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CONTENTS 3

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NEWS

Shireen Ahmed on Muslim women in sports

PGSS Council

15

AUS Council

Scientific scepticism and its’ risks

Ancillary fees: what they are and why we’re discussing them

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6 MULTIMEDIA

The Canadian landscape, demystified

COMMENTARY

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Work hard, party hard: Social drugs at McGill DISCOVER EVERYTHING LE PETERSON HAS TO OFFER.

19 EDITORIAL Support Black and Indigenous trans women

Food trends’ influence on gentrification

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CULTURE

Satirizing Zionism in the Jewish Diaspora

Monetary inaccessibility in the sciences at McGill

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The Daily reviews

Political apathy and the changing tides

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Positions must be filled by five McGill students, duly registered for the upcoming Fall 2017 & Winter 2018 semesters, as well as a Community Representative, who are able to sit from July 1st, 2017 to June 30th, 2018.

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SPORTS

SSMU Council

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STUDIOS FROM

March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

NEWS

March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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SSMU says “NO” to fee increases Who benefits from ancillary fee increases? “The administration.”

Xavier Richer Vis The McGill Daily

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n Thursday March 23, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Legislative Council gathered for its penultimate meeting of this academic year. Council heard one notice of motion regarding amendments to the internal regulations of finance, two presentations (one of which was an update from VP University Affairs Erin Sobat on Memorandum of Agreement negotiations), and four motions brought forward by councillors.

The motions included a “NO” endorsement for the referendum on an increase to the Athletics and Recreation ancillary fee, a motion regarding continued SSMU participation in the Association for a Voice in Education in Quebec (AVEQ), a motion regarding revisions to the Equity Policy, and a motion regarding undergraduate senatorial elections, all of which passed. Council also heard reports from committees and executives.

Saying “NO” to fee increases A motion was presented to Council which would endorse a “NO” vote in the upcoming referendum question regarding an Athletics and Recreation ancillary fee increase.

Earlier in March, a Winter 2017 SSMU General Assembly (GA) motion was presented which, if enacted, would have mandated SSMU to reject referendum questions seeking to raise ancillary fees until McGill acknowledged students’ concerns with these fees. Moreover, the motion demanded that McGill provide yearly financial reports to SSMU executives about the allocation of ancillary fees, and that a moratorium be imposed on increasing overhead charges.

Simply put, overhead charges are incurred when the University bills student-fee-funded units for central administrative services, which are automatically provided through the operating budget.

Overhead charges were vehemently contested during the 2012 Quebec student protests, and yet despite years of student advocacy, little has been done to curb them at McGill.

Although it initially passed at the GA, the motion concerning the Athletics ancillary fee was invalidated when SSMU learned of a pre-existing contract with the administration, negating their ability to enact such a motion.

At Thursday’s council meeting, movers of the motion to endorse a

“NO” vote said that “recent Athletics and Recreation budget numbers indicate that it is within the university’s financial capacity to not only reduce overhead charges, but to increase funding transfers from the central operating budget to fee funded units.”

They felt that a “NO” vote would send a clear message to the administration that students were no longer comfortable with overhead charges. “[The administration] has set up this unsustainable budgetary model where every few years, their costs are increasing, and every few years, they come back to us for [a fee] increase, and they say ‘Don’t you care about these services? Give us an increase,’ and they have no incentive to change their budgetary model around the overhead charges,” said Sobat, in defense of the motion.

“They have a blank slate, or a free pass basically, to keep increasing [overhead charges and ancillary fees] because we’ve never rejected that kind of increase,” he continued. “It’s in the interest of showing the administration that as a collective student body, we are not in support of this funding model, and want to see a reinvestment – not even a reinvestment – but a reduction of those overhead charges, so that the money that we pay to Athletics actually goes in fact to Athletics and not back to the central administration to redistribute elsewhere.”

“[The administration] has set up this unsustainable budgetary model where every few years their costs are increasing, and every few years, they come back to us for [a fee] increase.”

—Erin Sobat VP University Affairs of the Students’ Society of McGill University

However, Athletics Representative Yue Jiao raised concerns with the motion.

“Why is it the understanding that having a ‘NO’ vote will result in the [administration] understanding that these overhead charges are too much?” she said.

“The reality is that a ‘NO’ vote is

SSMU Council. actually going to cause Athletics and Recreation to put themselves in a situation where they have to re-evaluate their budget and that will affect the services that are being provided to students.”

“Especially if a ‘NO’ vote is associated with a strong message over overhead charges,” Sobat responded, “it is sending a message to the University that actually their financial practices do need to change. We’ve seen from the Athletics budget that they at times have been able to reduce those overhead charges or increase the transfers of money that they’re giving back to Athletics for particular initiatives.” “[A “NO” vote] shows that students want to see that kind of funding model, and it is not the same thing as us just wanting to cut services,” he added. “This is a better message than us just saying, ‘No, we just don’t want to increase the fees.’”

A number of councillors agreed with Sobat. Science Representative Caitlin Mehrotra said that the administration’s demand for fee increases does “kind of sound like a threat,” and Senate Caucus Representative William Cleveland agreed that the administration had to be shown that “this is not acceptable.”

In concluding the debate, Jiao asked Sobat “Who do you think would benefit from the fee increase?” Sobat simply answered, “the administration.”

The motion endorsing a “NO” vote passed with 13 in favor, four against, and five abstaining.

Restructuring the Equity Policy Council approved a motion regarding revisions to SSMU’s Eq-

Conor Nickerson | The McGill Daily uity Policy, which had been tabled since February. “[The motion] was primarily a restructuring of the policy to make it more clear and accessible to people trying to access it, as well honestly to interpret it for the Equity Commissioners,” explained Sobat.

“The next step once it’s approved will be to develop some new communication tools around it: we’d like to have to flow chart to clearly outline the process, and some resources to make it as accessible as possible because we don’t want people to dive into this document as a first step if they’re looking for recourse in SSMU.” Sobat explained that the motion also outlined the scope and jurisdiction of the Equity Policy, clarifying plans when issues outside of SSMU in other faculty associations arise, and how to refer said issues to other faculty equity committees. The motion passed unanimously.

SSMU participation in AVEQ Council also approved a motion regarding SSMU participation in AVEQ. Last year in referendum, the student body rejected an offer to join AVEQ, but SSMU nonetheless serves as an official observer to the student federation. SSMU executives have argued that joining a student federation would greatly influence the Society’s ability to influence provincial and federal politics at a higher level.

