mcgilldaily_issue_3647_screen_quality

SUMMER WORK

shine! radiating a dream

$15.05 base appt.

• • • • • •

Flexible PT/FT positions available Apply now, start after finals Customer sales/service No experience necessary Conditions apply All majors welcome

of inclusion &

CALL 514-939-8800

www.workforstudents.com

liberation scm general conference

queer & christian gathering

activism skills. community. creative worship. ecumenism. faith & social justice. a movement. you.

exciting speakers. activists from across the country. workshops on liberation, faith & resisting homophobia for lgbtqia* & allies.

may 2-10

may 6-10

toronto, ontario, canada register online by april 13, 2009 or phone 1-8-PROPHETIC. anti-oppression space / lgbtqia* & allies welcome. all travel subsidized / bursaries available. SHINE! / general conference is organized by the student christian movement, a student-led ecumenical social justice movement.

queerandchristian.org/conference

STUDENTS… COURSE EVALUATIONS MAKE A DIFFERENCE! LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD! Why complete course evaluations?

• To help instructors improve future course offerings.

• To inform decision-makers for merit, promotion and tenure, and teaching awards.

• To reach response thresholds required for dissemination of results to students.

Easy to complete: • Takes only 5-10 minutes • The system is open 24/7 • Available until April 14th inclusive

To access your course evaluations: • Log in to Minerva for Students • Select Student Menu • Click on Mercury Online Course Evaluations Menu • Then click on Submit your course evaluations Please address any questions/comments to:

Minerva Help Line

www.mcgill.ca/minerva-students/help

mcgilldaily.com all summer

News

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

3

MUNACA compromises on settlement McGill’s final labour offer includes nine per cent raise over three years Courtney Graham The McGill Daily

A

fter 16 months of tense negotiations between the McGill administration and the McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA), the two parties reached a settlement on March 26.

MUNACA, which represents over 1,700 workers across the two McGill campuses, voted 667 to 127 in their General Assembly (GA) held last Thursday to accept the University’s final proposal – a roughly 83 per cent approval rate.

The final settlement, submitted to both parties on March 25 by the government-appointed conciliator Robert Dupuis, represented a compromise between the two parties.

“We’re pleased that the negotiations have come to an end,” said Lynne Gervais, Associate VicePrincipal of Human Resources. “The workers of MUNACA are a vital part of the University community.”

MUNACA, however, was less enthusiastic.

“It [was] an arduous fight. I would have liked more for our members, but unfortunately there were a lot of other factors in play,” said MUNACA president Maria Ruocco.

Since the GA vote approving the proposal, Ruocco has also said several times, “It is without enthusiasm that we accept this offer.”

As it stands, the collective bargaining agreement will provide MUNACA members with a nine per cent pay increase over three years, and will honour the promise of night and weekend premiums, among other things. This contract will be valid until November 30, 2010.

Professor Anthony Masi, Provost of the University, saw the MUNACA agreement as a significant step toward McGill’s efforts to cut $12to $15-million from its budget while minimizing the impact on staff.

Stephen Davis/ The McGill Daily Archives

MUNACA employees were out of contract for over 16-months but never used a general strike as a bargaining tactic.

“We will do everything in our power to prevent layoffs, and all the suggestions we have received [from the town halls] will help. But it is possible that as positions become available, replacement will be on a caseby-case basis. Where possible, we will also have to cut back on casual and temporary employment,” Masi wrote in an email to The Daily.

Masi maintained that administrative management of hiring in the economic downturn will have little to no impact on students.

“Now is the time to reassess the things we do and how we do them with the objective of providing longterm savings without sacrificing quality of McGill’s educational offerings, extra-curricular activities, and research programs,” he wrote.

According to Robert Comeau, the University’s negotiations spokesperson, because MUNACA has already missed two of the pay-upgrade deadlines, the changes will be applied retroactively using December 2007 and 2008 salary figures. The final adjust-

ment will be made in June 2010.

These terms are a significant downgrade from what MUNACA originally asked for. In September 2008, MUNACA wanted a 13 per cent pay increase over four years and premiums for members who work nights and weekends.

At that time, the University rejected the proposal, and negotiations came to halt for several months in the fall after a second suggestion of a ten percent increase over three years was denied by the University.

The next counter-offer came in December 2008, when the University proposed an 8.5 per cent pay increase over three years – nearly the proposal offered on March 25, which MUNACA accepted.

With contracts settled for the next 15 months, Ruocco said MUNACA is looking to the future.

“With elections coming up [for MUNACA], hopefully the members will vote in a team that is strong, a team with a plan for the future,” Ruocco said.

AMUSE targets non-academic casuals in next bid Students criticize organizers’ tactics Niko Block The McGill Daily

N

ot one to give up easily, the Association for McGill Undergraduate Student Employees (AMUSE) has regrouped, and is once again preparing to apply for union accreditation to represent all non-academic casual employees – or “casuals” – employed at McGill.

The union’s organizers have been soliciting support from casual employees on McGill’s campuses since September. They requested union accreditation in December, when they believed they had acquired the signatures of 35 per cent of casual employees.

“Non-academic casuals include everything from cow milkers on the Macdonald campus, to bookstore employees, to library shelvers, to office replacements,” said Max Silverman, former SSMU VP External Affairs and current AMUSE organiser.

McGill’s administration suggested that non-students should be included in the union as well, on the grounds that many student and non-student casuals do similar work on campus.

AMUSE acceded, and temporarily withdrew their application.

“We’ve met many managers on campus who think this is a great idea.

It’ll mean that the workplace is a lot more structured and that there are more rules in place,” said Silverman.

Since withdrawing their first appli-

cation, AMUSE has received signed union cards from over 35 per cent of all student and non-student nonacademic casuals – the minimum required to gain union accreditation from the Quebec Labour Relations Board. They anticipate that their application will be submitted within a couple of months.

“The goal is to extend the benefits and protections of unionization to every student who works on campus,” Silverman stated.

Casual workers would be granted certain job protections after creating a union, including written contracts, access to grievance procedures, salary increases, and benefits through a collective agreement mechanism.

The Association of Graduate

Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) is assisting AMUSE in its efforts by signing up invigilators and salaried graduate research assistants, along with graders and markers.

But not all workers believe that joining a union will benefit them.

“I love my job, I think I get paid well, and I can get days off when I need to,” said Alexis Zimberg, a McGill Bookstore employee. “It’s not a benefit to join a union when I’m graduating in December.”

AMUSE organizers have admitted that they don’t know what workers would demand from the union, but now that they have 35 per cent of required signatures, they expect to hold a referendum vote by ballot.

Zimberg was also critical of the

methods union organizers used to sign up workers, explaining that she received numerous calls from them even when she asked to be taken off their list.

“I don’t have a problem with what they’re doing, I have a problem with how they’re doing it,” Zimberg said.

“They come up to you when you’re alone, or in the library, or on a date – it’s so intrusive.”

AMUSE will eventually include academic as well as non-academic casuals, but still has not filed for their unionization, partly because they were unsure of whether or not they had already received signatures from 35 per cent of them.

- with files from Alison Withers

News

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

5

CBC cuts 800 jobs Canadians push the government to lend money to the national broadcaster Henry Gass The McGill Daily

C

BC, Canada’s national television and radio network, will likely lay off 800 employees and implement major cuts to programs and services according to its 2009-2010 business plan, announced two weeks ago.

The cut-backs come in the wake of dramatic decreases in advertising income, which at one time accounted for one-third of the CBC’s revenue.

“We’re projecting a revenue shortfall of $171 million,” said Jeff Keay, CBC spokesperson. “The CBC has less flexibility, because we can’t go to capital markets for revenue.”

Keay said the programming reductions would be widespread, including cuts to news, children’s programs, radio programming, and music recording.

The cuts will be equally distributed throughout English-language CBC, French-language CBC, and Radio Canada, and will include cuts to CBC Montreal and other regional stations.

CBC’s total workforce will be reduced by approximately ten to 12 per cent, and 393 employees are slated to be laid off from anglophone programming.

According to James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage, the Conservative government will not increase funding to the CBC to compensate for the drop in advertising revenues.

In an email to The Daily, Moore wrote that the Conservative Party has supported the CBC with a record $1.17 billion this year, and cannot scrounge up any more money for the network.

Last fall, the CBC approached the government and requested a “bridge financing” plan. The plan would provide the CBC with increased loans to survive the downturn, which would be paid back in later years.

The government subsequently turned down the CBC’s request, forc-

Sally Lin / The McGill Daily

ing the CBC to dip into their reserves to mitigate a $65 million shortfall last year.

Moore explained that the Conservatives worried the bridge loan would have burdened the CBC and tax-payers in the long-term, especially if advertising revenues remained sparse in the coming years.

In response to the government’s decision, the global action web movement avaaz.org’s 300,000 registered

Canadian members initiated a petition urging the Conservatives to provide loans to the CBC. “The government is the only source of [CBC’s] funding, and the government is denying it to them,” said Ricken Patel, co-founder and executive director of avaaz.org.

Patel said the petition was presented to the government last Friday, accompanied by several other displays of protest, including a plane

over Ottawa flying a banner in support of the CBC. Patel believes that the cut-backs within the CBC are part of a larger trend involving the consolidation of media by large private conglomerates, many of which are allied with Canadian political parties.

“The decision to deny bridge funding was an ideological decision.

The government has an ideological preference for privatizing the CBC,”

said Patel.

Patel said that it is vital to preserve the CBC as an independent, impartial public media outlets, and a source of Canadian culture.

“The [purpose of CBC] is not to turn a profit, but to be a powerful source of Canadian culture, to provide an independent, non-corporate, Canadian perspective,” said Patel.

“Big business has no incentive to promote Canadian culture.”

Activist starts organisation to help children in war-torn Africa Kimmie Weeks wanted to help fix “the poverty that kills” Marguerite Bravay News Writer

A

compassionate audience listened attentively as child rights activist Kimmie Weeks recounted his traumatic civil war survival that inspired him to found Youth Action International (YAI), an organization that focuses on providing aid for children in the wartorn West African nations of Liberia, Uganda, and Sierra Leone.

Weeks was nine years old when the Liberian civil war erupted, and it was after this experience that he vowed to dedicate his life to helping innocent victims of war.

“I didn’t know how or when [I

would be able to], but I knew that I wanted to make change,” Weeks told The Daily after his address.

In 1989, when the war began, young Weeks and his mother were forced out of their home in the capital, Monrovia, by invading rebels. They spent the next six months at a refugee camp, where Weeks first confronted real misery - what he describes as “the poverty that kills.”

At the camp, food was scarce and the refugees ate roots and boiled dirty water to survive. Weeks contracted cholera, and later was almost buried alive. Weeks stressed, however, that he was more affected by the suffering of other children than his own.

“[The children] had nothing to do with the war, but they [were dying] because of it,” Weeks explained to the audience of 75 in the Adams Auditorium.

Weeks then explained that he found Monrovia in ruins when he returned from the refugee camp, and organized a neighbourhood cleanup.

The clean-up was the first step toward Weeks’ decision to begin the YAI. He said that from that point on, “there was no coming back.”

At 13, Weeks co-founded Voices of the Future, Liberia’s first child rights advocacy group. Four years later, he issued a report on the Liberian government’s role in training child soldiers and almost faced assassination.

Weeks was then granted political asylum in the United States, where he attended Amherst College in Massachusetts, and founded YAI. YAI has five branches in North America and is currently developing ten more. Each branch has its own specific goal. McGill University’s division – the first in Canada – focuses on the rehabilitation of ex-child soldiers and their reintroduction into society. Concordia is in the process of starting its own chapter.

YAI’s McGill chapter was excited to have Weeks come to speak. “[Weeks’] story is one of great courage. [His story] invokes inspiration in many and is worth hearing by all,” said YAI VP Communications Matthew Cherian.

Through educational services, vocational training, micro-loans to start small businesses, and healthcare awareness programs, YAI helps victims of war achieve economic independence. Projects include helping Ugandan ex-child soldiers plant a field of rice and teaching young women in the slums of Sierra Leone how to run their own businesses.

Despite Weeks’ bleak portrayal of modern Africa – rife with the devastating effects of AIDS and burdened by inadequate healthcare – Weeks remains positive that poverty can be eliminated.

“I don’t think I’ll end [poverty] on my own,” he said, “but I hope to be the one to set the machine in motion.”

EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY in downtown Montreal See www.marincom.ca Email CV to fmh@marincom.ca

Teach English Overseas

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH CREATIVE WRITING PRIZES AND AWARDS The MONA ADILMAN PRIZE IN POETRY, es�mated value $700--or es�mated value $350 for two students, is open to undergraduate or graduate students registered in the Faculty of Arts for the best poem or group of poems rela�ng to ecological or environmental concerns.

The CLARK LEWIS MEMORIAL PRIZE, es�mated value $450, is open to major or honours students in the Department of English. The prize is awarded annually or from �me to �me for original plays staged in the course of the academic year.

TESOL/TESL Teacher Training Certification Courses • Intensive 60-Hour Program • Classroom Management Techniques • Detailed Lesson Planning • ESL Skills Development • Comprehensive Teaching Materials • Interactive Teaching Practicum • Internationally Recognized Certificate • Teacher Placement Service • Money Back Guarantee Included • Thousands of Satisfied Students

OXFORD SEMINARS 1-800-269-6719/416-924-3240

www.oxfordseminars.ca

The CHESTER MACNAGHTEN PRIZES IN CREATIVE WRITING (two prizes, one of es�mated value $700 and another of es�mated value $400) are open to undergraduate students of the University for the best piece of crea�ve wri�ng in English, i.e. a story, a play, a poem, an essay, etc. Printed composi�ons are ineligible if they have been published before April 14, 2009.

Health Policy: Move to Change

The PETERSON MEMORIAL PRIZE, es�mated value $2,000, is open to undergraduate or graduate students registered in a degree program in the Department of English with dis�nc�on in English Literature (CGPA 3.30 or above) who has also shown crea�ve literary ability.

Professor and Canada Research Chair in Economic History and Public Policy

The LIONEL SHAPIRO AWARDS FOR CREATIVE WRITING, three prizes of es�mated value $1,500 each, to be distributed if possible among the genres of poetry, fic�on, screen wri�ng and playwrigh�ng. Each prize is to be awarded on the recommenda�on of the Department of English to students in the final year of the B.A. course who have demonstrated outstanding talent. (A note from your academic adviser verifying you will have completed your program requirements and the minimum credits required by the Faculty of Arts MUST accompany your submission.)

These compe��ons are restricted to students who have not previously won the First Prize.

Forms to be completed are available in the Department of English General Office, Arts 155. Submissions must be IN TRIPLICATE. Deadline for submissions: Tuesday, April 14, 2009.

GREGORY P. MARCHILDON Dr. Gregory P. Marchildon is an internationally respected policy scholar on comparative health systems. He has led various research initiatives for the World Health Organization and its regional ailiates, national ministries of health, as well as federal, provincial and territorial governments in Canada. Dr. Marchildon is also an economic historian who has conducted research on the evolution of investment banking in Canada and the impact of the Great Depression on the Prairie Provinces.

The Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy prepares practitioners and scholars for state-of-the-art policy analysis and public management. The school ofers interdisciplinary programming on two campuses, degrees in public administration (MPA) and public policy (MPP and PhD), and certiicates in a variety of specializations.

For more information about the school and our programs, please visit: www. schoolofpublicpolicy.sk.ca

Public Conference

« Les codes secrets à travers les âges » Gilles Brassard Université de Montréal (DIRO)

Will give the next « Grande Conférence » of the Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM) Thursday April 16th at 7:30 pm Free admission, the talk will be given in French.

Pavillon Jean-Coutu 2940, chemin de la Polytechnique Salle S1-151 Université de Montréal Université-de-Montréal or Côte-des-Neiges A wine reception will be offered after the lecture Registration : www.crm.umontreal.ca/inscription

7 First Nations minor proposed News

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

Student initiative may bring McGill up to speed

Scott Baker The McGill Daily

S

tudents in conjunction with the Society for Equity and Diversity in Education Office (SEDE), have been navigating through administrative red tape since September in the hopes that in the coming years, McGill will offer a First Peoples minor.

Pamela Fillion, U3 anthropology and a Daily staff writer, who is spearheading the effort, explained that by lobbying for a minor instead of a major, they avoided having to secure approval from the Quebec Minister of Education. Further, because the minor would be interdisciplinary and capitalize on existing resources in already-established departments, it would create little financial strain on McGill.

“Student interest is already there [for the minor] and a lot of professors are knowledgeable [about First Nations issues]. We really think this is something that could happen. There is a sentiment that this is doable,” Fillion said.

Dominic Popowich / The McGill Daily

Die-in protests AIDS policy Students call for a better system to ship generic HIV/AIDS drugs John Lapsley The McGill Daily

T

wo dozen “dead” students slowed traffic at campus’s Y-intersection on Wednesday to demand speedier delivery of medication to developing countries.

The die-in was spearheaded by the McGill Global AIDS Coalition (MGAC) and protested the inefficiency of Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR). The regime was passed in 2004 as an amendment to the Patent Act which allows drug manufacturers to synthesize cheaper versions of patented medications for export to countries that do not have access to them. However, CAMR has only exported AIDS drugs once since its establishment, sending drugs to Rwanda.

After about ten minutes on campus, the group of roughly 40 students marched to Phillip’s Square on Ste. Catherine, chant-

ing “Children can’t wait, cut the red tape” and “Harper, stop acting like a fool, make CAMR a useful tool!”

The students repeated the demonstration across from The Bay, undeterred by the wind and rain.

Volunteers circled the dead students and urged passersby to sign postcards to Parliament demanding CAMR reform.

“I think this was a great success,” said MGAC director Jamie Lundine, who distributed postcards for the duration of the protest. “We lasted a lot longer on campus than we expected and got more than 100 postcards signed.”

Joan Sherwin, a member of the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign, which seeks to provide aid to Africa, joined the die-in in solidarity with MGAC. “Canada needs to keep a full promise,” said Sherwin. “It’s time to pay our fair share of global aid.”

Apotex, a company that used CAMR to send HIV treatment to

Rwanda in 2008, has committed to sending pediatric formulas of AIDS medication to Africa only if Canadian export restrictions are made less cumbersome and costly. Several MGAC volunteers wearing pill bottle costumes struggled against a stretch of red cloth to symbolize the red tape that has bogged down the delivery of AIDS medication to developing countries.

MGAC has hosted a multitude of on-campus AIDS awareness events this year, including World AIDS Week in November and a Disparity Dinner in March. The die-in was MGAC’s final event of the school year, which coincided with a longawaited development in Canada’s foreign aid.

Last Wednesday, federal Senator Yoine Goldstein tabled legislation to streamline the complicated processes resulting from CAMR. Lundine hoped that further improvements would be made to CAMR legislation in the coming year.

five or six students [in the class] trying to create [a First Nations minor] for themselves,” Fillion said.

Presently, all aboriginal course content can be found in the “First Nations and Inuit Education programs” in the Faculty of Education, at the “Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment” at Macdonald Campus, or sporadically across course listings in the Faculties of Arts and Law. Currently no program akin to the programs across Canada exists at McGill.

Morton Mendleson, Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning) and former chair of the working group, explained that any plans drafted by the group would rely on government funding, and would take a long time to go through the necessary bureaucracy.

Mendelson agreed on the importance of promoting aboriginal education. “[Education] must play a central role in alleviating problems in aboriginal communities, so there is a social responsibility for institutions like McGill to contribute as best as it can.”

Mendelson, though, would not confirm his support for an aboriginal studies program at McGill, as “it is not up to the central administration, but a choice of the local level.”

After seven years of planning and coordination, Concordia University is also finally approaching its final administrative hurdles before its First

“Education must play a central role in alleviating problems in aboriginal communities” Morton Mendelson Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning) When Fillion circulated a survey sheet in three small classes focusing on First Nations, she gathered more than 50 signatures. She also participated in producing KANATAMcGill Undergraduate Journal on Indigenous Peoples of North America, McGill’s first-ever journal on First Nations issues. Fillion saw the journal as a telling barometer for interest in the potential minor program.

“The biannual KANATA journal proves there is enough material being produced at McGill by students who are interested in First Nations issues,” she said.

Catherine Duclos, U3 anthropology, who worked as the Publication and Finance editor for KANATA, looked forward to the possibility of a minor at McGill.

“There’s a high level of interest for International Development Studies and going abroad to volunteer and to help. [The First Nations minor] would acknowledge that our own country isn’t perfect,” Duclos said.

There is currently no aboriginal studies program on campus, though students have compensated for its absence by pursuing “ad-hoc” or independent Arts degrees focused on indigenous studies.

“I’ve taken several courses about First Nations and there are always

Nations major can be implemented.

Daniel Salée, a political science professor at Concordia and central architect of the program, said he is “cautiously optimistic” about the program because the proposal will be “a first for Quebec.”

However, the province is still behind the times – over the past 40 years, First Peoples, aboriginal, indigenous, and native studies programs have become well established across Canada with the establishment of faculties, programs, and degrees aimed to analyze and address the dynamics between indigenous people and European settlers.

Salée blamed the proposal’s tardiness on the mindset of Quebec’s population as a whole.

“Aboriginal reality is abstract, far away in the north and outside of the mind of Quebeckers,” he said.

Aboriginal presence on campus is low at McGill. Lynn Fletcher of the First Peoples House estimated that the total number of aboriginal students at McGill amounts to less than 300, or one per cent of McGill’s student body, although exact numbers are always difficult to ascertain. The University also only employs two fulltime aboriginal professors.

- with files from Shannon Kiely

We are a happily married couple seeking a proven donor for an IVF cycle.

We are a loving couple who have been through many infertility treatments and are unable to have a family without your help. If you are between the ages of 20-30, healthy non-smoker Caucasian young woman, you may be that one person who can fulfill our dream of having a child come true. We are healthy loving couple willing to spoil a child with love and care.

Thank you for your consideration. We can not wait to hear from you.

Please contact us at Nadia.villa@gmail.com or 514-303-3366

SUMMER JOBS

money back

fast

COLLEGE PRO PAINTERS is presently looking for responsible / hardworking University or College students for:

Full-Time Painting Positions May - August No experience required, we will train you to paint.

Positions available in your area.

If interested call 1-888-277-9787 or apply online at www.collegepro.com

Classifieds To place an ad, via email : ads@dailypublications.org over the phone : 514-398-6790 using fax : 514-398-8318 in person : 3480 McTavish St., Room B-26

The cost McGill Students & Staf : $6,70/day; $6.20/day for 3 or more days. General public : $8.10/day; $6.95/day for 3 or more days. 150 character limit. There will be a $6.00 charge per contract for any characters over the limit. Prices include taxes. MINIMUM ORDER $40.50/ 5 ads.

Housing APARTMENTS FOR RENT BROOklyN-BEllE ÉPOQUE McGill ghetto - RENOVATED STUDIOS for rent FOR 600$ / EVERYTHING included. 2 min from the McGill metro station and from the McGill University.

