THE MCGILL TRIBUNE Published by the Students' Society of McGill University
Tuesday September 20,1988
L
i
g
h
t
by Michelle Ninow and Val Moysey “Everyone in the world deserves to be free and to have basic human rights, that’s why I’m here today” stated the quiet Tracey Chapman before she began herperformance at the Montreal Amnesty International concert on Saturday night. 60,000 spectators were jammed into the ‘Big O’ for the “Human Rights Now” tour. Any show star ring Peter Gabriel, Daniel Lavoie, Michel Rivard, Sting, Youssou N’Dour, Bruce Springteen, and Tracey Chapman is bound tobe great. Expectations were high and by the end of the evening they had been surpassed. Despite the marathon length of the concert (eight hours), infinite beer and toilet lineups and off-synch video screen images of the micro stars preforming on stage, the crowd maintained its stamina and gave its all to create a sense of unity and support for Amnesty. As the evening progressed the electricity in the air mounted. Spectators danced, sang and clapped, initiated spontaneous human waves that travelled from one side of the stadium to the other and lit their lighters in the dark (the flame is Amnesty’s symbol). The concert opened up with all seven stars singing Peter Tosh and Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up”. Then the Senegalese rhythms of YoussouN’Dour resounded through out the stadium with surprising clar ity. The eight sound towers located on both sides of the stage allowed for relatively good sound all night long. Along with Youssou N’Dour, Da niel Lavoie and Michel Rivard pro vided the opening acts for the main attractions. Although in all three sets the artists put on great shows, the audience was not ready to become involved; many spectators did not
, e
n
e
r g
y
,
even arrive until the big names started to appear. Daniel Lavoie and Michel Rivard, joining the tour for the Mon treal performance, drew some indig nation from certain ignorant specta tors who shouted,”sing in English”. Fortunately, they were quickly ‘dealt with’ by the more enlightened mem bers of the audience. Michel Rivard did manage to tap a bit of the crowd energy with his popular song ‘Je voudrais voir la mer’. The show really gathered momen tum when Tracey Chapman, thepopular 24 year old folk singer, appeared on stage. Alone in the spotlight with only her guitar, Chapman mesmerized the spectators. Her simplicity and passion powered the audience for the follow ing performers. Peter Gabriel’smusic, synchronized
a
n
d
f r
e
e
d
o
withelaboratelighting,theatrics,and J dancing, sustained the energy Chapman had created. Gabriel took what she began and literally ran with it. The darkened stadium was trans formed into an ocean of star-like lighter flames and peopleraised their fists and their voices to join Gabriel in his emotional finale of his “Biko” song. Sting put on a good show for all his fans, but his contribution was less engaging than Chapman’s captivat ing voice and Gabriel’s animated act. Perhaps it was his somewhat repeti tive lyrics or maybe just concert burnout but the audience seemed to be fading abit. Sting launched his set with “King of Pain" and “Fragile”, and was joined by Gabriel for “They continued on page 3
F i r s t B o G M e e tin g by Trib News Staff The first Board of Governors meet ing of the academic year took place on Monday 19 September. Although publication deadlines for the Tribune preclude a report on the decisions of the Board taken at the meeting, as it commenced at 16h00, reports of the Executive Committee and the Senate were made available prior to this date. For those unfamiliar with the bu reaucratic structure of the University, the Board of Governors is, not to mince any words, the Supreme Entity. It is the body that ultimately makes the decisions that run the university, usu ally through acomplexcommiteestructure. When the university is not in session, decisions are made by the Executive Committee and ratified by the Board at a later date. Much of what the Board deals with is mundane, examination of what the various committees are doing, and dealing with the nuts and bolts of run ning a university. Someone has to buy pencils. Still, they do make some major decisions that affect all of us. An ex ample is the proposal put forward by VP(Administration and Finance) John
Armour, which would raise McGill’s application fee from $15 to $25, effec tive for the coming academic year. The fee, which all applicants for entry to McGill pay, has not increased “for at least 17 years,” according to Armour. So all new applicants are charged an extra ten bucks. (This doesn’t affect application fees for McGill’s graduate schools, which remain zero for all McGill students.)
The Board approves research con tracts (three more worth more than $100,000, including one with the Defence Research Establishment, were recentlypassed) and staff appointments and changes, along with a myriad of other responsibilities. The Tribune will continue to report regularly on Board of Governors’ meetings in order to keep our readers informed.