Despite the student body voting “NO” to joining AVEQ, more students voted to abstain in the referendum than voted for or against, with some

positing a “lack of awareness of the role of student federations in general and of the AVEQ in particular.”

The motion approved at Thursday’s council will allow SSMU to remain an observer at AVEQ until the end of 2017, and allow SSMU delegates to continue attending AVEQ member assemblies. The motion also stipulated that SSMU will continue to “educate its members regarding the existence and role of AVEQ,” and bring another referendum question regarding affiliation to AVEQ to Council for consideration in the Fall 2017 semester.

The motion passed with 14 in favour, six against, and three abstaining.

Senatorial elections In November, Council allowed undergraduate Engineering senatorial elections to be organized by the Engineering Undergraduate Society (EUS) rather than by Elections SSMU. At the time, it was argued that holding senatorial elections alongside the election of EUS executives would increase voter turnout and interest in Senator positions, without overburdening the EUS. During the Winter 2017 senatorial elections, this was expanded to all faculty associations. Senate Caucus Representative Joshua Chin presented a motion to standardize this practice, officially amending both the Internal Regulations of Representation and Advocacy, and the Internal Regulations of Elections and Referenda.

The motion passed with no debate, 22 in favor, and one abstention.

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March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

News

PGSS Council discusses fee increase referendum

Council seeks to increase students’ political engagement

Ellen Cools The McGill Daily

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n Monday March 20, the PostGraduate Students’ Society (PGSS) Council met for its eighth council meeting of the 20162017 academic year, and its second General Meeting (GM). At Council, a motion was approved to create a special referendum regarding the graduate innovation culture fund, councillors were appointed to the appointments board by a lottery system, and a motion was brought from the floor to endorse a letter to McGill requesting that the Legal Information Clinic at McGill (LICM)’s referendum question be blocked.

At the General Meeting, PGSS members heard announcements, as well as reports from each of the executives. They also discussed ways to increase engagement at PGSS Council meetings in the future. Quorum was lost roughly half way through the GM, and as a result, new business was tabled until the next meeting.

Motion to block LICM referendum From March 20 to 26, the LICM is hosting a referendum which asks graduate students, “Do you agree to increase the non-opt-outable Legal Information Clinic at McGill association fee paid by all graduate students on the downtown campus, excluding post-docs, from $2.00 per student per semester (excluding summer) to $4.50 per student per semester (excluding summer), starting in Fall 2017?”

During the Council meeting, a motion was brought from the floor

by PGSS Chief Returning Officer

(CRO) Manmeet Rai. The motion initially sought to block the LICM referendum, but according to PGSS Council bylaws, this would have been illegal. In view of this, it became a motion to endorse a letter to McGill requesting that the referendum be blocked, regardless of the result.

The motion brought by Rai stated that the LICM presented the referendum question before PGSS Council at its January 2017 meeting, and it passed. However, “the next day certain discrepancies were found in the information provided by the LICM representatives at the Council.”

It further alleged that the LICM lacks financial transparency and has adopted “skewed” procedures in running the referendum, and called for a PGSS representative to be placed on the LICM’s board to report on the organization’s workings and suggest improvements.

At one point, a student from the Computer Science Graduate Society asked for more details regarding the procedural discrepancies. In response, Rai said that the LICM had provided a provision for a preamble to be added before the voting period begins.

According to Rai, the LICM claimed the preamble would only add factual information, but “what is happening with this factual information in technicality, [is] if a ‘No’ Committee goes out and garners a lot of support, and you add new information which is going to show up on the ballot, it takes away that element of all your campaigning that you’ve done.”

“This is something which is absolutely rigged and should not be allowed, and this is not how referendums take place,” Rai said.

Moreover, Rai said the LICM has allowed anyone to join the ‘Yes’ committee, but students who would like to be part of the ‘No’ committee would have to go through a nomination process. He added that this process is unclear.

It further alleged that the LICM lacks financial transparency and has adopted “skewed” procedures in running the referendum.

Rai also claimed that on a ballot, LICM is allowed to provide a link to the statement of the ‘Yes’ Committee or the ‘No’ Committee. However, Rai claimed that the link LICM provided leads directly to LICM’s website.

The motion also noted a number of financial concerns with regards to LICM, and questioned whether a fee raise from $2.00 to $4.50 was necessary.

One student, Matthew, asked the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of LICM to address the concerns brought up by Rai. Colby Briggs, CEO of LICM, claimed that there is no preamble

on the ballot, as LICM is using an omni-box system which provides a link to a version of a candidate system, something which is typically done in PGSS elections.

In addressing the claim that a nominations process is required only for students wishing to join the ‘No’ Committee, Briggs said that “LICM obviously wants the fee levy to pass, so it’s not really logical to have a distinct nomination process, but if they did have a nomination process, it would be a matter of ‘Hey, CRO, I would like to be on the ‘Yes’ committee.’”

The nomination process for the ‘No’ committee would be the same. Briggs added that no student emailed him saying they would like to form a ‘No’ Committee.

In response, Rai said “I don’t see any statement out there which says that if you are applying [to be part of] a ‘No’ Committee, it will only be, ‘Hey, CRO, put me on the ‘No’ committee.’”

He added that, according to the LICM’s procedures, the LICM Yes Referendum Committee will be exempt from nomination procedure.

“In practice, I’m not sure it really matters if there is a nomination process or not,” Briggs responded.

“The Yes Committee is automatically the Legal Information Clinic because the Legal Information Clinic is holding a referendum to increase the fee.”

Mina Anadolu, PGSS Internal Affairs Officer, also pointed out that in an email sent out by Elections LICM on February 27, LICM called for the formation of yes or no committees.

However, the motion was then tabled, as the Council meeting had reached its time limit.

Increasing engagement At the end of the General Meeting, PGSS Secretary-General Victor Frankel asked PGSS members how they thought engagement could be improved.

In response, Andrew Dixon, PGSS Health Commissioner, suggested that awards for PGSAs could increase engagement at Council. Jacob Lavigne, PGSS External Affairs Officer, said that people might feel disengaged because they may have a lack of understanding of many of the issues discussed at Council, and thus suggested further training at the beginning of the year.

In response to these suggestions, Anadolu announced that awards for PGSAs are in the works, as is an increase in orientation sessions and training.

Finally, a student named Matthew from the Graduate Students’ Association for Neuroscience said, “One of the things that I’ve noticed this year on Council is that there’s really not a lot of motions to discuss.