(514) 708-7971 www.cogir.net

Employment MASTER SchOOl OF BARTENdiNg

walk in with your taxes, walk out with your money and you could win $5,000 towards a road trip. visit refundroadtrip.ca

Bartending and table service courses Student rebate Job reference service • 514-849-2828 www.Bartend.ca (on line registration possible)

Employment SUMMER CAMP : Swim Director, Instructors for Canoe, Windsurf, Golf. NURSING STUDENT (2nd yr. or higher) to assist camp doctor, www.mishmar.com, camp@mishmar.com

Services Offered SPA NINA esthetician : facials, massage, waxing, laser hair removal, photo rejuvenation / lifting. Student discounts. 2 downtown Montreal locations.

(438) 887-8288

Lessons / Courses ART COURSES POTTERY CERAMIC DRAWING PAINTING PHOTOGRAPHY LIFE MODEL SCULPTURE OPEN STUDIOS 10 MINUTES WALK FROM MCGILL 514.844.7752 WWW.CREATIVEBOOST.CA

“LAZY EYE”

Have you had a since childhood? McGill Vision Research is looking for study participants. Please call Dr. Davar Nikneshan at 514934-1934 ext. 35307 or email mcgillvisionresearch@ gmail.com for further information.

come in today or call 1-800-HRBLOCK (472-5625)

To qualify for student pricing, student must present either (i) a T2202a documenting 4 or more months of full-time attendance at a college or university during 2008 or (ii) a valid high school identification card. Expires July 31, 2009. Must also qualify for Instant Cash Back and Cash Back products. See office for details. Valid only at participating H&R Block locations in Canada. SPC Card offers valid from 08/01/08 to 07/31/09 at participating locations in Canada only.

For Cardholder only. Offers may vary, restrictions may apply. Usage may be restricted when used in conjunction with any other offer or retailer loyalty card discounts. Cannot be used towards the purchase of gift cards or certificates.

Help Wanted - Looking for a Special Ed Student (twice a week) to develop leisure activites for an autistic adult (21 years old) Must be confident and able to handle a difficult situation. I am looking for 10 hours (a.m.) weekly and salary is $11.00/hour. I would prefer that males apply for this position. Females can be considered.

(514) 343-5087

ADVERTISE IN THE MCGILL DAILY! 11,000 readers every Monday and Thursday 514-398-6790 ads@dailypublications

gET yOUR clASSiFiEdS ON ThE wEB! Place your classifieds in The McGill Daily and for only 10$ more, we’ll add it to our website! www.mcgilldaily.com/classifieds

The Business Office crew would like to shout a big THANK YOU to all our readers and advertisers for their support this year! The Daily will return on

August 31st, 2009

News

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

9

Khmer Rouge war criminals stand trial 30 years later McGill expert Frederic Megret discusses the signifiicance of the UN-Cambodian tribunal

O

n March 30, Kaing Khev Iev, the first of six Khmer Rouge leaders, stood trial for mass murder and crimes against humanity in a landmark tribunal. Iev was the head of the Khmer Rouge’s notorious S21 prison, where over 15,000 men, women, and children were tortured before being executed in the nearby “killing fields.”

From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia under the leadership of Marxist leader Pol Pot. During this period, the brutal regime forced millions of city dwellers to work on communal farms. Their vision of social engineering resulted in the killing of an estimated 700,000 people – over a third of Cambodia’s population – by execution, starvation, and overwork.

The Daily sat down with Frederic Megret, assistant professor in the Faculty of Law, and director of the McGill Clinic for the Sierra Leone Special Court, to discuss the tribunals that many hope will bring a just closure to this dark period in Cambodia’s history.

McGill Daily: Why has it taken so long to begin prosecution of crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge?

Frederic Megret: Initially the Cambodian government was not interested [because] it was still too dangerous. When the Cambodians decided that they wanted to go ahead with the trials, they wanted

Sniff...sniff

international legitimacy by doing this with the help of the United Nations (UN). The negotiations [between the UN and Cambodian government] dragged on for seven or eight years because they could never come to an agreement on the ideal formula. The Cambodians, I suspect, wanted international legitimacy without paying the price, [and] keeping control over who got prosecuted. The UN was adamant that certain minimum human rights standards be respected, and the rule of law guaranteed.

MD: After 30 years of waiting, what kind of interest is there in the country for the trials? How will the trials benefit the people of Cambodia?

FM: I think if you asked people before the trials you would find that most people are not really interested.

The interesting thing will be to ask the same people after the trials have taken place. This isn’t simply about averting the next genocide...but it is also about averting the lesser violations of human rights that still occur routinely by creating a sense that there will be no impunity for certain crimes.

MD: Who is being tried, and for what crimes? What punishment can we expect if these suspects are found guilty?

FM: In terms of the accused, there are six. The jurisdiction is for crimes against humanity, genocide, and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva

Rachel Wine / The McGill Daily

Assistant Law Professor Frederic Megret discusses the tribunal’s ramifications.

Conventions. As for punishment, it will be life sentences – no death penalty.

MD: The Canadian prosecutor Robert Petit has demanded that other key suspects be tried as well.

However, his motion was blocked by his Cambodian colleagues. Many believe that the motion was blocked by the Cambodians to avoid possibly implicating other individuals current-

ly affiliated with the government.

FM: I think that this is very much a moment of truth in that the Cambodians want to keep full control over who is going to be prosecuted. They want to make sure that it is mostly small fish. They don’t want this to become an indictment of the current regime.

undermine justice?

FM: Of course, if people who have committed grave offenses are not indicted it undermines the faith people have in justice. These sorts of tribunals were never meant to try everyone. Probably it is still the case in Cambodia that too many people were involved at all levels.

MD: Won’t such a limited trial

— compiled by Humera Jabir

British MP denounces Canada ban, addresses Concordia via videolink Government claims Galloway is a national threat

It’s the last Daily of the year, but that doesn’t mean you can’t write next year!

Send us your pitches over the summer! news@mcgilldaily.com

Niko Block The McGill Daily

T

he government of Canada has banned the British Parliamentarian (MP) and antiwar activist George Galloway from entering Canada on the grounds that he poses a threat to national security.

The MP had been slated for a speaking tour, which included an appearance at Concordia on April 1.

However, Galloway was able to speak at Concordia’s Hall building via videolink from New York. He began by sardonically thanking the Stephen Harper and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney for bringing more attention to his speeches in Canada than he would have received otherwise.

“Because of their efforts to stifle dissent, far more people have attended these lectures than they otherwise would have,” Galloway said.

Galloway also announced his intention to pursue legal action against Bernie Farber, the head of the Canadian Jewish Congress, as well as Canadian broadcaster CTV, for airing an interview with Farber in which he

asserted that Galloway is a supporter of terrorism.

“There’s enough that I say for you to criticize me, but you cannot lie about me,” he said. “I am not a supporter of Hamas, but I am a supporter of the right of the Palestinian people to resist the occupation that has destroyed their country. That might make me controversial in

into Canada.

Galloway contended that the attempt to criminalize those who support the Palestinian cause is at the heart of the anti-war struggle.

He ended his speech by calling for a binational state in which both Israelis and Palestinians would be granted equal human and civil rights.

“There’s no place for white states

“I am a supporter of the rights of the Palestinan people... but it does not make me a terrorist.”

George Galloway British Parliamentarian Canada, but it does not make me a terrorist.”

Galloway recently visited Gaza in order to deliver medical supplies, as well as $45,000, to the Hamas-led government of Gaza. Alykhan Velshi, a spokesperson for Kenney, stated that Galloway has been banned for violating the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which stipulates that supporters of terrorist organizations may not be permitted

or Jewish states or black states in the 21st century. There is only a place for democratic states in which every man and woman is treated as equal,” Galloway said.

Laith Marouf, a member of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) who was involved in organizing Galloway’s visit, saw the Canadian government’s decision as a violation of free speech.

“This is part of a pattern that

we’ve seen clearly for the past three months from the Conservative government,” Marouf said, pointing to the Canadian government’s criticism of Israeli Apartheid Week and its funding cuts to the Canadian Arab Federation. “This attack on Galloway’s freedom of speech is part of that. It’s an attempt to silence all those who criticize the Israeli government and the Canadian government’s policies in the Middle East.”

In response to the ban, SPHR filed an emergency injunction in federal court, claiming that the allegations that Galloway posed a threat to national security were entirely based on hearsay. Though SPHR’s concerns were recognized by the court, the presiding judge, Justice Luc Martineau, refused to overturn the Immigration Ministry’s decision.

“Because we were going to broadcast Mr. Galloway to the lecture halls, the judge found that there wasn’t enough harm done by the ban to overturn the government’s decision,” said Marouf.

Alykhan Velshi could not be reached for comment.

10 News

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

So long, SSMUshies...

Kay Turner President Turner jumped into 2008-2009 with many challenges ahead of her. She was forced to implement the outgoing Council’s decision to hand over Caférama’s lease to Café Supreme, a corporate chain, despite personal and vocal student support for a sustainable, student-run operation. Turner was also attentive to student input, even though it was admittedly the Gaza motion that finally spurred a large turnout at a General Assembly, not the organizational skills of the executives. Turner also has finally secured the SSMU nursery a spot, with construction expected to finish by the end of May. Most importantly, however, was that when the VP Finance & Operations Tobias Silverstein resigned in October, the executive barely missed a beat, divvying up the tasks, running things fairly well, and writing a reasonable budget. Leadership is important in a crisis, and Turner kept SSMU running smoothly, even if some projects – particularly with large projects like retooling the inventory system at Haven Books, signing food service leases, and creating a functional and bilingual web site – took longer than we would have hoped.

Nadya Wilkinson VP University Affairs If SSMU is supposed to check-and-balance the administration’s patronizing restraints on student life, Nadya Wilkinson certainly led the students’ defense. Brand new to SSMU this year, Wilkinson really stepped up to organize the Senate caucus, lobby the administration against the travel directive, and slash her way through the bureaucratic red tape. She organized some great research projects into campus food services, room booking reorganization, and at the same time worked closely to get the Office of Sustainability launched late this winter. After attending countless taskforce and Senate committees, we’re thrilled with the way Wilkinson has gracefully and professionally handled her portfolio, and we hope that she works closely with her successor to facilitate the continuation of all her hard work.

Devin Alfaro VP External Devin Alfaro has had a tough year. He worked hard on Reclaim Your Campus, a campaign to preserve and recoup student rights. But after it fizzled out by early fall, he had trouble finding even five people to attend its relaunch. He tried to lobby for international tuition to remain at a reasonable level at McGill amidst provincial deregulation, but new international management undergraduates will pay nearly $7,000 more yearly than last year’s students. However, SSMU’s external position is stronger than before. By aligning SSMU with other independent student unions, Alfaro has built up the “table de concertation” enough to start formalizing the unions’ relationship, a massive task. We doubt the student federation will succeed without a more concrete plan, but it still holds promise, considering the abominable state of other student federations in this province and country. Alfaro has also increased awareness among students of late night disturbances and other problems they create for residents in the Milton-Parc Community – the McGill Ghetto – a noble and often forgotten goal.

Samantha Cook VP Clubs and Services While Samantha Cook was largely treading water on two of her most important stated goals – defending student groups’ rights to use the McGill name and fighting McGill’s opt-out fee system for certain groups – she has not lost much ground either, while accomplishing other significant goals. She deftly maintained a professional, unemotional position on Choose Life’s status as a club, and recently oversaw the return of club funding to nearly $50,000 after it was cut by more than half in the last year. Gerts has also been run reasonably well – a responsibility Cook assumed after VP Finance & Operations Tobias Silverstein resigned. Cook also convinced the administration to grant students two more rooms for their use in the Arts Building. Overall, no news is good news; we have neither noticed nor heard many complaints from clubs or services this year, especially compared to the past. We can therefore honestly say that we hope that next year’s VP C&S, Sarah Olle, who worked under Cook, continues in the same vein – even if we would prefer a bit more ambition.

Evan Newton / The McGill Daily

Julia Webster VP Internal Julia Webster was so much more than a party-planner this year. Thanks to her efforts, SSMU has a new web site that’s usable, although still lacking in many areas, especially the much-anticipated French version. Although Webster promised last Thursday it would be released the following day, it remains hidden, and what we uncovered online was described by a member of the Commission on Francophone Affairs as “deficient” in its translation. Still, many campus events like Frosh and Snow AP had a more sustainable outcome, and Webster strengthened relations with McGill Varsity Athletics and francophone students, in spite of the web site problems. She also brought back two editions of 4Floors – although the Valentines edition was confined to the Ballroom – and picked up a couple VP Finance portfolio duties. She wasn’t able to get her big yearend concert and party, something she’s attributed to funding limitations. Now Webster is training her replacement, Alex Brown, who will probably follow in the Websterian school of thought next year, running a tried-and-true repertoire of events, along with some diversification.

News

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

11

WHAT’S THE HAPS

Refugee Rights Day Monday, April 6, 12:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Wendy Patrick room, Wilson Hall, 3506 University The Social Work Department of McGill University and the Montreal City Mission invite you to celebrate Refugee Rights Day, and attend a Roundtable on the 40th anniversary of the Canadian Refugee Convention, and music from the Project Refuge band.

Art Exhibit: Fire with Water Thursday April 2 – Friday April 24, 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.

Volver Café, 5604 Avenue Du Parc The Sexual Assault Centre of McGill Students Society will host its annual art exhibit, addressing the prevalent social issues of sexual assault and gender-based violence, testifying to the strength and courage of survivors of sexual assault.

Campus Eye

Charkoui speaks out Photo by Rachel Wine

Using secret evidence and an assumption of guilt to detain non-citizens indefinitely under threat of deportation, security certificate legislation inflicts high consequences on detainees with extremely low standards of justice, members of the Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui said at a Refugee Research Project event Wednesday.

Throughout the talk, Montreal French teacher and PhD student Adil Charkaoui detailed his decade-long struggle with the federal government over broad allegations of posing a threat to “national security,” or fitting the profile of a “sleeper agent” – terms that remain undefined in his case.

Last month, however, the judge hearing his public trial removed many of the strict conditions imposed upon him after his release from prison in 2005, stating that no evidence before her suggested Charkaoui was or might be dangerous.

Charkaoui – who does not have access to the supposed evidence in his file, and who has never been charged with a crime – said now is a critical point in his ongoing fight to clear his name.

For a full recording of the talk, see the Daily/CKUT audio blog at mcgilldaily.com.

Portes ouVERTes Wednesday, April 8, 4 p.m.

Gert’s, 3480 McTavish An informal opportunity to meet, network, and learn about environmental clubs on campus. Join us for a drink and the chance get to know other “green” students at McGill.

– Max Halparin

Speaking up for the city Montrealers want Citizen’s Summit aims to increase participation in local structures Rebecca Rosenthal News Writer

F

resh-thinking Montreal citizens will pool their creative solutions to the city’s urban issues at the fifth-annual social forum, Citizen Summit, titled “The City We Want.”

Held from June 5 to 7, the nonpartisan summit will focus on issues ranging from economy to urban planning, and from environment to democracy, but will focus on two themes not previously featured:

Culture and Social Justice, and Inclusion and Citizenship.

“Montreal is such a vibrant and diverse city, meaning that we need to not only look into questions of democracy and the local economy, but also issues and questions around culture and inclusion,” said Project Coordinator Saleema Hutchinson. “There are also many newcomers to Montreal from diverse backgrounds, making these two new themes very pertinent.”

Through workshops, discussions, and round tables at the Université du Québec à Montréal the Summit is hoping to bring together a variety of different networks, including students, unions, feminists, ecologists, and housing groups.

“It’s not only an academic event, but a grassroots event, open to all,”

said Hutchinson, who predicted that the variety of voices would create a “transversal analysis of urban issues.”

While many ideas will be developed and discussed at the summit, Hutchinson and others behind the event know that progress does not stop there.

“We need to work on the democratic structures, and on putting what we want into action,” said Hutchinson. “[Our] goals also include greater citizen participation in the structures of the city.”

In past years the event has allowed politicians to “feel the beat” of the public, while allowing the public to forward its own agenda, like the practice that’s now possible through the newly introduced exercise of participatory budgets in the Plateau.

Stories Without Borders Concert Tuesday, April 7, 8 p.m.

Sala Rossa, 4848 Saint-Laurent Join the McGill Middle East Program and the Montreal City Mission in enjoying the music and stories. All proceeds benefit the Stories without Borders project, building peace across borders, from Montreal to Israel. $5 presale and $7 at the door.

For tickets call 514.398.6717 or 514.884.9128x302 or email mmep@mcgill.ca or youth@ montrealcitymission.org.

The Summit comes at an important time for Montreal, with municipal elections happening this coming November, the recent $40-million budget cut in public transportation, issues with redevelopment projects like Griffintown, and broader problems such as racial profiling and air pollution.

The organizers maintaining that the Summit will not feature a protest to get their message across, but instead focus on inclusive and familyfriendly events like an outdoor “party for the people.”

For those who cannot attend the Summit, their web site hosts a Citizen’s Agenda – a short, threequestion survey – soliciting comments that will broaden the platform of citizens’ views.

Find out more at http://www.5sc. ecologieurbaine.net/en/node/132.

The Economic Crisis: An Astrological, Prophetic, and Spiritual Perspective Thursday, April 9, 7:30 p.m.

Shatner Clubs Lounge, 3480 McTavish Arie Abravanel, a former McGill student with a specialization in economics and professional astrology of 30 years, will offer a unique and shocking analysis of the current financial crisis through examination of the astrological charts of the U.S., U.S. Federal Reserve, and President Obama.

WUSC McGill Presents: “Trumpa-holics Anonymous” Friday, April 10 3 Minots, 3812 St Laurent All proceeds from the concert support the World Universities Canada – Student Refugee Program, which provides refugees with the opportunity to pursue post-secondary education. For tickets call Graham 705.8280 or graham.parkinson@mail.mcgill.ca. $5 in advance, $7 at the door

Thanks for all your haps this year. See you in the fall!

12 News

YEAR IN REVIEWThe Daily runs down 2008/9s big events

AUGUST »

SEPTEMBER »

OCTOBER »

NOVEMBER »

aDMin plans To resTricT sTuDenT TraVel The Office of Student Life and Learning releases a travel ban limiting students’ curricular and co-curricular travel to over 20 countries deemed dangerous by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Students and faculty alike oppose the document, claiming that it denies students the independence to make their own decisions.

MonTreal norTH youTH slain by police

reclaiM your caMpus GeTs oFF To a sloW sTarT

sicK builDinG synDroMe aFFecTs leacocK sTaFF

Police shoot and kill 18 year-old Fredy Villaneuva as he flees the scene of an illegal dice game police were attempting to break up in a park in Montreal North.

The 43rd victim of police shootings since 1987, Villaneuva’s death leads to riots throughout the borough, and prompts several vigils in the months to come.

Student groups and SSMU unite to launch the much anticipated Reclaim Your Campus (RYC) initiative, which aims to raise student awareness of issues on campus and to pressure the University to prioritize student interests.

The event kicks off with a wellattended demonstration at Roddick and Milton Gates. After initial enthusiasm, RYC collapses by the end of first term.

The Daily learns that eight Leacock employees working in the history department’s administration office were forced to leave work over the summer due to health problems caused by poor ventilation.

The workers file a complaint with Quebec’s Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail, reporting nausea; coughing; constrained breathing; burning in the throat, eyes, and nose; numbness in the mouth; and sore cheeks.

Because no causal link between the building’s conditions and their poor health could be positively identified, the claim is rejected.

sTuDenT WorKers WanT a union Too The Association of McGill Undergraduate Student Employees (AMUSE), which sought to unionize the 2,000 student workers on campus, debuts at SSMU’s activities night.

Organizers hope the union will regulate student working conditions and protect them from being arbitrarily fired.

AMUSE, however, hits a few bumps in the road when McGill refuses to release a list of student employees for privacy reasons. For the next months, it becomes a common sight to see groups of two and three students trying to identify student workers by striking up casual conversations around campus.

Generic DruGs Finally sHippeD To rWanDa After four years of work, Apotex Inc. finally ships 7 million generic three-inone antiretrovirals (drugs to fight HIV/ AIDS) to Rwanda under the Canada Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR). The shipment is expected to save the lives of 21,000 people, and marks the first of its kind under CAMR. However, Apotex says it will likely not repeat the gesture, because CAMR’s bureaucracy is far too complicated.

ouTDoors Ga Fails DespiTe Free HoT cocoa Despite the lure of free hot chocolate and apples, this fall’s General Assembly (GA) held in Three Bares Park loses quorum midway through, rendering it a “consultative session” and requiring that all motions be put to an online referendum.

While quorum was held, students are able to discuss whether SSMU should support AMUSE, though the GA loses steam during a discussion of motions on military research and recruitment on campus.

canaDian naTional rail sues proTesTers Canadian National Rail (CNR) begins legal proceedings against three Mohawk Nation activists to sue them for $100-million after they blockade the Windsorto-Montreal rail corridor – CNR’s busiest line – in Tyendinaga territory.

The blockade is formed in protest of what activists called the CNR’s misuse of their nation’s land. They also blockade two highways, citing similar claims against the provincial government.

senaTe VoTes To HalT TraVel DirecTiVe The McGill Senate, a body composed of McGill students, professors, and members of the community, tries to block Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning) Morton Mendelson’s travel directive.

Senate claims that the directive affects academic life – and therefore demands that it be consulted on the details of the directive before it became McGill policy. The administration rejects Senate’s demand for consultation, but revises the directive to include an “exemption” option for students, and brought it to Senate early in second semester for discussion only.

silVersTein resiGns FroM Vp Finance role SSMU VP Finance and Operations Tobias Silverstein announces his resignation midway through his term without explanation despite numerous attempts at contact. The other five SSMUshies divvy up the responsibilities in his portfolio, claiming that it would be too much work to train a replacement. They also refuse to comment.

FrancopHones laMenT sHoDDy TranslaTion The Commission on Francophone Affairs criticize SSMU, the Arts Undergraduate Society, and Elections McGill, among others, for sending unilingual or poorly translated emails to students, failing to translate key documents, and for hosting English-only web sites.

Alexandre Shee, VP External of the Law Students Association and also a member of CAF, brings forward a motion to SSMU urging them to reaffirm their bilingual policy, which passes overwhelmingly.

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

DECEMBER »

JANUARY »

FEBRUARY »

13

MARCH »

FooD serVices is uniFieD unDer sinGle DirecTor

sTuDenT union elecTions uneVenTFul

McGill introduces a new position, Director of Food Services, whose purview includes all cafeterias on campus and in residences.

Before this point, McGill had two food operations: Residences Food Services – which ran the Bishop Mountain Hall, Royal Victoria College, and Douglas dining halls, as well as small snack bars in the Burnside and McIntyre Medical buildings; and McGill Food and Dining Services, which administered the Martlet meal plan and operated numerous locations across campus.

SSMU Council censures Elections McGill to no effect except their mass resignation afterward in protest. Apathy shows as elections for most executive and senate seats end in acclammation; referendum questions raise little controversy or debate; and few students turn out to vote, barely surpassing quorum.

MeeHan

cHoose liFe HosTs conTroVersial speaKer

General asseMbly pacKeD For GaZa MoTion

Choose Life hosts Mary Meehan, a pro-life activist. When Meehan compares eugenics to abortion and likens abortion to rape, half of the audience is incensed.

