholas LePage) have an illegitimate child, The Son (Oskar Flemer), while The Mother subsequently had three more children with another man who died. They tell The Actors of their complex familial relations, centring on The Stepdaughter’s (Mars Zaslavsky) work as a sex worker, due to her family’s poverty.

The initial explanation, however, is only one version of the family’s story.

As the play goes on, The Actors begin to act out The Characters’ story, and contradicting perspectives and narratives are revealed. In an interview with The Daily, director Anna

Gordon pointed out that each of The Characters “has a different telling of the story.”

On stage, the six Characters echo Gordon, admitting that the words that create their reality are tricky and interpretive, and their meanings always subjective. Six Characters challenges the audience to grapple with contradictory accounts that are all, to an extent, both true and false.

This dilemma is the essence of the play, as The Director and his Actors struggle to see that representing a universally true life experience on stage is impossible.

Busting the myth of objective truth, Pirandello’s play also collapses the barrier between reality and performance, as The Director and his Actors struggle to wrap their heads around their uncanny situation.

Since The Characters are fictitious, yet truly alive on stage, they cannot be understood as anything but corporeal. Their reality is bound to The Actors’ subjective interpretation and performance of that reality, and vice versa. Gordon explained to The Daily that “we all live in our own internal worlds and our entire perceptual systems are mediated by our own inner experiences. [...] Humans are constantly performing.” By this logic, theatre and real life are inextricably intertwined. Neither is anything but the active shaping of an ongoing story.

Normally, this classic theatrical trope – the ‘play-within-the-play’ – could be considered overdone, if not for the theme of Six Characters. The existential struggles that define this particular play-within-a-play make it necessary for it to be confusing, fragmented, and mind-boggling.

Thankfully, the Players’ cast and director guide the audience, rendering the confusion beautiful. To contrast the many layers of the plot, the stage is, for the most part, bare. The

The masked Characters of Six Characters in Search of an Author. only constant prop is the white shadow screens, with actors posed behind to display creepy tableaus in the background of the set. The screens add a whole other dimension to the play: while the action on stage occurs, the audience also experiences the reactions of the offstage family, as they fear the upcoming, inevitable pain of the family on stage.

Along with the play’s mindbending nature, Gordon’s blocking of movement also plays an essential role.

The constant and dramatic movement on stage – running, pacing, and falling to one’s knees – simplifies the plot, giving the two audiences space to breathe as they try to understand all that happens.

The costumes, too, enhance not only the show’s aesthetics but also its accessibility. The Characters all wear white plaster masks, which

Srijan Shukla | Photographer

separate Actor from Character. The patterned masks make their faces look as if they had been sketched, much like unfinished drawings. Each character has a different set of eyebrows painted on their mask, which reveal their dominant emotion, such as sadness or anger. The Father’s is hardest to pin down, perfectly in line with his wiliness.

Unfortunately, the masks also prevent facial expression, and as such The Characters rely on their voices to deliver emotion. Much of the time, the actors resort to increasing their volume to convey strong feelings.

This constant noise quickly loses its effect, leaving the actors with little variety in their vocal tones. Volume is a powerful tool, but in smaller doses.

The actors do, however, maintain believability – particularly LePage and Zaslavsky, who strengthen each

other’s acting through the clash between their characters. The masked children are also especially engaging; Flemer’s stage presence is full of energy, complementing Natasha Ukolova’s eerie non-speaking part. Cleary, as The Director, takes full advantage of his unmasked face to convey emotion, his eyes acquiring an excited look whenever The Director was particularly inspired by the play.

Six Characters in Search of an Author is a mix of heavy dramatism, absurdism, meta-theatre, and comedy.

Players’ Theatre takes a confusing narrative and turns it into a sophisticated spectacle, inviting you to get lost in the layers.

Six Characters in Search of an Author runs November 19 to 22 at Players’ Theatre (SSMU Building, third floor). Tickets are $6 for students.