O n t a r i o s tu d e n ts
m by Paul Michell Students who graduated from On tario Grade 13 programs last year and are now enrolled in the Faculty of Arts are finding that unlike their predeces sors, they are not being awarded ad vanced standing for previously com pleted courses. Before the change of policy, students from Ontario who had a Grade 13 diploma were given six credits (a full year course) for each social science or humanities course that they had taken in Grade 13 and received a mark of 75% or higher, up to a maximum of 30 credits. Thus, many students who graduated from Ontario high schools with high marks in 1987 or earlier were able to enter directly into a program in the Faculty of Arts requiring substantial fewer credits to complete their de grees. This often meant a three-year, 90 credit program rather than a fouryear 120 credit program. However, those students fromOntario who gradu ated in 1988 are not being given a similar opportunity. Quebec students who have gone through CEGEP have always been able to take, a three-year program leading to an honours or majors degree in the Faculty of Arts. Ontario was the only other educational jurisdiction in North America which was recognised as giving more preparation to universitybound students in the form of an extra year of advanced work at the high
Administration to change its mind. As was previously reported in the Trib une, VP Battaglia was concerned that SSMU was not warned of the increase, from five to seven cents a copy for debit cards and to ten cents in cash, and only found out after the fact. McGill students have objected to the fee increases for three reasons, according to letters sent by student leaders to Dr. Eric Ormsby, Director of Libraries. Firstly, there is an objec tion to an increase at all; Management
school level. Students in other prov inces finish their secondary education after Grade 12, as do students from the United States, and both groups enter the Faculty of Arts in 120 credit pro grams. The move to close the “Grade 13 loophole” comes as a result of an at tempt to standardize admissions pro cedures and because Grade 13 is in the process of being gradually phased out. In recent years there has been much debate within Ontario educational circles as to whether Grade 13 should be continued, and it has been decided by certain educational gurus and mandarins that it should be eliminated over a period of years. Without going into too much detail, the system now involves the acquisition of Ontario Academic Credits (OAC’s) of which a certain number of must be accumu lated in order to graduate. Thus, five years are being compressed into four, although many students have chosen to take Grade 13 anyway, and the process has become messy and cha otic. So the boom has had to be lowered upon those students who didn’t get through the Ontario school system quickly enough. These students, who have already spent five years in high school, are now forced to spend at least four years to get a McGill B.A., and many will be 23 years old at gradu continued on page 3
E n te n te C o r d ia le a t M c G ill by Paul Michell Last Tuesday afternoon, at a press conference in the University Centre Ballroom, the new language coalition Entente Cordiale was formally launched 5t McOiU. It was the first time that the goals of the group had been elucidated to a large group of media representatives and students. Organizer/spokesperson Jacques Frenette detailed at length his personal conversion from “hard-line PQ sup porter and ardent Quebec nationalist” to a more moderate and conciliatory position. It had inspired him to form a group which could bridge the gap be tween the anglo Alliance Quebec and the stridently nationalist St. JeanBaptiste Society. Along with some other Quebec intellectuals and political fig ures, he formed Entente Cordiale. The goal of the new organisation is
P hotocopy d isp u te continues by Paul Michell The dispute between SSMU (Stu dents’ Society of McGill University) and the Library Administration con tinued this week with SSMU vowing to fight the price increases at the li brary photocopy machines. At Tues day’s SSMU Council meeting this, President Nancy Coté and VP (Uni versity Affairs) Maria Battaglia said that they would continue to resist the increases, and the Council discussed methods of persuading the Library
Volume 8 Issue 3
Undergraduate Society (MUS) Presi dent MartinBouchernoted that McGill Students already pay $3.33 per credit (i.e. $100 per year for a 30 credit program) in “course materials fees”, and P&OT President Lori Sullivan claimed that since “many of the courses...require extensivephotocopy ing of lecture and reading materials” that the fee increase could pose prob lems for many McGill students. As well, SSMU VP Maria Battaglia continued on page 3
a petition drive across the province to collect up to one million signatures in favour of promoting bilingual signs, with French as the priority. This, ac cording to M. Frenette, will “protect the French language while simultane ously protecting freedom of expres sion.” Also present at the press conference was former SSMU President Daniel Tenenbaum, who has accepted the position of heading the McGill peti tion drive. Tenenbaum, fresh from a new job at IBM, was clearly looking forward to returning to his old haunts. He told reporters that he had been the first candidate for SSMU elections to have used bilingual signs in his cam paign, and that they seemed to have been a major contributing factor to his election victory. Bilingual signs “just make good business sense,” said Tenenbaum. Businesspersons in the Montreal region know that bilingual signs are a boon to sales; both locals and tourists appreciate the abil ity to be able to read information in their native tongue. Tenenbaum also noted that McGill was a very appropriate location to set Entente Cordiale in full swing, be cause demographically the university is the only one in Canada which comes close to mirroring Canada itself; McGill andCanada both have a Frenchspeaking population of about 30%. If French and English interests can cohabitate at McGill, the intellectual heart of ‘Westmount Rhodesia’, “then why not elsewhere?” asked Tenenbaum. continued on page 3