Nearly 700 students cram into the Shatner cafeteria to vote on whether to condemn the bombing of educational institutions in Gaza. After constitutional challenges and a literal division of students to facilitate voting, the body votes to postpone the motion indefinitely.

police Try To ban MasKs aT proTesTs The Montreal police table a bylaw change that would make wearing masks at protests and insulting cops illegal in the City.

The proposal heightens tension between the Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay and the Chief of Police Yvan Delorme.

THoMson House cuTs sTaFF To cope with a $112,000 budget deficit, the Post Graduate Students Society Executive permanently lays off Linda Susnik, the Executive Director of Thomson House, in late October.

Munaca THreaTens To sTriKe McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA) threatens to strike after 13 months of negotiation with McGill.

Sixty-five per cent of union members vote to use pressure tactics in order to obtain a 13 per cent salary increase. In the same GA, MUNACA votes to reject McGill’s December 1 offer of a 12 per cent increase in salary.

«

Munaca DisrupTs McGill’s open House MUNACA protests at the McGill Open House.

The economic downturn and budget constraints force McGill to downsize its salary increase offer to 8.5 per cent over three years. MUNACA refuses the offer and digs its heels into the ground at 10 per cent.

scanDals plaGue concorDia sTuDenT union

McGill acQuires a neW resiDence Hall

Concordia’s student union records a $500,000 deficit, sues its former bookkeeper for $363,000, and fires its Chief Electoral Officer for not being a student in the middle of a referendum. The former executive who hired the bookkeeper spearheads a petition to recall the entire executive, but the Chair of Council rejects it a day before she resigns, resulting in a Judicial Board hearing and Quebec Superior Court case to try to enforce the recall.

The Daily confirms that Four Points Sheraton will become the next McGill residence, and is expected to reduce the lack of space for students wanting to live on campus. Many knew about the story but few were willing to discuss it, including McGill, which has yet to issue a press release about the hotel’s closure, now only 11 days away. Four Points Sheraton workers were on strike for months leading up to the buyout.

susTainabiliTy oFFice Finally opens

inTernaTional TuiTion conTinues sTeep cliMb

Nearly five years after its inception, the office attempting to bridge knowledge gaps on sustainability issues finally gets a director and a room to coordinate its work.

The space is appropriately decorated with eco-friendly carpeting and furniture.

McGill drastically raises undergraduate international tuition for new students, by up to 42 per cent over last year, depending on the faculty. Law tuition more than doubles and science and engineering will nearly double in five years to $21,300 a year, while management will increase in just three years to $10,000 a year.

cHoose liFe GeTs Full club sTaTus In a controversial decision, SSMU Council votes to approve the pro-life group for full club status after a heated debate and pleas from some students to ban it due to its alleged discriminatory nature.

The club becoms one of the first of its kind in Canada to receive this level of approval from a student union.

anTi-police bruTaliTy MarcH Turns ViolenT Protestors march from Mont Royal metro to the downtown core to protest against police brutality. Violence breaks out on both sides, and 200 people are arrested.

Many call for less counterproductive measures to address the still-serious problem of police unreasonably attacking the public.

Munaca accepTs conTracT silVersTein After 18 months of negotiations, MUNACA finally accepts a proposal by the University for a nine per cent pay increase over three years, with the promise of night and weekend premiums.

Commentary

Busting the Piñata: a response

Sasha Plotnikova / The McGill Daily

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

15

Why I like The Daily Jennifer Markowitz

I

but I was left slightly confused – was Kreitner defending hate speech? If so, it really did not fall in line with the following column, “Where might a new anti-Semitism take place?”

To me, this column seemed to be implicitly promoting a suffocation of debate on campus by equating current forms of anti-Zionism with an up-and-coming form of anti-Semitism. I definitely saw the merit in this argument, but was still disturbed by the equation. Additionally, the column reeked of generalizations, committing itself to the belief that activists for Palestinian self-determination and justice tend to isolate themselves from being active in other causes.

Kreitner’s subconscious uncertainty regarding free speech also reared its head in the following piece, “Don’t Sacrifice Campus Free Speech.”

And finally, there was the infamous “Righting Our Wrongs Over Iraq.” It received enough flack and response in The Daily, so I’m going to refrain from adding further masala to the wound. Truth be told, this column had potential; its overall point was legitimate. I may not agree with it, but it is an opinion I know exists, and that has been well-defended. Mind you, the only individuals whom I’ve heard and read defend this stance well have been professors – not “eager to impress” (Kreitner’s words, not mine) undergrads. Instead, I will comment on the fact that someone actually had the audacity to write in and say that their mind had been changed about the war by this particular column. God save us all.

And with this last-minute column, I’d like to say thanks to all 12 people, including Max Halparin and the copy editors, who read my column this year. Not that it matters, anyway. I’m awesome, regardless.

t’s all over – both my time at McGill and at The Daily. While the usual feelings of uncertainty and fear that most soon-to-be graduates enjoy have gripped me, I have a more profound worry – that I will never again be a part of an organization as honest and purposeful as The Daily.

More enriching than any lecture I have attended at McGill, The Daily has been my classroom. Contributing to the newspaper has defined my experience. The Daily’s Statement of Principles has shaped my outlook.

When speaking with some of the many students who have made The Daily possible, each says the same: that The Daily has had a tremendous impact in the way they think.

Where does this power come from? Proud as we are of our hardfought independence, The Daily’s catering to its McGill readers exclusively cannot account for it alone. I suspect it has more to do with The Daily’s relationship than with the development and dissemination of an idea. We are, above all else, a group of diverse individuals who are inspired by the opportunity to bring any idea into the public forum without worrying that it is unconventional, unprofitable, or unacceptable to some authority. The power stems from the ability to turn an idea into a tangible issue. It comes from the frenzy of ideas, the circulation of questions, from the vigour with which editors, readers, and writers alike consider The Daily and contribute to its vivacity.

The strongest aspects of The Daily are not the articles that contributors produce, but the letters, comments, and opinion pieces that readers share with the paper. This year when students wanted to talk about Gaza and Israel, they turned to The Daily.

When SSMU welcomed Choose Life, students debated the morality of the decision in The Daily’s pages. These exchanges are what make the paper unique and alive; these are what have sustained it for 98 years.

The Daily is no stranger to criticism. While each remark stings, we value condemnation as much as the praise that we receive. Welcoming both speaks to The Daily’s original purpose as a forum of ideas as much as it does the power of journalism and the involvement of students.

Continued engagement and respect from The Daily’s readers are vital to sustain the quality of the publication.

As coordinating editor, I often feel that I am merely managing other’s ideas. The Daily is not my paper. Nor does it belong to the 17 editors, or even solely to the writers. It’s yours; it’s ours.

The ideas are everyone’s.

Thank you for reading, writing, and debating, for sharing ideas and responding to ours.

Sana’s outta hurr. Good thing we could get one more artistic representation of her many facial expressions in print (see above).

Jennifer Markowitz was a news editor in 2007/2008, and our coordinating editor this year. Just don’t ask her to coordinate not saying “poop.”

Aristotle’s Lackey Sana Saeed

I

have always found the prefacing quotations in Piñata Diplomacy rather cute. Be it Chomsky or Walt Whitman or Jesus’s homeboy Luke, the man, Ricky Kreitner, knows how to use Google at an expert level.

Very impressive. Kreitner’s column has been one of the most interesting aspects of The Daily this year, a paper run by a bunch of indie-haired thrift-store clothing-clad rich Arts majors who like equal redistribution, civil rights, and other similar sounding socialist shit. Piñata, in an awkward attempt to be progressive, has brought somewhat of a refreshing conservative dash to the paper.

The Daily archives serve to provide a fascinating journey of Piñata’s evolution. Starting with the one of many Obama columns dated September 29, we can see a regression from the attempt to sound progressive. I’m not trying to make a judgment call here, and I am not necessarily saying that to be “progressive” – with the political connotations that we understand to be associated with it – means to have “better” political values. No. Hell no. Rather, I find it interesting how these columns portray the political evolution of Kreitner, a first-year student from the United States. Read together, in chronological order, we can see the shift in the columnist’s thought. Personal and political realizations, frustrations, and ambitions manifested themselves in half-witty writing each week, often evoking outrage from readers – as seen on The Daily’s web site and in its letters section.

Evolution is great. And I’m saying that as a theist. I don’t, however, believe that this particular political evolution has been expressed in the best way – it still shows the prematurity of some of Kreitner’s ideas. Not a bad thing, but concerning if you’re tackling a political column. Nothing personal, but I’m one of those people who tends to like her political commentary well-substantiated.

That being said, I’d like to take this opportunity, with my final column, to briefly address the Piñata Diplomacy pieces that have struck me the most in Kreitner’s development as someone with a political opinion.

Throughout the year, Piñata

Diplomacy has shifted from being a narrative column that personalized politics to a completely polemic political column. In this writer’s opinion, and with her own bias, the former worked far better for Kreitner, in terms of writing, than the latter.

One of the initial columns which comes to mind is the very first in a series of Obama pieces, “Sittin’ and Hopin’ for Change,” which shows a confused Kreitner. In this piece, he very eloquently describes an experience he has at a McGill for Obama meeting. The reader is enamoured

by Kreitner’s observational writing, which proves to be witty and successful in its description of the bored mind and the absurdity of Obamania.

His ending, however, is a bit weaksauce as Kreitner attempts to make a strong political statement regarding the Obama campaign’s decrease in excitement and the superfluous notion of “change,” without really commenting any further on these crucial points. Had he discussed the mentioned issues of wiretapping and campaign finance further, substantiating his claim of the superficiality of Obama’s “change,” then we would be talking about a solid political opinion piece. That, unfortunately, was not the case, and this reader was left feeling unsatisfied and used.

“Obama, After that Beautifully Singular Night” was another piece about that dude south of the border who became President or something of the United States. There weren’t any real issues here, other than the fact that I realized how very old I am.

Kreitner was in the first grade with Mrs. Haig in 1996 while I was chilling in fourth, with Ms. Cohn. All I remember is that me and this other kid, David Feldman, were the only two in our grade who supported Bob Dole. Thanks for bringing back those frightening childhood memories.

“Tadamon! Is no paragon” became the first in a series of IsraelPalestine related spam – I mean, articles – in The Daily in the aftermath of OMGaza. There was just one line I needed to read to judge this column: “After minimal research, I have come to the conclusion…” Good luck in grad school, kid.

“A Declaration of Journalistic

Independence” was just an awkward piece, acting as an open letter to family members. Kreitner essentially told them that he was a young man who was now taking charge of his masculinity vis-àvis a university newspaper column, and that he was not afraid of the repercussions that his expressed opinions would have on his political career. This was also one of the first columns in which we saw Kreitner become more public about his masturbatory habits.

The first column of Piñata Diplomacy I read in its entirety was “What Mumbai Means to Me.” While I appreciated Kreitner’s attempts to assure us that those evil men were just “bastardizing Islam,” I found it concerning that he felt that there was “an alarmingly popular myth out there that the terrorists’ admittedly heinous means are somehow justified by noble ends, or at least can be explained as working toward such desirable ones.” Who are you hanging out with, dude? I can definitely see that opinion as existent, but only with a minority status – especially on our campus. Terrorists being justified in the Mumbai massacre is a popular opinion? Maybe in the Swat. Check your sources, because that colloquial statistic is absurd, sir.

“Barack Obama is Not an Indie Rock Band” was just another Obama spam piece. Around this time, I began feeling that Kreitner was losing his writing mojo – writing a column every week can be rather strenuous.

Kudos, however, to Max Halparin, indie kid extraordinaire, for the title of the piece. Ten bucks says there’s already an indie band which has adopted that name.

“The Curious Case of Geert Wilders” was the first, unless you count the “Declaration” piece, of several columns dealing in one form or another with the issue of free speech, a topic with which Kreitner seemed to have a tough time as the months continued. I appreciated the citation of a reading from POLI 231’s syllabus,

18 Commentary

Rebecca Chapman / The McGill Daily

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

HYDE PARK

When justice is not enough Sarah Flatto

W

hat would Raphael Lemkin, the audacious author of the 1951 Genocide Convention and the man who coined the word “genocide,” think of Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir’s recent decision to expel 13 aid organizations from Darfur? Lemkin, a Polish refugee who lost both of his parents in the Holocaust, struggled for over 20 years to convince a fledging United Nations to acknowledge genocide as a uniquely heinous crime.

Interestingly enough, Lemkin was indignant at the easy passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the same UN bodies he was lobbying, thinking that the document would infringe on the unique nature of genocide. He accurately predicted that people would conflate the violation of human rights with genocidal acts, and take inadequate gestures to address violence aimed at both the destruction of a people and their identity.

It is both incomprehensible and dismal that over the past century, the global community has not made progress toward identifying, preventing, or halting genocidal killing. Diplomatic leadership has spent far too much time attempting to semantically label a conflict as genocide and not enough examining the reality of the situation or looking to solve it. Lemkin’s devotion to the letter of international law in qualifying genocide as a transnational crime akin to human trafficking has been misappropriated in the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) indictment of Al-Bashir for genocide and crimes against humanity. This is the first time an arrest warrant has been issued for a current head of state. The ICC’s intention to end a culture of political impunity is laudable, but Al-Bashir’s easy response to their indictment is a disturbing prediction of how regimes can make a mockery of international justice.

Alex de Waal, a Sudan expert, has criticized the warrant as a public relations scheme meant to validate the legitimacy of the ICC. Though this is a harsh assessment, the rebuff that Al-Bashir issued to the court by expelling UN-contracted aid organizations working in Darfur is demoralizing to the future of international mediation.

Al-Bashir has also announced that he will phase out all international aid organizations within a year.

Both the ICC and international aid groups have negatively politicized the Darfur advocacy movement. There are two fundamental issues with humanitarian aid in Darfur: first, groups that have jeopardized the neutrality of aid by providing rebel groups with material assistance; and second, the fact that aid does not nec-

essarily ensure peace-building. An example of the festering, static state of the Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps in Darfur is the emergence of a new generation of young men, the shabab, who have literally come of age in the camps. Their frustration at the lack of progress in their political situation has created deeprooted agitation and a violent backlash against traditional clan leadership, which adds to the chaos of the fractured rebel movement in Darfur.

The reality is that humanitarian aid is currently indispensable in Darfur. International organizations’ efforts to stave off famine and starvation since the conflict erupted in 2003 have been absolutely formidable. The refugee situation, combined with unsanitary conditions and the acute insecurity of the region due to ongoing rebel-militia clashes, is something that has been honorably and adequately addressed by many dedicated NGOs. However, humanitarian aid and international punitive measures only superficially address the symptoms of Sudanese civil strife. Historically, genocide has ended with regional military and political processes that have altered the political arena by force, making it become more inclusive of previously targeted minorities. Instead, we need to develop approaches that will circumvent the habit of ushering peace in by the barrel of a gun.

Multi-faceted and long-term solutions in developing interdisciplinary, transnational, direct resolution mechanisms that unswervingly address the problem of genocide should be placed into the protocol of regional intervention. The international community must focus on using economic leverage to partner with representatives of the myriad factions within Sudan, including local and national leaders, to restructure government representation and to address the grievances of marginalized groups. Complex educational programming must be present in the IDP camps to give youth an alternative to joining rebel movements.

We must recognize genocidal killing as an endemic flaw in our global fabric instead of expressing shock and horror each time it occurs and propagating the same tired rhetoric.

Let us strive to maintain humanitarian aid that will not victimize or alienate opposite sides of the conflict. Let us advocate comprehensive political action to prevent human devastation, not just guilty and myopic reactions in the aftermath of disaster.

Sarah Flatto is a U3 Political Science student. Get in touch with her at sarahflatto@gmail.com. Especially if you’d like to answer the question that adorns the top of her Hyde Park.

HYDE PARK

Our commitment is to humanity Hayley Lapalme

A

fghanistan’s history is ridden with invasion and foreign occupation. It abounds with insurgency, and is scarred by incessant conflict. Migration is a permanent feature of life there. During the Soviet invasion and the subsequent civil war, more than five million refugees fled to neighbouring Pakistan or Iran to seek asylum.

Too many Afghans face a grim reality: malnourishment, illiteracy, rape, forced resettlement due to violent clashes, drought, scarcity, and fear.

Afghanistan has been starved and dried out, and its women and girls especially have been abused and forgotten. In 2005, the last time there was sufficient order in the country to gather human development indicators, Afghanistan ranked 173 of 178 nations.

Since 2002, Afghanistan has been the largest recipient of Canadian development assistance, but what the Canadian public most often sees of this effort are Canadian Forces in uniform, bringing home our dead.

The general public knows very little about our country’s mission; our government has done too little to ensure otherwise. The apathy, misunderstanding, and ignorance that this cultivates is dangerous.

When Stephen Harper’s 2011 deadline comes, I expect many Canadians will be eager for a hasty exit from Afghanistan. Political rhetoric suggests that our military mission may end then, but that our engagement in the country will not. As it stands, Canada is in a poor position to make a wise decision about the nature and extent of this continued engagement.

Our voters don’t understand our mission and we lack a coherent purpose and strategy.

Little public discussion preceded Canada’s 2001 entry in Afghanistan, and this silence persists as Canada

has become gradually more and more entangled in Afghanistan’s most dangerous province, Kandahar.

Along with the U.S., the U.K., and the Netherlands, Canada is one of the most heavily invested international presences in the country. But you wouldn’t guess it from the occasional minimalist rhetoric and the wavering commitment of our national leaders.

Canada’s projects keep a low profile both at home and abroad.

The myth that Canadians are not a nation that likes war, that we are a peacekeeping people, reinforces our collective illusion that we have been peacekeepers since Pearson’s day – and it stops us from imagining new and effective foreign policies. We are fighting a very real, very violent insurgency. But our military does more than fire guns. We talk less about the military’s co-operation with civilian workers and with Afghans, perhaps because we are not comfortable or convinced by this contemporary use of the Canadian Forces for reconstruction and development.

The purpose of Canada’s mission, at least in policy terms, has been built on three pillars – defence, development, and diplomacy. As Harper and Obama recently conceded, the insurgency cannot be beaten by foreigners; therefore, if we say that we’re fighting the insurgents as a matter of national defence, our efforts are in vain, and our logic flawed. However, Canada can make a meaningful contribution by focusing on development and diplomacy and by increasing synergistic civilian-military co-operation.

The military is working to create the safety and security prerequisite for Afghan-defined and civilian-led reconstruction efforts like Canada’s Signature Projects – building the Dahla Dam, eradicating polio, and building schools. In co-operation with civilian police, diplomats, the RCMP, and development workers, Canadian Forces are training the Afghan army and police. They gather intelligence

by creating relationships with Afghan elders and their communities. Forces secure pockets of stability to create safe spaces for investing in women, educating children, and distributing food. Though worthy projects, each of these endeavours is imperfect and incomplete.

We have invested lives, resources, and time, but assessments of progress, security, and future prospects remain unclear. Understandably, this makes us wary. But it does not give us permission to be fatalistic or apathetic.

Some will argue that we have no business in Afghanistan, that remaining implicated will do little more than further protract a conflict that needs to be resolved indigenously. To this I say, too late. We signalled to Afghans that we noticed their circumstances, we suggested that there is a better way, and in so doing, bound ourselves to their fate.

If we do not start planning for 2011 now we risk making the same mistake we made in 2001: slipping into a decision whose implications we did not understand, with little inquiry or discussion, and with a high degree of detachment. Ten years later, Canadians now have the opportunity to be proactive and to shape our engagement so that we may speak about it with dignity. There is no American scapegoat on which to blame a hurried, uncalculated decision. Our ethics and strategy require brainstorming and debate in every sphere of society, business, and government. Should we use our military and if so, how? Which locally-owned projects need our help? How can we boost co-operation between civilian and military agencies?

Start talking – or history will judge us harshly for our narcissism and lack of creativity.

Hayley Lapalme is a U3 IDS and Political Science student, and still a people-person. Send her an email at hayley.lapalme@gmail.com,

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

19

Doug Breuer for The McGill Daily

OPEN LETTER

Let’s talk about residence issues Daniel Beamish, Brian Peebles, Nikki Shaffeeullah, Graham Smith, and Evan Snow

W

e write this letter to express the concerns we share as five Residence Academic Staff members (floor fellows). Although we have been in constant conversation with our floor fellow colleagues, hall directors, firstyear students and hall council members, we must make clear that we can speak only for ourselves. To begin, we would like to thank The Daily for their article “Floor fellows clash with new boss” and their editorial “Residence director must improve, or go.” The articles recognized the administrative changes in McGill Residences this year as a newsworthy, campus-wide issue. Our worldrenowned residence system, entirely community-, service-, and studentoriented, stands in contrast to those of other universities, and is indeed one of the most cherished aspects of student life at McGill.

To clarify, while floor fellows were interviewed in the article, the floor fellows neither wrote nor commissioned the article or editorial. Our goal here is to provide context to the situation from an internal perspective.

We would like to be very clear that while our alcohol policy is an important manifestation of our core principles, its proposed changes are not our central concern with Michael Porritt, as one might infer

from “Floor fellows clash with new boss.” We strongly believe that our philosophy of open communication and harm reduction is the most effective strategy for ensuring student safety – a position which has been empirically validated both in studies and in our day-to-day experiences. To Porritt’s credit, he yielded to demands made by the Residence Life Advisory Group (RLAG), and it seems that the most recent incarnation of McGill Residences’s new alcohol policy will uphold the essence of our current approach.

Since Porritt became Executive Director of Residences in November, the system has been rocked by tumult. In the Daily article, Porritt claims that “the vast majority [of staff] have been very supportive.” Indeed, from the beginning of his tenure we have done everything possible to be welcoming and supportive, and to understand his perspective and management style. However, Porritt has alienated much of the community by assuming and demanding that his staff put complete trust in him, while he himself demonstrates little – if any – trust in his employees.

In this short period, we have witnessed and personally experienced a pattern of unprofessionalism and disrespect that we feel stands antithetical to the values and principles central to our mission. Our criticisms are not character attacks on Porritt, but instead a set of professional grievances that relate to all facets of our jobs and the system at large.

For months, we have attempted to address these concerns through

all available internal channels. Staff members have tried on many occasions to voice their grievances directly to Porritt, only to be met with a lack of interest, or even outright resistance, despite his proclaimed openness to dialogue. In fact, in response to informal speculation about a particular aspect of residences, he issued an all-staff email worthy of Big Brother that disallowed questioning, declaring that “people seeking ‘inside scoop’ are just as wrong as people giving it.”

On another occasion, Porritt confronted a floor fellow who had been particularly candid about her concerns, and – after three successful years on staff and two months before the end of her contract – placed her on “behavioural probation,” indefinitely prohibiting her from speaking or writing his name. Yes, he actually did this.

Beyond these attempts to communicate with Porritt directly, staff members have met with the Dean of Students, who was highly supportive of the concerns. Others met with our representatives on SSMU, who were equally supportive, though unable to get a satisfactory response from the administration. The situation has reached a point where formal grievances have been registered with the University, and various official channels for resolving these disputes are being vigorously pursued. We appreciate that the Daily article served as a catalyst for public discussion. It is our hope that this external attention will validate with the administration the seriousness of our concerns.