Coming soon at the Phi Centre CONCERTS

November 21 at 6 PM DEE The Space Between Us Launch and concert as part of M for Montreal Free

CINEMA

January 23 at 9 PM ZOLA JESUS A co-presentation with Blue Skies Turn Black $21.25 (taxes and fees included)

November 19 at 7:30 PM PRIDE

By Matthew Warchus with Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton

November 22 at 5 PM GANGS OF WASSEYPUR

By Anurag Kashyap with Manoj Bajpayee and Nawazuddin Siddiqui

November 25 at 7:30 PM SUD EAU NORD DÉPLACER A documentary

by Antoine Boutet

Watch the trailers at phi-centre.com All films are $11.25 (taxes and fees included) unless otherwise indicated.

Programming subject to change without notice. Visit our website for the latest updates.

Phi Centre—407 Saint-Pierre Street, Old-Montreal—phi-centre.com

November 26 at 7:30 PM DAYS OF GRAY

By Ani Simon-Kennedy with Viktoría Rós Antonsdóttir and Davið Laufdal Arnarsson

November 27 at 7:30 PM ELLE QUÉBEC fait son cinéma: THE MISFITS

By John Huston Free

Culture

November 17, 2014 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

17

Getting bitter with DarkMatter

Poetry duo uses comedy, emotion to deconstruct bourgeois queer identity Yahong Chi Culture Writer

I

n 2010, the launch of the It Gets Better Project made the phrase synonymous with LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer) rights, promising a better future for youth facing harassment and violence. But late last Friday evening, art/activist duo DarkMatter pointed out in a packed McGill lecture hall that in reality, this promise was reserved for white, cis LGBTQ individuals. Through spoken word pieces that were sometimes vulnerable and occasionally aggressive, but always intensely personal, DarkMatter took on the intersections of hierarchies that continue to dominate queer movements.

DarkMatter’s performance “It Gets Bitter” was the keynote event in the five-day Culture Shock series held by the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) McGill and SSMU, with an introduction by Kama Maureemootoo and Kai Cheng Thom. DarkMatter is a duo composed of Janani Balasubramanian and Alok Vaid-Menon, two trans South Asian activists and artists. Their spoken word poetry, performed sometimes individually and sometimes together, was interspersed with explanations and discussion of their work. The interplay of poetry and conversation allowed for an informal atmosphere

that belied their no-holds-barred approach to concepts such as colonialism, gender-race relations, and transnational movements.

This head-on style of performance was exemplified in the poem “It Gets Bourgie” project. Performed by both artists, the poem was framed as a letter addressed to Dan Savage, the founder of the It Gets Better Project. The phrase “it gets bourgie,” a direct reference to the “it gets better” movement’s bourgeois undertones, and pop culture references such as “Like. Share.

Colonize. Repeat!” were laden with irony, grounding DarkMatter’s critiques in the everyday. The poem moved at a brisk pace, enhanced by the fluid back-and-forth between Balasubramanian and Vaid-Menon.

It was during these collaborative poems that the duo was at its best, their overlapping voices creating both a dialogue and a rant.

While their delivery was impressive, it was the personal nature of DarkMatter’s poetry that gave it weight. The duo exposed their pain to the audience, sharing searing memories of the damage they have experienced through a racist queer hierarchy. When VaidMenon asked, “Can I show you what it means to wear my body as a wound?” or when Balasubramanian declared, “I can only use a band-aid if I understand why I’m bleeding/ It might not be my blood,” they presented real, tangible effects of

Jasmine Wang | The McGill Daily oppression in their lives. This emotion was met with snaps, shouts, and cries from the audience – DarkMatter knows how to connect with its crowd.

But the duo were equally as skilled in using humour as in using raw feeling to make a point. Balasubramanian performed a piece on the ingestion of others’ intestinal microflora, a microorganism of the digestive tract, by consuming their feces, hence constructing a metaphor for the internalization of white colonial histories through

elaborate poop puns and pinpoint commentary. Another lethal combination of comedy, popular culture, and scathing critique was the collaboration “An Open Letter to the Basic White Witches of Hogwarts, from Parvati and Padma Patil.” The audience teetered between laughter and solemn shock, caught off-guard by the brutal blend of humour and truth.

