The McGill Tribune Vol. 39 Issue 6

The McGill Tribune THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 2019 | VOL. 39 | ISSUE 6

Published by the SPT, a student society of McGill University

McGILLTRIBUNE.COM | @McGILLTRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

FEATURE

GAME REPORT

Racial profiling in Montreal threatens safety

From fame to shame

Martlet Volleyball stumbles against Saint Mary’s Huskies

PG. 5

PGs. 8-9

PG. 15

(Sophia White / The McGill Tribune)

Pointe-à-Callière: Where history meets modernity

PG. 13

Inaccurate SSMU French translations pose issues for Francophone students The French portion of the weekly e-newsletters are laced with errors Kanella Basilion Contributor The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) has been facing backlash for inaccurate French translations of its weekly email newsletters. Translation errors

made certain emails incomprehensible, such as suggesting that Gerts’ cups were throwing trash onto the Lower Field. The translations were met with disapproval by many francophone students.

Sanchi Bhalla, SSMU Vice-President (VP) Internal, explained that SSMU cycles between two student

translators who translate the Listservs from English to French. One of them was preoccupied with academics and decided to use a machine translator for this particular email. “[The] translator came clean and they were brought in for a meeting with [Human Resources],” Bhalla said.

PG. 3

Behind the Bench: More than her husband

How tabloids, social media, and newspapers have failed pro athletes’ partners Kaja Surborg Sports Editor Internet personality and wife of English professional soccer player Wayne Rooney, Coleen Rooney, rocked Twitter on Oct. 9 with her claim that Rebekah

Vardy, a competitor on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and wife of Jamie Vardy, had been leaking personal details of Rooney’s life to British tabloid paper The Sun. The Guardian almost immediately released multiple articles

covering the scandal and breaking down Rooney’s scheme to catch Vardy in the act. The whole affair raised the question of why this was getting so much media attention from both tabloid and news outlets.

PG. 16

Searching for the Fountain of Youth Joe Schwarcz recounts humanity’s historic fight against aging Daria Kiseleva Contributor Montreal community members crowded into the Redpath Museum Auditorium on Sept. 27 to listen to an engaging Freaky Friday lecture. In the talk, Professor Joe Schwarcz, Director of the McGill Office for Science and Society, discussed

humanity’s historic attempts to delay aging.

“Nobody looks forward to getting old,” Schwarcz said.

“Historically, there has been this search for the Fountain of Youth, and, over the years, many anti-aging regimens have been developed.”

One such regimen consisted of bathing in sour donkey milk and was practiced by

Queen Cleopatra in the first century BC. Modern science suggests that, since sour milk contains lactic acid, the remedy could have had a slight rejuvenating effect. Lactic acid belongs to a class of compounds called alpha hydroxy acids (AHAs) that speed up the turnover of skin cells and are now marketed in cosmetic face creams.

PG. 7

2

NEWS

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 2019

Meet the Federal Election Candidates

Candidates for Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Sœurs discussed their goals Nina Russell News Editor

As Canadians prepare to cast ballots in the Oct. 21 election, local candidates are hoping to court students by relating their parties’ platforms to the McGill context. The McGill Tribune asked candidates from the riding of Saint-Henri-Est–Petite-Bourgogne–Pointe-Saint-Charles–Griffintown questions about their stances on the environment, housing, and health care.

(Tasmin Chu / The McGill Tribune)

Lianna Canton Cusmano

Green Party of Canada For Cusmano, a spoken word poet, writer, and arts educator, the Green Party isn’t running on a one-issue platform. While the Greens’ focus on the environment is important to them, Cusmano was primarily motivated to run because of the experiences they have had living within Montreal.

“I think [the Greens] have the most ambitious and comprehensive plan to achieve the change that we need,” Cusmano said in an interview with The McGill Tribune.

“The climate crisis has been building for a really long time. The other thing is that I’m an underemployed university graduate, who is a feminized, trans, non-binary person living in the gig economy, who lost their job [and] their apartment. So all of these issues affect me personally. And I’m one of the more privileged ones.”

For example, Cusmano finds the Greens’ emphasis on housing an important key to reducing the high number of Inuit people affected by homelessness. In Montreal, Inuit peoples represent 10 per cent of the Indigenous population, but close to 45 per cent of the city’s Indigenous homeless population.

“When you look in this riding in particular, we’re [seeing] places [becoming] gentrified,” Cusmano said.

“So in terms of policy, the Green Party will appoint a Minister of Housing to strengthen the National Housing strategy and make [housing] a legally protected, fundamental human right. [We will also commit to] regional increased housing investment, rent assistance, eliminating first-time home buyer grants, and finding nonprofit housing cooperatives and organizations, which [are] especially helpful for vulnerable communities like students and seniors.”

None of this comes at the expense of the Green Party’s environmental platform, which Cusmano believes is one of the most important issues of the campaign.

“I think the first [goal is] stricter targets,” Cusmano said. “We’ve seen other parties that target and promise [....] and fail to hit targets, and what the Green Party is proposing is to set a target of a 60 per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 so that we reach net zero emissions by 2050. And you accomplish this by setting [lower] legal emission limits for industries [and] by setting carbon fees, [while] making sure that everybody at the municipal, provincial, and federal level is doing everything that they can do reduce emissions, so that we don’t put profit ahead of the environment in our future.”

Marc Miller

Sophie Thiébaut

The Liberal Party has faced plenty of blowback for their decision to purchase the Trans Mountain Pipeline in May 2018, but for Liberal incumbent Marc Miller, this doesn’t negate their environmental priorities going into the 2019 federal election.

“So the Trans Mountain Pipeline [included] a flawed process that, namely, did not take into account proper consultation with Indigenous [communities],” Miller said. “And so we revamped the process by which these projects are approved. And we were at a point where we had to make a decision as to whether to purchase it or not. But when you take a step back, Canada is one of the largest net [exporters of] petroleum products in the world, [so] the responsible decision was to purchase that pipeline, knowing that those petroleum products would get to market through other means, including rail cars, which [are] much more dangerous.”

To mitigate some of the environmental damages, Miller said that proceeds from the pipeline, if the government decides to sell it, will be reinvested into green initiatives.

He also spoke to the benefits of diversity in relation to driving economic development, which he said will benefit economies suffering from labour shortages, like that of Quebec. “[Immigration is] a cornerstone [of] our economy, and our diversity makes our country better,” Miller said. “Because it’s a split jurisdiction, we are currently trying to encourage our partners in the [Quebec] government to be more generous. So this is [of] a particular concern [not only] to the diversity of the country, but it’s also a concern in the job market, because there is [an] over [one] hundred thousand person labor shortage in Quebec.”

With four years in Parliament under his belt, Miller remains inspired by individual Member of Parliament’s ability to make a difference.

“It has been a comforting revelation to me [that when you’re part of] an ambitious government that is forward-looking and cares about the people they represent, you can make [a difference] individually as a Member of Parliament,” Miller said. “We [made a] number of lofty promises in 2015 and you’ll see a number of others come out in our platform [this year].

And I think there’s a lot more work to do.”

Having represented Saint-HenriEst–Petite-Bourgogne–Pointe-SaintCharles–Griffintown as a City Councillor for the past 10 years, Thiébaut is no stranger to Montreal or its people. She was initially drawn to the NDP because of their ambitious environmental platform, and said that the final straw was when the Liberal government purchased the Trans Mountain Pipeline. For the NDP, this begins with recognizing the science behind climate change and acting accordingly.

“We want to be carbon-neutral [and] to reduce our greenhouse gases completely by 2060 in a situation [so we can] keep the temperature rise under 1.5 degrees,” Thiébaut said. “We don’t want to put any more money in the fossil fuel industry. We want to put money in the for these workers to go into training [for] new industries, [such as] construction.”

Another promise that was attractive to Thiébaut was their attitude to racial discrimination and hate speech.

“I think that, in Canada, we have the chance to have a beautiful society with a beautiful diversity and the NDP wants to show that everybody has a place in this society and everybody can do what they want,” Thiébaut said.

The NDP has proposed a national strategy for protecting communities against online abuse.

“We want to speak about the reality of racism [in Canada, and we] would like to fight against that,” Thiébaut said.

“We would like to have a [law regarding] what you can [say] on the internet, because [right] now, anyone can say anything and there is no recommendation to impose that [would make someone take] responsibility. [We would like] to remove these kinds of bad words. It’s impossible to accept that in our society, so we will work on that.”

Liberal Party of Canada

NDP

Michael Forian

Conservative Party of Canada Given that Forian is currently finishing up his Bachelor’s degree and on the verge of beginning a Master’s, he can relate to many of the issues that students in Montreal face.

For example, he plans to advocate for homeowners and renters who are currently facing a rising cost of living by eliminating the financial burden that energy bills pose.

“What we can do as a government [....] is to remove the GST [....] off [of] home heating bills and home energy costs,” Forian said. “This will immediately [...] alleviate the blow [to] homeowners and renters once we’re in power. So by eliminating the GST, I feel confident that [we] can help families, students, individuals be able to have more money in their pocket. And I think that’s a better thing at the end of the day, because we have individuals [who are] are able to spend your money better than the government can.”

Forian also believes in the conservative’s plan for health care. By gradually increasing the Canadian Health Transfer (CHT) and Canada Social Transfer (CST), he said that Canadians will be able to rely on steady health services.

“So if we look at the numbers, the two transfers are providing $55 billion to provinces and territories for health and social programs. So under our conservative government, Canadians will be able to count on us being able to ensure that there is stable and increased [funding for] health and social programs.”

One of Forian’s main priorities is to bring a young, conservative voice to Ottawa.

“I’m somebody [who has] worked in government previously, but on the provincial level, [so] I know the riding very well,” Forian said “I know the people [who] are the major stakeholders, I’ve met with the student leadership before, and also I feel that it’s important to have a voice that has these connections and is able to ensure that those those stakeholders are heard.”

Students who are eligible to vote in this year’s election should have received a voter information card, which indicates their assigned polling station. Electors that did not receive a card should check their registration status at elections.ca; no matter their registration status, all voters are required to present identification before casting their ballot.

NEWS

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 2019

3

Inaccurate SSMU French translations pose issues for Francophone students The French portion of the weekly e-newsletters are laced with errors Kanella Basilion Contributor Continued from page 1.

“We also sat down with the Francophone Commissioner and we realized that [francophone] students would rather have no French than [incorrect] French. We felt like we weren’t doing our duty as a union to represent all of our students.”

After the first error was found in an email sent on Sept. 8, an apology email sent out on Sept. 16 also contained mistakes which several students pointed out on Reddit. The text was translated from English literally, without consideration for consistent gender agreement, idioms, and overall flow, and structure. The translations improved until Oct. 7 listserv, in which the similar errors resurfaced.

SSMU’s Francophone Commissioner, Juliette Chesnel, has the job of protecting the rights of francophone students on campus. She spoke with The McGill Tribune about her response to the email’s aftermath.

“After the first bad translation happened, one of the VPs asked me, ‘What should we do about this?’” Chesnel said.

“I [felt] like the best option [was] to issue a statement saying that [they are] about [this] and that [they’re] going to work on it. That’s why they issued a statement [by email], but there were also mistakes [there], which was a bit confusing and

Student translators will now work together with an external company to provide French translations.

(Tasmin Chu / The McGill Tribune) disappointing. I’ve been meeting with the communications manager and we’ve been working on [the issue].”

Chesnel reflected upon her own experiences as a francophone student at McGill.

“One of the main issues I wanted to work on, because I’ve experienced it [myself] is the submission of papers in French because it’s something that McGill really advertises,” Chesnel said. “When I got to McGill, I submitted my first paper in French and it took the professor two months to correct [it]. [The class] needed the assignment [so that we could work on]

the final [project] and the whole class had two months for it while I had two weeks [....] Even though we’re an anglophone institution, we’re still in Quebec.”

Mary Anne Poutanen, a professor in McGill’s Quebec Studies Program, weighed in on the faulty translations.

“I’m not saying [poor-quality translations are] an issue just in Quebec, you see this all over [North America],” Poutanen said. “You have large populations of people who speak a [minority] language, whether it’s [the hispanic population] in the United States or Francophones in other

parts of Canada [....] There’s a carelessness of institutions not tuning to really reliable sources to make those translations. The question is, this carelessness, how do you interpret that?”

Poutanen also reflected on how she would have approached a similar situation.

“I know myself that I wouldn’t put anything out there publicly without it being corrected out of respect,” Poutanen said. “Every day is a learning experience, so if I make a mistake I want to know about it.”