The degree of Porritt’s unprofessionalism, in our estimation, has been inexcusable. Among his most embarrassing gaffes is the premature disclosure of a confidential multi-million dollar residence property purchase. Additionally, there have been substantiated incidents between Porritt and staff members, inimical to functional professional relationships, that we hold to be abuses of power. We take particular exception to his unprofessionalism where it has concrete effects on the well-being of students. It is frustrating that we cannot communicate specific details without violating the sensitive and confidential nature of the applicable situations, but needless to say, they are of grave concern to us.

Porritt has frequently dismissed our concerns about systemic overhaul as empty rhetoric, making blanket claims that he has not effected any serious change. However, we believe that Porritt’s statements and actions foreshadow substantive policy changes within McGill Residences. Porritt has made no secret of his impatience for the “respect” rule, going so far as to state in an all-staff meeting that 18-yearolds simply do not have the “cognitive capacity” to understand such a “high-level” philosophy. Although he has for now allowed our effective alcohol policy to remain intact, he constantly speaks in favour of prescriptive rule systems irreconcilable with a harm-reduction approach to substance use.

Moreover, while we acknowledge

that new policy has not yet been formally implemented, serious change has occurred. A once vibrant, cohesive, supportive, and highly effective service-oriented system has broken down into a maelstrom of disagreement, anger, apathy, and mistrust.

This condition has permeated the ranks of administrative staff, hall directors, floor fellows, council members, and students. This is, indeed, serious change. We blame Porritt.

It has been inspiring to see the support from colleagues, friends, current and former residence students, and floor fellows from years past. The support they have shown speaks to the incredible community that McGill Residences can be. In the interest of preserving the special character of our community and resolving this situation, we encourage you to continue sharing what you drew from the current system.

Porritt’s direct supervisor is Deputy Provost Morton Mendelson, who can be reached at morton.mendolson@ mcgill.ca. Porritt himself can be reached at michael.porrit@mcgill. ca. He has always claimed to be an open communicator. Please communicate with him.

Nikki Shaffeeullah and Graham Smith are MORE Fellows at 515 Ste. Catherine and Greenbriar, and Daniel Beamish, Brian Peebles, and Evan Snow are floor fellows at McConnell Hall, New Residence Hall, and Molson Hall, respectively.

They can be reached at nikki.shaffeeullah@mail.mcgill.ca.

20 Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

HYDE PARK

HYDE PARK

Alternative media amplifies diverse voices

SSMU works damn hard Jordan Owens

Carol Fraser, David G. Koch, and Malek Yalaoui

G

rassroots media, including campus radio, offer a vital alternative to the homogenous mainstream, especially in Canada, where a clutch of corporations own most of our media outlets.

Let’s run down the list: Rogers Media owns dozens of radio stations; CanWest controls Global TV and a raft of newspapers, including the National Post and the Montreal Gazette; the holdings of CTVglobemedia include the largest television network in Canada and the Globe and Mail; and Quebecor is one of the world’s largest commercial print media companies.

While many Canadians regard the CBC as a key source of national identity, it has been forced to endure massive budget cuts over the past decade under successive federal governments. Just last month, the bleeding process culminated with the news that the public broadcaster will lay off hundreds of employees and sell off $125-million in assets.

In the U.S., where political support for public broadcasting is even weaker, enormous private corporations like Time Warner – which are deeply connected through common board members to companies such as General Motors and Citibank – are capable of manipulating the media to limit what is seen and heard. To cite one notorious example, all of the News Corporation’s 175 newspapers supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In this way, media bullies obscure the news to push their agendas. In Canada, CanWest has been caught inserting the word “terrorist” into Reuters news wire copy, replacing references to certain Arab groups.

But even if they have no political axe to grind, media corporations stifle diversity through “rational” economic decision-making. Before CanWest bought out Conrad Black’s Hollinger Inc., the media empire eliminated competition by purchasing daily newspapers across Ontario, forcing some to shut down their Ontario Legislature bureaus. This may have increased efficiency by allowing the chain to share the work of fewer reporters, but it simultaneously curtailed the range of views available to readers. Such situations will likely become more common as the financial crisis further afflicts near-bankrupt media conglomerates like CanWest.

Alternative media institutions are

not designed to bolster, supplement or piggyback on the mainstream media, but to offer a competing narratives. Not beholden to private interests or governments, grassroots media rely on community support.

Such institutions are vital for the free exchange of ideas. In the words of noted journalist and author Amy Goodman, “We need to bust open the airwaves, allow the great diversity of voices that make up our countries, not just an echo of the voices of the few media moguls who are increasingly controlling the newspapers and the airwaves of our countries.”

The premise is one that is common to alternative media endeavours: provide media access for disenfranchised people and underrepresented issues, ideas, and art forms.

The central motivating factor is selfrepresentation.

As such, CKUT-Radio is driven by hundreds of volunteers from all walks of life. Our programming amplifies the voices of Mohawks, Haitians, South Asians, and other groups, including students, that frequently lack access to media that do not filter and stereotype them.

The Homelessness Marathon is an example of radio that empowers the marginalized. For seven years, CKUT has hosted this all-night broadcast, which amplifies the voices of poor and homeless people directly from the sub-zero Montreal streets, rebroadcasting them on more than 36 stations across Canada.

Student broadcasters are involved in shows like Off The Hour (broadcasting news produced by and for the Montreal community), Spitfiyah! (analyzing issues facing women of colour in Montreal), and All Things McGill (highlighting the activities of students on campus and beyond).

We can attest to the immediate and inspiring power of grassroots media.

FM signals transmit CKUT’s messages from the McGill campus, across the Island of Montreal and as far as the Laurentian Mountains and New York State, and we reach a worldwide audience through our webcasts at ckut.ca.

So support alternative media and get involved. After all, if you don’t tell your story, who will?

Carol Fraser co-hosts All Things McGill, David G. Koch is a frequent Off The Hour contributor, and Malek Yalaoui is CKUT’s Campus Outreach Coordinator. You can tune into CKUT at 90.3 FM or at ckut.ca, and check out Daily/CKUT audio reportage at mcgilldaily.com.

LETTERS

TWO FULL PAGES ON 28 AND 29

A

s someone who has worked closely with this year’s SSMU exec, I found Jake Heller’s Hyde Park (“We’re spending $120,000 on what?”, March 30) to be ill-informed. As a philosophy major, I found his argument that SSMU executives don’t deserve their salaries to be more than a little lacking.

This year’s exec was one of the hardest-working I’ve seen in my five years at McGill, and their commitment to represent students’ interests should be commended. It’s unfortunate that every student doesn’t get to observe first-hand how hard they’ve worked for us; they’d see that they’ve gotten their money’s worth this year. The issues the 200809 exec has dealt with could have seemed overwhelming for even the most seasoned politician – student or professional – but Kay Turner, Nadya Wilkinson, Sam Cook, Devin Alfaro, and Julia Webster repeatedly juggled multiple challenges and concerns from the administration; provincial, federal, and municipal governments; on- and off-campus interest groups; and individual students. They did it all with grace, class, and always with students’ best interests in mind.

The implication that SSMU executives should not be paid would create a barrier to entry that would prevent lower-income or financially independent students from being able to work for SSMU. The work involved

in being a SSMU exec is more than a full-time job; being a student and a SSMU exec at the same time (as one is constitutionally mandated to do) leaves pretty much no opportunity to pursue other means of income.

No offence to people whose parents are able to support them, but limiting potential SSMU execs to those who come from specific back-

I think we can both admit that asking SSMU execs to forfeit their salaries – thus limiting SSMU execs to a small pool of those who are financially able to not work while in university – would be counterproductive. Having talented executives is worth paying for; even The Daily gives its editors honoraria.

As Speaker of Council, I’ve been

“Having talented execs is worth paying for.” grounds is exactly what students don’t need, especially in difficult economic times. We need representatives who know the value of a dollar and are willing to fight to keep our tuition low because they know how difficult it can be for some people to come up with enough money to stay in school.

People who have had to support themselves financially, even partially, typically have valuable skills they’ve acquired while working. Like Heller said in his Hyde Park, work experience, just like other extra-curriculars, leads one to “acquire tremendous skills outside of a classroom, because [a person can] see that the world doesn’t play itself out inside of a textbook.”

I think it’s probably a good thing to have SSMU executives with work experience, wouldn’t you agree? If so,

able to see the inner-workings of SSMU first-hand, and been privileged to work with some really talented and dedicated individuals. I’d encourage anyone who questions the value of SSMU to get involved. As a financially independent student for the last three years, I can tell you there’s absolutely no way I, or anyone in my financial situation, would have been able to be a SSMU exec without a living-wage salary. Heller, if you want to volunteer for SSMU, I’m sure someone around the office could find you something to do. For those of us who can’t afford to volunteer, there are positions with stipends available as well.

Jordan Owens is a U3 Philosophy student and was this year’s Speaker of SSMU Council. She can be reached at jordan.owens@mail.mcgill.ca.

HYDE PARK

Thinking against your bias Sarah Ghabrial

T

he longevity and complexity of the Arab-Israeli conflict, along with the contention it arouses when discussed, have always interested me and made me to want to learn more about the issue. Prior to this semester, I never really challenged my beliefs about it. The way I viewed the events in Israel and Palestine was right to me, and frankly, that was all that mattered. I ascribed to the discourse I heard growing up, and when I began researching the situation, I turned to sources that confirmed what I already agreed with.

The Gaza crisis and the resulting renewed political debates brought me to reconsider this approach.

Because every conflict is multidimensional, I realized that what was demanded of me, as someone who wanted to know more, was impartiality and a willingness to have my values challenged. So I chose to deepen my knowledge in a way that defied the beliefs I’d always held onto. I had great discussions with a number of

people, many of whom disagreed with my positions. I turned to history to learn different narratives of the Arab-Israeli conflict. And I shared my findings and reflections with one of my professors, from whom I’ve learned tremendously.

I am Egyptian, but I no longer want this part of my identity to influence how I respond to this conflict. It is so easy to get caught up in the emotions surrounding this political situation, especially when you feel a certain religious or cultural connection to the events taking place in Israel and Palestine.

I feel that this is a major reason why the Arab-Israeli conflict is so contentious; it inspires solidarity among the groups involved to the point that they label those who hold different views as the “other.” This labelling does nothing but distract us from the important elements that we should be focusing on, and ultimately hinders the prospect for any peaceful resolution.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has never been simple and most people readily acknowledge this – yet this

doesn’t keep them from attempting to make sense of it by relying on reductive, black-and-white explanations. For many individuals, the line that separates who is right and who is wrong is clearly demarcated and those who stand on the “other side” become part of the problem, resulting in circular arguments about who is to blame rather than meaningful and progressive dialogue.

To fully understand this political situation, be prepared to have your beliefs challenged. As difficult as it is, do your best not to let your identity decide how you respond to this issue: your response should be affected solely by the facts, and not the propaganda. The complexity of the Arab-Israeli conflict merits a holistic understanding, not simplicity and bias. I am no expert, and there is so much about this issue I have yet to learn. But there are many individuals who have taught me so much this semester, and for that, I am very grateful.

Sarah Ghabrial can be reached at sarah.ghabrial@mail.mcgill.ca.

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

21

HYDE PARK

Unpacking the sticky simplicity Scott Baker

T

he “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land” stickers pasted all around McGill have become something of a symbol of radical thought. Their message is explicit, their objective specific: delegitimize the Vancouver Olympic Games on the grounds that Vancouver Olympic Committee (VanOC) has no right to host the games on venues that lie on unceded aboriginal territory (i.e., most of British Columbia). As a part of No2010’s ongoing mission to undermine support for the Games, the stickers amount to an attempt to make the Olympics synonymous with colonialism.

Colonialism stains every interaction within Canada, and until we attend to the colonial history of our nation, this will be our reality.

However, extracting this omnipresent truth and pinning it – or in this case, sticking it – to the Olympic Games has been both misleading, and detrimental to thoughtful discussion.

It is tremendously difficult to argue that the Olympics are not a colossal waste of money, time, and energy, and I do not attempt to argue this. However, opposing them on the grounds that they are happening on “Stolen Native Land” is problematic for three main reasons.

Nuanced claims No2010.com, the producers of the stickers, attribute VanOC policy’s unprecedented inclusion of aboriginal interests to the political advantage and lure of “aboriginal tourism” revenues. Furthermore, they accuse VancOC of “buying off” the host First Nations through Indian Act band councils, in an attempt to “pacify and avoid resistance.” Though endowed with grains of truth, these claims are misleading.

Though the games are taking place on unceded land, aboriginal band councils are still partners in the Games – and though the band councils were themselves formed by colonial powers, opposing the Games unconditionally on these grounds denies these native groups agency to make their own decisions.

A partnership was struck between VanOC and the four Indian Bands who hold traditional title to the area.

The Four Host First Nations (FHFN) – Lil’wat, Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh – sought out a partnership before the games were awarded in order to secure their interests, voice their concerns, and seek out

the best possible deal for their people. “The Olympics are a boon: for the government to look good, a boon for protestors to express themselves,” says Lea MacKenzie, Director of Outreach and Partnerships for the FHFN and an Indigenous Canadian.

“Why can’t it be a boon for us to push our agenda? Why can’t we use them to our advantage?” she adds.

No2010.com argues that native people are in support of the games because they have succumbed to the temptation to make money and because Olympic propaganda in the Aboriginal communities has been effective. In response to the criticism made by the largely non-indigenous members of No2010.com, Mackenzie counters that “non-indigenous people need to stop trying to speak on behalf of aboriginal people.” The FHFN have demonstrated that they are more than capable in dealing with the government.

Rather than being solely concerned with aboriginal advocacy, the No2010 group has a host of political motivations, including an environmentalist and anti-capitalist agenda.

No matter how worthy of our attention their myriad of political aims might be, it is absolutely unacceptable to pretend to speak for aboriginal people and undermine their sovereignty in the process.

The FHFN are sovereign: they have the agency, and they hold the right to make decisions about their land. As such, no group has the moral prerogative to condemn their decisions on the grounds that their motives are capitalistic. Any aboriginal nation can – and has – engaged with settler governments in capitalist relations on an equal footing. The Iroquois traders did this 300 years ago, and if the FHFN wish to now with VanOC, then they have the right to do so.

And though the band council structure may be a product of colonial forces, we are so deep in a state of colonialism that the debate over legitimate leadership (elected band council, or traditional council) is unresolved. Because of this, such absolutist conclusions like the inherent illegitimacy of the band council, are flawed in principle and practice.

The leadership of the FHFN, demonstrates a successful example of hybrid leadership, incorporating both traditional and elected leaders. Popular support of the band is significantly strong within the communities, and most importantly, the criticism from No2010.com comes from outside their communities.

Scott Baker / The McGill Daily

Regardless of whether or not Band Councils are colonial structures, it is the people of the FHFN who have the right to decide their own fate.

Interpretation, shmerpretation The simple slogan “No Olympics on stolen land” reduces a complex issue in a way that ties centuries of injustice toward indigenous people to one two-week-long sporting event.

Rather than provoking reflection on all Canadians’ part in this colonial legacy, it presents us with an easy scapegoat.

A similar logic seemed to be in play in the reaction to McGill Chancellor Dick Pound’s remarks. The tendency to claim, “he’s a racist, but we’re not,” isn’t too far from the claim that “we were racist, but now we’re not” – a common theme in dealing with the existential problems created by the dreadful marks on our history.

The habitual projection of Canada’s issues onto some other person, institution, or time fetters the progress of de-colonization in Canada.

Every interaction, every development, every aspect of Canada is imbued with a colonial legacy, and we must not reduce these down to an ultimately insignificant event such as the 2010 Olympics. The Olympics may very well be a villain, but if it is, it’s a temporary villain – and once it

becomes history, our “Stolen Land” issue will still endure.

And the technique Dialogue about Aboriginal rights is not only healthy, but necessary – and it must not be limited to issues surrounding the Olympic Games.

The 2010 games provide an opportunity to thrust this issue into the national discourse.

No2010.com’s approach is representative of many radical groups with wisdom to add to the discussion: non-negotiable, ideological extremism. This categorical denial of alternative approaches and insistence on bringing in other political goals such as anti-capitalism, only furthers to widen the sorry lack of understanding for this issue. Instead, No2010. com should use their influence and support base to constructively challenge the current power structures.

Caustic language and hostile criticism pasted on a camouflage-backed webpage merely polarizes the issue and forces Canadians to choose a side. Faced with the choice between status quo or radical change, what do you think the population will choose?

People have a right to be angry, yet if positive change is your goal, then diplomacy must find its place within ideology. Their campaign has

been to sacrifice dialogue for dogma – which will, as has been demonstrated over Canada’s past several hundred years, only alienate those who need to listen and isolate those who think they know.

The Olympics’ significance as a forum for social mobilization must not be understated. There is no denying the symbolic potency of the 2010 Olympics, and groups advocating for aboriginal justice should utilize this opportunity.

However, denying the sovereignty and agency of the FHFN, overemphasizing the symbolic nature of the 2010 Olympics, and alienating many Canadians from discussion are three implications that have caused “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land” to have somewhat of a negative effect.

I challenge No2010.com to preach beyond the choir and share their passion, spread their expertise, and involve themselves in a useful discussion that must occur in our “Stolen Country.”

Scott Baker is a U3 Arts student planning on doing a victory lap. He says that “the Olympics are fucked, but you gotta understand how they’re fucked.” To start, check out No2010. com, fourhostfirstnations.com, and the sustainability page at vancouver2010.com.

Letters

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

“Each year, at McGill, thousands of non-human animals are killed in the name of research and science education.”

Shloime Perel “Research shouldn’t kill”

So, you think I write like shit, do ya?

Re: “There’s a new Daily in town, and it’s called The Trib” | Commentary | March 19 Dear Marc, I cannot help but take personal offence to your article in March 19’s Daily. You begin strongly enough, suggesting that reviews of McGill theatre in The Daily often leave something to be desired. I myself am one of those “students involved and interested in theatre at McGill” who desired to “see better quality coverage” of what interests me, and I did start writing.

Choosing The Daily under the belief that you were more dedicated and inclusive of student body interests, I wholeheartedly dove into reviewing McGill theatre, reviewing four of the productions thus far this year. I did so with the very conscious intent to reduce synopses, increase analysis, and maintain a fair critical voice. For example, in my review of The Importance of Being Earnest which you mention, I dedicated one paragraph out of six to a terse, condensed synopsis of the plot, orienting the readership with regards to the play’s content and tone. One-sixth is quite evidently not the majority of the article, which leaves me with a sneaking suspicion that you did not even read it.

As for your most offensive and slanderous claim, that theatre reviews “do not reflect the overall quality of the Culture section,” my objection is twofold. First, if you are unfamiliar with the way Culture meetings are held, the person writing a book review one week could very well be the person volunteering to write a theatre review the next. Second, I can and will not vouch for the quality of my own writing nor claim its superiority – I am a student, as are we all, studying, learning, and improving with experience, and I hope to continue doing so my whole life. But to be publicly sideswept and assailed by a fellow co-writer is discouraging, to say the least. Since I do want to see better quality coverage of what interests me, I will start writing – for the Trib.

Sara Duplancic U3 English Literature Daily staffer Arts Undergraduate Theatre Society – VP Sales

Salaries mean honesty Re: "We're spending $120,000 on that?" | Commentary | March 30 As the partner of a former SSMU executive, I'll be the first to admit that I am jealous of the salary each exec receives. I, too, was dedicated to student government, to building student services, and to showing democratic leadership. I didn't have a salary!

But Jake, you really misunderstand what SSMU execs do. They don't get elected for fun and self-discovery.

They sign up for over 60 hours a week of dealing with everyone's B.S. and then some while taking classes. The Arts Undergraduate Society and the Science Undergraduate Society might find competent people to work for free, but only 20 hours a week tops.

And if our history with AUS and SUS is indicative of what happens when you ask people to work hard jobs for nothing, we see that one or two bad apples will inevitably defraud our organizations. Salaries keep people honest.

And why do we need SSMU to be kept honest? Because without SSMU, there's a good chance that we would not have study space in the libraries, a Sexual Assault Centre, McGill's Sustainability Office, the Midnight Kitchen, the Bike Collective, relatively low tuition, and so on. Those SSMU execs who do a good job are building and protecting a vibrant student community. They deserve at least a living wage, if not also our grudging respect.

Trevor Chow-Fraser B.A. 2008

Why don’t you do it... for free?

Re: “We’re spending $120,000 on that?” |Commentary | March 30 Perhaps Jake Heller would like to offer his services to the 2010-2011 SSMU executive, free of charge? Most students are not so privileged as to forestall a real job in favour of an unpaid, year-long, largely thankless, 80-hours-a-week job. Suggesting that our executive work without a salary is tantamount to suggesting SSMU operate without an executive – if you want to see a REALLY low candidate turn-out, you’re on the right track.

Sarah Woolf U1 Political Science & Women’s Studies Arts Rep to SSMU

World Tuberculosis Day forgotten March 24 was World Tuberculosis (TB) Day, although looking around campus, you would never have known it. There were no vigils, no protests no ribbons, no speeches.

The same individuals who angrily condemned the deaths in Gaza at the General Assembly were strangely silent. I’m not downplaying what’s going on in Gaza, but this disease doesn’t differentiate between Israelis and Palestinians, and certainly doesn’t care about borders.

Tuberculosis is a bacterial disease that is responsible for nearly two million deaths per year. Another way to look at it is that the disease kills three people every minute; so even if we were able to stop TB tomorrow, it would still be too late for 480 people. For the few TB cases seen here in Canada, the outcome is good. We have a good health care system, a lifestyle that allows access to good nutrition, and drugs to treat the infection. However, the majority of people suffering from this disease are in parts of the world where there is little access to treatment, let alone nutrition, and good health care. We need to stop thinking that the problems in other parts of the world do not affect us. Air travel has made the spread of the disease easier (remember the infamous “TB traveler” who spread a drug resistant form of the disease to others on the plane on his way home from Europe?), and it isn’t as if Canadians aren’t travelling to places where TB is present (anyone reading ever taken a trip to the Dominican Republic?).

Our silence in the face of this epidemic is nothing to be proud of. We need to realize that TB presents a global health threat to millions.

So the question is: what will it take for us to start doing more?

Robert Andrew Kozak PhD4 Microbiology

Research shouldn’t kill

Senate is afraid of students

Re: “Where do all the animal parts go?” | Science+Technology | March 30

Re: “Senate delays student question on military” March 30

About the question “Where do all the animal parts go?”: these “parts,” were sentient, feeling creatures at one time that we exploited and killed at McGill.

Each year, at McGill, thousands of non-human animals are killed in the name of research and science education. To me, this is totally immoral and is based on the traditional assumption that humans are the superior species and have the right to determine who shall live and who shall die among nonhumans (and even humans, of course, in the case of genocide). Research should not murder.

To put it in a seemingly absurd way, it is not the fault of a monkey or a mouse that each has its particular life form, which then falls prey to humans. Why do members of a species who have named themselves “Homo sapiens,” or “Wise Man,” not let them simply live out their lives in peace rather than keep them as slaves in McGill or other university laboratories, to be killed in the end?