DarkMatter ended the evening with a Q&A during which they noted that, often, people take in their shows as art distinct from the so-

cial movements that inspired them.

It is important, they emphasized, to actually partake in activism and real-world efforts against the harmful structures of colonialism, queerphobia, and racism. In making explicit the link between their art and their activism, DarkMatter was able to not only critique a white, hierarchical gay movement, but to also suggest effective ways of dismantling it. Their performance was not only an experience and a revelation, for the attendees: it was a call to action.

November homesteading workshops at the concordia greenhouse and The Montreal international documentary festival Niyousha’s Pick: November Homesteading Workshops at the Concordia Greenhouse The Concordia Greenhouse has been hosting “informative and inspiring” homesteading workshops all month. If you missed the first two workshops – soap-making and mushroom cultivation – it’s not too late to check out the last two and pick up a few skills for a self-sufficient lifestyle.

On Tuesday, you can check out the “Kombucha Workshop” with Liza Charbel from Gardens Without Borders, a local not-for-profit horticultural therapy centre which “provides accessible gardens and nature programs.” The workshop will explore the health benefits of kombucha and teach how to pre-

pare it. Alternatively, attend the last event, “Hot Topics in Urban Agriculture Workshop: Indoor Winter Farming.” This one is free and led by the greenhouse’s own event coordinator, Sheena Swirlz. Growing your own food in the bitter winter may sound like an expensive hassle, but this workshop will provide tips and tricks for doable projects using “accessible and affordable growing supplies.” Winter doesn’t have to mean those sad pots of shriveled plants – keep homesteading and keep things green during the winter, if that’s your kind of thing.

Rosie’s Pick: The Montreal International Documentary Festival The

Montreal

International

Documentary Festival continues this week with screenings around the city, as well as retrospectives, master classes, debates, and, of course, parties. The festival promotes the work of Quebecois documentary-makers, in addition to presenting a bilingual international program. This year’s festival features multiple themes such as “territories,” exploring the relationship between humanity and the environment; “Beat Dox,” or movies with rhythm; and “horizons,” which revolve around current affairs.

For Quebecois content, check out Bruno Baillargeon’s The Work of Days, a film that chronicles the friendship and work of three Montreal artists who share a studio and a unique friendship. A little fur-

ther from home is The Wanted 18, a collaboration between Quebec, France, and Palestine that tells the story of how Palestinians resisted economic dependence on Israel in the 1980s by owning cows, eventually fuelling the First Intifada.

If you’re looking for something lighter but still political, God Save Justin Trudeau critiques the spectacle of Canadian politics through the story of Justin Trudeau’s 2012 boxing match against Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau.

No matter what topics pique your interest, the Montreal International Documentary Festival has got you covered. Take a break from writing those term papers to sit in a room that isn’t a library – maybe you’ll learn something that you

can’t find in a textbook.

The “Kombucha Workshop” is Tuesday, November 18 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.. The “Hot Topics in Urban Agriculture Workshop: Indoor Winter Farming” is Thursday, November 20 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.. Both workshops will be held at the Concordia Greenhouse, 1455 de Maisonneuve West.

The first screening of The Work of Days is Wednesday, November 19 at 6:15 p.m., at Cinema Excentris – Cassavetes. The first screening of God Save Justin Trudeau is Tuesday, November 18 at 8:30 p.m. at Cinema Excentris – Cassavetes. The Wanted 18 plays Tuesday, November 18 at 6:30 p.m. at Cinema du Parc. For the full festival schedule, check out ridm.qc.ca.

18

Culture

November 17, 2014 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

M for Montreal preview guide Rosie Long Decter The McGill Daily Since 2006, M for Montreal has served as a platform for up-and-coming Montreal and Canadian artists. While no match for POP Montreal in size (and in the number of free events), M for Montreal is an important festival for local acts looking to gain exposure. If you’re a local listener just looking to gain some exposure to good music, here’s what you should hit up this week.

