THEMcGILl TRIBUNE
Tuesday. M arch 2 4 , 1987
BOG Votes To Sit On Military Research by Elizabeth Pasternak
The Board of Governors (BoG) unanimously voted to create a joint com m ittee o f Board and Senate members to review the procedures of military research at McGill last Monday. The BoG meeting got underway as Principal Johnston recalled the "unfor tunate incident" where 3 members of the civil disobedience group called "The Little Red W agon" occupied VP Research Gordon Maclachlan's office for six days in protest of the research on Fuel Air Explosives being conducted at McGill. At that point, a persistent clamour
from the 150 students protesting outside the administration building began to filter through the closed windows of the Board room. The demonstrators had already been marching in a circle in front of the building for close to 2 hours, despite a minor blizzard, chanting anti fuel air war slogans and demanding responsible research. Congregated near the face of the building, the demonstrators pounded on garbage cans, mailboxes and signs and chanted protests. "Some issues have been raised on the board with regard to our research guidelines," Johnston said, "particularly
Radio M c G ill G o e s FM! by Michèle Dupuis
The Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission granted CFRM Radio McGill a licence last Thursday to broadcast on Montréal's FM dial. Come September, CFRM w ill be broadcasting over a 100 Kilometer radius around the clock, seven days a week on 90.3 FM. "W e are Pleased, said a jubilant Martha-Marie Kleinhans, station manager at CFRM. CFRM has been campaigning to obtain the FM license for approximately two year. The radio station was forced to compete with Radio Concordia (CRSG) and CIBL, a local community radio station for the one position on the dial available for student broadcasting in the Montréal area. Montréal is the only ma jor city in Canada that does not yet have a student operated radio station. Lucy Odette, Assistant to the (Québec) Regional Director of the CRTC, stated that the Commission granted the license to McGill over Concordia because McGill is "w e ll supported and better prepared; it was clearly the best
Don Rossiter and Martha-Marie Kleinhans beam with pleasure.
Odette also noted that the station "offered true alternative programming," and had over 25 years of experience in broadcasting, (six years on cable) she ex plained that these reasons, along with the support of students, the university's administration and the business community were the deciding factors for the Commission on which station would receive the license. Radio McGill sought out six businesses who would advertise on the station as soon as they received their license. Students showed their support in October 1985, by voting to grant the station $2.00 per student per semester to cover operating costs. The administration has promised CFRM a $112,000 loan upon the granting of the license to cover various start up costs including studio renovations, anten nas, and new equipment. According to Kleinhans, these are the only extra costs that w ill be incurred as the station w ill continue to operate using only volunteers. The volunteers are the "key to our success," said Don Rossiter, co author of Radio McGill's FM application. The station is also hoping that Vice Principal (Physical Resources), Sam Kingdon, w ill provide new office space to house the necessarily expanded operations of the station. Although Kingdon saw a "legitimate need" for extra space, he was not prepared to discuss it: "it's too premature," he said.
Co-op On Campus by Claude Trudelle
Many people have not heard of Coop McGill. Yet, this student run organism is very much alive with sales of a quarter of a million dollars during its last financial year! But what is a cooperative exactly? A cooperative is a non-profit organiza tion owned by members who pay a minimal fee in exchange for a share. This share in return allows the member to benefit from low priced items that the Coop distributes, and also gives the member a voting right in general assemblies. Coop M cG ill was officially constituted in early 1985 under the name of the McGill University Engineering Student Cooperative. Its original objective was to distribute the Philips 3100 computer to
engineering students. The advent of the computer, however, created demand for computer related products such as diskettes, printers and paper. Therefore,, Coop M cG ill diver sified and now offers a wide variety of co m p u te r pro du cts as w e ll as calcula tors, o ffic e fu rn itu re and typewriters. From a task force solely composed of engineering students, the Coop quickly grew up with the involvement of students from other faculties. This brought in different views and various skills. Presently, over^30 students work at the Coop to best serve the interest of the 800 members. Coop McGill is located in Room 281, McDonald Engineering Building and is open from 10:00am till 4:00pm during the week.
Published by the Students' Society of M c G ill U niversity
V o lu m e 6, Issue 23
those made in the last few years regar ding military research." He explained that the guidelines only stipulate that M cG ill is prevented from engaging in secret military research. Johnston then said, "I propose an ad hoc joint committee of Board and Senate to review procedures involving military research. This committee would include three members from the Board, and three members from Senate, one of them being a student." As a motion was put forward to ap point this committee, David Schulze, Grad Rep., proposed that the body move to Appendix C of the BoG documenta tion. In this document, the student Ad Hoc C om m ittee for Responsible Research, recommends the suspension of the contract between the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Defence Research establishment. It also recommends that BoG enlarge the mancontinued on page 3
Justin Richardson says "n ix " to FAE's.