As a result of the criticism, Bhalla reported that SSMU will now outsource their translation work to an external company alongside the student translators to prevent against future mistakes.

“What we’ve moved on to now is we have a student translator but we also have an external company that we use as a proofreading source,” Bhalla said. “The two work in conjunction to provide the best translations they possibly can. We are working with professionals as well, because, while we do authorize student jobs and want to provide students a place to work on campus, we understand that sometimes you are preoccupied as a student and there are things that slip through the cracks.”

Bhalla reaffirmed SSMU’s commitment to serving McGill’s student body.

“Hold [SSMU] accountable,” Bhalla said. “When you hold us accountable when things happen, we do change, and we’re always striving to be better.”

Black Students’ Network aims to pass ‘Black students’ Bill of Rights’ BSN urges McGill to increase its efforts in supporting Black students Maya Abuali & Heleena De Oliveira Contributors McGill’s Black Students’ Network (BSN) is working to pass a motion this year through the McGill Senate that would establish several rights that Black students would be entitled to on campus.

The BSN aims to shed light on the distinct experiences and barriers that Black students face at McGill. The motion, titled the ‘Black Students’ Bill of Rights,’ hopes to ensure an institutional support framework in which Black students will be able to advocate for their needs on campus.

The Bill, which will be proposed at the last McGill Senate meeting of the Fall 2019 semester, will be composed based on findings from the online consultation form, in addition to data gathered from previous surveys circulated by the BSN. An online consultation form for the proposed legislation was created to collect feedback from Black students concerning their experiences at McGill. The poll includes several links on what motivated the idea for the bill, such as the history of James McGill as a slave owner, the growing reparations movement, and the recent establishment of Georgetown University’s Black Students’ reparation fund, which repays descendants of slaves sold by the school.

Chloe Kemeni, Vice-President of Advocacy for the BSN at McGill conceived the idea for the Bill of Rights. Kemeni explained that, to this date, there have been no institutional systems in place to support Black students.

“I [wanted] some sort of institutional bill in place that [was] similar to a call to action, which [the university would be] forced to confront,” Kemeni said. “The university is [making its] commitment to equity through the Bicentennial, through strategic planning [and] long term planning [….] you have these big five

core goals for the university, and one of them is to expand diversity.”

Kemeni stated that suggestions for the bill will be put forward by Black McGill students at a Town Hall taking place on Oct. 17. While the online form will be instrumental in developing a draft of the document, Kemeni also has several ideas about what resources she would like to see on campus for Black students. Her main concerns are the recruitment of Black counselors, discrimination-free classrooms, as well as sustained funding that will allow [the BSN] to run initiatives benefiting Black students.

“Ideally, the bill would be divided into multiple sections; [....] what Black students are entitled to in academia and in classrooms, [....] what Black students are entitled to when it comes to services, [....] what Black students are entitled to in residence, [and] what Black students are entitled to in the admissions process,” Kemeni said. “So then I see distinct pools based around that.”

Kemeni expressed concerns about the lack of racialized professors and counselors at McGill.

“What does it look like to recruit more racialized and Black professors? What does it look like to make sure that your services can be able to support Black students? Why is it that [there are] counselors for your international student or Francophone, or Indigenous or queer [students], but then there’s nothing for [those who are] racialized?” Kemeni said. “So then it once again puts the burden on students to fill the gaps that the university, in my opinion, should be providing” Christelle Tessono, former President of BSN, agreed that the proposed Bill of Rights would benefit Black students.

“I believe that the Bill of Rights presents itself as a good opportunity to hold the institution accountable to the specific challenges related to anti-Black racism,” Tessono said.

Kemeni is working with the administration to ensure that it will be accountable to the Bill. (McGill Black Students’ Network) VP External Affairs for the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) Darshan Daryanani agreed that the implementation of the bill is long overdue. Daryanani expressed that his only concern with the Bill would be ensuring that it wholly captures the gravity of the issues of racism on campus.

“It is good that the [online consultation] form is there because it is getting students to discuss their feelings concerning their experiences [on campus],” Daryanani said. “My hope with a form of this nature [that will provide data for the bill] is that [...] it is representative of all the [students’] concerns because something as formal as a bill should not miss out on anything.”

4

NEWS

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 2019

SSMU passes moratorium on auxiliary fees to achieve divestment

No new or increased auxiliary fees will pass in an attempt to financially pressure administration McEan Taylor Staff Writer In the third Legislative Council of the year, the Student’s Society of McGill University (SSMU) debated the Motion Regarding Policy on Moratorium on McGill Fees Until Fossil Fuel Divestment. While SSMU has already issued a statement in support of fossil fuel divestment, it has yet to take direct action against the administration. By passing the motion, SSMU aims to exert its influence by vetoing the creation or increase of student auxiliary fees.

SSMU to withhold the creation of any new student fees until McGill divests The first motion on the agenda, the Motion Regarding Policy on Moratorium on McGill Fees Until Fossil Fuel Divestment, passed with 22 in favour, four against, two abstaining. The motion prevents the creation of new auxiliary fees and increases to existing fees, which are collected from students to be used by the McGill administration for various projects and departments. By withholding the creation or increase of these fees, SSMU hopes to financially constrain and pressure the McGill administration into divesting from fossil fuel companies.

This motion was the most dramatic action taken against the administration for the divest campaign.

During the question period, Beatrice Mackey, Law representative, voiced a constituent’s concern over whether it is smart to politicize student services. Vice-President (VP) University Affairs Madeline

Wilson responded by emphasizing how the administration uses student fees.

“Student Services have always been politicized,” Wilson said. “A lot of Student Services are self-funded units [meaning] a lot of the money to fund these services already exists. In the case that [the motion passes] and fees from students are not on referendum questions in the future, there are other sources for this money to come from.”

Council members also expressed concerns about the effectiveness of the moratorium and its implications for the study body. Sebastian Duckett, the proxy for Senate representative Andre Lametti, voiced the SSMU Senate’s opinion over the motion.

“At our most recent senate caucus meeting, this motion was discussed in detail and the response was overwhelmingly against it,” Duckett said. “Firstly, we believe that the moratorium on student fees will simply remove the student voice from the student process. Currently, the University allows [SSMU] to approve or deny any fees before being put to referendum. [….] If the administration is forced to circumvent SSMU to run referendums on fees, they will do so and it will become the new norm.”

In response, supporters of the motion emphasized the power of SSMU to represent students’ stance against fossil fuels and take direct action against the administration.

“As students, the biggest power that we have is money at this university,” Wilson said. “We pay an exorbitant amount of fees to the university. When we go on strike, that is because we are intellectual

workers and our inability to comply with the university is a form of direct action. When we pass a moratorium, that is showing that our money is where our mouth is.”

SOUND BYTE “[SSMU] is able to do our par t in obtaining climate justice. Over the past few weeks in office, we’ve been working with Divest McGill to help uplift their campaign and work in solidarity with them. We can use the power that we have as students, 23,000 strong, to send a message to this administration that divestment is our top priority.”

SSMU President Br yan Buraga

MOMENT OF THE MEETING Members of Divest McGill funneled into the room for the debate por tion of the motion to pass a moratorium, attempting to encourage the Council to adopt the motion. They were able to bring extensive knowledge about the histor y of divest campaigns and their successful impact on other issues.

World Bank President delivers speech ahead of Annual Meetings David Malpass emphasized the need for broad-based growth through pro-market reforms Delphine Polidori Contributor The Faculty of Arts and the Desautels Faculty of Management hosted the World Bank Group President David Malpass on Oct. 7, in Pollack Hall of the Strathcona Music Building. Malpass addressed topics related to the institutions’ policy agenda, which include pro-market liberalisation and addressing climate change, setting the tone for the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund Annual Meetings being held this week in Washington, D.C. from Oct. 14 to 20.

Malpass was nominated to head the World Bank by U.S. President Donald Trump after having served as his senior economic advisor during the 2016 election campaign.

After his tenureship as the American UnderSecretary of the Treasury for International, Malpass’ nomination was unanimously approved by the Bank’s 25-member executive board this year on Apr. 5. This marked the beginning of his responsibilities as the leader of one of the world’s largest providers of loans to international governments for development projects.

Following an introduction by the Dean of the Faculty of Arts Antonia Maioni and Principal and Vice-Chancellor Suzanne Fortier, Malpass spoke about the important role that technology plays in lifting people out of extreme poverty by enabling growth which reduces inequalities.

“We’re almost at the point of having secure systems that would allow poor people to electronically receive remittances, foreign

aid, and social safety net payments, as well as their earning, and then be allowed to save and transact freely,” Malpass said. “That [will] be revolutionary, because it [will allow] people the freedom and opportunity they need to improve their living conditions.”

The World Bank estimates that the global labor force will grow to 620 million people from 2020 to 2035, while economic growth worldwide is predicted to taper off.

“With most of the growth in the poorest countries, employment is the best safety net,” Malpass said. “With global growth slowing, it’s paramount that countries carry out well designed structural reforms to ignite domestic growth.”

Malpass also spoke about the challenges attributed to climate change, which risk hindering the organisation’s mission of ending poverty and promoting global prosperity.

“In November [2018], the World Bank announced a $200 billion five-year target to help the countries address climate challenges, [stressing the importance of the implementation of both adaptation and mitigation strategies],” Malpass said. “At the recent United Nations General Assembly meetings in New York, I [also] joined Germany in announcing PROGREEN, a fund that will address a range of climate and environmental problems.”

Following Malpass’ speech, Dean of the Desautels Faculty of Management Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou moderated a short Q&A session between the guest speaker and the students in the audience.

Evidentlty, the event left some students disappointed by the message David Malpass

Every year the World Bank delivers a speech at a different university before meeting in Washington with the IMF. (Delphine Polidori / The McGill Tribune) delivered. Alexandre Caillon, U3 Arts, was concerned about the implications behind the institution’s focus on using economic indicators for assessing development.

“Without surprise, [Malpass] promoted the role of private actors and alleviating barriers to trade to boost development and tackle social issues, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Caillon said. “I’m just worried about the overly pro-market, pro-US, pro-[trade] liberalization ideology it may hide.”

Many students were unsatisfied at the

end of Malpass’ talk due to his ambiguous responses to their questions. “[It] was slightly unsettling to see in person how an important policy and development leader on the international stage could be quite vague in response to pointed questions asked specifically by students,” Shannon Greisman, U2 Arts, said. “A lot of his answers seemed to me a little bit evasive or vague. This is what we’ve come to expect of our political and global leaders [but] it was a new and unsettling experience for me to see it in person.”

OPINION

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 2019

T

EDITORIAL BOARD Editor-in-Chief Caitlin Kindig editor@mcgilltribune.com Creative Director Nicholas Raffoul nraffoul@mcgilltribune.com Managing Editors Abeer Almahdi aalmahdi@mcgilltribune.com Miya Keilin mkeilin@mcgilltribune.com Sophie Brzozowski sbrzozowski@mcgilltribune.com

News Editors Kyle Dewsnap, Helen Wu & Nina Russell news@mcgilltribune.com Opinion Editors Lucas Bird & Johanna Cline opinion@mcgilltribune.com Science & Technology Editor Emma Gilles scitech@mcgilltribune.com Student Life Editor Leyla Moy studentlife@mcgilltribune.com Features Editor Gabe Nisker features@mcgilltribune.com Arts & Entertainment Editor Kevin Vogel & Katia Innes arts@mcgilltribune.com Sports Editors Ender McDuff & Kaja Surbourg sports@mcgilltribune.com Design Editors Erin Sass & Erica Stefano design@mcgilltribune.com Photo Editor Leanne Young photo@mcgilltribune.com Multimedia Editors Sarah Ford & Aidan Martin multimedia@mcgilltribune.com Web Developers Jad Hamdan & Jonathan Colaco Carr webdev@mcgilltribune.com

Racial profiling in Montreal threatens safety A report released by three professors at l’Université de Montreal released on Oct. 7 found that the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) were 11 times more likely to stop Indigenous women on the street than white women, four to five times more likely to subject black and Indigenous people to street checks, and twice as likely to stop people of Arab descent compared to white people. These numbers reflect the reality of people of colour living in Montreal, who experience systemic racism in their daily lives and exist within racist institutions.

Montreal and McGill have an obligation to protect the safety and dignity of racialized people and to prioritize anti-oppressive approaches to security.

While this report was one of the first to quantify it, the SPVM has a long history of racial profiling.

From the SPVM’s action plan against social and racial profiling’s creation in 2017, only one third of the plan was implemented, resulting in little noticable improvement. The police service’s most recent action plan— released in 2018—was criticized for using ambiguous language that created loopholes for racial profiling.