November 19, Evening: Country Calder La Vitrola at 11:45 p.m.

Free!

+

Alex

Self-described as “Sleaze Wave,” Montreal pop duo Country will start off M for Montreal the right way. Country’s dark but dancey synth tunes will put you in the festival mood. The band released Failure this fall, a nine-track album that evokes the likes of Joy Division and Blondie, with cheeky track titles like “Money for Cancer.” Jointly kicking off the festival is Edmonton pop prince Alex Calder. This opening show takes place at one of Montreal’s newest venues, La Vitrola, and, best of all, it’s free.

November 20, Day: The Franklin Electric, High Ends, Kandle and the Krooks, The OBGMs, Holy Family, Secret Sun Café Campus at 1:00 p.m.

Free!

This show has too many bands to highlight the talent of each, but let’s just say it’s a powerhouse lineup as far as Canadian indie goes. This is the perfect opportunity to get to know the non-sleazy, non-late-night identity of Caf´é Campus, which actually has a pretty regular rotation of indie shows. Pay particular attention to Secret Sun, another Montreal duo making indie pop waves. Anne-Marie Campbell’s dreamy vocals will float through the drum machines and right into your head.

November 20, Evening: Light Fires, The Posterz, Homeshake, The Muscadettes, Weaves, Heat, Ragers 666 Cléopatre at 8:30 p.m. $14.26 Headliners Ragers 666 have recently been making a name for themselves in Montreal with their fusion of hip hop, electronic, and rock. It won’t be long before this group takes off. Their debut EP, to be released sometime this month, was produced by the same dude who produces Rick Ross. Make sure to catch ‘em while you still can. Also not to be missed is Toronto quartet Weaves, whose quirky sound is hard to pin down. It’s fun, jangly, and smooth all at once – you’ll have to see them to figure out what that means.

November 21, Evening: Mozart’s Sister, L.A. Foster, Antoine93 Le Ritz at 9:30 p.m. $12 Somewhere between Grimes, CVRCHES, and Madonna is Mozart’s Sister, the project of Montrealer Caila Thompson-Hannant. Her powerful vocals, thumping beats, and blinding light shows will keep you dancing all night long. This show will be quite the party, especially given that it’s happening at the newlyrenovated Il Motore, now Bar Le Ritz PDB.

November 21, Day: Montreal Digital Music Journalism Le Ritz at 9:30 p.m. $12

November 22, Evening: The Muscadettes, The New York Kleps, Mise en Scene L’Escogriffe at 10:00 p.m. $8

Featuring local journalists from across all music genres, this panel will feature tips for aspiring music critics in Montreal. In a digital era, it is increasingly difficult to find jobs in the traditional journalism in the arts field, because very few print papers are hiring full-time employees anymore. Those with a knack for critiquing creativity need to be able to navigate the blogosphere to maintain any hope of building a career. This panel promises to provide budding critics some much needed direction.

Twin sisters Chantal and Kathleen Ambridge are The Muscadettes, a Montreal garage rock band straight out of the early nineties. Orleans’ The New York Kleps are rockers of an earlier age, channelling – yep, you guessed it – The New York Dolls. Get your ripped jeans out and jump around for the last night of M for Montreal.

M for Montreal spotlight: Slight Read our review of their new release before you see them this weekend

Grace Bill Culture Writer

J

ust over a year ago, in April 2013, Slight released their debut EP, Melodion. Over that EP’s three tracks, the Montreal-based group presented a familiar sound somewhere between Stereolab’s retro-futuristic avant-pop Emperor Tomato Ketchup and the dreamy psychedelic pop of The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin. The vocals follow angular, idiosyncratic melodies, shared between the band’s core songwriting

duo of Danji Buck-Moore and Michael Hahn – who also happen to be McGill alums. The duo, joined by a varying group of percussionists, creates a lush atmosphere around these melodies, building on the interplay between Hahn’s reflective guitar and Buck-Moore’s keyboards.