When we get to Council we’re really just hearing reports, there’s no actual discussion going on.

I don’t know if that’s because nobody knows how to actually write a motion [but] I think a workshop at the start of the year on how to write a motion, how to present it to Council, and how to actually make a difference here would be very interesting.”

AUS Council appoints new VP Finance Plans revealed for extensive renovation of Leacock terrace

Lizzie Grieco News Writer

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n Wednesday March 22, the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) Legislative Council assembled for one of its final meetings of the academic year. Council voted on a motion to amend the AUS Equity Policy, appointed replacements for former Arts Representative Igor Sadikov and former VP Finance Deepak Punjabi, and discussed new information concerning possible renovations to the Leacock terrace.

Resignation of the VP Finance Before giving her routine executive report, AUS President Becky Goldberg made a statement concerning Punjabi’s resignation, which occurred on March 20.

“There’s a lot of speculation spinning around about why Deepak resigned,” she said. “Just to clarify, he found a job off campus, that’s the reason. [...] It shouldn’t necessarily be encouraged

to find a job part way through another job, but I’m glad that he’s doing what he needs to do.”

This announcement followed the passing of a motion to appoint the Arts Financial Management Committee (FMC) Representative Noah Lew to the position of acting VP Finance.

Weeks earlier, Lew had been elected VP Finance for the 2017-2018 academic year.

Amendments to AUS Equity Policy A motion to amend the Equity Policy bylaws was moved by Amanda Hills of the Political Science Students’ Association, Nick Milum from the International Development Studies Students’ Association, and Equity Commissioners Jad El Tal and Leah Damo. The proposed amendment stipulated that AUS executives must undergo training on consent, responding to disclosures of violence, and being an active bystander.

“We feel like it’s really important that student executives are really prepared to handle the situations that come their way,” noted

Hills. “Especially because a lot of the events we run have alcohol and that really affects the nature of consent.”

The motion passed unanimously, and without debate.

“It shouldn’t [...] be encouraged to find a job part way through another job.”

—Becky Goldberg, President of the Arts Undergraduate Society Renovations to Leacock terrace In his executive report, VP Academic Erik Partridge revealed the Faculty of Arts Committee’s plan to renovate the Leacock

terrace to include an amphitheater. The project would involve a complete re-sloping of the area in order to incorporate green space and a new outdoor gathering place for students.

“This is somewhat problematic,” Partridge said, “because it would be an amphitheater probably without a roof, and I don’t know how many of you [...] want to stay outside in the middle of the winter.”

This prompted a question regarding whether or not the administration had considered using the money to instead create an indoor study space which would be fully accessible year-round.

“We suggested that they put some sort of potential ceiling over it,” he responded, “which they’re open to exploring. It would definitely not be heated in the winter.”

It was made clear that the administration had already gone far ahead with this project and it should soon be implemented despite these critiques.

News

March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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SSMU bound by contract on fees Agreement with McGill means fee increases must go to referendum

Marina Cupido The McGill Daily

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xecutives of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) were recently informed that SSMU is contractually bound to put any ancillary fee increases requested by the University to referendum. Under the provincial act governing the accreditation of student associations, SSMU’s Legislative Council would ordinarily have the power to debate and reject such fee increases; this newly-discovered contract with McGill negates that power.

Although this contract has been in effect since 2010, the current SSMU executive team only became aware of it in the context of a motion against ancillary fee increases which passed at SSMU’s most recent General Assembly (GA). Following the passing of this motion, which had been moved by VP University Affairs Erin Sobat, the administration apparently informed SSMU that the pre-existing contract effectively rendered it nonviable.

What are ancillary fees?

McGill undergraduates pay six dif-

ferent ancillary fees to the University.

These fees finance a range of services and programmes, from the Office for Students with Disabilities to McGill’s Athletics facilities. Ancillary fees are non-opt-outable, and they are initiated and governed by student referendums.

These fees are automatically adjusted to reflect inflation, but every so often, McGill requests a significant increase. Sobat sat down with The Daily to explain why this happens.

“The way [McGill has] set up most of these units – in particular ones like Student Services or Athletics – is to be very reliant on student fee funding,” he explained, “and there are increases to their costs for salaries, for inflation, for maintenance of their facilities and buildings over time, and so as a way to address those increased costs, [administrators], on a pretty regular cycle, come back to students requesting an increase.”

According to Sobat, this pattern of financing is unsustainable, hence his attempt to freeze increases on the Athletics ancillary fee through the aforementioned GA motion. He told The Daily that this reliance on student fees to run certain services is allowed

to occur because the services in question are considered non-essential.

“In something like Athletics or student services we have obviously been advocating for quite a while that the University stop charging overhead fees [...] to those units,” Sobat continued. “For example, in the case of Student Services in the Brown Building, that has been deemed not central to [...] the purpose of the University and so the central operating budget doesn’t pay for maintenance of the Brown Building – that comes out of the student services budget.”

Limiting SSMU’s independence In 2010, SSMU’s executive team signed a contract with McGill which stipulates that whenever the University requests an ancillary fee increase, SSMU must send that increase directly to a referendum. SSMU Council, which is composed of representatives from every McGill faculty and is intended to act as the Society’s main legislative body, has no opportunity to debate and potentially reject the requested increase.

In an email to The Daily, Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learn-

ing) Ollivier Dyens explained his view of this contract. When asked if, in his opinion, it limits student democracy at McGill to a damaging degree, he responded emphatically in the negative.

“We believe this Agreement actually strengthens ‘robust student democracy’ because it gives students – all students, not just a small group – the power to accept or reject a proposed fee increase,” Dyens replied.

“That’s direct democracy.”

Another issue that has caused concern is the fact that this contract has no end date, meaning that it could theoretically remain in effect indefinitely. It’s unclear why this is the case, but Sobat explained that

he’s committed to doing whatever he can to challenge the contract.

“I think that’s something certainly that should be looked at,” he said, “and obviously the ideal time would be in the context of the current Memorandum of Agreement [MoA] negotiations [...] I hope that the incoming executives will be interested in and concerned about. I’m going to do more research both in a legal sense [ and] in the political sense [...] and perhaps also working with other associations through a provincial student federation.”

Marina Djurdevic | The McGill Daily

Multimedia

March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

s w e i v e r p a i d e m i t l u M

What’s on Unfit to print this week?