For example, In Feb. 2019, Montreal mayor Valérie Plante and the SPVM chose not to outfit officers with body cameras, citing high costs as well as police feeling “too surveilled” while on the job. However, Montrealers of colour spoke of experiencing stress, trauma, or anxiety after facing police abuse or being “arbitrarily watched,

OFF THE BOARD

Copy Editor Keating Reid copy@mcgilltribune.com Business Manager Heela Achakzai business@mcgilltribune.com Publisher Chad Ronalds

TPS BOARD OF DIRECTORS Heela Achakzai, Isabelle Côté, Solomon Friedman, Katia Innes, Caitlin Kindig, Marie Labrosse, Katerine Milazzo, Falah Rajput, Keating Reid, McEan Taylor, Ahmad El-Zammar

STAFF

ublication is the sole responsibility ofThe McGilTri Kate Addison, Makena Anderson, Dan Aponte, Zoe Babad-Palmer, Adam Burton, Jonathan Giammaria, Sabrina Girard-Lamas, Alexander Hinton, Benjmain Joppke, Deana Korsunsky,Alaana Kumar, Ronny Litvack-Katzman, Kennedy McKee-Braide, Taja De Silva, McEan Taylor, Sophia White,Amir HotterYishay, Iman Zarrinkoub

CONTRIBUTORS Maya Abuali, Kanella Basilion, Vanessa Barron, Vivien Bian, Asha Bittenfender, Heleena De Oliveira, Owen Dunkley, Jonah Fried, Patrick Gilroy, Shaun Lalani, Daria Kiselevai, Delphine Polidori, Miguel Principe, Yara Shaheen-Abuelreish, Margaret Wdowiak

TRIBUNE OFFICE 680 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, suite 723 Montreal, QC H3A 0B8 - T: 773.680.8919

The McGill Tribune is an editorially autonomous newspaper published by the Société de Publication de la Tribune, a student society of McGill University. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of The McGill Tribune and the Société de Publication de la Tribune, and does not necessarily represent the views of McGill University. Letters to the editor may be sent to editor@mcgilltribune.com and must include the contributor’s name, program and year and contact information. Letters should be kept under 300 words and submitted only to the Tribune. Submissions judged by the Tribune Publication Society to be libellous, sexist, racist, homophobic or solely promotional in nature will not be published.The Tribune reserves the right to edit all contributions. Editorials are decided upon and written by the editorial board. All other opinions are strictly those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the McGill Tribune, its editors or its staff.

Please recycle this newspaper.

Erica Stefano Design Editor Content warning: Mentions of self-harm and suicide.

People are uncomfortable talking about sadness. Discussions of tragic events are often met sympathetically, with ‘I’m sorry,’ if not ignored.

Perhaps out of knee-jerk politeness, people are reluctant to exercise empathy. We would much rather turn our backs on the pain of others, or watch from afar and be thankful for our own conditions. Public obsession with celebrity divorces and breakups stems from this reluctance to engage with people in our own lives, and even represents a tendency towards finding entertainment in others struggles.

stopped, and detained.” Body cameras have been proven to reduce violence; a mild sense of surveillance for the SPVM team is a reasonable trade-off for the preservation of the safety and wellbeing of visible minorities.

Given these past failures in accountability and integrity, it is vital that the SPVM maintain transparency with their next steps to address the racial profiling crisis.

The racial profiling report, which was commissioned by the City of Montreal, comes in the wake of the release of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls report on June 3. This report includes a supplemental document that addresses the language barrier in Quebec that endangers Indigenous peoples in Montreal during their encounters with French-speaking police officers. Following the closure of residential schools (where many Indigenous children were forced to speak only English) many Indigenous people were relocated to Montreal without any French skills.

Insensitivity and violence towards Indigenous peoples in Montreal by the police has been reported countless times and language barriers only exacerbate the issue. The SPVM must heed the calls against their mistreatment and take steps to address language barriers if any real change is to occur.

Institutional racism expands beyond the SPVM and affects McGill students of colour on-and off-campus. Being a student is a temporary identity, while racial

identity is permanent. Students of colour on campus face challenges that white students will never have to endure.

In Quebec, the government’s implementation of Bill 21 in June validated racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia on a provincial level. The Bill, which prohibits public sector employees from wearing visible religious symbols, disproportionately disadvantages people of colour.

In addition to validating racist discrimination, the Bill also whitens the already primarily caucasian police service’s hiring pool. By barring citizens who wear visible religious symbols from joining the police force, Bill 21 systematically weeds out people of colour.

A rise in police-reported hate crimes following the Bill were attributed to the emboldening and legitimizing of racist attitudes by Bill 21. The Bill reinforces a culture of white supremacy within which the SPVM can practice sociallyacceptable discrimination.

At McGill, systemic racism must also be addressed by providing campus security with anti-oppression and de-escalation training. McGill’s floor fellows also play an integral role in fostering a safer environment for these racialized students in residences and their anti-oppression training should be prioritized and improved to ensure a safer space for students.

Moreover, SMMU’s “Know Your Student Rights” campaign could be extended to legal rights to help educate racialized students on their

5

EDITORIAL rights when confronted by police.

While asserting these rights may not be safe in all instances, having knowledge of these rights could be useful.

While McGill is a primarily white space, all students can support student groups including the Black Students’ Network and the Indian Students’ Association in fighting racial injustice. Students can be supportive by being attentive to student movements and petitions such as the gofundme campaign that was created to assist McGill student Jean Kagame with legal fees related to an incident of anti-black racial profiling. Moreover, casting a vote in the federal election on Oct. 21 is one of the easiest ways that students can help the effort. Systemic racism, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and racial profiling are disturbing realities that must not be overlooked when choosing how to cast one’s vote. Moreover, blatantly racist incidents like when the Bloc Quebecois recently urged white Quebecers to elect politicians who look like them must be condemned for their statements.

The recent racial profiling study calls for a change in culture and practice at the SPVM. Moreover, McGill and its students must prioritize anti-oppression on campus both through increased training and through support for initiatives by and for racialized students. However, none of these measures can stand alone without a government that addresses systemic racism.

Mental health requires more than hashtags and hotlines Negativity, including talking about personal struggles or one’s own mental health, comes with the price of social isolation.

Mental health is a topic that people are uncomfortable to talk about; if mental health is talked about, the discussion is centred aroundww the most common mental illnesses: Depression and anxiety disorders.

Personality disorders, schizophrenia, and obsessive compulsive disorder, to name a few, go widely undiscussed.

Public reluctance to discuss painful topics encourages individuals conceal their struggles and emotional pain.

The unwillingness to address the darker side of personal struggles is exemplified in social media culture, as mental health is treated as another platform for shallow and ineffectual virtue signalling.

Awareness campaigns are co-opted by hashtag activism—lists of hotlines mixed with soccer mom-like platitudes posted to garner retweets. Much is owed to these campaigns, including promising starts to destigmatization, but addressing mental health requires more than just a tweet. Hotlines and mental health organizations are impartial resources, but they require people to have the courage to reach out to get help in

the first place. Seeking help requires addressing topics that continue to be ostracized in public discussion, all while confronting the real threat of involuntary loss of agency through hospitalization. One day per year, even one month per year, devoted to mental health is not enough.

Moreover, large corporations’ attempts to address mental health are tone-deaf at best. On Twitter, people can now report tweets talking about self-harm or suicide to Twitter’s “safety” partner program. This results in an email to the user containing a (notably devoid of Canadian or international resources) list of crisis hotlines. Implementing a reporting system for mental health treats the issue with the same level of scrutiny as punishable actions or crimes.

Furthermore, it represents the general public’s aversion to confronting mental health issues as health issues instead of punishable offences: Platforms such as Instagram and Facebook have adopted policies to ban users or hide content that relates to self-harm or suicide altogether.

There is a balance to be struck between recognizing that mental illnesses require professional help and realizing that we all have a

part to play in helping others.

Destigmatization requires confronting the uncomfortable and looking out for those around you. The burden cannot fall on the mentally-ill to reach out when the path to reaching out is littered with hurdles, when the words “get help” are used interchangeably with negative and positive intentions.

Mental illness continues to be used in everyday ableist vernacular as a way to silence individuals, whether it be through describing your annoying neighbour as ‘psychotic’ or attempting to diagnose Donald Trump and describe his actions as a result of poor mental health.

We need to become comfortable with asking if others are okay. Only a few words are needed to check up on others and give them the opportunity to open up and, to show that you care. Placing bans on content and hiding mental illness from our private lives will not get rid of its existence.

Facebook and Instagram had good intentions in drafting their policies, recognizing the need for those in distress to express themselves, but it is individuals and communities that must learn to listen to the mentally ill, not large corporations with hashtags and hotlines.

6

OPINION

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 2019

Voting responsibly means voting sustainably Jonah Fried Contributor Just as abrupt changes in leaves’ colours herald the coming of winter, shifts in global environment signal that our world is on the cusp of a climate crisis.

There is currently an insect apocalypse, and the drastic decline in global bird populations over the past few decades is starting to look like one as well. The worldwide epidemic of wildfires in places such as Brazil, Lebanon, and Siberia, which are inundating the ‘world’s lungs’ by the day, is just one of the more obvious harbingers of climate doomsday.

United Nations reports outlining the sheer immensity of the challenge that the world faces in preventing climate armageddon have become increasingly foreboding. Voting for officials that will commit themselves to institutional changes to counteract climate change is one of the few means that students have to safeguard their future. It is in the interest of every McGill student with the eligibility to vote to give candidates’ proposals to tackle climate change the most weight during the upcoming Canadian federal elections when determining who to vote for.

Climate policy should not be the

Election day is on Monday, October 21. (chch.com) only factor that determines someone’s vote. Candidates’ approaches to dealing with economic inequality, immigration policy, racial inequality, and other issues need to be factored into the calculus as well. However, if climate change is not addressed effectively, these issues will be exacerbated. As sea levels rise, climate scientists predict that millions of people will be displaced within the next two generations. This mass migration of refugees that rising sea levels could create would dwarf the consequences of current climate change-related displacement. The four major parties may disagree about how many immigrants should be accepted into Canada every year, but there should be unanimity on the need to do what can be done to prevent the rising sea level to prevent an even greater migrant crisis.

Socioeconomic inequality is already being compounded by climate change.

Within Canada, climate change does not affect communities equally: It has a disproportionate impact on lower-class communities, Indigenous communities, and people of colour. If climate change accelerates, socioeconomic inequality will severely increase.

Considering how inextricable climate change is from other political issues, it stands to reason that if a candidate has a strong climate policy, then they have a solid approach to preventing the escalation of existing socio-economic problems. The Green Party, headed

by Elizabeth May, has advocated for “Mission Possible,” a comprehensive plan to dramatically transform the Canadian economy to make it more climate-friendly and avoid “climate catastrophe.” Jagmeet Singh of the New Democratic Party has also promoted “Power to Change” a climate action plan to create new jobs in clean energy.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax has been utterly ineffective.

Rather than reducing dependence on fossil fuels, the tax has raised the cost of fuel for average Canadian and created frustration across the nation. Moreover, given the paradox presented by his government’s

acquisition of the $4.5 billion Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project, one can hardly call his approach to climate policy practical. However, the Liberals have at least committed to curbing emissions. On the other hand, Andrew Scheer and the Conservative Party would give provinces such as Alberta, where the economy is extremely dependent on fossil fuel exploitation, greater autonomy to draft their own environmental regulations, which is extremely counterintuitive to sustainability. Scheer’s proposal is contradictory to environmental interests because it would ensure that carbon emissions and other environmentallydestructive practices proliferate, guaranteeing grave consequences for the nation in the long run.

The reins of Canada’s government should be given to a candidate who will take the necessary steps to ensure that future administrations even have a Canada to govern. McGill students need to vote for someone who will prioritize climate policy and stand up to multinational fossil fuel corporations. We need leaders who will translate their words into action; leaders who will channel legislative power into ensuring that the world that students are graduating into won’t be destroyed.

Climate change requires global thinking and local action Makena Anderson Contributor Following a decade of vacancy, the City of Montreal has announced a plan to convert 43 hectares of land, once home to the Bluebonnets racetrack, into the city’s first carbon-neutral neighbourhood. The 10-year plan for the Namur-Hippodrome neighbourhood includes the development of 5,000 housing units, an emphasis on public transit, and the creation of public spaces that encourage pedestrian use. However, for the community to succeed, residents must modify their lifestyles in ways that promotes sustainability.

Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante has emphasized the importance of cooperation and consultation of residents throughout the implementation process, and is committed to designating 40 per cent of the neighbourhood to social affordable housing. Similarly, the proposed neighbourhood will promote mixed land-use, which will be in close proximity to thousands of service sector jobs, and be accessible by transit. While Montreal’s push for carbon-neutrality is a positive large-scale step, progress does not absolve individuals of their responsibility to question their own behaviours and contribution to climate change.

Montreal is no stranger to environmental advocacy: Last month, Plante entered the spotlight at the United Nations’ Climate Action Summit for her commitment to sustainability. Since being elected, Plante has emphasized the need for better transit systems, greenspaces, and banning singleuse plastics. If successful, the proposed Namur-Hippodrome neighbourhood will serve as a framework for other cities.

The proposed Namur-Hippodrome community is an encouraging example of municipal climate policy. However, government policies implicitly require changes on the individual level. The success of this new community hinges on the openmindedness and accountability of future residents, just as the success of global climate action relies on universal cooperation.

Whether stemming from macro-level or micro-level policies, lifestyle changes are inherent in sustainable climate strategies.

Residents of Montreal’s new neighbourhood will be equipped with housing, roads, and businesses to limit their carbon footprint.

However, without individual cooperation these sustainable ideals are vulnerable to failure.

To promote the success of the community, residents must be open to permanently modifying their lifestyles in a way that is conducive to sustainability. In practice, this may not be straightforward.

A recurring theme in climate action is individuals’ reluctance to change their behaviour when benefits are intangible or take years to realize. A study from the International Journal of Economic Law elaborates on this theme through the collective action problem, whereby individuals resort to inaction when the benefits they receive from behavioural changes are outweighed by the costs of individual sacrifice. For example, riding a bike instead of driving reduces net greenhouse gas emissions, yet the added time and inconvenience for the individual may be perceived as greater than the relatively small, shared benefits. While gains from abatement are often perceived as inconsequential, they exist nonetheless.

To overcome obstacles of individual

The Namur-Hippodrome is located on what once was the Bluebonnets racetrack.

(Ann Macnell / The McGill Tribune) cooperation, researchers at Clarkson University have pioneered smart-housing residences, wherein students self-monitor their energy consumption to encourage palpable revisions in their behaviour.

Digital dashboards and sensors reveal energy-use data to students as a reminder that consumption patterns have an impact on their environments. Through demonstrating the weight of behavioural changes, projects like this quantify individual benefits and emphasize the power individuals have in shaping sustainability.

The outrage that drew over half a million people to the streets of Montreal on Sept. 27 must be channeled into an effective tool to catalyze change. However, this change may not be as monumental as Montrealers are expecting. While immediate action is necessary to prevent global

climate warming and irreparable damage, the benefits of today’s actions will not be realized overnight.

Raising awareness about the climate crisis is no longer the most pressing issue.

The majority of Canadians believe in climate change and many understand that it is an emergency. The issue now lies in how we tackle the crisis. While the onus is primarily on institutions and governments, their plans will fail without unrelenting support on the individual level. Even if small efforts seem inconsequential, they are always more powerful than inaction.

Climate change is a universal issue, and by virtue, it must be universally confronted.

Macro-level policies, like Montreal’s Namur-Hippodrome neighbourhood, must be supported by individual behaviour to drive consequential change.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 2019

7

Searching for the Fountain of Youth

Joe Schwarcz recounts humanity’s historic fight against aging Daria Kiseleva Contributor Continued from page 1.

In the 19th century, physiologist Charles Brown-Séquard observed that eunuchs suffered from medical problems and hypothesized that a substance present in the testes was the key to health and longevity.

He injected himself with extracts from dog testes, inspiring other researchers to further investigate gland transplants.

This tradition continued into the early 20th century when John Brinkley, a charlatan without medical credentials, made a fortune by transplanting the testicles of goats into the scrota of aging men.

“He had very few complications because he never connected the goat testicles to anything, but he had plenty of men saying how happy they were, […] undoubtedly due to the placebo effect,” Schwarcz said.

“Although we look back on these ventures as being virtually comical, […] this really was the beginning of hormonal therapy.”

Attempts to exploit the gullibility of the public persisted, even as legitimate science advanced. Human growth hormone (HGH), the pro-

duction of which declines as a person ages, became a widely promoted remedy after a 1990 study observed that HGH treatments increased lean mass and bone density in elderly men.

“HGH, at the time, was very difficult to come by,” Schwarcz said.

“But there were clinics that popped up […] that were offering HGH injections for much less than [the expected price], so no one knows what they were actually injecting.”

When public awareness caught up, companies instead began marketing an HGH ‘secretagogue,’ a substance that supposedly stimulates the secretion of raw materials to form HGH proteins inside the body.

However, HGH levels decline because of the reduced activity of enzymes that assemble raw materials into proteins, not because of a shortage of raw materials.

“Supplying these secretagogues is like supplying bricks and windows and doors and hoping that they will assemble themselves into a building, which will not happen because the builder is missing,” Schwarcz said.

Schwarcz also noted that the manipulative tactics of advertisers are present in many modern antiaging products.

“Marketing very often uses

Anti-aging regimens go back to Cleopatra’s time. (Daria Kiseleva / The McGill Tribune) clever words such as ‘It may help’ […] and, as soon as you do that, you are protected legally,” Schwarcz said.

Some companies push this principle above and beyond. Based in Arizona, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation specializes in cryonics, a pseudoscience that insists on freezing human corpses in the hope of resurrecting them in the future.

“It [costs] at least $100,000,” Schwarcz said. “This is of course nonsense. When you are cold and dead, you are dead.”

While some make expensive bets on futuristic technologies, Schwarcz’s recommendations for prolonging life are a lot less flashy.

Okinawa Island in Japan is home to more centenarians than any other place in the world. The life-

style of this population is characterized by a high consumption of fish, vegetables, and fruit, a low consumption of red meat and processed food, and high levels of activity.

“Eating a proper balanced diet, […] exercise, and [genetics] are a few keys, but these are not highly marketable,” Schwarcz said. “There constantly are these miracle solutions, but there are no miracles.”

The strongest-ever hurricane in the northeast Atlantic

High ocean temperatures and jet stream winds powered Hurricane Lorenzo to Europe Vivien Bian Contributor After developing off the coast of West Africa in late September, Hurricane Lorenzo took 11 days to reach the west coast of Ireland and the UK. In addition to recordbreaking heavy rainfall, Lorenzo wrought major damage on the British Isles and other places lying along its path, like the Azores.

Hurricane Lorenzo is the strongest recorded storm to have made it so far east in the northern Atlantic Ocean.

Kai Melamed-Turkish, a Master’s student in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at McGill, explained that there are two main criteria for hurricanes to develop.

“One of the major factors that you need for a hurricane to form are warm sea surface temperatures [...] of about 27 degrees Celsius,” Melamed-Turkish said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “You also need relatively weak winds in the upper part of the atmosphere. You don’t want the winds to be too strong, or to be changing direction too much.”

In the case of Hurricane Lorenzo, the warm sea surface at its tropical development location provided it with ample energy for surface water evaporation. Once a hurricane has formed, it can only last if high sea surface temperatures and the jet stream, a concentration of relatively strong

Lorenzo brought damage high-altitude winds in the atmosphere, carry it through its course.

“Normally in the Atlantic, we would have a pattern that tends to direct storms further west and at more southerly latitudes until they reach about the Caribbean or North America, and then they would start to make a turn towards the North,” MelamedTurkish said. “But in the case of Lorenzo, that wasn’t quite the pattern. The wind pattern in the upper atmosphere allowed Lorenzo to make the turn towards the North and further east.”

Melamed-Turkish added that through-

in baseball games.

“It’s hard to actually separate which [home run] was hit because of the [player’s] natural ability from which one was caused by the amplification [of drug use],” Bloxam said.

While scientists cannot say for sure what is to blame for a single extreme weather event such as Hurricane Lorenzo, climate change will certainly increase the frequency of such events. As a recent study in Nature found, higher temperatures in the Arctic can cause variations in the jet stream in certain parts of the world. This weakening of the jet stream produces meteorological extremities such as unusual intrusions of cold air from the Arctic into the middle latitudes, as well as prolonged and record-breaking rainfall to Europe. (cpb.gov) heat waves and dry conditions.

With both rising sea levels and increasout Lorenzo’s northbound path, the sea sur- ingly frequent extreme weather events, face temperatures remained above normal, Melamed-Turkish expressed concern for which allowed the hurricane to build up en- populations along coasts. ergy and maintain its strength at latitudes “With a rise in sea level, it makes it further north than usual. easier for these storms to bring water As the ocean surface in the Northern from the ocean into major coastal cities,” Hemisphere reached its warmest month in Melamed-Turkish said.

140 years this past August, more extreme Meanwhile, Bloxam urges both adapweather events are likely. Kevin Bloxam, tation and mitigation in protecting coastal a PhD candidate in the Department of At- cities. mospheric and Oceanic Sciences, advised “We have to collectively reduce our against directly attributing the longevity of carbon emissions and also protect the Hurricane Lorenzo to climate change, how- people who are most vulnerable to climate ever, drawing an analogy of steroid doping change at this moment,” Bloxam said.

From fame to shame The fraught history of McGill's global ranking

Kyle Dewsnap

News Editor

In 2006, Tom Traves, then-president of Dalhousie University, formed a coalition of 11 schools, nine of which were among the top 15 research universities in Canada. The 11 presidents of the represented universities signed an open letter addressed to Maclean’s Magazine, denouncing their method of producing university rankings for their annual education issue. These schools refused to participate in the Maclean’s questionnaires, which gathered administrative data about schools’ student bodies and opinions of other institutions.

“We welcome public assessment of our work, and all our institutions devote significant resources to that end,” Traves’s letter reads. “However, it is truly hard for us to justify the investment of public funds required to generate customized data for your survey when those data are compiled in ways that we regard as over-simplified and arbitrary.”

McGill, though, continued to participate in the survey, and ranked first overall in the 2006 edition of the list. There is no mention of Traves’ letter in McGill’s celebratory press release.

University rankings are as popular as they are controversial: Mary Dwyer, the editor of Maclean's Magazine’s annual education issue, noted just how instrumental these rankings are with students who are picking out a post-secondary school. “[In 1991,] there wasn't really any available [....] easy-to-access information on all the various universities [in Canada],” Dwyer said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “So, two editors here thought that Maclean's should do a university ranking, and it was a big hit. We even had to do a second printing. By the second year, they realized [that] there’s a real interest in this. At the same time, the universities had lots of concerns about [the methods involved in] that first ranking.”

While McGill has enjoyed the number one spot in Maclean’s for 15 years in a row, its placement in other rankings is less stable. Since 2012, McGill has been falling by an average of two spots per year in the Quacquarelli Symonds’s (QS) World University Rankings, the most popular international university ranking in the world.

Both national and international rankings have received criticism for their opaque methodology: For many students and administrators, it is hard to understand what information is incorporated in a university’s rank.

As a result, Adrienne Cara, 2L Law at McGill, doubts whether people care about McGill’s consistent decline.

“People’s perceptions of a school don’t change overnight because rankings come out,” Cara said. “The alumni, research, and people coming from the university

are what truly creates a school’s reputation. I went to a lower ranked school for undergrad, but have only encountered alumni with positive stories and employers with positive impressions.”

Deciding what makes a university worthy of a higher ranking is almost completely subjective. Because different publications have different ideas about what should go into scoring a school, rankings can contradict one another. Consider this year’s rankings, for example: 2019 is the ninth year in a row where McGill has fallen in the QS rankings, but McGill has also been climbing steadily in the Times Higher Education (THE) rankings over the past five years. Dwyer acknowledged that designing rankings can be contentious.

“Because [these are] general rankings, we have to look at things that can be applied to all the universities, and it has to be something that can be measured in a uniform way,” Dwyer said. “If you're a small liberal arts university, you're just not going to have the same kind of funding picture or research grants as McGill, or [the University of British Columbia], or [the University of Toronto (U of T)].”

International university rankings are a relatively recent phenomenon. The practice started in 2003 with the Academic Ranking of World Universities. According to Alexa analytics, the two most popular university rankings are now the QS and THE rankings. Both systems try to measure two key features of a school: The quality of the education that it offers its students and the amount of research that its faculty offers. However, while these two indicators can be statistically measured using employment and citation data, the rankings may leave out intangible factors that are crucial in determining a student’s quality of life on campus. Dwyer believes that the intangibles can only be measured with a survey.