Now, straight out of their improvised loft studio, Buck-Moore and Hahn, joined by Drew Barnet on drums, have released a new followup single, “Spirit School/Tasting.”

The first thing that strikes listeners familiar with last year’s EP is that the band has upped the fuzz on their sound. The A-side, “Spirit School,” is mostly in line with Melodion, with the exception of an unfamiliar fuzzy guitar that drones throughout much of the song. This shift toward shoegaze is even more noticeable on the B-side, where the swirling guitar effects and atmospheric synths in “Tasting” bring to mind My Bloody Valentine’s 2013 album m b v. It’s a subtle change, but one that Slight

Slight’s new EP shows a new level of sophistication, incorporating various influences to produce a more distinguishable sound. pulls off well. The increased psychedelic and shoegaze influences, combined with the soft pop of before, make the group’s sound slightly more distinct. Their energy level on this new release is also higher than the first EP. Aside from this shift, however, not much else about the new release is remarkable in

terms of the band’s development.

The vocals, for one, are unremarkable, but they don’t seem to be the focus. The lyrics of “Spirit School” come across as a metaphor for an unsatisfying relationship. The narrator sets up an image of “halls and rooms convincing me to stay” but complains “It’s not all on me/what we do when we’re asleep.” Unfulfilling relationships consistently inspire music across the board, from the powerfully moving to the the eyeroll-inducing cliche. For Slight, the relationship-inspired lyrics are too ambiguous to have any sort of emotional impact. Meanwhile, the vocals to “Tasting” are so obscured through effects and filters that the lyrics are hard to discern – but this is is often the case for shoegaze music, which is more about atmosphere and timbre than lyricism. As such, the lyrics don’t add much to the music. The vocals are more of a background layer, a

feature like the fuzzy guitar, not noteworthy but still noticeable – they would be missed if the tracks were purely instrumental.

“Spirit School/Tasting” is a promising single. While there’s nothing about it that really stands out, that may be the point – not to take any of the elements as independent, but to simply listen and absorb. In terms of the band’s development, it shows a new level of sophistication, incorporating various influences to produce a more distinguishable sound. Indie rock and psychedelic fans should keep a lookout for Slight – they won’t grab you immediately, but you might just like what you hear.

Both Melodion and “Spirit School/Tasting” are available for digital download at the band’s Bandcamp page, slightsound.bandcamp.com. Slight will perform at Sala Rossa on November 22 at 7 p.m. as part of M for Montreal.

Editorial

volume 104 number 12

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

November 17, 2014 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Criminalizing sex work is not a solution

phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com coordinating editor

Dana Wray

coordinating@mcgilldaily.com coordinating news editor

Janna Bryson news editors

Jill Bachelder Emma Noradounkian Igor Sadikov commentary & compendium! editors

Cem Ertekin Emmet Livingstone features editor

Hannah Besseau science+technology editor

Zapaer Alip

sports editor

Drew Wolfson Bell culture editors

Niyousha Bastani Rosie Long Decter multimedia editor

Alice Dutrut photo editor

Tamim Sujat illustrations editor

Alice Shen copy editor

Molly Korab design & production editor

Rachel Nam web editor

Arielle VanIderstine community editor

Diana Kwon le délit

Joseph Boju

rec@delitfrancais.com cover design Tamim Sujat contributors Grace Bill, Marc Cataford, Yahong Chi, Christian Favreau, Teddy Liptay, Jonathan Reid, Srijan Shukla, Subhanya Sivajothy, Myra Sivaloganathan, Madison Smith, Scarlet Solidarity, Ceci Steyn, Arianee Wang, Jasmine Wang, Andy Wei, Sandy Wong.

Joelle Dahm | The McGill Daily

B

ill C-36, which regulates sex work in Canada, is set to become law by December. The bill is the Conservative government’s response to a Supreme Court decision last December that struck down key provisions of Canada’s existing sex work legislation on the grounds that it actively endangered sex workers.