(The Daily’s radio show)

March 15 episode: Reclaiming Queer Arab Stories & Gaps in Canadian Refugee and Immigration Law Content warning: discussion of Islamophobia, Homophobia The first segment of this episode features an interview with Saleem Haddad, the author of Guapa, a political and personal coming of age story of a young gay man living through the Arab revolutions in 2011. The novel, published in 2016, was awarded Stonewall Honour and received critical acclaim from the New Yorker and the Guardian. Haddad was selected as one of the top 100 Global thinkers of 2016 by Foreign Policy Magazine. The interview highlights Haddad’s inspiration for the novel, and the struggle to reclaim the narrative around Queer Arab stories. Haddad draws on the works of queer Arab activists and his own personal experience to discuss the struggle for freedom and equality in the Arab queer movement. Haddad was a speaker of the event, “Reclaiming Queer Arab Stories” hosted by the McGill Students in Solidarity for Palestinian Human rights.

The second segment features excerpts of Jenny Jeanes’ presentation on the gaps of Immigration and Refugee law in Canada. The presentation was a part of “The Future of Refugee law in Canada”, an event hosted

by The Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL) McGill. Jeanes discusses gaps and policy loopholes affecting refugees and those with non-legal status. She problematizes the lack of accountability in detention laws, given the amount of discretion given to immigration officers. Jeanes draws on recent cases of removal, where immigration policies failed to protect those seeking protection in Canada. These cases highlight enforcement measures that leave refugees at risk of a limbo, with no legal protection. Jeanes is currently the program coordinator of Action Réfugiés Montréal detention program. She has visited the Canada Border Services Agency in Laval, Quebec on a weekly basis since 2005.

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Commentary

March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Working through the system

Leftist groups need to get involved in partisan electoral politics James Ward Commentary Writer

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hen I returned to the U.S. to protest the 2016 presidential election, I noticed that many of the groups organizing the first demonstrations after the election had not been previously involved in partisan electoral politics. Most had never been associated with the Democratic Party, or with any mainstream American political groups. Instead, the organizing forces behind these demonstrations originated in the far left, among people who often identified as revolutionary socialists or anarchists and frequently expressed a disdain towards partisan politics in general.

This should not have been all that surprising. Leftist groups, often called ‘rad’ groups at McGill, are used to demonstrating. For those outside the mainstream political discourse, demonstration and direct action (such as shutting down inauguration entrances) are strategic decisions. It was these groups that had the fervor and know-how to get people into the streets marching against a semi-fascist demagogue who had taken the presidency on a platform of racism, sexism, and violent rhetoric. Yet these protests, both during and after the election, were reactionary and limited in scope, targeting the isolated phenomenon of Trump rather than promoting a distinct alternative vision. If leftist groups had involved themselves more directly in the political processes through which candidates and political platforms are chosen and created, we might be facing a very different situation-– pushing for the advancement of truly progressive policies instead of lamenting the victory of a rightwing demagogue over a defender of the neoliberal status quo. Moving forward, leftist groups need to use their principles and tactics to take an active role in creating the political conversation, rather constantly reacting to it.

The reason why leftist groups tend to avoid direct partisan involvement is because their political ideologies often characterize the capitalist state and all its elements as inherently oppressive, thereby defining any positive advocacy (by which I mean any advocacy in support of a political outcome) as complicity in state oppression. I am sympathetic to this view in theory, but an uncompromising adherence to these principles hamstrings the ability of leftist groups to affect change. The ‘rad’ left can oppose

government policy effectively, as in the 2012 student demonstrations in response to Quebec university tuition hikes, but it lacks the ability to advance concrete policies along the same lines (like free tuition, for instance), because doing so would involve endorsing government action and the politicians who drive that action. Leftist groups, especially those on university campuses, cannot afford to limit themselves like this. You may think “smashing the state” would be ideal, but there is a greater responsibility to aid and empower those who, right now, live under conditions of violence and oppression– racist, patriarchal, colonial, economic, or environmental– expressed through the state or the private sector or anything else.

We cannot distance ourselves from a political system that affects the lives of millions. We must engage.

We cannot distance ourselves from a political system that affects the lives of millions.

We must engage.

It is often argued that structural change has not been and cannot be made through political engagement.

The truth in this is that change cannot be made through political centrism and appeasement. However, not only is it possible to affect change through radical engagement in politics, it is through this engagement that the left has made its greatest accomplishments. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, or “snick”), for instance, can claim significant credit for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, legislation that, while in no way ending structural racism in America (as is often claimed on the right), reshaped the landscape of racial policy for the betterment of Black Americans. SNCC, founded at Shaw University and eventually expanding to chapters across the country, was a ‘rad’ group by any measure.

Its tactics included direct actions often carried out in the face of lynch mobs organized by local police and the Ku Klux Klan, and its radical student activism inspired other campus groups like Students for a

Marina Djurdjevic | The McGill Daily Democratic Society (SDS). Many of the touchstones of contemporary activist culture, like consensus based decision-making, have their roots in SNCC. However, SNCC was directly engaged with political reality. It demanded specific political action from specific political actors and condemned half-assed attempts to placate it. At times, it was deeply antagonistic towards the Democratic Party, as when it formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in parallel to the nationally recognized, and entirely white, Mississippi Democratic Party. However, SNCC did not disavow political change, just as it did not rely on the benevolence of elected politicians to enact it. Instead, those in SNCC understood that radical action is necessary to force political action, and through their methods can claim to have reshaped the political and social landscape of America.

Radical action is needed for democracy to function correctly because, as any ‘rad’ activist will tell you, democracy is rigged in favour of those in power. Voter disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, media capture, campaign financing– these criticisms of the democratic process are fully valid. These are not, however, reasons to abandon democratic engagement because, firstly, structural barriers exist to any form of anti-oppressive action, and secondly, ‘rad’ groups specifically are needed to fight these barriers. The media cannot stop people from seeing marchers in the streets, and the political effect of occupying buildings or conducting mass strikes cannot

be bought. For those who are educationally or economically disenfranchised, radical organization outside conventional channels lets them bring their political weight to bear.

Criticisms of the democratic process are fully valid. These are not, however, reasons to abandon democratic engagement.

The final false conception about democratic engagement is that it requires abandoning other radical or revolutionary activism. In his 1965 speech “The Ballot or the Bullet,” Malcolm X criticizes the Democratic Party for inaction and betrayal. He lauds Black Nationalism, suggests that Black Americans ought to arm themselves, and threatens guerilla warfare against the white supremacist state. Yet, his message was not to abandon the ballot—it was to use the ballot “like a bullet,” as a weapon to force change. Political involvement does not contradict radical ideology or methods, as long as the ultimate goal is to better people’s lives.