“There's two things that we do that fall into [elements that can't be measured],” Dwyer said. “Those would be the [reputation] survey [and] the student satisfaction survey. I think those two indicators recognize that, yes, we can crunch all the data [we] want, but statistics can only tell part of the story. [Surveys are] just based on people's opinions. And some people might criticize it for that reason, and others [....] will praise it.”

In the late 2000s, reputational and student surveys were given significant weight in deciding ranks, much to the chagrin of university administrators. Maclean's was not the only publication that was subject to a boycott: In a 2007 meeting of the Annapolis Group of American Liberal Arts Colleges, a majority of the 80 university presidents in

attendance said that they did not intend to participate in the U.S. News’ rankings in the future.

In both Canada and the United States, both students and university staff were concerned that rankings forced universities to compete with each other, instead of working to improve the quality of education they offered to students. Madeline Wilson, Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP University Affairs, agrees with this sentiment.

“Frankly, I couldn't give less of a shit about McGill's international rank,” Wilson wrote in an email to the Tribune. “My aversion to international rankings stems primarily from the fact that [they] explicitly reinforce the idea that academia is rooted in competition. Education shouldn't be a competition.”

The tension between universities and ranking organizations reached a point where the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Institute of Higher Education Policy (IHEP) both published guidelines for rankers in an effort to protect universities. According to Dwyer, the IHEP forced education publication companies to reconsider their methods and motivations.

“I think [the] main point [of the university boycott] was that [universities] wanted to see third-party data and not self-reported data,” Dwyer said. “And, at that time, there were also more and more rankings both nationally and internationally. So, [the IHEP] published the Berlin Principles.”

The Berlin Principles were put together in 2006 by UNESCO-European Centre for Higher Education and the United States-based IHEP in an effort to make rankings more objective. While survey data could still be included

in the rankings, publications would need to give the results less weight when scoring a university. Administrators favoured this more statistical approach, though it meant that students’ and employers’ opinions would ultimately factor less into rankings: In 1991, 25 per cent of the Maclean’s final score for a school was determined by its reputation; in 2019, it was only worth 15 per cent.

However, the drama surrounding rankings does not explain why McGill has been struggling in the international rankings. If a student seeking a four-year undergraduate degree entered McGill in 2015, they were accepted to the 25th-best school in the world, but graduated from the 35th-best. Simona Bizzozero, Head of Public Relations at QS, provided two reasons why McGill is floundering.

“Regarding McGill University’s decline in the overall ranking, it’s relatively down to the drop in Faculty Students and Citations per Faculty,” Bizzozero wrote in an email to the Tribune. “McGill’s performance in reputational indicators has been quite stable, while the improvement in internationalization metrics hasn’t been strong enough to regain the lost ground.”

‘Faculty Students’ and ‘Citations per Faculty’ are QS jargon for two metrics: The amount of research produced by a school’s faculty, and the quality of education that students receive. The amount of research is calculated by taking the number of citations produced by an institution over five years and dividing it by the number of teaching staff at the school.

Since 2017, McGill has produced fewer citations in two popular journals than other universities, PLOS ONE and Scientific Report, likely impacting the school’s ranking.

For many students, however, the amount of research produced by their university is not as important to them as the quality of the education they receive. McGill is struggling on that front, too.

QS, THE, and Maclean's all use student-staff ratios as indicators of a school’s commitment to teaching; it’s commonly believed that the fewer students to one faculty member, the higher quality of teaching those students will receive. However, since 2008, McGill’s student population has steadily increased by around 600 students per year, while the number of tenured faculty has remained consistent.

While this may not seem like a significant change, the number of students to each professor has increased from 16 to 18 in just 10 years. This change has had a massive impact on the student experience at a school of McGill’s size: In Fall 2008, there were

635 students registered in Physics 101. 10 years later, in 2018, that number rose to 728. There are only 601 seats in Leacock 132, meaning that extra students students are forced to either sit on the floor or are relegated to overflow lecture rooms where the class is broadcasted.

However, James Martin, Associate Director of Internal Communications at McGill, notes that McGill is still proud of their relatively high rank, even factoring in recent declines.

“External rankings can help us promote our strengths and identify the potential areas we would want to improve,” Martin said in an email to the Tribune. “While positive rankings can contribute to a good international profile, McGill's international reputation is based on much more than that [....] employers across Canada and around the world look extremely favourably on McGill graduates when hiring. Thiws is important for young graduates starting out in their careers, as well as those seeking to advance their careers in the future.”

However, McGill’s celebration of rankings leaves some students feeling cheated.

Claire Grenier, U2 Arts, says that McGill’s fall in rank represents a growing lack of concern regarding student well-being.

“I think McGill has fallen because they are not as adept at adjusting to student needs,” Grenier said. “McGill uses rankings to attract students but rarely keeps their promises after students pass through the gates.”

Wilson also shared a similar attitude about university rankings in general.

“The fact that donors, prospective students, and academics use these rankings to determine where they or their money will be going is particularly troubling, because it is in fact those institutions that don't have the resources or capacity to compete for a higher ranking that likely need the most support,” Wilson said.

Rankings exist to make complicated decisions simple—perhaps too simple. And no matter how much information goes into deciding which university comes out on top, reducing the quality of an institution into a single score causes a massive loss of information about what the reality of the student experience is at that university.

Fortunately, at least one ranking-maker seems to acknowledge this.

“If you're looking at the rankings, it's important to not just look at the main chart and see what three schools are at the top,” Dwyer said. “That’s not going to tell you much.”

10

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 2019

A new era of precision medicine to start at McGill

Biobanking offers another reason to get rid of your fax machine Owen Dunkley Contributor There are three things that get doctors jazzed up: Sleep, coffee, and precision medicine. Caricatures aside, the next stage of medicine will likely include increasingly accurate diagnoses and personalized treatments that consider patients’ genetics, known as precision medicine. Large tissue sample collections and big data on tissue donors have been at the forefront of a new wave of medical research around the world, fuelling this progression. These annotated repositories, termed ‘biobanks,’ are commonly used for associating abnormal cellular or molecular biological markers—biomarkers—with disease.

Although large biobanks exist in countries such as the UK, US, and China, smaller, local studies are critical validation tools for any healthcare system with distinct genetic diversity. Ayat Salman, a PhD student in the Department of Family Medicine, believes that Quebec’s medical record-keeping infrastructure is limiting the ability to track chronic diseases in the population.

Currently, a large portion of medical write-ups in Quebec are stored as scans of doctors’ scribblings on paper, and fax machines govern most communication between hospitals. According to Salman, this antiquated system limits researchers from searching for or codifying data from years of tissue donors’ previous visits to their doctors, potentially letting important flags of chronic disease to go unnoticed.

“Each tissue has a story associated with it,” Salman said in an interview with The McGill Tri-

Fax machines still govern most communication between hospitals. (buckley.af.mil) bune. “The family doctor who keeps a record of regular visits is a good source to tell that story.”

To gain access to this resource, Salman is pushing for the implementation of standardized electronic medical records across family doctors’ offices in Quebec, so that biobank researchers need not go on furious fax chases to gain knowledge on patients.

Although much information could be gained from the general practitioner’s office, donors might soon be able to help draw connections between lifestyle and disease by contributing data collected from health-tracking applications to cer-

tain biobanks. Montreal has seen a recent boom in app-based health startups.

“There are so many small companies with great software out there that can be put together and used [in a centralized] biobank,” Salman said.

When performed in a calculated, secure, and ethical way, data collection on a large scale could catapult Quebec into a new age of understanding chronic diseases.

The information that we gain from biomarker research is only half the battle in providing the public with quality medical care. Professor Vincent Mooser, the new Canada Excellence Re-

search Chair (CERC) in Genomic Medicine who joined McGill’s Department of Human Genetics in August, wants to apply biomarker research to develop new therapies. “[The other half] involves clinical trials to show that [the information gained from biobanking research] can be used for drug discovery and drug development,” Mooser said.

With the help of more than $25 million in funding over the next seven years and an enterprising research program, Mooser hopes to catalyze the world-class biomedical infrastructure at the university and move genomic research-based therapies into the doctor’s office. “[Many studies] have already linked biomarkers with disease,” Mooser said. “I am hoping to show that what they found is clinically useful and can actually be translated towards new drug discoveries.”

Mooser is hoping to solve the quandary that if a doctor identifies a disease biomarker in a patient but does not have a proven way to adjust his treatment accordingly, then the initial test for the biomarker serves no clinical purpose. If Mooser and his team succeed in their ambitious goals for the coming decade, McGill may soon be at the centre of a new era in genome-based drug development.

The biomedical field is at the cusp of a revolution in the way that disease is treated, and McGill appears to be keeping with the times. Salman and Mooser have different approaches to precision medicine in Canada, but they share a strong drive to advance evidence-based care towards a future of precision and prevention.

Fact or Fiction: The impact of hunting on animal populations Hunting is a controversial topic in wildlife management Margaret Wdowiak Contributor Hunting has often been suggested as an effective means of controlling animal populations.

Yet, hunting can be beneficial in some instances and harmful in others.

Hunting can actually help fund conservation: In the US, hunters generate millions of dollars for conservation efforts through excise taxes and licence fees. In Sub-Saharan Africa, trophy hunting, the government-licensed shooting of big-game animals such as lions, raises more than 200 million dollars a year for conservation purposes.

Another benefit of hunting is its effect on local communities, which profit off of increased revenue from hunting. This gives them an incentive to preserve animals and the environment.

According to Kyle Elliott, an associate professor in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences at McGill, hunting can also help improve the health of certain animal populations.

“In some cases, hunting prevents overpopulation and [its] associated diseases and hardships, so individuals may be in better condition because they have less competition from other individuals,” Elliott wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune.

Hunting is also a useful mechanism for controlling populations of invasive species.

“Hunting can clearly help increase the populations of species that are in competition or predated by the species being hunted,” Elliott wrote.

“For example, hunting [...] wolves can increase

deer and moose populations.”

Yet, despite the good that hunting can do, it can also create environmentally harmful consequences, the most serious of which are overhunting and species extinctions.

“Most species of animals that have gone extinct in North America have gone extinct due to overhunting,” Elliot wrote.

One of the most notable examples of overhunting in North America is the extinction of the passenger pigeon. In Africa, too, regulated hunting can drive species closer to extinction. Trophy hunters, who are responsible for killing 600 lions each year and tend to target males, often destabilize lion populations. They also kill animals from populations that are already declining, which is particularly alarming given that 75 per cent of the African lion population have been killed in the last 20 years.

Trophy hunting often provides a cover for, and consequently increases, poaching. To continue reaping the financial benefits of this practice, groups inflate animal numbers and even pressure the government to raise hunting quotas.

Furthermore, hunting license fees can adversely affect ecosystem health. The revenue from these fees often increases the population size of big game target species, leading to overpopulation at the expense of countless non-game species. This results in reduced biological diversity, genetic integrity, and ecological balance.

While hunting invasive species is often a management strategy to save native populations, it can also put these species at risk.

Trophy hunters are responsible for 600 lion deaths every year.

(Emma Gillies / The McGill Tribune) “Some groups encourage the hunting or harvesting of invasive species to control populations,” Elliott wrote. “This can be effective, but can lead to a market for related species or species in their native range.”

By creating a market for invasive species in their natural habitat, humans endanger these species and degrade these native ecological systems beyond repair. For example, the overhunting of frugivores—fruit-eating animals—hinders seed dispersal, thus reducing tree diversity and overall forest biodiversity.

Ultimately, using hunting as a management strategy is the result of previous human interven-

tion. In North America, white-tailed deer populations are now abundant, after humans hunted down predator wolf populations. Hunting is often seen as a way to manage these deer populations and prevent habitat destruction, though research shows that it is not always successful. Other options include culling, or selectively killing individuals; translocating individuals; and preventing reproduction through sterilization.

Whether hunting is a useful conservation tool depends heavily on geography, species, and who you ask. In some circumstances, it is appropriate and beneficial. In others, it does much more harm than good.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 2019

11

Le Cartel’s gallery opening is an homage to street art Clothing line hosts first gallery event Vanessa Barron Contributor Montreal-based clothing brand Le Cartel hosted its first gallery event at their brick and mortar store in the Mile End on Oct. 11.

In addition to their Fall 2019 clothing line, the event had multiple DJ sets, a cocktail bar, and a flash tattoo station. The work of visual artists, such as William Houde, Aurelien Saly, and HRVB, were prominently featured on the walls, posters, t-shirts, and tattoos. Through all these forms, the event connected street art with streetwear as a style that permeates public space.