Where the government had the opportunity to improve its policies and promote the safety of sex workers, it instead wrote a law that addresses none of the Court’s concerns and perpetuates the harmful stigmatization of sex work.

The bill effectively replicates and expands the harmful provisions that were struck down last year, such as the criminalization of brothels and public communication for the purpose of sex work. It restricts the purchase or sale of sexual services in public spaces, criminalizes the involvement of third parties such as bodyguards and drivers (who are key to the safe conduct of sex work) introduces the criminalization of those who purchase sexual services, and prevents sex workers from advertising. All of these provisions prevent the creation of a safe space for conducting sex work – they force sex workers to do business on the streets and underground.

In pushing this legislation, the government has ignored the spirit behind the Court’s decision, instead taking the opportunity to promote a conservative agenda that regulates the bodies and lives of sex workers. The bill’s express purpose to ultimately “abolish [sex work] to the greatest extent possible” is fuelled by a moralistic condemnation of sex work, while failing to address the needs of those directly impacted by it. In promoting abolition, Bill C-36 perpetuates the stigmatization of sex work that ultimately contributes to the level of violence, and lack of response to it, faced by sex workers, especially those from marginalized populations.

There has been an overwhelmingly negative response to this bill from sex workers and advocacy groups. The Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform, Sex Professionals of Canada, and Stella, a Montreal sex work solidarity organization, have all spoken out against the bill. Instead of heeding the calls of those with lived experience, the government has relied primarily on one advocacy group in writing the legislation: the Women’s Coalition, which seeks to abolish sex work.

Opposition to sex work and the support of its criminalization does sometimes stem from a concern for safety. The Native Women’s Association of Canada responded negatively to the Supreme Court’s original decision, noting that “Aboriginal women and girls [...] are among the most vulnerable population in Canada,” and that many Indigenous women find themselves doing sex work as the result of poverty.

Indeed, while many sex workers enjoy their jobs, many others find themselves in the industry not by choice, but due to coercion, violence, trafficking, or poverty. That being said, criminalization does not actually address these issues. Bill C-36 puts sex workers in harm’s way regardless of the circumstances under which they entered the industry.

If those in power are actually concerned with the well-being of sex workers, they must radically change their approach to sex work legislation. Instead of supporting archaic legislation with harmful rhetoric that portrays sex workers as either victims or villains, the government must make a genuine effort to address the issues that really matter: preventing sexual violence and ensuring the safety of sex workers.

—The McGill Daily Editorial Board

3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-26 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9 phone 514.398.6790 fax 514.398.8318 advertising & general manager Boris Shedov sales representative Letty Matteo ad layout & design Geneviève Robert

Mathieu Ménard Lauriane Giroux

dps board of directors Joseph Boju, Juan Camilo Velásquez Buriticá, Joelle Dahm, Alyssa Favreau, Ralph Haddad, Rachel Nam, Hillary Pasternak, Thomas Simmoneau, Dana Wray All contents © 2014 Daily Publications Society. All rights reserved. The content of this newspaper is the responsibility of The McGill Daily and does not necessarily represent the views of McGill University. Products or companies advertised in this newspaper are not necessarily endorsed by Daily staff.

Printed by Imprimerie Transcontinental Transmag. Anjou, Quebec.

ISSN 1192-4608.

CONTACT US NEWS COMMENTARY CULTURE FEATURES SCI+TECH SPORTS MULTIMEDIA

news@mcgilldaily.com commentary@mcgilldaily.com culture@mcgilldaily.com features@mcgilldaily.com scitech@mcgilldaily.com sports@mcgilldaily.com multimedia@mcgilldaily.com

PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONS DESIGN&PRODUCTION COPY WEB COMMUNITY

photos@mcgilldaily.com illustrations@mcgilldaily.com design@mcgilldaily.com copy@mcgilldaily.com web@mcgilldaily.com community@mcgilldaily.com

19

Compendium!

November 17, 2014 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

20

Lies, half-truths, and the state is the Executive Committee of the Bourgeoisie.