O c e a n o g ra p h y by Ian M. Harrold
Last Tuesday's meeting of the Faculty of Science sounded the death knell for M cG ill's internationally known Institute of Oceanography. Introducing a motion for the "dissolution" of the Institute, the Dean of Science, W illiam Leggett, asserted that the move "in no way reflects on the quality or the dedication of the staff of the Institute" but rather, is an attempt to "restructure existing resources." Although several faculty members ex pressed sadness and regret at the loss, the motion was passed overwhelmingly with only five members voting against.
G o e s
Leggett said that the dissolution was in part an initiative on the part of the In stitute's own staff and that the situation there had grown "more serious" since 1983, when an independent report recommended closing down the In stitute should it's funding remain at such an historically low level. The report praised the Institute's high level of pro ductivity (over 45 published studies in 1984-85) and said its funding should be increased to the tune of $250,000. In ad dition, the report recommended that two new positions be created in marine chemistry and primary production. The status quo, the report said, would mean
Environmental Ethics by Michael Sharpe
Nowhere does the statement "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" ring more truly than in the ears of en vironmentalists. Since the 1960's, peo ple like Rachel Carson, Garrett Hardin, and David Suzuki have been trying to awaken a lethargic public, short-sighted politicians and greedy indistrialists to the fact that our planet is in trouble. Serious trouble. More often than not, the warnings have fallen on deaf ears. There is, it seems, a tremendous inertia in this system of ours: A system which thrives on conspicuous consumption and ex plosive growth, and which clings tenaciously to a quaintly Victorian but dangerous concept of progress. Progress at all costs. What we are finding, of course, is that the costs are real, and that we are paying in the hard currency of biologically dead lakes, of airw hich isn't fit to breathe and of fish with enough mercury in them to deform unborn children. The problem, as the environmentalists are finding, lies in determining just where the inertia springs from. What is exactly that keeps our wasteful, seem ingly insatiable industrial machine roll ing, while the evidence that it is going to be our downfall literally piles up around us. Is it, as some claim, a product of the system itself, a result of the sheer complexicty of the economic and the political systems we have evolved? Or is it just inside our heads? People like Michael Bloomfield, ex ecutive director of the Harmony Founda tion, are inclined to think that our seem ing inability to change really is just in side our heads. In his talk, Environmen-
tal Ethics: Pursuit of a New Relationship W ith Nature (organized by McGill Studnt Pugwash) Bloomfield explained how he created the non-profit Harmony Foundation two years ago, as a means of "pursuing a new relationship with nature through education and learning." He has no time for the cynics who claim that it is too late to do anything about environmental degradation, that we are doomed as a species and are go ing to drag the world down with us. "W e must revolutionize our relation to nature and other animals." We cannot go on "arrogantly behaving as if we are ecologically and ethically the centre of creation. O r as M.A. Giannelli said "The Special Darlings of the Unvierse." Although Bloomfield's message may not be new, he is going about spreading the word very effectively. The inertia of the system, to use the same metaphor, lies with the "O ld dogs." The people who are too set in their ways and refuse to see the immediate need for a new ap proach to our use of the environment. Very often, these are the people who wield the power. continued on page 3
U n d e r a slow death for the Institute. At present, the full-time staff numbers three professors and professor emeritus Max Dunbar, who founded the Institute in 1963. Dean Leggett said the pro fessors w ill be reassigned to the depart ments of Biology, Meteorology and Geological Sciences and students w ill be allowed to complete their MSc's and PhD's as they had registered. New students w ill have to register in different departments under the aegis of an as of yet undefined interdisciplinary marine sciences program. At a meeting of concerned staff and students held Thursday at the Institute's Eaton building, students expressed shock and disbelief at the way the affair was handled by the Faculty. Some students said the Faculty held longstan ding prejudices against the Institute and its independent status. Still others deplored the way the Institute's dissolu tion had been carried out, calling it "death by strangulation." Professor Dunbar, who was not con sulted about the closing said that although he didn't want to create any "waves," the dissolution w ill be "look ed upon badly" in academic circles in Dalhousie, Laval and at the Université de Montréal. He said that M cG ill "is making a mistake in the long run" and queried whether oceanography could have any kind of identity if spread loose ly among three departments. Some students implied there had been a long-running undercurrent of competi tion, between the Biology Department and the Institute of Oceanography and that there may have been a concerted ef fort to shut the Institute out. Dean Leggett said he planned to ad vance the idea of a joint oceanography program with Laval Uhiversity and held that this could "enhance oceanography at McGill and in Québec." Students, many o f w hom are American, voiced concern over the pro spect of taking marine biology courses in French. At a time when the federal continued on page 11
INSIDE: Debating the Death Penalty........... • ............................................. page 8 Athletics Complex Saga Continues page 10