Founded in 2015, Le Cartel produces streetwear collections in collaboration with Montreal artists. Their past collections feature works from artists like illustrator KRUMP and muralist Monosourcil among many others. Their purpose as an organisation, according to their Instagram bio, is to explore the intersection between fashion and art. Le Cartel’s Fall 2019 collection features the intricate and groovy artwork of Epithumia Rose, a multidisciplinary artist known for her tattoo work, which she has practiced in studios across the world. Her designs feature on the backs of simple t-shirts, with the brand’s logo on the front. The art on these shirts is

as sophisticated as that which would appear in a painting in a gallery.

While Le Cartel hosted the event, their clothes were hardly its focus: A throng of PBR drinking young professionals mingled near a dozen t-shirts hanging on the wall, but most patrons were there for other types of art that decorated spaces and bodies. A makeshift tattoo parlour in the corner of the room complemented the designs on both the t-shirts and on the walls.

Large graffiti pieces and duplicate posters by the German artist, HRVB, adorned the walls of the large event space. Originally from East Berlin, HRVB’s art is an homage to ‘90s rave culture, heavily influenced by the cultural and political climate that accompanied the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Aptly titled ‘Berlin Calling,’ his work often includes pop culture characters like Mario and Lego figurines. As a nod to East Berlin’s history as a socialist state, these symbols of Western consumer culture are manipulated into high art, only to be plastered across buildings like advertisements. The format of the works themselves pertains to the setting of the street: Graffiti is often sitespecific, whereas posters are designed to be reproduced and hung in a location of the owner’s choosing. Surprisingly, one of the highlights of the event was the bathroom

Le Cartel’s gallery blended fashion with street and tattoo art. (The McGill Tribune / Dan Aponte) stalls, where pop art style posters lined every inch of the walls; patrons could take these posters home with them as memorabilia.

This process of art reproduction parallels streetwear itself: Taking artistic ideas from someone else on the street, and repurposing it in another space.

Street art, like graffiti and posters, is heavily informed by the space that it occupies. Similarly, streetwear has a sense of locality because it incorporates local influences and pop culture. While Le Cartel market themselves as the link between art

and fashion, the art featured on the shirts is far more important than the garments’ construction. The fact that t-shirts are a staple of streetwear around the globe shows that the visual print design is essential to making an artistic statement, rather than the way it is worn. To some, it might seem excessive to pay so much for just a shirt or a hoodie but at least you know where that money’s going–directly into the pockets of Montreal artists. Streetwear like Le Cartel speaks to a city’s pride in its own artistic scene in the form of wearable art.

Mashrou’ Leila echoes voices of Arab resistance at Club Soda The band released their fourth studio album, The Beirut School, this year Abeer Almahdi Managing Editor Mashrou’ Leila celebrated their 10th anniversary this year; to commemorate the occasion, the band released The Beirut School, their fourth studio album. The band have begun international superstars, with their tour covering Europe, the Middle East, before making stop in Montreal at Club Soda on Oct. 9. Singer Hamed Sinno, violinist Haig Papazian, keyboardist and guitarist Firas Abou Fakher, and drummer Carl Gerges brought powerful Arab energy that radiated through the venue. Sinno and Mashou’ Leila have been Arab 2SLGBTQI+ activists and trailblazers, completely flipping the script on the homophobia and heteronormativity that plague much of mainstream Arab pop music. The band, whose name translates to either ‘The Night Project’ or ‘Leila’s Project’, played a set full of warmth and inspiration.

The night began with a performance from one of Montreal’s own Iraqi-Canadian alternative hip-hop artist Yassin “Narcy” Alsalman. Through his show, Narcy also shed light on current protests in Iraq against corruption, rising unemployment, and poor public services. Besides his career in music, Narcy is also an actor, professor, and multimedia artist, currently teaching one of Canada’s only hip-hop courses at

2019 marked Mashrou’ Leila’s 10th anniversary. (The McGill Tribune / Taja De Silva) Concordia University. Narcy’s performance and call to action created an intense and impassioned atmosphere in anticipation for the main act.

Mashrou’ Leila’s Hamed Sinno opened with a powerful spoken word poem, followed by a performance of “Roman,” an ode to rebellion and hope.

Sinno’s ardent and energetic call for resistance inspired a fiery energy in the crowd and was a fitting way to inaugurate the concert.

Another standout of the night was

“Jinn,” written after Sinno’s father passed away. In the song, Sinno detailed his struggle to mourn, using drugs and alcohol as a means to cope. Sinno’s soothing but strong voice allowed the audience to feel the pain, but also his resilience.

Throughout their set, Mashrou’ Leila was accompanied by audiovisuals that enhanced the deep lyrical meaning behind many of their works. During “Radio Romance,” a projection of two male-presenting lovers tried to embrace flooded

the screen with the impending night and many protestors blocking their way.

The band’s set was filled with thoughtful and political calls to action; the dreamy and multidimensional ballad “Tayf,” Sinno explained, is about the Lebanese government’s crackdown on queer clubs and bars in the country.

The band’s outspoken activism has led to multiple controversies, including the government of Egypt banning Mashrou’ Leila from ever performing in the country again. Sinno explained that the song “Cavalry” highlights those struggles against government oppression and calls to fans to continue supporting resistance. Additionally, the accompanying music video echoes the same sentiments, portraying a young girl attempting to fight soldiers who are invading her home, arresting her family, and cutting down their olive trees, resembling the protests by Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi in the year prior.

In the encore, the band closed off the night with “Marrikh.” Sinno explained that the song was about his struggles with mental illness and the stigma that comes with it; therefore, he asked the audience to put down all their phones, and the venue to turn off the lights. “Marrikh” was a powerful, dreamy, and bittersweet end to the night, with audience members closing their eyes and drifting into the finale.

12

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 2019

‘Hron, a Country of Ghosts’ dares to be different Independent queer sci-fi film challenges traditional utopias Patrick Gilroy Contributor

Queer Digital Futures

Hron, A Country of Ghosts, a new independent film from director dani Tardif, is a self-described anarcho-queer sci-fi movie about love and war. The film centres on Dydo Horacki (Noé Larose), a journalist who is assigned to a military camp to cover the expansion efforts of the fictional Borolian Empire, an imperialist regime intent on domination.

After writing an article that criticizes the war effort, Dydo is sent by the militia’s commander to accompany some soldiers on a dangerous mission. Realizing too late into the expedition that they were set up, the party is attacked and Dydo is taken by one of many militia groups that reside in the mountains. Herein lies the twist: The “captors” quickly make it clear that they aren’t taking Dydo as a prisoner. They do not seem interested in pointless cruelty. Instead, they give Dydo the option to be left behind, but for lack of a better option, the journalist joins them.

Drawing inspiration from Michel Foucault’s idea of heterotopias— spaces which exist within but apart from the contexts that surround them, and as such reveal hidden values of the cultures they exist in— the bulk of the film’s 60-minute runtime juxtaposes this small group of anarchists with the violent imperialist state. The anarchists, who refer to themselves as the Free Company of Mount Heather, are depicted as warm and authentic. The imperialists are not. It is a clever political twist on the classic sci-fi war epic: Rather than having democratic rebels try to take down an autocratic empire, the socialist anarchists attempt the coup. However, this film is more interested in the political battles taking place than the physical ones.

For the rest of the film, we are treated to a look into the life of this free collective. The viewer is invited to imagine a classless, genderless society where decision making is shared. There are many overt critiques of capitalist hierarchies throughout the film, but the subtle digs are the most effective. For example, Dydo reacts with childlike disbelief when they learn that people choose to work freely to benefit their collective. Coming from the empire, Dydo has only understood work as the product of coercion by a superior. Hron, A Country of Ghosts plays as a social critique simply by showing the merits of its subject: The confederation, unlike the Empire, is very, very good.

Though the film prides itself on tidy politics, core elements of the story that would have strengthened Hron’s impact are sadly absent.

Take a deep dive into queering geography and digital documentation of personal history with the creator of Queering the Map Oct. 23, 2:30-4:00 p.m.

853 rue Sherbrooke, Arts 160 Free

October Photo Discussion ‘Hron’ premiered in June 2019. (ulele.com) The relationships between characters are what drive the film, but they lack conflict and tangible development. The close bonds that form between Dydo and the militia members develop for no discernible reason beyond narrative convenience, and the viewer has no cause to root for these characters. Many of them are given extended and intimate monologues over the second half of the film, but their emotional impact is limited by the lack of narrative development.

The film privileges its political message over traditional storytelling techniques; which is ultimately unfortunate.

The film does a good job with costumes and setting, and manages to create a distinct universe in an impressively short span of time. The ski masks, bandanas, and ragged clothes of the anarchists immediately register as rebellious as well as being of this planet, while the imperialists’ orderly and uptight outfits are classically sci-fi. Attention is drawn to the dress frequently, and watching both kinds on screen at once makes this sci-fi feel timeless and distinct.

The film’s crew introduced the work suggesting that although something is not perfect, that doesn’t mean it is not worth making.

There are merits in the film’s production, acting, and design—and there is a charm and depth to the rogue politics on display that makes the film work as a conceptual piece examining the effects of politics on interpersonal relationships.

Whether or not you agree with its message, the film has an unabashedly independent spirit. And it’s a welcome breath of fresh air from whatever has been clogging up your Netflix queue.

Discuss, admire, and appreciate the work of fellow photographers with the McGill Photography Student’s Society Oct. 18, 12:30-2:00 p.m.

Burnside 512 Free

The Art of Listening to the Most Marginalized Active listening training from Concordia’s oral history research centre Oct. 22, 5:00-7:00 p.m.

1400 Boul. de Maisonneuve Free

Concordia Used Book Fair

A veritable plethora of previously loved literature Nov. 3-5 1:00-6:00p.m.

1515 St. Catherine St. Ouest Free

‘Honour: Confessions of a Mumbai Courtesan’ brings the world of sex trafficking closer to home Teesri Duniya theatre offers an unflinching rendering of the Mumbai red-light district Asha Bittenbender Contributor Before Honour: Confessions of a Mumbai Courtesan begins, the audience is plunged into complete and total darkness in the Montréal Arts Interculturels (MAI) theatre. When a spotlight comes up on writer and performer Dipti Mehta— her face partially obscured from our view by a colorful, bejeweled scarf—her figure is the only limb of reality extended to us in the alien space.

The beginning of her one-woman show is not the only time the audience feels that Mehta is rescuing us.

The plot chronicles the life of a young girl named Rani, during the days leading up to her ‘first sale.’ Hers is the world of the courtesan, and she is about to join the adults who work in the trade.

Secondary characters include Rani’s mother, Chameli, a veteran prostitute sold by her own father at age 13. Now as an older woman, she presides over the little world of her daughter; their family friend Meena, a eunuch who helped raise Rani; and Shyam, whom Chameli raised but who now aspires to pimp out both Chameli and Rani.

Mehta plays all these roles herself, and those

‘Honour’ is a poignant and artistic call to action. (thecultch.com) of prospective buyers. Her extended solo makes the isolation of the world she portrays palpable —alone onstage, her characters live isolated from men and women leading ‘civilian’ lives of marriage and babies, careers and education.

Her main character, Rani, sharply feels this isolation: Her youth and inexperience is impossible not to find endearing. The tensions of the world Mehta explores are present in her titular character as well–Rani is also streetwise, using the kinds of words that young women are not supposed to use, understanding the desires of lecher-

ous men she meets on the streets.

The supposed isolation of the world onstage is challenged by the presence of the audience in the Montreal theatre. As mature and capable as Rani seems, the audience very much wants to intervene: To stop the sale, to whisk Rani away, to rescue her. But we cannot.

The powerlessness the audience feels watching the plot progress is not the lesson to be taken away–rather it is the coal with which Mehta hopes to light a fire in audience members.

The play’s program included research from the

United Nations estimating that 24.9 million individuals are in forced labour situations, largely women who have become the victims of human trafficking. For every girl whose fate is sealed, there are thousands more who can be saved by intervention from those with the resources to do so. Panelists at a talkback after the show included an advocate for human trafficking and forced prostitution in Montreal. Her inclusion emphasized the message of the play: This issue is both locally and universally urgent.

Honour is not a lament, but rather a call to action. The issue of human trafficking, though dire, is not hopeless. Mehta’s performance, encompassing seven characters throughout the play, stands in stark contrast to the coerced position of her heroine. Her agency is exercised every time she slips out of a character and into a new one.

In her first appearance as the mother, Chameli, Mehta states: “This is the reality of a woman’s life: She pays for the sins of others.”