At the very least, there should be mandatory alternatives to lab animal use for students who request it.

So far, the much publicized concern with the “McGill environment” has never included discussions or forums about the hundreds of thousands of nonhuman animals killed at McGill throughout its history.

I suggest a memorial day in their memory.

As a member of Demilitarize McGill, I was glad to see an article in The Daily about our current goals for McGill’s research policy. However, the article leaves out an essential point concerning the Senate’s consideration of our policy: the senators don’t “have to wait until May 20” to discuss our proposed changes. Rather, they have been delaying our policy’s appearance on the agenda for the last few months, and are finally allowing it to come up for discussion on May 20, when all student media will be out of commission for the summer, and thus unable to report on the outcome of the meeting.

The head of the Senate Steering Committee has told us that the policy discussion has been delayed because it had to be worked on more. We are now attempting to get the discussion postponed again, until mid-September, to make sure that students will be aware of the Senate’s actions on this. Above all, our policy calls for heightened transparency in McGill’s research policy, and we believe that it is contrary to our goals to have the Senate consider the policy at a time when student media is no longer running.

Jade Hurter U1 Political Science and Literature Demilitarize McGill member

Shloime Perel BA ‘1966

Prayer isn’t healthy Re: “Prayer: medicine or malarkey?” | Mind&Body | March 26 I question why Dr. Larry Dossey has written so many books about prayer healing instead of publishing in peer reviewed scientific journals like, you know, scientists.

If prayer works at actively healing people, then it represents a fundamental shift in our understanding of medical science, but if the best he can do is a few studies of the mysterious beast that is AIDS, I remain skeptical.

Considering how many studies have shown zero, or even negative

correlation between prayer and health, then I think our taxpayer dollars are better spent researching something that is more than wishful thinking. The man really shows his pseudoscientific cards when he invokes the magic word “quantum” to help explain his particular brand of B.S. I suspect, however cynically, that this Dossey character is probably in it for the money, and that prayer doesn’t work any better than placebo. I’ll wait to buy his next book just to be sure.

Andrew Komar U2 Civil Engineering

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

Art Essay Nicole Buchanan

Art Essay

23

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

23% 14%

3%

of artists with works in the Whitney’s permanent collection are women.

of new york’s Metropolitan Museum of art collection was created by female artists.

“W

hy have there been no great women artists?”

Linda Nochlin asked in her seminal 1971 essay of the same title. It’s a question that many others have considered as well. Walking through art museums in North America and Europe, it’s hard not to notice that it’s men who have created most of the works that hang on the walls.

And while women have done pioneering work to advance other art forms – Isadora Duncan or Martha Graham in modern dance, George Eliot, Gertrude Stein, and others in literature, for instance – the number of women who are known for their contributions to the Western visual art canon is nearly small enough to be counted on one hand. Certainly, this under-representation of women in visual art can’t be chalked up to women’s inability to create great art, nor can it be explained simply by mentioning the reality of women’s subordination throughout much of history. Instead, the reasons for current imbalances in the art canon are more complex. The status quo has to do with the way art education has been approached throughout history. It has to do with the spheres in which women have historically been permitted to exist, with the way museum collections are formed, and with the persistent misconception that women, when it comes down to it, are lacking some crucial artistic quality that would put them on the same playing field as men.

Statistically, the under-representation of women artists in classical and contemporary museums is astonishing. Women artists are responsible for only one per cent of the New York Museum of Modern Art’s entire collection of works created prior to 1970. They make up a mere 23 per cent of the artists represented in the permanent collection of New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, female artists created less than three per cent of the museum’s collection. Even when considering museums dedicated to newer work and exhibitions of contemporary art – which one would expect, in the time of gender parity and improved equality between the sexes, to include a more balanced number of male and female artists – an under-representation of women is notable. As evidence, women artists comprise a meagre 14 per cent of all the living artists given solo shows at the Guggenheim between 2000 and 2006.

In looking at the reasons behind this

inequality, it’s important to realize that two interconnected issues play into the problem.

One has to consider the conditions faced by pre-contemporary women artists that prevented them from creating art; these repressive conditions helped form and perpetuate stereotypes about women’s essential ability to create art. It’s also important to consider the degree to which contemporary women still suffer from the effects of these stereotypes, and whether it’s getting any easier for them to be considered as men’s artistic equals.

H

istorically, the reality is that far fewer women than men were able to make art due to the circumstances that governed their lives. Angela Vanhaelen, a professor of art history at McGill, notes that until the 17th century in Europe, artistic practices, like all other professions, were overseen by guilds to which women were denied admission. Guilds regulated who had access to the basic tools needed to practice painting, sculpture, and other artistic disciplines professionally, and by excluding women, guilds removed any chance they had to study and practice art. There were occasional exceptions to this rule – Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi’s artist father taught her his craft, for instance – but these cases were rare.

Though guilds eventually disappeared and the creation of art became less strictly regulated, women still had to fight to receive training.

Few women were admitted to art academies, and if they were granted entrance, they were not permitted to take courses that studied the nude figure. When women were denied access to the nude body, Vanhaelen says, it limited their ability to study the intricacies of human anatomy, and therefore their ability to portray the body in painting or in sculpture.

Anne Grace, the curator of modern art at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), adds that even if women did receive the necessary training, often the subjects that marked certain periods or movements were often off

of all living artists to have given a solo show at the Guggenheim between 2000 and 2006 are women.

limits to female artists. “When we think about the Impressionists or early Moderns,” she says, “men were painting in bars and places where women of a certain class, the class that artists would generally come from, wouldn’t be allowed. They weren’t allowed out on their own to paint these things. They were systematically denied access.”

While it would seem reasonable to assume that these barriers might diminish as time progressed, that’s not necessarily the case. Even as late as the fifties, women had difficulty securing artistic training. It wasn’t until the eighties that women artists were able to assume a place in the mainstream art world. That decade was marked by the likes of Jenny Holzer, Cindy Sherman, and Barbara Kruger, who were some of the key figures of their time. The fact remains, however, that in Western society in general, women and men are not equal. This truth permeates into the art world as it does everywhere else.

T

he museums as institutions and, by association, the curators, are also key forces that shape the art canon and have the power to uphold or challenge the under-representation of women artists. It’s evident that big museums are all driven by different agendas. Behind the scenes, a museum’s choices can often reflect factors as varied as the desires of a particular benefactor, the projected ability of new acquisitions to draw crowds, and the desire to raise the profile of the organization’s collection. All of these factors can potentially uphold the current under-representation of women artists.

At the MMFA, Grace says, many of the museum’s acquisitions are actually donations, meaning that in part, the permanent collection is “an accumulation of collectors’ choices and a history of those choices.” While she concedes that, “when we do exhibition programming, the reality is that we have to think about what will bring people through the doors,” Grace is careful to point out that marketability is only one of many criteria that go into the decisionmaking process. Although she says that gender can be taken into consideration when making choices about how to round out the museum’s collection, she believes it is most important to “highlight important and strong works. The museum certainly doesn’t discriminate against women, but the best way to serve women’s art is by showing it in a context where the woman’s voice is as loud as the man’s – where ideally, the gender of the artist is not a factor.”

The perspective, that it doesn’t do women

25

1% of works created before 1970 in the new york MoMa’s collection are by women.

artists any favours to recuperate their work and incorporate it into the canon merely for the sake of upping the number of women represented, accounts for the disparity between men’s and women’s work that viewers often see when visiting museums. According to Vanhaelen, it’s also an important way of resisting tokenism, or the incorporation of women’s work into collections, exhibitions, or books solely on the basis of the need to include a female artist or two, rather than on the merits of their work. Tokenism is dangerous, says Vanhaelen, because it’s one more way of marginalizing women. “Women are made to be exceptions in these cases,” she says, and it serves only to set them further apart and establish one more barrier to their full incorporation into the mainstream.

M

ore barriers are the last thing women artists need. What becomes clear when looking at the historical trajectory of women in art is the that roadblocks that prevented them from inclusion in the mainstream in the past are far from disappearing. In museum collections the world over, women’s work is often kept in the archives, or, according to Vanhaelen, sometimes misattributed to male artists, particularly unsigned works by women who worked in the style of major male painters.

When their work is properly credited, women’s work is much more likely than men’s to be “read through their biography,” Vanhaelen says.

“Caravaggio murdered people and we never take that into consideration,” she remarks. “But Barbara Hepworth had triplets, and after that, every time something appeared in her art in a group of three it had to be about her babies.”

Grace says that in today’s world, “women have as many opportunities as men, and are represented in great force, making art in all different media, and dealing with all different subjects – not just with a feminist perspective.”

But Vanhaelen emphasizes that to a certain extent, the common perception still holds that “women are naturally less inclined to have the drive to create visual art.” That sheer creative power has historically been gendered as male, and as a result it has been generally understood that work produced by women just couldn’t measure up.

“We will never be able to rewrite history, and the statistics are what they are,” Grace says.

But she is hopeful that the art world will continue to change. “The days of excluding women on the basis of their gender are something of the past,” she comments. Here’s to hoping she’s right.

26 Features

All photos by Chris Urquhart for The McGill Daily

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

27

Nazi chic On a grey day in Berlin, Chris Urquhart finds herself at a protest decrying a neo-Nazi clothing label

I

t’s protest day and I have nothing to wear.

We’re late. My flatmate, Ili, is on her cell with half of the left-wing radical scene in Berlin, coordinating meeting points and check-in times. We’re assembling to protest the opening of Tromsø, a swank clothing shop in downtown Friedrichshain. But neither fur nor sweatshop labour are on the chopping block today. Rather, we’re protesting a particular brand of clothing on their shelves – Thor Steinar Clothing, which is gaining popularity among the rising radical right in Berlin for its neo-Nazi associations.

Ili turns off her phone, tucking it in her fanny-pack.

“Just wear black,” she informs me, running a hand across her shaved head.

“Both the left scene and the Nazis – we all wear black.”

Confused as to why we would want to risk being mistaken for neo-Nazis at an anti-Nazi demonstration, I zip up my hoodie wearily. Ili assures me it is only to confuse police, who will be unable to segregate the crowd and stop the protests if things get ugly.

“And bring your passport,” she adds thoughtfully, in her soft Germanic accent, “Or we’ll end up in the police station, which can be really annoying.”

L

ike the rest of Berlin before 4 p.m., I am hungover but eager. As I scan the crowd, I am confronted by a sea of black: dark toques smothering neon yellow mohawks, black mitts on cherry bomb-throwing hands. There are some exceptions – a rainbow-haired punk girl supporting herself on crutches sucks on a beer, and a boy dressed solely in pink gesticulates at a police lineup. For the most part, though, black is what’s up.

“See!” Ili says, “I told you.”

The group swells to hundreds as we approach Schiesisches Tor U-Bahn Station, a few hundred metres before Tromsø. As Ili and I walk to the front of the crowd a severe police officer, clad in fluorescent yellow riot gear, stops me. She points and spews at me in German.

“Open the bag,” she orders, rifling through my belongings: a camera, a passport, a muesli cereal bar. Harmless.

“Fine,” she concludes, pointing me onward, confident that I am not a Nazi, nor a real radical. I wonder if it’s the muesli bar that gave me away.

At 2:30, the crowd starts to gain speed. I scan the buttons, my eyes met mostly by “Gegen Nazis!” (“Smash Nazis”) signs and slashed swastikas. I breathe a bit easier.

“Nein Nazis! Nein! Nein! Nein!” the crowd shouts, spearheaded by a group of snarling twenty-somethings with bullet-sized piercings.

“God! So macho,” Ili snorts, “But at least they’re on our side.”

As we reach Tromsø, we see it has been barricaded off, shut down for the day, protected by a horde of police officers.

T

he neo-Nazi scene in Berlin has come a long way from skinheads and swastikas.

In terms of political activity, modern neo-Nazi groups have been responsible for hundreds upon hundreds of hate crimes against Jews, Turks, and other minority groups in Germany, from arson and sexual abuse to murder. Active neo-Nazis propagate racially intolerant or antiSemitic ideals, often under the guise of advo-

cating freedom of speech or pride in one’s race or heritage.

As a result of tightening laws on public displays of anti-Semitic affiliations (it is illegal, for example, to wear a swastika in public), racist radical right groups have crafted more subtle ways to show their support. Thor Steinar clothing has been central in this image makeover, allowing Nazis to be seen in public without fearing arrest or fine.

After having their original logo banned in 2004 for appearing too similar to uniforms worn by SS officers, Thor Steinar Clothing has started to use a series of codes and less direct references on their clothing to show Nazi affiliation. Numbers such as 88 (For “Heil Hitler”) or 18 (for “Adolph Hitler”) are popular as references, as are more typical symbols of Nazi pride (such as eagles and Norwegian flags to symbolize “Nordic origin”). The use of Norwegian symbols has prompted uproar from a number of Norwegian politicians, some of whom are taking Thor Steinar to court for the use of their flag.

In addition to wearing Thor Steinar clothing, German neo-Nazi groups have also appropriated more mainstream clothing, such as New Balance, with ‘N’ standing for National Socialism, as well as Lonsdale (leaving an unzipped sweatshirt on top to show the NSDA for Hitler’s the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP). Initially sold almost exclusively online, Thor Steinar has begun to open up shop at central and strategic locations across the country. They sell accessories, men’s and women’s clothing, and even stock kiddie clothes. “[Neo-Nazis] want to fit in the mainstream,” says Thom Hinum, a scholar of anti-Semitism and radical left activist, “but they still want to spread intimidation and fear wherever they go.”

Despite all the attention the label has been getting from protests and lawsuits, however, Thor Steinar still claims, both on its web sites and in interviews, that it is “just a fashion label.”

A

fter a few hours of chanting and loitering outside Tromsø the protests dwindle. The kids are freezing from the pissing rain, and the punks are in need of more beer. Ili is upset about the weak turnout, so we head to a vegan cupcake shop with some friends. In a strange juxtaposition, it is located down the street from Tromsø.

“I hate this neighbourhood,” Ili says of Friedrichshain, a trendy core of Berlin. “Too many tourists, and too many Nazis.”

Her friends agree, shaking their blackcapped heads vigorously.

Clothing brands such as Thor Steinar are sneaking under the radar, making the neoNazi presence subtly visible. With thousands of members in Germany and growing, neoNazism has become one of the most popular youth subcultures in Germany.

“I really can’t believe it,” Ili sighs. “How stupid can people be?”

As we sit at the counter, we strip off our protest gear. Gloves and toques are strewn across the café table, mixing with our veggie dogs and cakes.

Faces fill with ethical food; hands rub together for warmth. The neon yellow icing clashes with Ili’s small black pullover, and I smile at the thought of anyone ever mistaking her for a Nazi.

28 Letters

Admin doesn't care about undegrads Re: “McGill’s $10-million deficit forces cuts” | News | March 26 In a recent News Brief, McGill Provost Anthony Masi was quoted as saying that because of rising costs outpacing revenue, McGill needs to cut expenditures – but that this will be done “without compromising our academic quality.” Encouraging, no?

Unfortunately, the same article states that at a recent Senate meeting, Masi suggested that money could be saved by overloading teaching assistants with more marking, and reducing the number of classes with conferences. Does Masi really not see the serious inconsistencies in this line of thinking, or is he just hoping we won’t?

Although I'm disheartened to hear that the administration thinks these types of cuts will not compromise academic quality, I can't say I'm surprised. After four years at McGill, I've come to the conclusion that the university administration couldn't care less about the educational experience of undergraduate students, despite

Why Gileadi ran away Re: “Elections McGill staff resign” | News | March 23 Although this response comes late, I feel that it is necessary to clarify the position of SSMU Council with regard to the March 5 censure of Elections McGill.

In the midst of a prolonged Council meeting that night, it came to our Council’s attention that Chief Electoral Officer Nicole Gileadi was in Ottawa and had been participating in Women in House on March 4 and 5.

She had gone without even informing the SSMU President. While I encourage Gileadi’s interest in Canadian parliamentary politics, this showed enormous disregard for her responsibilities as the chief overseer of the SSMU elections and referenda of this year.

There are two weeks in the entire academic year when the presence of the Elections McGill officials really counts: the two weeks of election period.

Luckily for Gileadi, this election year was not fraught with the same feisty campaigns and electoral by-law breaches that have complicated the campaigns of the previous two years. Had these controversies occurred this year, Gileadi’s absence would have hugely undermined the success of the elections. Instead, with luck on her side, she oversaw a successful campaign period.

In the March 23 article, Gileadi stated, “[Council] went about it the wrong way, and they compromised the way we functioned.” This is an unfortunate

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

their protests to the contrary.

In defending the outrageous salaries and severance packages paid to administrators, Principal Heather Munroe-Blum argued that the University has to pay "top wages to get top people," and that this was not something for which she would apologize. If she won't apologize for that, how about she apologizes for treating undergraduate students like a cash cow that can be squeezed ad infinitum?

Masi's recent comments display a profound disregard for the quality of undergraduate education. If that's the best the administration can come up with, they obviously need assistance.

Why not save even more money by enforcing a minimum enrolment in all class sizes? Or reduce the need to pay markers by requiring all exams to be multiple-choice?

Hyperbole aside, these suggestions are ridiculous, and so are Masi's.

If the University wants to demonstrate any regard for the quality of its undergrad education, it needs to go back to the drawing board and come up with something better.

Esther Lexchin u3 international Development studies

response on the part of the ex-CEO. Gileadi had been informed multiple times about many other poor performances on the part of Elections McGill, including being absent from their office on the deadline for nomination kit submissions, and poor bilingualism and egregious errors in their campus news advertisements, among others.

After finding out that the CEO was out of the province during the election period, the only option that remained for Council on March 5 was to publicly censure Elections McGill officials. In no way can Gileadi reasonably claim that this censure “compromised the way [Elections McGill] functioned”. It was simply a reprimand for their negligence.

In addition, March 5 was the last Council meeting before the end of the election period and thus Council needed to act quickly to ensure that the period be completed successfully. The resignation/ walk-out of Gileadi and her two colleagues was simply a way to avoid the deserved scrutiny from Council that they knew would be coming.

If the former Elections McGill staff was so confident in the integrity of the job they had performed, they would have stayed to argue their position during question period with Council, rather than running away.

Sebastian Ronderos-Morgan Arts Representative to SSMU SSMU VP External 2009/2010

Respect is all you need Re: “Floor fellows clash with new boss” | News | March 30 It’s safe to say that Rez was one of the happiest years of my life, and that is due in no small part to the superb atmosphere that is propagated by the skilled Dons/Floor/MORE fellows. An atmosphere that promotes growth is one that must necessarily allow mistakes, and that was one of the things that I loved about the system the most – it allowed people to make mistakes in an environment that was forgiving and nourishing. If shit ever hit the fan, we had the expertly trained staff on hand to keep respect the top priority.

Even if it is only for a year, Rez is your home, and an integral part of feeling at home is not feeling like a criminal. However, it appears that the new Director of Residences strongly favours policy that “cracks down” on the behaviours that carry a slight risk of legal action. If we make it “illegal” to drink, the Residence culture will become extremely paranoid. When the floor fellow’s job is to make the environment safe, turning them into prison guards defeats their whole purpose, instituting an “us versus them” attitude that doesn’t build trust or respect for McGill or its Residences.

If we arrest the development of our first year students by making them criminals in their own home, then we have no right to complain when they don’t learn to behave responsibly, especially when they become a headache to Residences, McGill, and the city at large. The old Director of Residences understood the value of respect, and what I want from this new management is respect for our rights as adults! It’s not too much to ask for, and I think all students should call for the respect that they deserve from this management before they take it away from us.

Keep the ethos for the future Re: “Floor fellows clash with new boss” | News | March 30 I would just like to briefly state that I believe the changes being brought forward regarding the level of personal discretion and administrative discipline in McGill residences, as recently reported in The Daily, are wrong.

The philosophy of leaving the application of the rule of respect to personal responsibility that I experienced in residence this year contributed substantially to my having a safe and enjoyable first year at McGill, and it would be wise to maintain that same ethos for future years.

Sincerely, Sean Husband U1 Arts

Come on, Ricky, leave them Williams alone Re: “What Matt Damon teaches us about education” | Commentary | March 30 Look, I understand if you want to bash our education system, but why’d you have to bring Robin Williams into it? He is, and I don’t think I’ll get much resistance for saying this, the most important actor of the late 20th century.

We’re talking about a triple threat who acts, sings, and grants wishes if you rub his magic lamp. Not to mention he’s Peter Pan, and the Hook food fight just may be the most emotional and inspiring scene in movie history. And come on – Dead Poets, Patch Adams, Mrs. Doubtfire, RV!? Please, lay on the critique of our society, but let the genius alone.

Mookie Kideckel U1 History

Andrew Komar U2 Civil Engineering

Jesse’s ghost is spooooky Re: “Afghanistan’s top Canadian soldier” | Commentary | March 26 Dear Daily Editors, All year long I’ve been hoping I wouldn’t have to write this letter, contenting myself with mumbling under my breath and trying to ignore the consistent undermining of The Daily’s principles taking place in the news section. But this latest travesty is too much. Hey News Editors: the Canadian military already has every major mainstream media source propagandizing

for it. You don’t need to do it.

In fact, those pesky principles expressly stipulate that you’re not supposed to. Shame on you, Daily. May the ghost of Jesse Rosenfeld haunt you forever.

Sincerely, Fred Burrill U4 History

That “face time” was a nice idea, but instead I’ll write a letter I walked out of FDA Wednesday to find a petite Asian girl wearing an oversized poster board that read “Problems with The Daily? Let’s talk.” She was being absolutely torn apart by a portly six-foot-tall Master’s student who had at the very least been on his high school debate team. I have no problems with how he was sharing his opinion – it was a warranted rant about The Daily’s obvious lack of impartiality. What is surprising, however, is that The Daily would have the gusto to leave this poor girl alone to fend for herself, especially without a mastery of verbal whit and banter. Up against the linguistic stylings of Master’s boy, Asian Girl had no chance. All it really did was make anyone loitering in the Adams foyer sorry for her, and for The Daily’s pathetic attempt at obtaining feedback.

So, let’s talk, Daily. What Master’s Boy said was admittedly, difficult to refute. The Daily does have its token writers who are actually serious about becoming journalists. Most of the time, however, it features myriad reviews of things that happened yesterday, a rant or two about McGill administration, and a promotion for a SSMU club event whose ongoing booth in McConnell Engineering is drawing a vast crowd averaging 25 visitors per day. I wish people would care, but really, they don’t. All they’re really worried about is the three papers due in the next five days.

Not to worry, Daily, I don’t blame you. After all, what else could one expect? This is McGill. One look at next year’s SSMU Council is enough for anyone to understand why The Daily is so inclined to promote a left-leaning, radical (as in Rad Frosh Radical, rather than Stalin Gulag Radical) opinion. Maybe that’s a good thing. We can’t pretend that even “great” news agencies like Fox aren’t leaning one way or another. Honestly, I’d rather have a left-leaning paper that is going to promote giving me free lunch from Midnight Kitchen and stopping the ridiculous tuition hikes than a right-leaning paper that tells me that exploiting third world labour is good for our economy. In the end, Daily, though I wish you would get some balls and try to be impartial, I’m still glad you exist.