You can be revolutionary, organize in a revolutionary fashion, and still engage with the political reality. We do not have to choose – we cannot

afford to choose. We should pursue change down all avenues.

What that means, practically, is that leftists and leftist groups should meet with, speak to, and demand change from politicians and political parties, publically and privately, at every level. It means that when those politicians and parties ignore those demands, or make only a pretense of effort, we should call them out by name in our actions and demonstrations, in our literature and in our discourse. It means that, if a politician demonstrates they are truly committed to taking concrete political action against violence and oppression, we should give them whatever support we can. Individual leftist groups have power, especially at the local level, to meaningfully influence political outcomes. When they band together nationally and internationally, that power is multiplied. We should not abandon this power out of ideological purity or paralyzing cynicism.

Perhaps it is easier, in principle and practice, to react, to oppose, to fight back. Fighting for things is complicated, and whatever is achieved will always be a compromise, not measuring up to what is principally deserved. But we do not have to be satisfied with those compromises to acknowledge that they may improve the lived experiences of millions of people. The political process shapes those experiences.

We need to be involved.

James Ward is a U1 History and English Literature Major. To contact the author, please email james. ward@mail.mcgill.ca

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March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Paying for grades

COMMENTARY

The underlying classism of undergrad sciences at McGill

Laura Brennan The McGill Daily

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hen you attend university, you are paying for an education. Universities were founded upon the love of learning and the desire to answer unanswered questions, although access to these opportunities has always been limited to those privileged by class, race, gender, and ability. However, the contemporary interpretation of university life has come a long way from the initial pursuit of knowledge – as undergraduate degrees are becoming more and more like a high school diploma, university environments can often feel more like a competition, especially in the sciences. Undergraduate general science courses are often filled with hundreds of intelligent medschool hopefuls (myself included), all grappling with the newfound fact that they are no longer the “smartest in the room.” I can imagine these classes are as challenging to organize and instruct as they are to attend. How do you assess a class of 500 to 1000 students who were all the top of their respective high school classes? Professors often resort to difficult multiple choice examinations that are worth the majority of your final grade, as it is just too logistically difficult to do anything else with the provided budget, limited teaching assistants, and time.

When I entered McGill this year, I expected that just like in high school, with a fairly involved study schedule and regular class attendance, I would be provided with the resources to succeed in exams. I have no trouble spending many hours studying, and I have never missed a single class – somehow, I still find myself struggling to keep up in almost every single class. I have no trouble admitting that I am often very lost in class as the pace of university courses and

style of learning is not something I am used to. Sometimes, I feel like I am just not given the proper resources to succeed – and I know I am not alone in feeling this way.

I have no trouble spending many hours studying, and I have never missed a single class – somehow, I still find myself struggling to keep up in almost every single class.

In fact, there is a whole industry that preys on this feeling of helplessness – and for $200 to $500 or more, you can attend an exam prep session with small class sizes, and an instructor who breaks down complicated problems and teaches you in a style similar to high school, even providing exam problems and their solutions that often happen to magically be the exact questions that end up on the exam.

I am not targeting any particular company or business – there are many of them out there. Not only that, there are even websites with a paid subscription of $20 or more a month where you can have tutors work out your online assignments for you.

There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with these prep sessions or wanting to attend them.

After all, it is reassuring to feel like you understand the content that is

going to be on an exam. The problem is that there are people who can afford attending these sessions before every exam, and there are those who simply cannot, especially when the exams start to add up. Due to the fast paced nature of science courses, it’s pretty much guaranteed that those who attend these courses will perform better on the exams, and because a significant portion of the class does pay for these sessions, they drive the average up, leaving behind those who struggled through the content on their own because they had no other choice. If the exam is curved, those who could not afford the prep session will be negatively affected. Another consequence of this is that professors often end up with feedback that shows a greater understanding in their course than there actually is, and thus lowers the resources even more for the students who cannot shell out upwards of $200 every time an exam rolls around. To put it simply: those who are more financially well off are much more likely to do well in undergrad sciences at McGill.

The more I think about this issue, the more complex it becomes. I have attended a few of these prep sessions, and they did significantly help me succeed on the exams I wrote. However, I also felt an immense sense of guilt and hypocrisy, as I knew I was experiencing a privilege that my peers often did not have access to.

I also felt cheated, considering I am already paying for my edu-

cation, yet I have to pay for my grades on top of it. Many professors and teaching assistants recognize this issue, and some courses have free teaching assistant-lead cram sessions to mimic these paid sessions, which I greatly appreciate. However, an instructor, knowing what is on the exam, is never going to simply give away the answers to an exam question. At paid prep sessions, this is exactly what they do, and this is where the fundamental difference will always lie unless something changes.

I also felt an immense sense of guilt and hypocrisy, as I knew I was experiencing a privilege that my peers often did not have access to.

improve the teaching and support at McGill. This would include hiring more professors as instructors based on their teaching ability rather than their research capabilities. This would mean allocating more of the departmental budget to teaching-assistant lead tutorials and review sessions. Perhaps this could also include teaching workshops for present faculty so they are more able to connect with their students and get their intended point across. This would mean changing the primary structure of undergraduate science courses at McGill so students no longer feel they need to turn to external support to understand the content.

As for the present state of my undergraduate science experience, I don’t know if I am surprised that this is the way it is, I am very disappointed. I believe that those that work hard should succeed, period, no matter their financial situation.

Laura Brenna is a U0 Sciences student. To contact the author, email laura.brennan3@mail. mcgill.ca.

What would this change look like? In my opinion, the best strategy would be to

Jennifer Guan | The McGill Daily

Letters to the editor Submit your own: letters@mcgilldaily.com

In response to a commentary article, “Fed but not nourished” (March 20, 2017)

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s a University food service we can always do better, but this article was a little misleading.

Our dining halls offer a wide variety of choices, some in the comfort food or unhealthy snack category, while most are balanced or healthy options.

Your statement, “Presently, McGill cafeterias cater more to what a student wants to eat than what a student needs to eat” is false; we aim to do both.

We do offer poutines once a month in

most residences and we do a cookie madness day 2-3 times a semester in only two residences. Our unhealthier options are staggered throughout the year, whereas Meatless Monday, however, is held and subsidized in all residences once a week all year.

There was a reference to Nutella by the kilo; SHHS only offers 11g or snack packages.