But each time her female characters do so, Mehta pulls a scarf from the lines suspending them around stage. By the last scene, she has gathered them in her arms, bearing their weight just as women are expected to bear debts; as the lights come down for the final time, she turns her back to her audience, and lets them fall.

STUDENT LIFE

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 2019

13

Campus Spotlight: McGill Design Collective Student group plans to bring better design to campus Miguel Principe Contributor Purposeful design determines the user-friendliness of websites, the efficacy of advertisements, and the accessibility of buildings — and McGill is home to many students who are passionate about it. For Carrie Rong, U2 Science, graphic design is both an interest and an outlet for her creative side, which is often otherwise neglected during the school year. A year ago, she began to tinker with graphic design software to create promotional material such as posters and a website for the Physiology Undergraduate League of Students (PULS), where she is currently the Communications Director, . Her interest even led to a summer internship in product design. Rong lamented the lack of a community for design-minded individuals like herself at McGill.

“I realized [that] there seemed to be no one to talk to about design with,” Rong said. “I wanted to bring creative people together to show McGill what good design is [and use our foundation of skills to] change the design here.”

Sensing this lack of space for creatives on campus, Rong founded the McGill Design Collective as a home where designers at McGill could congregate. The first goal of the club, which aspires to be “McGill’s

Design Collective hopes to make McGill beautiful. (McGill Design Collective) premiere creative agency,” is to advise other clubs on good design. Rong wants to work with student groups on campus because she noticed that many groups made posters and websites that were not effective or aesthetically pleasing. She hopes that she and her fellow Design Collective members will soon be able to take requests from both clubs and local startups to create material that incorporates their clients’ requests into while applying smart design

principles.

The collective also aims to teach and challenge its member base, which is currently composed of 20 people with experience in various forms of design such as graphic design, web design, and photography. For beginners, the Design Collective will host workshops introducing common design software such as Adobe Illustrator and Figma. For more advanced members, the collective is giving a monthly design

challenge to help foster creative growth.

With these initiatives, Rong hopes to achieve the slogan of their group: “Let’s Make McGill Beautiful.”

“A designer’s mindset is to iterate upon things that can be improved,” Rong said. “The Design Collective aims to enable its members to go out [on campus], take projects from clubs, and make them more beautiful.”

For the group, beautifying McGill’s clubs means creating design that has meaning and purpose. An example of purposeful design is choosing colours that express a certain sentiment or characteristic, such as using blue to convey tranquility. Rong envisions that the collective sets a precedent to incorporate good design principles for promotional materials at McGill, such as complementary colours and thoughtful use of negative space. She also hopes to have the collective’ members inspire others to strive for more meaningful use of design.

With the goal of making McGill a place with more deliberate design, the club is starting this fall with weekly meetings that alternate between workshops and “Design and Donuts,” an event for like-minded creatives to come together and evaluate each others’ design pieces. A permanent meeting place and time has not been set, but students can keep up with this up-and-coming design club on their Facebook page.

Pointe-à-Callière: Where history meets modernity Archaeology and history complex highlights Montreal’s origins Sophia White Staff Writer Tourists and locals alike usually flock to Old Montreal for its quintessential cobblestone streets, cafés, and boutiques, but anyone hoping to learn more about the history and architectural origins of Montreal should look no further than Pointe-à-Callière. Montreal’s Archaeology and History Complex sits in the heart of Old Montreal. The museum consists of seven buildings and structures on top of authentic historic sites, all of which tell stories about the origins of Montreal.

What most distinguishes Pointe-àCallière from other history museums is its modern approach to design. The museum draws upon multimedia and modern technology to engage visitors and bring history to life. With authentic archaeological digs as the foundation for the complex, visitors can walk through these sites or view them from above through transparent glass floors.

Pointe-à-Callière’s permanent exhibitions focus primarily on the history of Montreal. The very first exhibit, “Generations Montreal”, is a fast-paced multimedia show that provides an immersive glimpse into the history and birthplace of Montreal. The show was internationally recognized as an immersive live experience at the 2019 Muse Creative Awards.

“Memory Collector” is an underground light installation projected onto the stone

walls of North America’s first collector sewer, and was a feat of civil engineering and urban infrastructure when it was first built in Montreal in the 1830s. “Where Montreal Began,” a newer exhibit, is a sleek interactive design studio built over the very first settlement in Montreal, Fort Ville-Marie. The space is designed to pay tribute to the pioneers of the colony and their desire to establish a new society. Visitors can place their hands on shapes along a wall and see the names of the people who played a role in founding Montreal appear. In another room, a map and guide outlines a brief history of First Nations villages, but Indigenous history and culture is otherwise largely missing from the overall narrative of the museum, as settler-colonial interactions are discussed in mainly Eurocentric terms.

“Building Montreal,” another permanent exhibition, highlights key moments in the timeline of Montreal’s history from 1350 to the present. Finally, “Crossroads Montreal,” the last permanent exhibition, begins in the ruins of Ville-Marie’s first Catholic cemetery, dating back to 1643, and continues onward from there. Archaeological traces help to guide the history of the site, beginning with the First Nations people and ending in the 19th century.

In addition to the permanent exhibitions, the museum also presents three to four temporary exhibits every year. “Dinner is Served! The Story of French Cuisine” delves into the history of France’s culinary culture,

Pointe-à-Callière consists of seven buildings and structures atop archaeological sites that detail Montreal’s origins. (Sophia White / McGill Tribune) and “Into the Wonder Room” brings together objects from the collections of the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, France, as well as hundreds of items from museum collections across Québec and Canada and from private collectors.

Starting on Nov. 27, a new exhibit called “The Incas, Treasures of Peru” will be on display, which explores the world of the Inca and Andean culture from prehistory to the contemporary era. In the style of Pointeà-Callière’s other exhibitions, “Treasures of

Peru” is set to include immersive projections, authentic architectural elements, and a model of a contemporary market.

Though the museum primarily lays the foundation for the story of Montreal’s history from a settler-colonialist perspective, the complex nonetheless provides a starting point for visitors to discover the history of the city. Montreal has a rich history, and Pointe-à-Callière has uniquely allowed archaeological traces of Montreal’s birthplace to become accessible to the public.

14 STUDENT LIFE

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 2019

La Cale: A greener way to stand out

Zero-waste pub La Cale challenges competitors to minimize trash Yara Shaheen-Abuelreish Contributor The recent Montreal climate march and ensuing conversations about climate change have prompted many students to reexamine their consumption habits and reduce their waste. Four friends in Rosemont are ushering in this change with their new zero-waste pub, La Cale. Located on Rue Saint-Hubert, the bar prides itself on its strict adherence to environmentally-friendly business practices while still offering patrons a full bar experience.

Walking into La Cale, the industrial ceilings and dim lighting create a rustic aura. There is still a ‘new bar’ feel, as co-owners Gab and Luca Silver Fox rush about making their homemade sodas and prepping vegetarian poutine.

Josh Gendron, who has been with La Cale since the beginning and goes by Gend, described La Cale’s journey from its beginning to opening day.

“It’s hard to make it a short story, because it was a long process,” Gend said. “Me and some friends [...] wanted to open a bar for a while but [...] lacked the inspiration to do so. There’s so many [similar] bars out there. So when we came across this book by Bea Johnson about zerowaste lifestyles it just inspired us to [implement] that style of operation into the bar system. It’s

a way for us to be different from other people while also making a difference in the bar industry. Most of us nowadays, we like to care about what we eat [and] what we serve.”

Gend does not believe La Cale has faced obstacles so much as challenges.

“It’s just finding the right suppliers and thinking outside the box,” Gend said. “It’s not an obstacle, it’s just a bit more work [and] a bit more research. [Our juices and sodas are made in-house], which most bars buy premade. We made the bar. The chairs and tables are secondhand furniture from auctions or restaurants that closed. Zero-waste is all about reuse and we like to give things a second chance.”

Gend continued to support this claim as he talked about the message they would like to send to the Montreal bar community.

“This is not a difficult thing,” Gend said.

“Sometimes things are more costly or time-consuming, but that’s really what makes your bar stand out more than other places. When you buy a Coke at another bar, it’s always the same Coke [....] I think it’s worth all the effort if you want to be different.”

Gend recommends that business-owners forgo printing the second extra receipt and stock their businesses based on what they can reasonably sell. To consumers, he urges people to stop ordering bottles of water and fill their empty pint

Slick and rustic La Cale seeks to make waste-consciousness a norm.

(Dan Aponte / McGill Tribune) glasses instead.

“Say no to straws,” Gend said. “My main advice is just try your best to make the least waste as possible. [...] When a business goes zero-waste, the impact is multiplied, [and it pressures] other businesses [...] to do the same [to avoid being] seen as the polluting business.

You’ll have to make the switch eventually, [so] why not now? You just need to think outside the box, and [with all the literature], it’s getting easier and easier.”

Gend reports an overall positive response to the bar and hopes for further support from

the community at its upcoming events, including Thursday comedy nights and a wide array of musical acts.

With significant strides and major community support, La Cale is setting the stage for some long-awaited and exciting changes to the Montreal bar scene. Gend reported that the pub raised $22,000 through online campaigns, which shows the high demand for waste-conscious businesses in the city. This will likely mark the beginning of more conscious business practices and will urge business owners and consumers alike to start thinking outside the box.

Brain games for study breaks

How puzzles can offer more productive procrastination Alaana Kumar Staff Writer With midterm season in full swing, students often struggle to keep stress levels low and grades high. As exams rapidly approach, individuals are often overwhelmed and struggle to keep their focus while studying. Research suggests that brain games can make for a more productive study break as these activities keep the mind active, while offering a comforting way to de-stress. Whether it be a crossword, a jigsaw puzzle, or sudoku, mind games have been known to improve memory, cognitive function, attention span, and other brain functions vital to student success.

For most students, retaining complex information can be challenging. A study conducted at the University of Exeter and King’s College London found that participants who frequently played crossword and sudoku puzzles demonstrated sharper performances across several tasks. These tasks were specifically designed to assess memory, attention, and reasoning. The study also suggests that playing such games helps keep the brain younger as one ages, reducing the likelihood of later developing advanced stages of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

Additionally, students who often play brain games find that they help with focus, since their mind is working to find a solution in an allotted amount of time. While some like to save these puzzles for a relaxing study break, others choose to start or

Brain games can improve memory, and attention span among other functions vital to student success. (pixabay.com) end their day with a brain game. For Corrina Greenler, U3 Arts, starting her morning with a crossword puzzle helps her productivity throughout the day.

“I love how doing a crossword is something to keep my mind active but isn’t school work,” Greenler said. “[It] gets me thinking and motivated [Once I finish one,] I’m ready to work on my other tasks.”

This satisfaction from solving a puzzle is a motivator to challenge oneself with these activities. Many individuals who partake in brain-stimulating games see this form of entertainment as exercise for the brain. A study published in the Internation-

al Journal of Geritatic Psychiatry suggests that, in seniors, crosswords and other such puzzles strengthen the brain, almost like physical exercise does for the body.

Focusing on a non-academic task for a set period of time allows students to take a break without letting their minds idle. Meredith Charney, U3 Arts, finds that doing crossword puzzles can help balance everyday stresses.

“I do the crossword almost every day,” Charney said. “I have a lot of anxiety, and when I’m doing a crossword, it diverts that mental energy elsewhere.”

McGill psychology professor Dr.

Richard Koestner connects brain games with the concept of flow as defined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihali. “[Flow is] associated with pursuing interesting and challenging activities where there is a specific goal and feedback,” Koestner said. “Games and puzzles [...] are designed to produce the conditions that lead to flow.”

In contrast to watching TV and surfing the internet, which provide minimal structure to divert our attention from our anxieties, brain games allow us to spend more time in flow. “[Research supports the idea that] increasing the number of flow activities we do each day can greatly enhance our personal well-being,” Koestner said. “I think [brain games] are more likely to produce flow [than these activities, but] we have to keep increasing challenge and skill so that the activity continues to produce flow.”

Since high stress levels can lead to numerous health concerns, it is important to find enjoyable and productive ways to relax the mind and body. A University of Toronto study suggests that giving the mind a break allows one to return to a task with more energy and a new perspective.

The results found that effective relaxation techniques vary from person to person, but for many students, crosswords and other puzzles can be a worthy means both to de-stress and to challenge oneself. Referencing Mihaly Csikszentmihali, Koestner recommends that students challenge themselves through brain games in order to reap the mental benefits.

SPORTS

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 2019

15

Martlet Volleyball stumbles against Saint Mary’s Huskies Martlets lose in three sets despite strong defence second match against the Huskies on Oct. 12, winning in straight sets to close out preseason play. They begin their regular season on Oct. 17 when they host Laval (7–5).