Salma Moolji U1 International Development Studies [Ed Note: ‘Asian Girl’ is Daily Editor Braden Goyette. Come talk to her in Adams and see her verbal skills.]

Letters

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

29

“We care deeply about the values that make McGill rez what it is, and we will defend them fiercely.”

Carly Boyce “Hey Morty, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”

Hey Morty, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it Re: “Floor fellows clash with new boss” | News | March 30 My name is Carly Boyce, and I spent four years living and working in the McGill residence system: one as a first-year student, and three more as a member of the floor fellow team in Gardner Hall (2003-2006).

These years were incredibly formative for me and the innumerable students I worked with, and the skills I gained are put to use every day in my current job in a community organization, working collaboratively with young people facing discrimination based on their sexuality and/or gender presentation as a Coordinator at Project 10.

In my work at Project 10, McGill Residences, and the North American Federation of Temple Youth (NFTY) National Leadership Center (KUTZ camp) among others, I have seen the same principle demonstrated over and over again: treating young adults like children brings rebellion and disaster, while treating them like adults provides immense opportunities for growth, learning, and rising to the many challenges that independent living has to offer. The flexibility of one-rule-respect as a disciplinary system allows the staff in residences to treat each other and the students they serve like individuals, instead of cases. Leaving room for open discussion about alcohol, drugs, food, coping mechanisms, mental health, sex, etc. fosters an environment of dialogue and harm/

Keep your personal information to yourself I got ripped off the other day for $20 from a really genuine-sounding weiner in a fancy car. He told me his wallet was stolen and he desperately needed gas money to get home and cancel his credit cards, and I guess I looked like an easy target.

When he hadn’t paid me back two days later, I finally resigned to the fact that I obviously don’t have the slightest clue when someone is lying directly to my face, nor apparently am I a very good judge of character.

It seems like everyone here has a scam-story to commiserate about, and my $20 loss is actually pretty insignificant compared to others.

The scariest story I heard is from someone who was ripped off to the tune of 16 grand. The student was approached by a stranger who said that he needed to borrow a few hundred dollars and would pay back $5,000 in return the next

risk reduction, where people feel safe seeking help if something goes wrong. The fact that my students had nothing to hide from me, and nothing to fear – no exaggeration – saved lives in Gardner Hall over the years I worked there. Watching students gain skills in taking care of themselves (and each other) in a supportive (not restrictive) environment was an experience that cemented the goals and approach of the rez system for me. Please treat incoming staff and students like humans with hearts and brains, not like potential liabilities. They deserve better. We deserve better.

I urge the administrators to see the current team of academic staff and building directors as an indispensable resource, and to take a close look at the incredibly progressive, responsible, and responsive manner that McGill residences have been run over the last number of years.

Changes to the system should be made in careful consultation with the people who know the system best: those who work in it now.

There is a huge community of current and former staff who have wisdom to share as you look into making changes to this system.

Please know that we are not inflexible, nor opposed to change, but we care deeply about the values that make McGill rez what it is, and we will defend them fiercely.

Thanks, Carly Boyce BA 2006, BSW 2008 Gardner alumna 2002-2006

day; all he needed was her bank account information to wire the money to her. Sure enough, the next day $5,000 showed up in her account and she’d made a new friend. Fast-forward a few weeks and she’s being questioned by police about $16,000 in fraudulent cheques being passed through her account and subsequently used for criminal purposes. She was able to clear herself of criminal charges but she says, “I wouldn’t wish that situation on my worst enemy.”

After hearing her story, I couldn’t care less about my gas money anymore, and I think it highlights an important fact: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Keep your personal information to yourself, and if you just have to give your money away, the homeless are probably your best bet.

Lindsay Angus U3 English Literature and Political Science

The Revolution of the Lambs

I expected more from a student of religion

“Il n’est pas de sauveurs suprêmes.

Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun.

Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes. Décrétons le salut commun.” – L’Internationale During each of the last three months, the U.S. has lost more than 600,000 jobs, putting the unemployment rate at 8.1 per cent. However, if we also count part-time workers who can’t find full-time jobs and those who have simply given up looking, the rate would be 14.8 per cent. Let this number sink in: almost 15 out of 100 people can’t find full-time jobs, and those who still have their jobs are clinging to them desperately and are forced to accept wage cuts.

Economists and politicians repeatedly tell us that it is our excessive consumption that causes this crisis. Is it greed if a couple wants to buy a house to put a roof over the heads of their children?

Is it greed to desire a better life for oneself and our loved ones? The problem is not greed. The problem is that we have a system that kicks people out of their homes when they need one, that lays people off when they need a job, that produces goods that people cannot even buy because their wages are too small. This system is called capitalism, a system that is dying but refuses to give up the ghost.

We are the sacrificial lambs when capitalism enters a crisis. The hungry wolves are lining up and our shepherds are doing nothing to save us. Instead, they are leading us to the slaughterhouse en masse where our blood will be spilled to rejuvenate this rotten system. The last time they did this was in the forties, when 70 million of us perished in one of the darkest chapters in the history of human kind.

There is hope, however. We have learned that we can only trust our own power. We are starting to kick down the fence and trample both the shepherds and the wolves.

There is a vast green pasture that belongs to us and we are taking it back. The revolution of the lambs is on the order of the day and those who sneer at it will be swept aside by the tide of history into irrelevance.

Re: “Terrified without reason” | Commentary | March 9

Ted Sprague Master’s II Chemistry

I might have hoped that Stephen Davis, a student at the Faculty of Religious Studies, would not resort to the same homogenization of the Christian faith that we are now so accustomed to seeing in the media.

Indignation at the description of Jesus and the Apostles, the objects of the faith of a billion people, in terms of the impotent ex-President Bush and his cabinet wouldn’t be very productive. But that faulty description can tell us a lot about the conflict that we perpetuate by maintaining a mental association between American neo-conservativism and the whole of Christianity, an association that has ensured the stagnation of the debate over gay marriage over the last decade.

Policy victories mask the sore of a bilateral furor that is increasingly entrenched, and shows less and less hope for mutual understanding.

If the Brazilian excommunication scandal of Bishop Giovanni Battista Re is any indication, the opinions of the Christian faithful and the instructions handed down by those deemed to be the authoritative voices of the Church are increasingly disjointed. Douglas Farrow is one of these mouthpieces. But he is a Christian, he talks to Christians about gay marriage, and he does

We're SSMU and we like you Re: “We're spending $120,000 on that?” | Commentary | March 30 As avid Daily readers, we, the future SSMU executive, always take the student opinions represented there to heart and try to figure out how to best incorporate it into SSMU. We felt Monday’s Hyde Park was a good opportunity for us to say hello and share some thoughts.

First, the numbers used in this article were a bit off – McGill has 19,853 full-time undergraduate students. We strongly agree that student apathy as represented in the lower voter turnout is a huge issue and one we will be struggling with next year.

However the numbers are not quite as bad as stated in the Hyde Park.

Second, yes, being a SSMU executive is a full-time, salaried position.

Execs work more than 40 hours per week most weeks, and must take one or two courses to remain students, and accordingly, members of the Society, but do not have any more time than that. The position is not just an extracurricular – it is a job that

so in terms of faith. For all of Mr. Davis’s counterpoints and Danish evidence, he never once makes an argument in these terms – rather than writing on homosexuality as a student of religion, he treats the issue atheistically and ultra-secularly.

There is nothing wrong with this, of course. But if universal acceptance of gay rights through discourse is the goal (and I hope it is), then this sort of argument is hopelessly futile when applied to Christianity.

By now, the people who have been bothered enough to leave the Church by what is outrageously marketed to them as the “Christian stance” on homosexuality have left the Church. But the Church, Christians, and the disagreement surrounding gay marriage all remain. What is the use of criticizing Farrow’s “two-decades-old” rhetoric if the rhetoric used to criticize him is two-decades-old itself? It would be foolish to expect today’s self-proclaimed gay rights activists to change their tune, to achieve their aims by respect and not disdain. It is left to the modern students of religion, then, who know the distinct values of both personal freedom and personal faith, to meet the stubborn Church on its terms, and to convince it of the worth of the former without assailing the latter.

Mike Prebil U1 History

pays barely over minimum wage.

Lastly, and most importantly, we want to take this opportunity to open up a dialogue with students. As is clear from this article, there is still a lot of confusion over exactly what the SSMU executive and SSMU itself does. We are trying to be more accessible and transparent, and hope this letter is a good start. We would love more input into what projects and issues are important to you, so we can work on them to the best of our abilities. To discuss specific projects this year’s execs are working on, you can always contact them via email or phone, available at ssmu.mcgill.ca.

They also present a report of their activities every Council. These are open meetings where anyone can ask questions, make suggestions, or just listen. The last Council meetings are April 2 and April 16, at 6 p.m. in the Lev Buchman room. Please feel welcome to come by and hear more about what the SSMU executive (and Council) does, and to make your opinion heard.

The 2009-2010 SSMU Executive

Science+Technology

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

Courtesy of Brian DeRenzi

Mobile phone technology can be used for a mobile health education, health records keeping, and as an aid in the diagnosis of disease.

A call to action Nadja Popovich The McGill Daily

C

ell phones have become such fixtures in our everyday lives that most of us take them for granted. Those small handsets lying inconspicuously in our bags have broken down communications and information barriers over the past decade, but now, because of their increasing accessibility and relatively low cost, cell phones are transforming a more unlikely field: health care delivery. And you thought your iPhone was revolutionary.

Dimagi was one company fortunate enough to recognize this potential early on.

Founded in 2002 as a healthsoftware company comprised of a group of clinicians and programmers from MIT’s Media Lab, Dimagi has looked to use mobile phone technology as a tool for fixing some of the most pressing health needs of the developing world – from mobile health education, to health records keeping, to aiding the diagnosis of disease. The company has set up systems from Bangladesh to South Africa, while their current focus project, CommCare, a cell phone-

based system for community health care workers, is being developed in Tanzania.

According to Jonathan Jackson, co-founder and CEO of Dimagi, CommCare is the product of collaboration among many partner groups and is built on an open source data collection platform. While Dimagi is responsible for the software programming side of the project, another company, D-Tree International, is leading the implementation on the ground. “[The CommCare program] runs directly on your handset and it helps groups like community health workers. It will allow them to do scheduling, task management, and decision support,” Jackson said.

CommCare aims to link individuals, community health workers, and larger health organizations through a network of on-the-ground recordkeeping.

The software also provides detailed symptom questionnaires, which can be followed by less-skilled health care workers in routine houseto-house check-ups. This would allow health organizations to extend their reach as health care services could be extended to a greater number of communities.

Looking to change the way health care is delivered in the developing world, one cell phone at a time

“Usually, they are going household to household and recording symptoms of people on their phone – and that’s driving them through this tree of questions in our program [on their handset]. Depending on how people answer, it directs the health care workers to refer them to the right medicines or other services.”

For Jackson, the provision of such services through mobile technology is especially important in settings where greater technological infrastructure is lacking.

“There aren’t necessarily standardized health records [in many developing countries], which is a big problem. So we’re focused on minimal data fields [and] the household, whereas you’d usually be talking about data gathered at the clinic,” he said.

“We are a ways off from an accessible clinical records sharing system going across many of these countries because of the basic lack of Internet connections. I think the small-scale, phone-based, community programs are going to work because they are such simple systems and can therefore actually be implemented.”

Dimagi and its partners are currently working on expanding the field of users on the CommCare plat-

form. According to Jackson, the use of a uniform product across sectors would facilitate communication and health information sharing between different levels of health officials and organizations, contributing to better community health data gathering overall.

“Right now we’re just in the early stages of design for the headquarter software, and that will be used by a number of different people, like the supervisors of community medical centres, but also centres of operations, like the NGOs who are employing these workers, so that they can check trends, not just individual cases. They can then chart the overall health of the system, which is a huge missing gap today,” Jackson said.

Still, Jackson believes that technology alone is not sufficient to make a deep-seated impact on health care delivery in the developing world. Instead, the main contribution of technologies such as CommCare is their ability to facilitate better monitoring of and communication between health service providers on the whole. In this way, such systems can allow for greater innovation in the direct patient care already being provided by community health programs.

32 Science+Technology

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

Telescope scans the galaxy for Earth-like planets Exoplanets detected using data from gravitational disturbances and luminosity David Zuluaga Cano Sci+Tech Writer

N

ASA recently launched the Kepler Mission, an initiative that will search for Earth-like planets in a northern constellation known as Cygnus over the next three and a half years. The mission began with the launch of its flagship telescope from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, on March 6.

Astronomers did not find evidence of exoplanets – planets outside of our solar system – until the eighties. In 1988, a team of Canadian scientists working at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope published a paper in the Astrophysical Journal detailing their observations of a group of bright stars. The team claimed to have found a planet with a mass similar to that of Jupiter orbiting Gamma Cephei, a star approximately 45 light-years away.

At the time, the announcement was met with a great deal of surprise and scepticism. Previously, claims of exoplanet findings had turned out to be experimental mistakes, explains one of the paper’s authors, Gordon Walker, Professor Emeritus from the University of British Columbia.

“It was recognized that the observation was difficult to make,” said Walker.

Detecting an exoplanet is not an easy task and often must be done indirectly.

Planets cause a very small gravitational disturbance on their parent star, where the star orbits a centre of mass between the two bodies. In our solar system, for example, Jupiter causes the Sun to orbit a point near the solar surface at a speed of 13 metres per second. By measuring these movements, astronomers can determine the characteristics of the planet causing them.

Due to limited precision, exoplan-

et discoveries have mostly been of large planets that have easily observable effects on their stars, explained Robert Lamontagne, a professor at the Université de Montréal.

“If you were an astronomer in another world [with our current technology], you would not be able to detect Earth,” he said.

The Kepler Telescope will change that, using another technique called differential photometry to detect exoplanets indirectly. Differential photometry allows astronomers to measure the changes in a star’s luminosity. Every time a planet orbits in front of its star, it creates a small, partial eclipse. Kepler detects these changes in luminosity and uses the information to calculate the mass and size of the planet.

The process will take some time, Walker explained, as the planet must complete several transits in front of its

star before astronomers can confirm its existence.

“If you were looking to detect Earth, you would need to watch for three years,” Walker said.

Until very recently, the search for exoplanets generated little interest in academic circles. Walker explained that, after several bogus claims in the sixties, there was little appetite in the professional field for exoplanetary research.

“Some people felt that such an undertaking was not even a legitimate part of astronomy,” Walker said.

The Kepler Mission is merely one of several upcoming projects that are looking for exoplanets. For example, the European Space Agency plans to launch the Darwin Spacecraft in 2015 in order to detect and study exoplanets using infrared telescopes. This will allow analysis of the composition of the planet’s atmosphere, which could be

an indicator of the presence of carbonbased life.

Three-hundred-and-forty-four exoplanets have been found to date, according to records kept by officials at the Paris Observatory. That number is only expected to increase as new telescopes are deployed in space, and as the technologies used for Earth-based observations progressively improve.

The discovery of an exoplanet capable of harbouring life would mark an enormous achievement in astronomy.

Such an observation, Lamontagne remarked, would help determine how likely it is that life has arisen elsewhere in the universe.

“The answer will come within our lifetime,” he said.

The Kepler Mission will cost an estimated $600 million and will monitor approximately 100,000 stars in the Cygnus constellation.

Consumers fishing for a healthy diet Canadian scientists question the sustainability of recommending fish intake Iain Martyn Sci+Tech Writer

S

ushi, anyone? Our omega-3 frenzied society tells us that eating fish will stave off conditions like heart disease, mental illness, and cancer. Health Canada touts fish as an excellent source of protein, and recommends we eat two servings per week. So fish is all we need to stay alive and well into our triple-digits, right?

According to a newly published study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, these conceptions are based on insufficient and contradictory scientific data.

“Research is needed to clarify the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids,” write the authors in their article.

One of the major problems with these studies, argue the authors, is that they target a healthier demographic than the average – those who regularly eat fish are also more likely to exercise and less likely to smoke or drink.

The authors maintain that what is certain is that fish stocks are disappearing faster than you can say “cod”.

With affluent and developed countries continually pursuing the alleged health benefits of fish, consumption is on the rise. Forty per cent of the world’s fish stocks are currently classified as “collapsed”, meaning they yield less than ten per cent of their historic maximum catch, and the number of collapsed fisheries is increasing exponentially from year to year.

There are also over 100 confirmed cases where overfishing has resulted in marine population extinction.

Scientists predict that by mid-century, all commercially exploited stocks will have collapsed.

Scott Cantin, a spokesperson from the Department of Fisheries

and Oceans Canada, remarked that while Canadian domestic fisheries are “well-managed and sustainable,” he would recommend people “become informed about the issue and how they can make informed choices when buying fish and seafood for their dinner tables.”

According to Scott Wallace, the sustainable fisheries analyst for the David Suzuki Foundation, current dietary recommendations for fish are unsustainable. “Health guidelines exceed what is realistic, ecologically,” Wallace said. He also noted that aquaculture, or at least the aquaculture we’re used to in North America, isn’t the answer either.

Though large carnivorous fish like salmon and tuna consume three to five times their own weight in smaller fish, their relative nutritional value is actually low. A third of the world’s fisheries are devoted to “reduction fishing,” catching fish to feed to larger, more marketable farm-grown fish, which only exacerbates the problem.

Until any significant health benefits from fish oils can be scientifically confirmed, slight changes to your eating habits can make a difference.

Start serving small fish such as herring or plant-eating carp at the dinner table and you’ll still get your seafood fix while remaining fish-stock-friendly. Another option suggested by the study’s authors is to go right to the source and harvest these oils directly from algae or genetically modified yeast and plants. Beth Hunter, the Oceans Campaign Coordinator of Greenpeace Montreal, suggested taking advantage of the fact that fish oils are the same oils present in many seeds, like flax or linseed.

There’s no law that says what fish we should or should not eat. But the exaggerated health claims and factual ecological concerns are something to consider if we want a sustainable future.

Matthew Park / The McGill Daily

Consumers these days are omega-3 frenzied.

Science+Technology

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

33

McGill net security, our digital Big Brother Decoding the “black box” of computer surveillance Pinky Langat Sci+Tech Writer

T

he email messages you’ve sent, the web sites you’ve visited, even the Facebook wall posts you’ve posted: any and all of your online activity is subject to surveillance by McGill’s information security group.

Any computer, computer network, or software under McGill University’s control is considered part of McGill Computing Facilities (MCF). Under the Code of Conduct for Users of McGill Computing Facilities, authorized McGill personnel may compromise user privacy while performing routine operations or responding to potential security threats and violations to the MCF code.

Under the code, users have a right to privacy, but that level of privacy does not exceed “reasonable expectations.” But the exact definition of “reasonable expectations” has yet to be defined. Last year, a former McGill student faced academic probation for altering a Wikipedia information page about a professor, while logged into McGill VPN. Sylvia Franke, McGill’s Chief

Information Officer, commented on network security operations in an email message to The Daily.

“We use a number of technologies to ensure secure networks – including a newly-implemented intrusion prevention system [and] audit trails on login information to support traceability,” Franke said.

The student, who must remain anonymous for fear of facing further punishment, has not had a unique experience. Staff members are also subject to the computer monitoring.

Jeremy Cooperstock, an associate professor in electrical and computer engineering, commented on the investigation of his and other staff’s personal computer files. “[Since] the administration does not disclose to the faculty that their files have been investigated, we have no idea how often it happens,” Cooperstock said.

Frustrated at the lack of communication between the faculty and administration, Cooperstock maintains a blog of Senate meetings and other incidences of what he calls “a lack of honesty and blatant disregard for a general kind of ethical work practices.”

According to Franke, Information Security responds in “specific reported incidents or in cases where their

further investigation is warranted due to potential threats exposed by our security technologies.” The Chief Information Office however, did not comment on how frequently these violations occurred or what specific situations constituted a “threat.”

The main question lies in how the administration is able to monitor computer activity.

Harrison Brundage, U0 computer

computer network is a set of layered components that connect together for computers to communicate. One of these components is called an Internal Protocol (IP) address. These IP addresses are managed by a router, which is the central computer that manages Internet users’ messages and web destinations. In the case of McGill networks, this router is owned by

Under the code, users have a right to privacy, but that level of privacy does not excede “reasonable expectations.” engineering, and an online entrepreneur shed light on the black box of monitoring systems.

“McGill is essentially between us and the Internet; all our traffic goes through them and they could go through what we do if they want,” Brundage said.

Brundage explained that a

McGill. The “central computer” assigns a specific IP address to identify each individual user, and another IP address identifies each web address visited.

The IP address gives a multitude of identifying information, including where the user was connected and at what time – even the specifics of the

Inter-office politics around the holy water coolerStephen Davis

computer.

IP addresses, however, are not private information.

Even Wikipedia has a system of tracking IP addresses to log inputs and prevent abuse. On the Wikipedia website, there is a public history view for all the additions and edits made to a specific article, identifying the IP address of the user who made the revision. This IP address log is common to a lot of websites like Facebook, and online forums that contain “dynamic content” – spaces where you can input information.

“Getting the IP address is easy.

The difficult part is taking an IP address and getting a name from it,” Brundage said. Tracking a user may take considerable detective work under normal circumstances, but when you voluntarily sign into the McGill network or VPN using your McGill ID, there is little to deduce. With over 22,000 students at McGill though, the task of online surveillance seems daunting. To help, there are a multitude of computer programs that may be able to aggregate information about when a user accessed what web address, or downloaded a specific file.

EXP

SURE

Mind&Body

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

Camille McOuat / The McGill Daily

Learning by doing, and drinking If you have one beer this summer, it better be at Mondial de la Bière

All hopped up Joseph Watts

I

’ve enjoyed this gig. I really have.

But at times I realized that this column might not be the best way to get my message across. Before you call me a defeatist, hear me out.

To reiterate an elemental goal of my column since its inception, a beerdrinking public that is informed of the depth and intricacies of the craft brewing movement might think about what they are drinking enough to try something they don’t know but may enjoy. Perhaps more importantly, an informed beer drinking public only strengthens and unifies a local beer culture, providing a better environment for craft breweries to operate in.

Though there are, and will always be, those for whom beer is a golden, tasteless alcohol, our status as college students makes us receptive to such encouragement. We seek out variety in all we ingest – food, drink, fields of study – and right now we drink more beer than we ever will again. Writing a beer column in a university newspaper is like advocat-

ing safe sex in a whorehouse. Sure, it looks good on paper, but the idea’s a no-brainer.

Beer journalism is important, but if this is your first time reading or your first time paying attention, it’s also your last. So what’s a student to do? Luckily, there’s an event approaching that will accomplish for the novice beer drinker in one afternoon what a year-and-a-half of beer columns might get you through.

Montreal’s largest and most successful beer festival, the Mondial de la Bière, enjoys its 16th annual installment during the first week of June.

The event has garnered substantial respect from beer geeks both foreign and domestic, due in part to the festival’s reputation of deftly showcasing remote international breweries alongside little-known breweries from right here in Quebec.

This formula for success becomes apparent when Jeannine Marois, the president and founder of the Mondial, explains why her festival is devoted to beer: “Because I love

it. It’s a great community of small businesses filled with passion and it extends wherever you go. You can travel the world drinking with nice people.”