We offer soft drinks, but we also offer more than 10 choices of “milk” – 1 per cent milk, skim milk, chocolate milk, three fla-

vors of soy, three more of almond, lactose free… as well as more than thirty other non-carbonated/non-sugar drinks.

We offer only soups made from scratch and there is always a vegetarian or vegan option available. Many of our “cream soups” are actually creamed with liquid tofu!

In dining halls the “Hot Meals” are not usually carbohydrate options but are most often a lean, sustainably sourced protein and a vegetarian and or vegan option with protein coming from tofu and legumes,

with a side of fresh-roasted or steamed vegetables and a wide selection of rice, grains, pastas, and potatoes.

SHHS has two full-time and one-part time nutritionists on staff. We are the first Canadian university to seek and achieve a certification from SPE (a third-party certification) for nutritious and sustainable choices in the dining halls.

—Oliver de Volpi Executive Chef, Operations and Sustainability

COMMENTARY

March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Gentrification on a plate

The ‘cereal’ gentrification of communities around the world

Hannah Rapaglia Commentary Writer

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hey’re colourful, they’re loud, and they’re literally everywhere. I’m talking about food videos. Anyone who has been on Facebook in the past year has surely seen these videos by BuzzFeedFood, Tasty, Delish, INSIDER Food, and POPSUGAR Food.

This is not to say I haven’t indulged in watching a few dozen said videos myself. In fact, I recently found myself distracted from an entire lecture by food videos playing on a student’s computer in front of me. Though they may be captivating, their intent is far from innocent.

These videos contribute to gentrification by attracting tourism associated with hip new diners and dives. Though these restaurants have a following among outsiders, they are far less appealing to the locals in these communities. According to Jonathan Montpetit, reporting for CBC News, low-income residents are disillusioned by the appearances of shops and restaurants; they cannot afford to take advantage of the gentrification of their communities.

There can be positive aspects to the development of new restaurants in traditionally poor or neglected neighbourhoods: from Brick Lane, London to St Henri right here in Montreal. After all, gentrification can yield fresh revenue, an expanding cultural scene, or aesthetic improvements. However, the hidden culture behind the food videos that bring about some of this gentrification is harmful and exploitative.

Montreal is intimately familiar with the process of gentrification through social media advertisements. Gentrification affects students who are looking for an affordable place to settle down after they graduate; they may find themselves displaced as a result of gentrification, as it raises the cost of living.

St-Henri is one community among several in Montreal– Rosemont, the Gay Village, and Mile End, to name a few– which has been hit hard by gentrification in the past two decades.

For St-Henri the development of condos led to a growing number of new businesses preparing to cater to this new population. In turn, as the number of new businesses in St-Henri increased, so did median incomes, property taxes, and rent costs. The quickly-rising cost of living created complications for StHenri residents, and they were not going unnoticed. In fact, distressed members of the community began to lash out against the noticeable gentrification with sit-ins, demonstrations, and even vandalism.

Rahma Wiryomartono | The McGill Daily In May 2016, a group of protesters took action against a high-end grocery store in St-Henri called 3734. Fed up with the gentrification they’d been seeing for years, the vandals graffitied the “bourgeois” grocer, set off smoke bombs, stole thousands of dollars worth of merchandise, and left a strongly worded letter behind. Their actions are explained in the final statement: “Long live de-gentrification.”

Gentrification is not exclusive to Montreal, but is rather a growing international concern, especially within big cities. For example, gentrification in London, England elicited similar reactions from their local community members.

Back in 2014, a pair of British brothers opened Cereal Killer Cafe in the formerly poor and immigrantfilled neighborhood of Brick Lane, London. Described by the owners as a “colourful, nostalgic eatery,” it was a gimmick from the start. In fact, the cafe was allegedly a stroke of hangover-induced genius, and it has since served the brothers well financially.

Charging upwards of £4.00 for a bowl of sugary cereal, Gary and Allen Keery have made a killing– no pun intended– off hungry hipsters’ strange fascination with splashy, new-wave eats. And, though the cafe itself doesn’t offer much beyond breakfast, it has garnered staying power. Despite picking up most of its media coverage in 2014 and 2015, Cereal Killer Cafe and places of the like are still glamorized in videos across Facebook and Snapchat Discover–

where media goes to die– in 2017.

One popular food video page, Delish, posted about the Cereal Killer Cafe just this past week, and the comments are overwhelmingly positive. Facebook users can be seen sharing the post and tagging their friends at will, exclaiming about how they “HAVE to try this place!”

Yet, despite its sudden resurgence of popularity, Cereal Killer Cafe is no stranger to controversy. The Keery brothers certainly have their critics. In fact, the cutesy joint has been the target of criticism and protest through the years - according to a report for The Guardian by Nadia Khomami and Josh Halliday, protesters in 2015 scrawled the word “scum” on the cafe window and wielded lit torches while carrying pigs’ heads.

The protest’s motivations are understandable. Many people who believe in the solidarity of their working class communities are tired of social media bringing unwanted tourism to their beloved neighborhoods merely on the basis of a restaurant or bakery selling some ridiculous confection. Specifically, communities of colour and immigrant communities —among others—have been marginalized and forced out of their neighbourhoods in urban spaces across the world, despite having made their homes there through past decades.

This is largely due to their collective food economy taking the brunt impact from this influx of Facebookinspired eating habits.

For people of colour in newly gentrified neighbourhoods, part of the

problem surrounding the growing popularity of food videos is that they promote inauthentic ‘ethnic’ restaurants rather than giving this invaluable advertising to lesser-known, authentic establishments. In a Washington Post article by Roberto A. Ferdman in which he interviews Krishnendu Ray, an expert on food studies at NYU, the double standard behind the American people’s obsession with “ethnic food” is exposed: “We want ‘ethnic food’ to be authentic, but we are almost never willing to pay for it.”

Part of the problem surrounding the growing popularity of food videos is that the promote inauthentic ‘ethnic’ restaurants.

Additionally, Ray speaks to the idea that ethnic food is looked at from a position of superiority, “because of our refusal to treat it with the same prestige as we treat others [types of food], [the food] is not nearly as authentic as we imagine it to be.”

Of course, uncritical pop-culture consumerism lends itself well to the

decrease in traffic to authentic eateries. People who see a Facebook video advertising a new hotspot not far from them are surely more likely to seek that out excitedly than they are likely to do further research and try to find something more authentic. After all, part of the allure of the minute-long soundbite-esque food videos is that they reel you in with pops of colour and lively music without actually giving you any substantive information. They might share two or three menu items—sans prices, of course—along with the general location of the joint. From there, it’s the consumer’s job to share the video with friends and desperately hunt for the spot it’s advertising.