Heela Achakzai Contributor Martlet Volleyball (8–4) hosted the Saint Mary’s University Huskies (2–2) on Oct. 11, losing in three sets. Despite close scores in every set—21–25, 21–25, and 30–32 respectively—the Martlets were unable to close out a single set against the punishing play of the Huskies.

In the first set, Saint Mary’s started strong, maintaining their lead throughout.

However, the Martlets closed the 10–1 gap before giving up the set by four points. Despite a slow start, two kills from second-year middle blocker Charlene Robitaille picked up the pace for the Martlets.

McGill came out hot in the second set, maintaining a lead thanks to the dominant play of fourth-year hitter and captain Rowan Fletcher, fifth-year hitter Clare Nishikawa, and second-year Libero Catherine Vercheval.

The trio continuously contested the Saint Mary’s attack, scoring repeatedly on blocks.

The Martlets stayed persistent and narrowed Saint Mary’s lead to 19–18. They continued to compete and looked to have found their rhythm, but the Huskies ultimately pulled away, winning the set 25–21.

“We’re trying to make sure our servereceive is more stable because when we started to pass well, the game was different,” Head

MOMENT OF THE GAME Near the end of the third set, with the teams tied at 28–28, fifth-year middle blocker Myriam Robitaille hit an incredible kill down the heart of the Saint Mary’s defence to put McGill in the lead.

QUOTABLE The Martlet defence was strong all game, leading to several crucial points that kept the game close..

(McGill Athletics) Coach Rachel Béliveau said. “We do have to put more pressure when we are hitting; […] the difference between the two teams is that they can hit fast, and we are not as fast and powerful as they are [....] It is a good preparation for us.”

The crowd was on the edge of their seats for the entirety of the third set as the Martlets found themselves in a win-or-go-home situation. The home side put up another strong defensive performance and a lengthy lategame rally brought the best out of both teams, making for an exciting match with the score tied 28–28. An exceptionally executed kill was the decisive point in the Huskies’ win.

“I think it was our first game home so we needed some time to adjust,” fourth-year power hitter Elisabeth Perault said. “We really need to watch the middle on the other side, so we are going to make a new game-plan against that.”

Despite the loss, the Martlets put up a solid performance lead by impressive play from Fletcher and Robitaille. This game’s lineup saw many new players play exceptionally well, including first-year rightside hitter Clara Poire and first-year power hitter Victoria Iannotti.

The Martlets came back strong in a

“We have a lot of new parts, so I think we need to work on the team chemistry together. I think that is what’s missing, […] knowing the girl who’s playing beside you, knowing whose responsibility it is to take the ball.”- Thirdyear hitter and captain Rowan Fletcher on where the team is looking to improve over the season.

STAT CORNER The Oct. 11 game saw the return of fifth-year middle-blocker Myriam Robitaille after a year-long hiatus. It was a strong comeback, as she managed eight kills, one dig, three stuffed blocks, and a pair of assisted blocks in the match.

NBA Season Preview: The uninitiated fan’s guide The most exciting teams for free-agent fans to support this season

Adam Burton Staff Writer Let’s face it: Montreal isn’t the best city for basketball fans. However, the Raptors’ Championship win may have spurred the genesis of basketball-fandom across the country. Thousands of first-time fans packed into the Jurassic Park on Peel Street to watch the improbable dark-horse squad headed by Kawhi Leonard thrash the Warriors, and in the process, fell in love with basketball.

When the NBA season starts on Oct. 22, fans without a team will have to choose where to place their loyalties. There’s no lack of excitement coming into the 2019–2020 NBA season with everyone on the all-star starting lineup, including Leonard, playing musical chairs. The McGill Tribune compiled a list of the most thrilling teams to support before the bandwagons leave the stations.

The Philadelphia 76ers

Even those that question the value of the team-building process can’t deny that the 76ers are looking impressive this year. Joel Embiid lost 20 pounds over the summer, which is sure to make him better defensively and lighter on his feet. Ben Simmons may have learned to shoot, even draining his first ever threepointer in a preseason game. Furthermore, the off-season addition of veteran Al Horford will add to their depth and defence. Without Kawhi Leonard in the Eastern Conference to stop them, the 76ers will be contenders this coming season.

Los Angeles Clippers

The recent addition of Leonard and Paul George to an already elite Clippers’ roster has Lakers and Warriors fans concerned. Hot off one of the greatest playoff runs in NBA history, Leonard is now on an even better team, he’s ready to cement his legacy, and it’s time for the battle of LA to return.

Denver Nuggets

The Nuggets’ roster has remained mostly unchanged, unaffected by free agency. They are the only top team with any continuity, an undervalued aspect in building team chemistry. If Nikola Jokic continues with his unique take on the centre position while being surrounded by exceptional shooters and highly anticipated rookie Michael Porter Jr., they just might be in the mix to win it all this year.

Los Angeles Lakers

With the recent addition of Anthony Davis, the Lakers have catapulted into championship contention. By pairing Davis with Lebron James, holding on to Kyle Kuzma in the Davis trade, and landing valuable shooters like Danny Green, the Lakers are looking to prove that they still own LA.

Dallas Mavericks

Dirk Nowitzki retired last year, but this year’s Mavs roster isn’t any less European. Former Rookie of the Year Luka Dončić paired with recent 7’3” addition Kristaps “The Unicorn” Porzingis should make for a deadly combination.

New Orleans Pelicans

This might be the most exciting assembly of young talent to ever grace the NBA. Zion

With no clear frontrunner in the NBA this year, it’s every fan’s opportunity to pick their team before the bandwagon leaves the station. (Clippers Digital) Williamson, possibly the most talked about NBA prospect of all time, will be paired with Lonzo Ball, a talented playmaker no longer suffering from a weird jump shot. The two should make for a flashy and explosive duo, churning out highlights on a nightly basis, and potentially propelling their team to the playoffs.

Houston Rockets

The Rockets have been hovering in finals contention for the last three years, but the Warriors have stopped them at every turn. The blockbuster trade of Chris Paul to Oklahoma City for Russell

Westbrook might be what gets them through the blockade though, with the Warriors now weakened

by Klay Thompson’s injury and the loss of Kevin Durant. With both James Harden and Westbrook setting all-time records for ball possession in the last few years, however, it’s unclear how both teammates will share the spotlight.

If there has ever been a year to get into the NBA, this is it. Nearly every team has been reshaped by free agency and trades, and there’s no clear frontrunner. Anything could happen, and fans have a fantastic chance to choose a team.

16

SPORTS

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 2019

Martlet cross country impresses once again Elizabeth Hirsch clinches third medal at the Interlocking Meet Shaun Lalani Contributor The McGill cross country team competed on Oct. 12 in the RSEQ-AUS Interlocking Meet, hosted by the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) at Parc Maisonneuve. A total of 316 runners representing 15 teams competed in the men’s and women’s eight–kilometre categories. The nationally-ranked Martlets finished third overall with fourth-year runner Elizabeth Hirsch claiming an individual second place.

The Martlets were impressive in the season’s first eight–kilometre run. Hirsh, McGill Athlete of the Week, capped off a 29:16.5 effort with a podium finish, her third over the last four races. Accompanying her in the top ten was third-year Sandrine Veillette, who finished with a time of 30:19.00, fourthyear team captain Chloe FleurentGregoire (placed 14), and thirdyears Laura Carlton (19) and Brianna Mendes (28), taking home a total of 68 points for McGill.

“The first [eight-kilometre race] of the season is: c’est impressionnante; it’s not [necessarily] a struggle but requires focus,” Fleurent-Gregoire said after the race. “[The] first [fourkilometres are] okay, the [next two] you can fall asleep [because]

it’s four repetitive laps. But the last [two-kilometres], [you] step it up and show what [you] have.”

Despite missing out on what would have been their fourth successive first-place finish, the Martlets put on a competitive display against the nation’s top teams. They fell just short of the Laval Rouge et Or, who recorded 67 points, and the Queen’s University Gaels, who took 49.

The McGill Men’s team, however, endured a tough loss as the team failed to build upon an improving trend of overall finishes.

First-year Henry Wellenstein, who finished in 39th place, fifthyear Simon Bernier (58), firstyear Noah El Rimawi-Fine (63), second-year Oliver Cyr (79), and third-year Jeremy Obrand (117) combined for a total score of 250 to finish in tenth place at the meet.

Wellenstein, who has been McGill’s brightest spark for a fourth successive race, was enthusiastic about his performance.

“This is my first year [on the team], so I’m kind of just going with the flow,” Wellenstein said.

“A lot of work goes into running at the race-pace. We do a lot of interval [runs] where we’re slower than the race-pace [and] faster than the race-pace, [...] but its [also] about pushing hard physically and mentally [to win].”

The team, coached by 32time conference Coach of the Year

Fourth-year Elizabeth Hirsch claimed her third individual medal of the season with a second-place finish. (McGill Athletics) Dennis Barrett, remains positive about improving their times ahead of the provincial championships.

“It’s my first [eightkilometre race] since last year so it was definitely more difficult, but Coach [Barrett] is always on me about improving my cadence, to take more steps per minute,” Hirsch said. “He wants us to start out in the front [and] be confident about it [....] That is what I did today. It was scary, but [we] need to challenge ourselves.”

The cross-country team’s next challenge will be the provincial championships in Quebec City on Oct. 26, followed by the highly anticipated Nationals in Kingston on Nov. 9.

MOMENT OF THE RACE Fourth-year runner Elizabeth Hirsch started the race at the front of the pack, displaying confidence as she kept control throughout the run to eventually take home the silver medal.

QUOTABLE “[We’re] a very different team compared to last year, [...] but what’s cool about McGill is that we have a lot of depth. It’s not just three [or] four girls but ten girls that are all strong [runners], so we’re always competitive. We’re really hoping to win it this year.” - Martlet captain Chloe Fleurent-Gregoire on improving upon the team’s fifth place finish at last year’s Nationals.

STAT CORNER The Martlets (68 points) narrowly missed out on the second-place finish to their rivals, the Laval Vert et Or (67).

Behind the Bench: More than her husband

How tabloids, social media, and newspapers have failed pro athletes’ partners Kaja Surborg Sports Editor Continued from page 1.

Rooney and Vardy are both married to professional English soccer players.

While Rooney and Vardy have large social media followings and have appeared on reality television shows, there are plenty of female partners of male professional athletes that deliberately avoid the public eye. Regardless of their online or public personas, many of these women are continually reported on by tabloid news, gossip sites, and even fan accounts on Instagram and Twitter, simply because they are married to or dating famous athletes.

The obsession with male athletes’ wives and girlfriends has even led to a colloquial acronym: WAGs, short for “wives and girlfriends.” Rooney was even referred to as “Wagatha Christie” on Twitter–a title that essentially reduces her to being the wife of Wayne Rooney.

In October 2018, The Daily Star published a story about an Instagram post from Anna Lewandowska, a Polish national karate champion who happens to be married

to Robert Lewandowski of FC Bayern Munich and the Polish national soccer team. The story covered a series of negative comments left on the post, most of which seem to blame her for her husband’s team losing a game shortly after the photo went up. Covering the online hate that women receive seems harmless at first glance, but continuing down the single-sentence paragraphs that make up all good tabloid journalism, it emerges that The Daily Star’s defence of Lewandowska is that she is “devoted” to her husband. The implication is that had she not fit the publication’s definition of “devotion,” she would deserve the hate that she received from FC Bayern’s fans. Rather than being worthy of respect because she is a human being, she is deemed worthy of respect because of her husband and her devotion to him. The article also refers to Lewandowska as a “fitness blogger”–a term that is reductive at best.

Lewandowska is a retired Polish, European, and world karate championship medalist who now runs a hugely successful fitness empire in Poland with a line of healthy foods and nutrition supplements, baby clothes, and fitness programs. Her assets are estimated to be worth 47 million Euros.

Anna Lewandowska has won 29 medals at the Polish national karate championships.

There are endless examples of athletes’ wives being described as everything from “blonde beauty” to “brunette entrepreneur,” but two central themes emerge throughout all of the articles and social media posts: Their appearances and their role in their husband’s lives. Both of these trends in describing the wives and girlfriends of famous athletes dehumanize them,

dismissing the possibility that they have any independence as human beings and any worth outside of their physical appearance and their husbands or boyfriends.

The recent coverage of the conflict between Rooney and Vardy, while hugely sensationalized, was rare in that it focused the story on the actions of the women involved, not on their husbands or their