The Mondial de la Bière was surely a labour of love. It lost money in each of its first seven years. However, if the crowds of recent years are an indication, 2009 will be a fruitful year for Marois, with over 120 breweries submitting about 300 beers.

Montreal is truly the perfect city for an international celebration of handcrafted brews, because, as Marois explains, “We are an open city. People are willing to discover new things which I think is part of our cultural signature.”

This is what makes the beer festival such an effective entrance to the world of craft brewing. Whereas the world of microbrewing, characterized by small business and regionalism, is often derided for its exclusivity, the conglomerate beer festival is a solution to this. You can read about the stuff all you want, but it’s a whole different story when you go out there and have a beer.

For the uninitiated, a beer festival can be a daunting place. On June 3, the Mondial de la Bière will kick off five days of festivities at Windsor Station, spilling out into the courtyard directly adjacent to the Bell Centre. The concept is simple: get a tasting glass and a fist full of tick-

ets costing a buck each, then mill around the booths getting a threeor-four-ounce sample for one to five tickets. If that’s not enticing enough, there will be panels of professional brewers discussing the biz, a contest judged by an international jury, and plenty of entertainment.

Yet, the true value of the Mondial de la Bière is its global spectrum.

The inclusion of multiple beers from beyond North America makes the festival a forum for the interaction of many brewing cultures. For the first time, seven Japanese breweries will be featured, including Kinshashi, Harvest Moon, and Brewmaster, which is said to be rare even in Japan.

Marois traveled to Japan to personally hand-pick each microbrewery, but she says it was worth the effort just to give the foreign breweries a venue. “We bring breweries that have never been to Canada and that you won’t see anywhere else. That’s something pretty amazing to do.”

The added effort is not designated solely to beer from great distances. For the seven breweries from Ontario that will be featured this year, provincial importation policies and tariffs added consternation for Marois and her team. “Getting beer from Ontario was as difficult as getting it from France because the SAQ makes it hard and costly,” says Marois.

“If I was doing this to make money, I

would never do it.”

Luckily for Quebec’s brewers, this has made the Mondial de la Bière primarily a showcase for local beer.

Around 70 per cent of the breweries featured this year will be from within the province, and size is not a barrier.

Booths have been given to groups like Distribière, a co-op of smaller breweries from as far as the Îles dela-Madeleine north of Prince Edward Island, which makes it possible to sell their beer in Montreal.

Marois acknowledges that a festival like hers may be essential to Quebec beer. The grouping of the many elements of a large provincial industry unifies a local beer community and, as mentioned before, informs the beer-drinking public of the merits of said community.

Furthermore, Marois will be doing Quebec beer an even greater service when she features local breweries this October in Strasbourg, France during the first Mondial de la Bière in Europe.

As a final counsel to my readers, if you are staying in Montreal for the summer, head to Windsor Station in early June for an excellent start to the city’s many summer festivals. Keep an eye out for me; we’ll grab a beer.

Mondial de la Bière goes from June 3-8. Hit up Joe at allhoppedup@ gmail.com if you’re looking for a date.

36 Mind&Body

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

Stephen Davis / The McGill Daily

Talking sex with Sue Johanson

L

ike most curious young Canadians, you may have been used to staying up late and switching on the Sunday Night Sex Show with Sue Johanson. Though we were prepubescent, and we certainly had nothing to call in about, many of us listened and learned more from this voracious grandmotherly woman than from our girlfriends or boyfriends.

Johanson was originally educated as a nurse and worked as a sex educator during the seventies and eighties in Ontario.

Her matter-of-fact way of speaking generated a following that grew as she moved on to her own radio show and, later, television.

Now, she is famous for talking about the most outrageous aspects of sexuality in a frank and hilarious manner – easily filling amphitheaters across Canada on her campus tours.

The McGill Daily caught up with Johanson at the Ampersand conference on Saturday, March 28, where she delivered the keynote address to a crowd of 150 students.

The McGill Daily: Why are you giving a presentation at McGill?

Sue Johanson: What I’m talking about is sex and sexuality and my goal is to fill in the gaps – all the things they didn’t tell you about sex.

And it’s not from a fear basis at all; it’s from a reassuring basis. In Canada, we have much better sex education than the United States, but it is by no means in-depth. The curriculum is great, but it depends on the decision of each principal in each school [as to] what parts of that curriculum will be incorporated into the program.

Then, it’s up to the comfort level and skill of the individual teacher – so if they’re not comfortable talking about blowjobs, it’s difficult to get good information out there.

MD: What kind of things did the sex education system leave out?

SJ: Things like ‘’females do not

have orgasms every time they have sex.’’ Guys need to know that because there’s so much pressure on [them].

As it stands now, they think if she doesn’t have an orgasm, then either he’s a lousy lover, or she’s frigid.

MD: If you were in charge of sex education across Canada, what would the system look like?

SJ: It would be in-depth and open – a lot more about homosexuality; a lot more about the controversial issues; a lot more about abortion; a lot more about pregnancy, labour, and delivery. There would be an in-depth course on relationships.

Communication would be emphasized much more than it is. We still communicate the same way our parents did. We still fight the same way, and that’s pretty destructive. So, that would be my vision of what I’d like to see happen, but it’s not going to hap-

pen because it takes too long and it’s too labour intensive.

MD: Why is that?

SJ: Unfortunately, when teachers go into the faculty of education, they have a general BA and take one year to become a teacher. They get exactly one class on sexuality. That’s just not fair to teachers. That’s definitely not fair…. If I had it my way…there would be a team who would probably be nurses and they would be independent and not be employed by the board of education.

MD: How would the team of nurses work?

SJ: You would have one who is an expert on sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV. One who is an expert on birth control, a [team dedicated to] homosexuality. You would have to do homosexuality covered by a team of a gay and lesbian so that we got both perspectives and the comfort level would be up because lesbians feel very left out. A lot of lesbians are very, very angry.

The team would go in for a period of time, about an hour a day, all year long. So [students would] have a broad spectrum of sex ed, from different people, and not from the same person, because [everyone has] biases and [they] need to be balanced by somebody else.

MD: If you had one message for the McGill community, what would it be?

SJ: Know what you’re doing.

Think ahead. Plan ahead. Never let sex ‘‘just happen.’’ And always practice safer sex.

– compiled by Ethan Feldman

Sue Johanson was invited to speak at the first annual Ampersand Conference, which took place on Saturday, March 28. The conference was organized by the Bachelor Arts and Science Integrated Council (BASIC).

Q&A with Sue Johanson at the Ampersand conference Is there a way to make a guy come more times in a row with less time to rest in between?

Actually, there is! It’s called “kegel exercises.” Go on your computer and go to talksexwithsue.com and there’s a list of pubic exercises. We usually recommend them to the females, but if guys do them then they can last longer, they won’t ejaculate as quickly, they won’t completely lose their erection, and they can ejaculate once again. So, pull up kegel exercises and they can go one after another – and you may be sorry.

What’s the best kind of food for sex play?

Well, it’s not macaroni and cheese. There isn’t really an aphrodisiac, but it is known that females do find chocolate to be a bit of an aphrodisiac.

There’s something about it being high sugar, high energy, and it has an effect on females. Oysters don’t do it, pineapple don’t do it, celery don’t do it.

I am a girl having trouble [reaching orgasm].

It’s not that she’s unable, it’s just that she’s never got there yet. She is able, as long as she is normal – in the way of the nerve endings working – then she is able to have an orgasm, absolutely. So, again, she’s got to masturbate and learn how to get there herself.

You need to relax. All girls can learn to orgasm, unless you’re quadrapelegic or paralyzed from the waist down and have no sensation. The interesting thing is that these males and females can be stimulated in other ways. I have a friend who is paraplegic and he can reach ogasm by his partner blowing in his ear and kissing his ear and the back of neck along with armpit and nipple stimulation. He doesn’t ejaculate, but he reaches orgasm psychologically.

Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

37

Montreal’s nouveau New Wave Automelodi makes electronic music vital by staying true to its organic roots Alexander Weisler The McGill Daily

S

o far, much of the attention that Montreal band Automelodi has garnered centres on the fact that their songs are written in French. To single out a band for this in the big Quebec seems odd – that is, until you listen to the five tracks on Automelodi fait ses courses. “There is a certain set of influences, that seem to always pop up in current production,” explains frontman Xavier Paradis, “and as soon as you get out of this set of influences you stand out.” The 2008 Pop Montreal program expressed surprise that the band is not British; their shoe-gazing, romantic sound recalls New Order and The Smiths rather than the chansons of Quebec or even the typical indie sound of Mile End. Automelodi is part of a francophone-indie renaissance, in which a host of French-language bands have picked up the baton of the anglo-dominated Montreal music boom of a few years ago.

It’s difficult for a band to get attention when they sing in French, but even more so when they reject the Quebec norm. “There is a very limited francophone star circuit, and it tends to be limited to a certain mainstream category,” says Paradis. “There’s not as much media space for diversity to come through.” Paradis may not have record companies lining up at his door, but the musician, who produces acts including Plaza Musique, and Jef and the Holograms by day, hasn’t

lost faith in his work. “What initially gets you into doing music,” he says, “is trying to make what you hear in your dreams, or definitely not on the radio.... Either you choose to abandon it or you keep pushing forward.

You keep shovelling clouds,” he says, offering a Quebecois expression.

Paradis moved to Montreal from Quebec City in 2000, after releasing a couple of dark dance tracks in the vein of Kraftwerk. “Now anyone can do similar things with just a laptop, but I still had to synch up tapes with a computer,” Paradis recalls of his efforts in the nineties. He quickly met some musical comrades in Montreal, and they began performing as Echo Kitty. Automelodi was born in 2006; “I really felt there was a new context and new songs needed,” Paradis explained. “I wanted to, not necessarily turn my back on everything, but do something a little more personal, hence the name change.”

With Automelodi, Paradis is trying new things, including writing songs in English. Though their output is almost entirely in French so far, the band certainly isn’t beholden to Bill 101, the law that made French the sole official language of Quebec. “To refuse to sing in English would be like renouncing a musical instrument that I like,” says Paradis; the band currently has two songs in English. While most musicians turn to exotic instruments to achieve a worldly sound, Paradis considers every language a unique instrument that is played differently. “I’ve seen some French web sites that tried to correct our

name,” Paradis recounts. “They tried to add an accent. There is no accent.

I really wanted the name to be nonlanguage specific; Automelodi could be German or Italian. I would sing in four or five languages if I could.”

Automelodi is influenced mostly

by British acts, especially Brian Eno. “Eno didn’t do things in a strictly electronic way, and we also integrate some organic elements, real drums, some guitars,” the singer says of his band’s sound. Automelodi tags itself as electronic, but it certainly falls more in the tradition of eighties synth-pop than contemporary electronica. Organic is the key word here, as their songs don’t sound like something made in a lab, but on a stage. The swooping guitar of premier single “Buanderie Jazz,” played

by Patrick Gosselin, recalls Johnny Marr, and the ambience evokes a Joy Division song more than Eno’s compositions. Paradis’s anglo tastes have even affected his Quebec French giving him a bit of an English swagger.

Their influences might be easy to pick out, but Automelodi never sounds tired. They take Brian Eno’s aesthetics to the dance floor and use seductive synths to induce nostalgia for right now. The world of Automelodi is French New Wave soundtracked by eighties New Wave-vaguely sinister but efficiently upbeat.

The EP release show was April 4 at the Green Room. The EP is available for sale on the band’s MySpace and at Atom Heart Records.

Aleksiina Chapman for The McGill Daily

An autopsy of the image From cave paintings to the twin towers, W.G.T. Mitchell dissects visual culture Kira Josefsson The McGill Daily

Y

ou probably consume more images in an average week than your grandmother did in her whole lifetime. Images are everywhere: just think about your typical computer session. Facebook, a couple of news sites, the two or three blogs you check every day. Just starting there, already you have been exposed to several hundreds of images, and that’s before you’ve gotten off the computer. Navigating around the city will lead to at least as many image-encounters: on billboards, newsstands, gig posters, street signs.

Images are everywhere, and they affect us more than we think.

But despite the enormous impact images have on our lives, we have a very limited knowledge of them.

School teaches us how to read and analyze a text, but puts far less effort in teaching us how to interpret an

image. How do images affect us?

What does it mean that they’ve taken on an increasingly important role in information-transmission? University of Chicago professor W.J.T. Mitchell has written a book entitled What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, and a few weeks ago, he held a talk at McGill on “The Future of the Image.” Before avid listeners, he laid out his theories on how we should approach the growing presence of images in the world.

In what he called “an autopsy of the image,” he led the audience of McGill students and professors on an “animal trail,” examining different human depictions of animals.

Animals, he claimed, have always been representative of humans: they were our first metaphors, the first painted subjects, and their blood was the first material used for painting. Mitchell sees them as the perfect image of the future, since everything that we have done to animals has later happened to us. After we domesti-

cated animals, we became sedentary farmers. The medicine we test on animals, we later give ourselves.

Mitchell juxtaposed cave paintings of bison and other game in French Lascaux to modern-day depictions of dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, pointing at the irony in how the futuristic narrative of the movie at the same time features an image of the most ancient animal we know. Whereas the Lascaux paintings were made to facilitate the hunt by familiarizing the hunters with their prey, roles are inverted in the ultramodern narrative of Jurassic Park – here, the image of the dinosaur threatens to kill its creators. And if, like Mitchell says, telling stories about animals is telling stories about us, this becomes a perfect analogy of how images seem to have slipped out of our control and gained their own life. Jurassic Park, then, becomes the perfect analogy of our fear that images will turn our world order upside down.

Mitchell drew his examples from

a context well known to anyone who has opened a newspaper these last few years: the war on terror, and, more recently, the election of Barack Obama. The New Yorker’s July 2008 cover of Barack and Michelle Obama caricatured as Islamist terrorists created a great stir all over the world: Western intellectuals feared that “the general public” would not understand that the drawing was satirical.

It is a testimony to the great power of images, and how we fear losing control of them. But most people did get the irony, and Mitchell says that in the end it also became a joke on those nurturing the idea that people are stupid and don’t understand the politics of images – because they do.

For this reason, Mitchell warns that destroying an image, whether literally or figuratively, won’t make it go away. “Images can neither be created, nor destroyed,” he said, adding that attempts to destroy them will only make the idea of them more powerful. When the 9/11 ter-

rorists attempted to destroy what many Americans felt to be a symbol of national pride and unity, the real towers may have been demolished, but patriotic sentiments increased rather than decreased after the attack. The status of the twin towers as a symbol was strengthened after their destruction. It is impossible to eradicate an image, and to deal with one we find problematic, we must engage with it. We must appropriate its meaning, change its message to what we want it to say. And Mitchell believes all people are capable of doing so.

So what, then, is the future of the image? “Images are the future,” Mitchell answered his own question.

Because of the richness of images, they are full of meanings to discover.

The image foresees the future. You know that saying, “an image says more than a thousand words?” Well, according to Mitchell, it is up to you which combination of those thousand words you want it to speak.

38 Culture

Amar Singh for The McGill Daily

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

Of books and brains Neurologist Liam Durcan’s hobby is writing bestselling novels Daniel Lametti The McGill Daily

I

n 1998, Dr. Liam Durcan, a neurologist at the Montreal Neurological Institute, decided that he wanted to try writing fiction. Having no formal literary training, he enrolled in a beginners’ writing workshop, and over the course of the eight-week program wrote a couple of short stories. He wasn’t really sure if his writing was any good, but at the end of the workshop, on the advice of one of his teachers, he submitted a story to a literary journal. It got rejected.

Undaunted, he tried submitting another story and this time, to his delight, it got accepted. A few years later, he published a book of short stories and it received critical acclaim.

Then he wrote a novel and it became a national bestseller. Remarkably, Durcan does most of his writing in his spare time, pecking away at his laptop computer each evening, in the two hours between his kids’ bedtime and his own.

L

iam Durcan was born in Winnipeg, in 1965. As a child he didn’t read much: “I wasn’t particularly interested in books and I don’t know why,” he says. It wasn’t until high school, when he got a job shelving books at the Winnipeg Public Library, that he first became interested in literature.

“You see Ulysses on the shelf and then you just pick it up,” he says.

After high school, he studied science for two years at the University of Manitoba, before transferring into the school’s medical program.

He graduated young, at just 24, and

moved to Montreal to do his residency in neurology at the Montreal Neurological Institute. Neurology, which involves taking a detailed case history of every patient, was a natural fit: “I like talking to people,” he says, “and neuroscience is extraordinarily interesting.”

Shortly after completing his residency, he got married and later had two kids. And although his family life and medical practice were doing well, he still felt that he was missing something. “I didn’t have a humanities education,” he says, “and I sort of regarded myself as a person who was not very well-educated in terms of the ethics of the world.”

To fill this perceived gap in his schooling, when not practicing neurology or taking care of his family, Durcan immersed himself in reading philosophy and history. He then enrolled in the creative writing workshop that launched his career. He was one of only four students to sign up for that session. “Going into the workshop, I had nothing prepared,” he says. Three months later, his first short story was accepted for publication.

O

n most Fridays, Durcan can be found in the medical specialists’ unit on the fourth floor of the Queen Elizabeth Health Complex in Notre Dame de Grâce. With the exception of a large wooden desk and a poster on the wall entitled “Head and Neck Muscles,” the office where he sees most of his Friday patients is undecorated. Outside, nurses shuffle by, carrying vials of blood and urine, while patients roam the halls in wheelchairs – the Queen Elizabeth is not the type of place you’d expect to find

an acclaimed writer.

Sitting across from each other at his desk, we launch into a discussion about neuroscience. He’s particularly interested in a patient group that has damage to both the occipital lobe – the part of the brain that receives nerve impulses from the eyes – and the parietal lobe – the part of the brain that deals with visual awareness. “They’re cortically blind,” he says, “but they don’t know they’re blind – they confabulate.” The brain is his specialty, but he talks insightfully about almost anything, as if he received a draft of topics days ago and has been studying up every night since.

Ten years ago a rare autoimmune disorder caused him to go completely bald. At first glance, he looks a little like Superman’s archenemy, Lex Luthor. But after you speak with him this impression quickly fades – he’s incredibly soft spoken. In fact, he’s developed a neat trick of speeding up and slowing down his speech at key moments to place emphasis on words without having to raise his voice.

In contrast to his quiet nature, his stories vary wildly in both plot and narrative structure. In his first book, A Short Journey by Car, one story tells the tale of Stalin’s dentist, while another, narrated from a woman’s perspective, laments summers past at the town pool. His novel, Garcia’s Heart, is about a neuroscientist who travels to The Hague to witness the war crimes trial of his mentor. The book is the only one of his stories that involves neuroscience, but even one is “a bit of a disappointment” to him – Durcan scoffs at writers who fall back on the saying, “write what you know.”

A

ndrew Steinmetz, an editor at Esplanade Books, the publisher of A Short Journey By Car, was working part-time as a medical librarian at the Montreal Neurological Institute when he heard rumours that one of the Institute’s neurologists had become a writer. Steinmetz, who is also a writer, started exchanging stories with Durcan on a weekly basis.

“It quickly became obvious that he was prolific,” says Steinmetz, “I mean, he was bringing in stories every week and they were getting published month by month.”

At first, Steinmetz was wary of offering to publish his friend’s work.

“It was sort of against my better judgment because it was someone I knew and I didn’t want to publish someone I knew,” he says. “But, I mean, it just became so apparent that Liam was a freak and even if he was my friend I should publish him.”

Freakish is not a bad way to describe Dr. Durcan’s writing habits. Working for a couple hours each night, he wrote Garcia’s Heart in just nine months. He says that he’s never had writer’s block, and given a flat surface on which to place his laptop, he can write in almost any situation. In fact, since his wife recently gave birth to their third child, he’s had to drastically alter his daily writing routine to work around his new son’s sporadic sleep schedule. He’s been writing his second novel, a story about an architect, on the train to and from his office in Montreal and his home in the West Island. It’s a 45-minute ride each way, allowing him 90 minutes to write. Half of this writing occurs before 6 a.m. – he catches the train each morning at a quarter to five. “I used to get up ear-

lier,” he says, “but it’s just too tough.

The theme of your writing becomes sleep deprivation and all the characters are pissed off.”

D

urcan is not the first writer to have gotten his start as a doctor.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the Sherlock Holmes series, turned to writing after the ophthalmology practice he opened in London failed miserably. Anton Chekhov, possibly one of the greatest short story writers ever, considered his training as a doctor to be his principal profession. Steinmetz believes that because physicians meet so many people on a daily basis, having a background as a doctor can help a writer to develop characters. Durcan agrees with his friend’s assessment. “I think that this work really helps me,” he says.

“I meet 15 to 20 people everyday – that’s an invaluable laboratory for human behaviour.”

Even so, working two full-time jobs is not easy, and near the end of our interview I ask if he’s considered quitting medicine to write full-time. He ponders the question for a second – an unusual thing for him to do – before answering “No.” He then concedes that his neurology gig might limit his ability to promote his books. As it is, he barely has enough time to write, let alone do the things that writers are supposed to do when not writing, like attend writers’ retreats and workshops. “Maybe that’s to the detriment of my career,” he says, hesitantly, “But I’m pretty comfortable that if my work fails, or doesn’t fail, it’s because of the quality of my writing,” he pauses, before continuing more confidently, “And I can live with that. And if people like other books – that’s cool.”

Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

39

Gettin’ jiggy with it McGill’s Urban Groove Dance Project pays loving tribute to hip hop dance culture

Nicolas Boisvert-Novak The McGill Daily

S

ometimes, when my mind wanders and my thoughts begin to drift, I wonder what hip hop culture would look like were it as complacent and joyless as indie rock. How, for instance, would white middle-class hipsters film the videos for “Yeah!” and Will Smith’s “Getting’ Jiggy Wit’ It” – the undisputable peaks of Western civilization?

First among the list of things to go would be the “40s” and sizzurp-filled Styrofoam cups; next, the smoke machines and blaring neon lights.

And in that same swoop, they’d likely do away with the scantily clad supermodels and – gasp – background dancers! My goodness! The music industry would crumble! Children would cry as Lil Wayne withdrew into obscurity! We would all be lost…

I apologize to those I’ve frightened – this was not my intention. The truth is, we all underestimate the part background dancers – unsung heroes of the music industry – play in our day to day lives. And though we rarely give them their due, the kind souls coordinating McGill’s Urban Groove Dance Project have more than made up for our neglect with Hip Hop 101.

Presented as a primer for hiphop’s impressive array of dance styles, Urban Groove’s year-end performance enlightened just as well as it entertained. Taking place at Concordia’s Moyse Hall-sized D.B. Clarke Theatre, the two-and-a-half hour dance extravaganza kept its audience captivated in spite of its high-school talent show trappings.

Indeed, whatever reservations those initially caused me were overcome by Urban Groove’s palpable enthusiasm and the sudden outpouring of an entire school-year’s worth of effort.

It’s those heaps of effort that Elise Antoniak and Jessemine Fok – this year’s coordinators for the Urban Groove Dance Project – seem to most vividly remember. The group’s intricate choreographies, they tell me, took hours to write and infinitely more to rehearse – and it shows. The group effortlessly flowed in and out of 19 performances, all well distinguished by their choice of dance style – whether it be old-school or locking, gangsta’ or R&B – the detailed costuming, and occasional flashes of storytelling.