University is a sham Nerds fight back to no avail Lucy Peaseblossom The McGall Weekly

C

ampus sleuths have uncovered a secret that runs to the core of the University establishment. Documents leaked to the The Weekly confirm that university education is in fact an elaborate scheme to erode students’ self-esteem and critical thinking abilities in order to create a population of servile dullards.

Disgruntled and socially exiled McGall nerds were behind the revelation; a group of them hacked a University email account and discovered a folder containing correspondence between the administration and political top brass. Most emails contained detailed documents advising academics on how to degrade students. Examples in-

cluded such instructions as: “peer at students over your glasses,” “ignore students’ questions; use passive aggression,” “set presentations that are designed to humiliate the presenter,” and “engineer overlylarge classes so that students feel like cattle.”

In the interests of readers’ peace of mind, The Weekly has held back publication of some of the most shocking recommendations. However, campus activists consider making students’ families pay tuition the most humiliating measure.

“No matter what you do it’s wrong,” said Keener O’Dowde, a U3 Social Interaction Tips Student and former straight-A high school pupil. “You do your work, get your shitty C+, receive no advice, and then get thinly-veiled abuse from

your prof, TA, and classmates.

Then I have to turn around and pretend to my family that everything’s fine?”

The Weekly interviewed Crackers Burge, a Masters Comical Science student and disgruntled nerd, to speak to the revelation. “What we’ve figured out is that this began post-student strike.

Political elements decided that students needed to be tranquilized back into stupidity – they were frightened of exposure.”

“What’s most worrying is that some students seem to have been co-opted,” he continued. “It’s those slimy student Liberal Party members who strut around with their suits and pompous smiles and condescending conversation. These people have been bred to make you feel bad about yourself,” he contin-

ued. “God-awful class traitors!”

McGall has reacted with characteristic apathy; Liberal McGall, the university’s Liberal student society, released a statement calling on the need for more “neutrality and rational discussion.” However No Justice Without Justice For Nerds (NJWJN), a student group aiming to collect all academicminded students under one roof, has decided to raise awareness of the issue.

Some of NJWJN’s activism has raised eyebrows, however. The group has accused student politicians, professors, and administrative staff of belonging to an alien reptilian race.

“David Ickes was right. Just so, so right. The proof is in their eyes: their cold, emotionless, reptilian eyes,” chirped Nerd-In-Chief,

Satchel Gramme, referring to the glaze of hopeless exasperation commonly found among bureaucrats.

“It’s all a trick. They put on their human shells everyday, but their alien technology isn’t sufficiently advanced to capture the beauty of the human eye.”

An anonymous administration insider contacted The Weekly to clear up some of the confusion. “In a way, this reptile shit is playing really well for us. We’re obviously not reptiles,” he said.

“We are engaged in psychological and economic warfare though,” he chuckled. “Governments crush the working people while the middle class sits smugly because they think they’re exempt. Our genius is in making them think that, while enslaving their puny minds when they come to study with us.”

Crossword: from far far away Across 2.

3.

4.

7.

8.

12.

13.

17.

19.

Most fans will ignore this character exists.

Old crazy uncle with a lightsaber.

Its destruction disturbed millions of physicists.

Fastest piece of junk in the galaxy.

Dynasty of people who keep bringing balance to the Force.

Scruffy looking nerf-herder.

Only cis straight human female in the universe.

More machine than man, like most of us.

Epitome of the military-industrial complex.

1.

5.

6.

9.

10.

11.

14.

15.

16.

18.

Only (human) person of colour in a galaxy of trillions of species.

Fine, he created the universe. But why Disney?

Anthropo-supremacist centrist state.

Very old, very wise Muppet.

Not so anthropo-supremacist anti-oppressive freedom fighters.

Rwwaaargh.

“The whole planet is one big gentrified city.”

Order of passionate individuals who only crave power.

Apathy is death, not even social capital could save these monks.

Sci-fi equivalent of social capital.

Down

WANT TO BE MY CROSSWORD FAIRY? Email compendium@mcgilldaily.com