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FEATURES, PACE 10-11
Petition: no Chartwells Ifati» C h o ir
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Elizabeth Martin, a library assis tant who has been working at McGill for 20 years, is circulating a petition asking the university not turn over control of the Burnside basement cafeteria to Chartwells. The cafeteria, currently run by McGill Food Services, serves soup, salad, danishes and cookies, as well as cooked meals. Martin is concerned that the quality and cost of the food may change under new management. “Their food’s good and it’s fresh and it’s really very affordable,” she said. “I don’t know if I can say that [for] Chartwells. ’’ Ancilliary services staff were not available for comment by press time. Increasingly, student and univer sity-run cafeterias are being managed by outside companies. Chartwells took conrol of Good Bytes Café, the McConnell Engineering cafeteria, on June 1. The cafeteria had been run by the Engineering Undergraduate Society for more than 10 years. EUS President Michal Wozny said that Good Bytes used to be known for the cheapest and best pou tine on campus, but that is no longer the case. This year, a small poutine costs $3.46 before tax, whereas he estimated that last year a large pou tine was around $3 including tax. Josh Vorstenbosch, president of
the Science Undergraduate Society, said he had not seen the petition but was opposed to Chartwells taking over the basement cafeteria. “I am personally against Chartwells going in there, he said, “one for fear of prices going up, and two, it has been my experience in general that the service isn’t as good.” John Hunt, U1 Science, said he wasn’t looking forward to the cafete ria being taken over. “I don’t like Chartwells,” he said. “I like more independant companies and business.” “It’s like globalization on a small scale when you think of Chartwells taking over concession on campus, Martin said. Bill Pageau, an administrator for McGill Food Services, defended Chartwells in an interview back in October. “If one looks carefully, the price of milk in all the cafeterias operated by Chartwells has actually dropped,” he said. Most people sign Martin’s peti tion when approached, said Carmelita Kohn, who has been work ing at the counter for approximately 24 years. “[Martin] must have picked up at least 30 pages of signatures already,” she said. — with files from Lisa Varano
“The university is attempting to transfer responsibility for CKUT to SSMU.
NEWS, PAGE 2 “Sounding off on a miscellaneous assortment of bests and worsts of the past year.”
A&E, PAGE 17 Mom’s not going to be happy. Report cards are coming home for McGills sports teams.
SPORTS, PAGE 21
Twas the loathed exam period and throughout the day, all the overworked students wished they were at play.
Quest for props Mont Real hip hop comes correct Heather Kitty Mak
With hip hop being so ubiqui tous these days, ask anyone whether they have listened to it and you would likely get a chortle of disbelief. Ask someone whether they’ve listened to Montreal hip hop, however, and you would get silence. It is not even because Montreal’s scene has a short history. Granted, compared to its ancestors in the Big Apple, Montreal hip hops start in the 80s in NotreDame-de-Grâce was a bit delayed. Block parties, along with groups and artists like LDG, Zero Tolerance, Spec2 and Chuck Ice, were the mainstays of the time. It was a time when shows were still promoted by word of mouth, hip hop wasn’t blasting out of cafés,
and the Internet was nothing more than a way to share military intelli gence. An amalgamation of cultures
Predominantly Anglophone at the time, it wasn’t until the appear ance of rap in France that the focus gradually shifted to the Francophone scene. Emulating their New York counterparts, groups began by rapping in broken English and, over time, completely switched to French with tinges of Québécois slang, English, Arab, Jamaican, Creole and Spanish ver nacular thrown in the mix. While most critics would gloss over Montreal for Toronto, Vancouver, or even Halifax, few have noticed the pirate s booty that is the Montreal hip-hop scene. What, then, has been the problem
in accessing this treasure trove? Why is there so little support? “The Montreal hip-hop scene is inherently complex,” explains Dave One, co-owner of Audio Research records and rap editor at Vice magazine. “There are the Francophone and Anglophone scenes, both [of] which are quite different. Also, within these scenes are different cultural communities, which make the scene hard to unify.” To say that the Montreal com munity is diverse is an understate ment. Ray Ray of Les Architekts takes a crack at running through the cultural communities. “In Quebec, you have a lot of white Quebec MCs and DJs such as See BATTLE, page 16
it yvcr&of CallPaul at 398-6806