All that attention to detail contributed to my impression of each performance as a staged version of a classic music video – say, any number of R. Kelly cuts – with added emphasis on the background dancers we so often ignore. And though both coordinators would prefer to liken their performance to amateur YouTube tributes, their use of song selection as an anchor for their performances’ themes drove my point home. Still, whatever the case was, the outcome was the same: a loving tribute to the vast dance culture that sprung from hip hop and is now inseparable from it.

What I couldn’t have guessed, however, was that their preparation was as much of a learning process for them as the event was for us. From their auditions in October (set to repeat themselves next year) to last weekend’s final kiss-off, dancers’ participation in Urban Groove Dance Project meant building off of their previous experience and delving into

Luke Thienhaus for The McGill Daily

styles they weren’t yet aware of, honing their skills through careful repetition. While neophytes – such as yours truly – would be better off paying for intro classes, seasoned dancers wishing to get acquainted with urban dance styles should consider joining them next year.

That said, if there’s one recommendation I’d have to make for subsequent performances, it’d be to relocate to a more intimate venue.

The choice of an amphitheatre – and such a large one at that – struck me as awkward, as the wide empty spaces dwarfed the performers. While the choice was well justifiable on artistic grounds – elevating popular styles to a plateau traditionally occupied by ballet and ice-skating Mickey mice – the event could have been made even more endearing had they ditched the stage.

Having the performers share the

floor with their audience, for instance, would have gone a long way in creating a communal vibe, perhaps even galvanizing non-dancers to turn their sad lives around and “get with it.” Still, mine’s a minor quibble, which I’d lost sight of within the first 15 minutes.

And by the end of the second hour, I could tell: no one in the audience would ever watch a music video and look the background dancers over ever again. We were saved.

contentious field of online dating.

Today, this practice is stigmatized: online dating is seen a last resort for the down-and-out desperate. Due to this reputation, Prest initially had a hard time finding people who were willing to be interviewed or to share their experiences on the show.

But online dating is a perfect example of the positive aspects of the technological disconnect. Prest found that “most of the people who do date online feel safer and more in control of how close they get than they otherwise might.” Women in particular, she said, tend to feel less subjected to objectification and feel they can set more distinct boundaries.

Prest discovered that online dating was particularly popular among people who desire to join online versions of their own communities, tracking down online meeting places

for seniors or queer men, for instance.

Visiting sites such as jdate.com, the leading Jewish singles network, ensures that visitors enter very specific dating arenas. Online dating in general introduces participants to a more level emotional playing field: people who join online dating sites conceivably have like-minded aims, and are willing to openly express them.

As far as the online dating stigma goes, Prest is confident it will lift eventually. “Social change takes time,” she says, and soon dating online will be accepted as another means of meeting people – as “just a different way of communicating.” As we learn to adapt to our rapidly changing world, it is only natural for us to adopt new forms of communication. But when it comes to our actual relationships, virtues such as honesty, trust, integrity, and patience will never get old.

Hook-ups for the Internet age CKUT’s Audio Smut levels the emotional playing field Sara Duplancic The McGill Daily

T

he other night, my male friend begrudgingly watched an episode of Sex and the City (SATC) with me, laughing at – not with – main characters, and occasionally sighing. Ultimately, he proclaimed that the show is responsible for making a whole generation of women cynical – an interesting claim that raises many questions. Is our generation as a whole more cynical than previous ones? If so, why are we so suspicious of each other’s intentions? Is pop culture that much more formative to our private, interpersonal relationships than our real life experiences?

The Carrie Bradshaw-esque tone I adopted above just goes to show that

pop culture phenomena like SATC do leave their mark on viewers. But my personal experiences, as well as those of several of my undergraduate friends, have led me to question the quality of human relationships in our postmodern ghost-land. Our society is so firmly rooted in the Western tradition of individualism that self-satisfaction and instant gratification sometimes seem to be the sole order of the day, shattering the very processes by which we establish deep and meaningful human bonds.

People become increasingly distant from each other as they walk their isolated paths. This leads to even less accountability and ownership of one’s actions, and a deeper entrenchment in – as opposed to a challenge to – one’s insecurities. In the end, many choose to play games instead of communicating honestly and openly. We

forego integrity, changing who we are from situation to situation.

Ironically, new communication technologies do much to isolate us from each other. New forms of communication – such as text messaging – truncate meaning, feeding our ravishing appetite for instant gratification and making us too impatient to connect with each other more deeply.

There is no Wikipedia article to help us out of this mess. There is always, however, the possibility of seeing the bright side of things.

“The Internet simultaneously connects and disconnects us,” says Kaitlin Prest, one-fifth of the sexpositive, feminist collective that produces the CKUT’s monthly program Audio Smut. This month’s installment of the show asked, “How do we hook up?” The topic eventually led to an examination of the fairly new and

40 Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

Do you like reggae music?

Montreal roots band meditates on their relationship with the city

Rupert Common The McGill Daily

“I

’m from London, Ontario, believe it or not,” says Mark Mahoney, who founded the Montreal-based roots reggae band INWORD. The singer and guitarist goes by the name Jah Faith when he performs but introduced himself as Mark. The band has five members, but for the interview they are represented by their two most vocal.

Alongside Mark is INWORD’s drummer, Jahsun – the originator of the Kalmunity Vibe collective.

Jahsun was raised in Montreal by his mother and father, who hail from Barbados and Saint Lucia, respectively. He made a point of saying that his mother came to the Caribbean island, “by way of the motherland,” a statement that aligns him with many of reggae’s original players. His black dreads, next to Mark’s blonde ones, capture how reggae has moved from these impoverished islands to the four corners of the world. Mark brings up something I didn’t know how to ask, and answers it better than I would have expected. “I’m Canadian. I’m not from the Caribbean,” he proclaimed, “I didn’t go through the same struggles as the founding fathers, or even some of the people today, but it doesn’t make my own unique expression using [reggae] any less valid.”

Kalmunity Kalmunity Vibe collective is having its six year anniversary show on May 16 at The saints (30 ste. catherine o.) expect to see: hip hop, reggae, funk, soul, jazz, poetry, and dance. entrance is $15.

The collective also performs every sunday at Diese onze (4115 st.

Denis), and every Tuesday at sablo café (50 st-Zotique e.) each costs $5. check out kalmunity.com.

They both recall listening to Bob Marley as 13-year-olds. Mark’s mother worked with a Jamaican nurse, who, after hearing of his interest in reggae, made him four tapes – all Bob. For Jahsun, the desire to escape from an overbearing family picnic provided his moment of clarity. He borrowed his mother’s Walkman and listened to side A and B of a Marley mix tape. “I’m telling you,” Jahsun admits, “everything the man said was like – ‘boom,’ and I just understood. From there on out, I knew this was the best music in the world.”

Jahsun is adamant that he “wants to live through music and not be apologetic for it.” This means that he holds no part-time job, something that would distract from his drumming. As an artist, he feels that his contribution to society is often under-appreciated. Mark articulates their contribution as an inspirational one. Through their lyrics and music, INWORD wants to push their listeners to find fulfillment within themselves. When Jah Faith repeats a chorus, it is not simply because it’s catchy, it’s because that is the one message he wants to stick in people’s heads. “The reality is [that] the rhythm of reggae music is very communicative,” explains Jahsun, “and if you put a message on top of that, it will flow into people’s psyche in a way that they will feel it.”

The two hinted that Montreal might not be the best place to perform their music. Although they have love for the city and the other reggae bands within it, when I asked about the “scene,” Jahsun said simply, “It’s dead, man.” He described how a scene should interact with people and generate itself, something that is not happening here in Quebec.

On any given weekend in Montreal, finding live reggae is not easy. Mark added that bars are concerned with profits; “They don’t want to book a reggae show because they feel the people that attend don’t drink as much as a rock band crowd.” When venues do book reggae shows, they often approach it with a poor understanding of the culture. Jahsun was

especially disgusted by the slew of clubs in Montreal that, “play reggae and hip hop music but won’t let the people who carry that culture into the clubs.” The dress codes these nightclubs enforce restrict the styles associated with the music.

When he performs in the city, Mark often asks the crowd, “do you like reggae music?” This is not meant to be arrogant or rhetorical: he really means it. Sometimes when INWORD plays, the audience seems stunned; they don’t quite know how to receive their vibrations. On such occasions, when Jahsun walks through the crowd in between sets, he is surprised to be greeted as warmly as he is. The energy people express to him individually oftentimes isn’t projected by the group and onto the stage. This is why Mark must ask his question.

They both agreed that, although reggae is an extremely popular genre, it hasn’t been adopted by the big cats of the music industry. With reggae just underground, and not played widely in live venues, Canadian fans who mostly listen through their headphones come to the show and experience a sensory overload.

Energy and warmth emanate from both Jahsun and Mark, and when they record their album, they want this feeling to come across. They tell me that it’s both a matter of performing the songs well, and recording them using the right formula. Jahsun and Mark both fell in love with reggae before it went digital. When producers used analogue, the old tape reels brought depth to the sound. In Mark’s words, the MP3s of today’s world “squish” reggae into one plane. “We have musicians playing like computers and computers trying to play like musicians,” said Jahsun. What INWORD wants to do. is put the needle back in the groove and make timeless music.

INWORD performs at Sala Rosa (4848 St. Laurent) on April 11. The show starts at 10 p.m. and costs $10.

If you like reggae music and want to hear some now, go to myspace.com/ Inword.

Camille McOuat / The McGill Daily

On the left: Mark Mahoney, a.k.a. Jah Faith. On the right: Jahsun.

CULTURE BRIEF Hot Doc takes a look at the boundary-pushing methods of ex-McGill professor Next month, Toronto’s Hot Docs Film Festival is screening a film on a controversial topic that hits home for McGill students. In co-presentation with imagineNative films and the Media Arts Festival, the festival will be showing Alanis Obomsawin’s Professor Norman Cornett – Since When Do we Divorce The Right Answer From an Honest Answer, which addresses the unorthodox teaching method of a former McGill religious studies professor.

The director of the film is being honoured with the Outstanding Achievement award in documentary film-making. A pioneering National Film Board director, Obomsawin has made such films as Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance(1991), Rocks at Whiskey Trench (2000), Richard Cardinal: Cry From a Diary of a Métis Child (1986), and many others

on topics concerning Canadian First Nations peoples. In Professor Cornett, for the first time, Obomsawin focuses on a non-Native topic – the reaction to the dismissal of a maverick educator.

Norman Cornett wanted to push fear out of the education equation and reawaken the joys of learning. His stay at McGill ended in 2007 with an abrupt contract termination after 15 years of teaching. The film follows Cornett as he trains students, using dialogue, field trips, and journals, to come to an understanding of themselves, intellectually and morally. Using student videos, the film captures controversial panel discussions arranged by Cornett, which include guests such as Prime Minister Paul Martin, actor Ethan Hawke, ex-Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard, jazz musicians Oliver Jones and Dave Brubek, and even Obomsawin herself. Cornett’s courses covered such wide-ranging topics as Judaism and anti-Zionism, the relationship between music and medicine, First Nations issues, death and dying, and media and genocide.

According to the film synopsis by Hot Doc’s Gisèle Gordon, “At a time when the role of higher learning is under intense scrutiny, this is a fascinating exploration of pedagogy, morality, and the price of freedom of thought.”

– Pamela Fillion

42 Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

Sasha Plotnikova / The McGill Daily

Out with the new, in with the old Export of used clothing to Africa creates jobs, new looks Nikki Bozinoff The McGill Daily

“I

foresaw a brilliant future of Africa, if by any miracle of good-fortune I could persuade the dark millions of the interior to cast off their fabrics of grass clothing and don…second-hand costumes…. See what a ready market lies here for old clothes!”

The now-infamous Sir Henry Morton Stanley wrote these words in the late 19th century as he carved out the land that would become the private colony of King Leopold of Belgium – the Congo Free State. Stanley, a brutal slave-driver known for “persuading” chieftains to sign away the rights to their lands, was a man driven, above all else, by economic pursuits. It is thus unsurprising that he should remark on the vast potential of African markets to absorb used clothing. That was over 100 years ago.

Today, Stanley’s prediction is proving itself correct. In the wake of trade liberalization policies in the developing world, the used clothing business has increased dramatically.

According to United Nations’ trade statistics, in 1990 Canada exported US $9 million worth of second-hand clothing. By 2008, that number had risen to US $174 million.

I

first became conscious of the degree to which used clothing is exported to Africa while in Ethiopia last summer. You can imagine my surprise when I met a woman in a rural town, a five-hour drive outside of Addis Ababa, wearing a T-shirt from a summer camp I had attended in grade school. During further travels I passed a man in a Montreal

Canadiens jersey, a Toronto Blue Jays baseball cap, a boy wearing purple snow pants, and numerous people dressed in hoodies with CANADA stamped in large letters across the front. These, of course, were only the easily identifiable Canadian items.

M

uch of the debate in the mainstream media concerning the export of used clothing centers around the assumption that the import of used clothing into African countries inhibits domestic production, and evokes fear of cultural imperialism.

According to Karen Tranberg Hansen, anthropology professor at Northwestern University and the author of Salaula: The World of Second-Hand Clothing and Zambia, however, used clothing has not strangled domestic industry. Tranberg Hansen argues that domestic production of clothing in Zambia declined in the early nineties for the same reasons that manufacturing in most other industries did: free-market policies at a time when industry was still heavily dependent on the import of raw materials, combined with inappropriate technology and poor management. In fact, Transberg Hansen says, the used clothing market in Zambia actually stimulates the economy by creating jobs. Employment in the used clothing industry can range from sorting items, to transporting large bales of clothing, to entrepreneurial work, operating stalls in a market place. She also cited Chinese imports, small amounts of local production, and chain stores from South Africa as other important players in the clothing market. “You have all these things that are in my view coexisting without a lot of struggle

because basically they are orienting toward different consumption niches,” she said.

Tranberg Hansen also dismisses notions of cultural imperialism, arguing that it is not a useful concept in a globalized economy. “A lot of [imported, used clothes] are manufactured far away from the West. Styles that we might call world dress, such as jeans, skirts, tops, sneakers, are not particularly locality-bound and people wear [them] everywhere from China to Zambia to Australia,” she said.

Tranberg Hansen also pointed out that though used clothing markets in Africa may appear chaotic and indiscriminate, imports are actually tailored to seasonal and cultural demand.

“It is specified in advance,” Tranberg Hansen said. “In a country like Zambia, there is a winter season that is very cold and indeed they sell jackets and coats.”

I

t is useful to consider that wearing used clothing can often be a fashion choice for many in the West, but for most in developing countries, it’s an economic reality. Still, as Tranberg Hansen described, it is an aspect of international trade that should be analyzed critically, rather than taken as an opportunity for victimization of those who wear used clothes.

“In the case of Zambia, and in many places in Africa, people want to be dressed nicely and they don’t care particularly about the source of these clothes. What they care about is putting together a ‘total look’ that...makes other people look at them,” she said. “People appropriate these clothes – it is kind of incorrect to think of them as old, because they are given new lives in new contexts.”

A UNIQ UE OPPORT UNITY TO GET

AG O RA

HYDRO

MONTR

QUEBE

YO

UR MUTEK _10 PA SSPORT AT EARL Y-BIRD PRICES ! ($1

C, UQA M 'S

95+TAX ES)

COEUR

EAL | A P RI L

DES SC IE N C

ES

8 | 200 9

10PM - 3AM AT AGORA HYDRO QUEBEC | UQAM'S COEUR DES SCIENCES 175, PRESIDENT KENNEDY AVENUE, MONTREAL TICKETS: $10 AVAILABLE AT ATOM HEART AND AT THE DOOR

10 TH EDITION | MONTREAL, QUEBEC, CANADA

MAY 27 - 31 | 2009 AKUFEN (CA) ATOM TM (DE/CL) CARL CRAIG (US) DEADBEAT AVEC PAUL ST HILAIRE (CA/DE)

GHISLAIN POIRIER (CA) MODERAT = MODESELEKTOR + APPARAT (DE) RICARDO VILLALOBOS & ZIP (CL/DE) AND MANY MORE...

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

All You Can Eat Matthew Park

Photo Essay

43

Compendium!

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

Lies, half-truths, and nakedity

Waves of feminism, tsunamis of juices Emily Jasper

A

A portrait of a nude male who should work about the arms a lil’.

Fellow graduates Regina Phelangi 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

27

28

24 30

29

32

41 44

47 51

34

40

43

52

13

25

31

33

39

12

22

21 23

26

11

48

36

37

38

42

45

46

49

50

54

53

35

55

56

57

58

59

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

60

61

62

ttending a university that places minute emphasis on the fine arts, one struggles in finding outlets for creative ventures. Two of my b.f.f.s, Adina and April, managed to find an imaginative means for expression in a weekly life-drawing class on campus. Low enrolment soon forced the class to be cancelled, and my friends were out of artistic luck. This past October, Adina decided to act on her lack of inspirational imagery and start a life-drawing class herself. This idea soon evolved into our weekly night life-drawing society, otherwise known as Flowing Juices.

Six of the society’s members live together in the Clark house where the class takes place, but the amount of participants can reach double that.

One of the potential 12 women will volunteer to model for the group about a week before the scheduled drawing class, so as to leave time for bodily research. Each Monday, that brave friend stands up, de-robes (literally, we have a satin turquoise kimono-robe with fire-breathing dragons on it, which is reserved especially for the model of the night to get into the mood), and powerfully poses for at least an hour so that the attentive artists can succumb to her image in admirable silence. We draw each other naked. What.

Those drawing remain quiet; however, we always play songs that reflect the intensity of the situation.

The model’s and artists’ concentra-

Across 1. Studs 6. Hardly haute cuisine 10. Crowds 14. To no ___ 15. Small stream 16. Stroke of genius 17. Half of an ice creamy duo 18. Most populous continent 19. Idiot 20. McGill grad turned Canadian political leader 22. What one might wear to graduation 23. “Make the ___-tide gay...”

24. Ms. Daniel, Ms. Morein, and other U3s, soon 26. Palin or Parker (var.)

30. Clamour 31. Sleep type 32. Barenaked Ladies 1992 hit 33. McGill’s MNI, for one 35. Within 39. Filipino language 41. Kind of penguin 43. “Remember the ___!”

44. Not all 46. With ‘tat’, a musical duo 47. Juicyfruit, e.g.

49. 3 1/2 or 4 1/2, maybe? (abbr.)

50. Santa has one 51. Sweater material 54. Bolted

tion is never disturbed by the surging music. However, if any of the songs on the Flowing Juices playlist pop up during a dinner-making session or house party, you can always see a glint of amusement in the eyes of all society members. Beside the sometimes humorous musical repetition, all other aspects of the class are taken extremely seriously. No one who is not drawing may be present, those participating are not to invite others without the blessing of the upcoming model, and anyone who does not feel comfortable sharing their drawings or their bodies with the class receives no pressure to do either. We have tried our hardest – and in my opinion accomplished – a safe space in which women can come together, engage in communal artistic sensations, exchange creativity, and not only feel good about improving our drawing styles critically but also ourselves essentially.

Volunteering to model has just as significant a role in the Flowing Juices experience as the actual life-drawing facet. Many of us feel more comfortable frequenting nudity than others, but both exhibitionist and wallflower can bond over the sensation that arises when standing vulnerable to scrutinizing charcoal until the “buzz” of the egg timer signals a position change. To describe the artists as “scrutinizing” may conjure allusions of judgement, but it is rather with loving dissection that my friends’ eyes pore over each other’s similarities.

The posing timeline is decided upon before the session begins (typically, we start with five-minute

quickies and eventually evolve into 20-minute portraits) but can easily be vocally adjusted as pose difficulty is often misjudged. Some pose facing forward, some pose backward, and a chair is often used for more interesting positions (again, mischievous glimpses are exchanged when an unsuspecting party animal decides to rest upon the infamous seat which has held many a bare ass).

Whenever I describe our story of Flowing Juices to other friends, family, or potential employers, the most common response has been “When can I volunteer?” It is this positive reinforcement that helps us in realising how unique our society is, aiding in the continuation of our weekly sessions.

We have only had one valiant male model thus far, but are more than welcome to future volunteers from all the genders. No matter the complexity of the shadowing, nor the intricacies of body parts, each artist fully supports the model’s choices and does their best to achieve the reproduction they most desire. At the end of each session, the model first receives a hearty applause and after the show-andtell portion of the evening, the artists receive one too. Support, camaraderie, and of course, creativity are what constitute our society’s objectives. Each aspect aids in our outlooks on each other and ourselves, helping to sustain the movement and add to the strengthening current of Flowing Juices. Sometimes we even need to lay down a towel.

56. Pat on the back?

57. McGill grad turned rock musician 63. Source of fibre 64. Length x width 65. Eastern Indian language 66. Fungal spore sacs 67. Pinocchio, at times 68. Chilly 69. Hunt for 70. Opposite of foe 71. Affirmatives

34. Fleeting 36. ___ sex 37. Do or re, for example 38. Convocation, in short 40. Angry look 42. Bus alternative 45. Breakfast staple 48. Garam ___ (Indian spice mixture) 51. Former President of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud ___ 52. Care for 53. 50’s actress Kelly 55. Black wood 58. Seed husk 59. A Great Lake 60. Tears 61. Kind 62. “___ who?”

Down 1. Pilgrimage to Mecca 2. Eye layer 3. One who makes busts 4. McGill grad’s Star Trek persona 5. Craftily 6. Salmon relatives 7. Lends an ear 8. Assortment 9. Flat 10. Times for Shakespearean dreams 11. Hatred 12. Neighbor of Togo 13. Town in India’s Chhattisgarh state 21. Visual’s partner 25. Jump 26. Bristle, to a biologist 27. ___ sex 28. Latvian capital 29. McGill grad turned New Yorker writer and author

Solution to Arnie’s last one W A S T

O N T O

C A B O T

E L O P E

B A T E

A L S O

O N I T

D I L A T L E A X O E R R B I L T O E A R N S

Y E L L E S R Y N F C A I U T S H A B L E

T R E A T

H A R P Y

A T H O E M M H Z A O N O K S S

A T O P

W H E A I D S R I A R A T B I G L I G A T O E N E C O L A T I R R A W E A E L I X R L H A N S U D I O M A E N E R

M E N U

P A D S

E M E E R

S A S S Y

S A N D

A N I S

Compendium

The McGill Daily, Monday, April 6, 2009

45

The Shatner map continues to direct students circa 1998.

SSMU map evokes past, memories Harriet Rocco The McGill Daily

R

efusing to acknowledge the disappearance of University Bytes and Sadie’s Tabagie,

SSMU execs continue to reject reality with maps and ideology from about ten years ago.

“Iiiiii just wanna fly,” one said.

“That ‘Semi-Charmed Life’ song has a lot of words,” another one muttered. PEACE.

That’s all, folks. You can contact Margot at margot.nossal@gmail.com.

Mallory Bey for The McGill Daily

You can find Angel’s work at angel-illustrated.blogspot.com.

Angel Chen for The McGill Daily