Greeted by obnoxious poppy music and a clip of the classic “Mikey Likes It!” bit, I revisit the Delish video promoting the Cereal Killer Cafe once more. However, this time as I watch it I am overcome with a sense of bleakness. On the one hand, I am glued to the screen as sinfully sweet menu items with catchy names like “Unicorn Poop” and “Double Rainbow” are prepared before my eyes. On the other, though, I cannot help but remember the dark side of places like this, and the consumerism, gentrification, and urbanization of working class communities they cause at will.

Needless to say, I instantly lose my appetite.

Hannah Rapaglia is a U1 English Literature and World Religions student. To contact the author, email hannah.rapaglia@mail.mcgill.ca

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down the habit hole Coming out of a four-year addiction to cocaine, I wanted to find the line between use and abuse of social drugs

*content warning* *cocaine and alcohol addiction, and self-harm.*

March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Features

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written by natalie liconti | visuals by conor nickerson

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f you Google image search “coke addict” you’ll likely get results of celebrities like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton passed out in the back seat of a private car. Do the same for “crack addict” and let me know if you find a top image result that features any teeth. While I’m definitely not Lindsay Lohan – even though I’d like to be – and I still have all my teeth, I am an addict.

Nina, a fourth-year student at McGill, writes to me that she believed that an addict couldn’t possibly look like her. “I had no idea I could be an addict until I actually learned more about addiction and met other young people who were sober, who showed me that recovery was possible,” she tells me.

Similarly, it took me years to realize that my ‘bad habits’ were actually an addiction.

Why did it take me so long to understand that my use/abuse was a problem? I am addicted to cocaine, and cocaine is a social drug. Social drugs connect the isolated, the insecure, and the anxious. They push the introverts out into the world of “normalcy” (whatever that is), the world of partying and social activity that university students are generally expected to engage in. Cocaine became my drag queen.

She was fabulous, social, horny, witty – she was what I wish I could be all the time.

Cocaine gave my antisocial, awkward, and inhibited interior self a Miss Congenialityscale makeover.

As I stopped using cocaine, I felt increasingly as if I was living between two worlds, unable to fully participate in either.

I was having trouble being sober and reintegrating into my social circles. I felt shameful when I slipped up and used again.

However, I also did not feel that I belonged in addiction support groups. By all external metrics, I was “high functioning”: I earned top grades, regularly called my mother, was actively involved in theatre and performance, and was in a stable relationship. As a result, my friends and peers didn’t see my dependency on cocaine as an issue – though many of them were aware that I used regularly. I thought, to be an addict, I had to have hit proverbial rock bottom. I began to understand how many addicts felt the way I did, and were slipping under the radar in their dependency on social drugs.

My goal for this article is not to sound like Oprah on “Oprah’s Next Chapter,” but I did want to interview people in my community about their experiences with addiction and party drugs, specifically in the context of McGill. One of these people is Anna*. A student at Concordia, Anna has struggled with drinking since the age of fourteen, and she tells me that she had much more trouble getting help for her alcoholism than for her abuse of prescription drugs. In the case of her addiction to opiates and Benzodiazepines (like Xanax) she was “a visible addict” – she lost weight, became increasingly withdrawn from society, and eventually overdosed before her hospitalization. Thus, she received immediate institutional care. She no longer uses any kind of non-social drugs, but her dependency on alcohol continues, and she’s finding it harder to address because of alcohol’s widespread use in social settings.

Cocaine became my drag queen.

She was fabulous, social, horny, witty – she was what I wish I could be all the time.

Part of the reason Nina and I had a hard time realizing we were addicts is because lot of our images of addiction are rooted in racist, classist, and colonial stereotypes.

The addicts we see in pop culture are almost invariably poor, uneducated, Black, or Indigenous. We have particularly deeprooted racism when it comes to particular substances: Indigenous people are often shown to be alcoholics, and Black people are portrayed as crack addicts, for example.

We need to unlearn these stereotypes because they’re deeply destructive to the marginalized communities they’re lobbied against, and have been deployed to justify their mass incarceration and ongoing disenfranchisement. But also because they

prevent us from recognizing those who don’t fit the image – in my case, white, universityeducated, and middle-class – as addicts.

I hope that this article can be the beginning of revisioning a more accurate spectrum of addiction. I believe that in doing so, we may widen a vocabulary for the treatment and support of addicts.

Down the habit hole Cocaine became my entire life very quickly. I began using cocaine when I was eighteen, and less than a year later I couldn’t have an alcoholic drink without accompanying it with coke. Over the three years that I was heavily using, I would buy a gram a week on average. That’s about $320 a month, amounting to nearly $4,000 a year. I remember one week I had $12 in my account and still bought coke that night.

I always found a way to pay for it. I began compulsively stealing from pharmacies and grocery stores to save an extra thirty dollars here and there.

Eventually I couldn’t afford cocaine anymore – not the price, but the sleepless nights, the damaged relationships, the increasingly aggressive behaviour, the manipulation of friends and family, and the complete sense of desperation that I felt without it. Instead of feeling excited to go on exchange in my final year of university, I became incredibly anxious about the thought of arriving in a new city without having a dealer there. I even considered flying with bulk, or mailing cocaine to my address in Glasgow. Of course, within a week, I found a dealer in Glasgow. While I was traveling in Europe during my exchange, my trips were determined by whether I could travel via train in order to bring cocaine with me.

If I had to fly somewhere, I would frantically contact all of my connections to see if they knew someone who knew someone who could “hook me up in Stockholm.”

Addiction is exhausting.

Hélena*, a friend of mine who works at a restaurant in Montreal, began drinking when she was fourteen. She tells me that in the town that she grew up in, drinking was normalized and “everyone was getting fucked up.” Being naturally shy, she found alcohol

appealing because it helped her feel social.

From there, drinking became a habit, then an addiction. “When you learn how to function with a substance in your life,” she tells me, “you don’t even see what it’s like to function without that substance. It automatically becomes an addiction.”

The habit began as an excuse. She would tell herself I can’t fall asleep without a couple of beers, or I can’t unwind after work without a couple of beers. As her tolerance built up, a couple of beers escalated into a bottle of wine every night. “When a bottle of wine isn’t enough to get you drunk,” she says, “there’s a serious fucking problem.”

So after years of drinking, Hélena began to ask herself some difficult questions like Can I go out and not have more than two beers?, which was clearly not the case.

Working in the service industry furthered the normalization of alcohol as a daily ritual.

Since drinking is an inherent part of the afterwork culture in the service industry, she told herself, We’re all like this, it’s not a problem if everyone does it.

I thought, to be an addict, I had to have hit proverbial rock bottom.

Eventually Hélena became less and less functional and began to feel serious physical repercussions from her drinking. To alleviate the physical pain associated with constant hangovers – fatigue, headaches, muscle aches, stomach pain, decreased sleep, shakiness, and depression – she would start drinking earlier in the day. It got to a point where everything she did revolved around whether or not she would have access to alcohol. Her mind was consumed with whether she could make it to the dep on time before it closed after her shift. If she couldn’t make it, she’d have to go to the local bar where she would be surrounded by people with similar problems. She had developed superficial friendships with people who she believed to be important to

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March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

her, but really what was important to all of them was drinking.

Just like Hélena, Nina tells me how she began to orchestrate her entire life around ensuring that she could drink. “A habit floats around in the background,” she says, “where[as] an addiction is the undercurrent to everything that you do.

The difference between addiction and habit is that you can’t imagine life without this substance,” she writes. “Non-addicts change their behaviours to meet their goals, but addicts change their goals to meet their behaviours.”

Drugs are super fun until they’re not fun anymore After Hélena’s first attempt at sobriety several years ago, she re-introduced alcohol several months later – and her alcoholism soon got worse than it had ever been. One night her upstairs neighbour broke into her apartment after smelling smoke. She had been cooking when she passed out on the kitchen floor, drunk; her food began burning and filled the apartment with smoke. “That took me a while to get over,” she tells me.

“The shame associated with something like that happening [...] When all you know is drinking, you just drink to forget that kind of thing. That incident was definitely the beginning of the end.”

I was feeling empty and tired, after years of using cocaine regularly. I would feel so much shame from things I had said or done to people while being high, and I didn’t want that anymore. I was desperate to find the middle ground of having two drinks and going home – without doing coke. For me everything is always all or nothing, a mindset inherently bound to my manic depression. When I tried to cut back on my use I’d either stay in, needing complete isolation from all people, or go out and stay out until the sun came up.

Similarly to my experience with coke, Nina tells me that “drinking socially” had a very different meaning than what it apparently meant to other people. For others, drinking was a nice accessory to a pleasant event. For her, “drinking was the event.” She drank because of self-hate and it became a socially acceptable way of selfharming. When she was drunk she stopped hating herself for a few hours. Eventually she learned that it’s not normal to black out every single time you drink. She tells me that “The most powerful part of addiction is it’s the only disease that tells you that you don’t have a disease.”

Work hard, party hard: Drugs at McGill It’s especially hard to quit social substances like cocaine or alcohol because we’re trained to think that being social is necessarily positive. It’s hard to see how high energy and extroversion could be a symptom of an illness. But we sometimes end up enforcing sociability – especially in a university environment, with immense pressure to have “the best four years of your life” – at the expense of our health.

McGill, and Montreal generally, are known for their “work hard, party hard” ethic. But it’s a lifestyle that ends up invisibilizing addiction: when you’re getting good grades and making new friends, it’s so easy to

argue that it’s alright to do Adderall during the day and coke at night.

Nina is drug-free and sober, and has not let this socially isolate her. She still often goes out; she simply won’t drink alcohol. She tells me that now she knows what situations she enjoys: “Come out dancing with me and expect to see me flapping on the dance floor, Red Bull in hand,” she says. People in her life frequently forget that she is sober and drug-free because she looks nothing like the somber, no-fun sober girl stereotype.

“When you learn how to function with a substance in your life, you don’t even see what it’s like to function without that substance.

It automatically becomes an addiction.”

Having spent her entire academic career in recovery, Nina told me that, “At McGill, there’s a disturbing culture that normalizes substance abuse, and can make it extremely difficult for students to recognize addiction when it’s present in their lives.” Being from the U.S., she had no knowledge of what frosh was. By complete luck, she signed up for Rad Frosh (which isn’t dry, but isn’t centred around drinking) instead of the more typical Faculty Frosh (“had the McGill website described this as what it is, chugging beer at 10 a.m., the choice would have been easy for me”). She has now seen casual cocaine use at parties go unquestioned, and has learned about drinking competitions like Carnival that are spun as ‘school sponsored charity events.’ As a floor fellow, she has watched students spend hundreds of dollars a week on drugs, drink every night, and simply slip under the radar. She has friends who have either gotten sober while at McGill, or came here already sober, and they have all shared these sentiments: McGill fosters a community that normalizes harmful substance use behaviours, ignores addiction, and provides next to no support for those struggling with substance use issues.

In complete agreement with Nina, I have found McGill Counselling and Mental Health Services (CMHS) insufficient (to put it lightly) when it came to seeking help for my addiction. In my first year I made several attempts to get into a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) group therapy session – a type of therapy well-suited to treat addiction – and was on a waitlist from November until March. When I was finally at the top of the waitlist, I was told by the same clinician that had encouraged me to sign up immediately that I was unable to join as there were only a few sessions left before the summer. When I asked if I could be placed on the waitlist for the following semester, the clinician said I’d have to come in the Fall and try again.

There have been a number of recent reforms of mental health services at McGill – like combining Mental Health and

Counselling services, and their new, dubiously effective stepped-care model. These changes were instituted only in response to student outcry in the face of months-long waitlists and inadequate care. Currently, CMHS’s Substance Misuse Program (SMP) is the main hub of support on campus for students with addictions – but McGill needs a wider variety of support groups and resources specifically addressing addiction. But we’re stuck in a catch-22: the stigma and silence surrounding addiction makes it difficult for students who are former or current addicts to publicly call on the administration to provide adequate support. This lack of resources only make it easier for students to develop or sustain addictions without the proper help.

Breaking the habit, and recovery It was a Monday morning and Hélena thought to herself, It’s a fucking Monday. You don’t need to have a drink on a Monday. Half the world doesn’t get as shit-faced as you do on a Monday, it’s going to be okay. “And then it was Tuesday, and I thought, It’s fucking Tuesday – I don’t need to have a drink. And then on Wednesday, and the first drink that was punched in was a mistake – and the week before I would have been super stoked that the first drink was a mistake because that’s a free drink I could have. I had it in my hand and I thought, No – and gave it to someone else.”

“So it became one day at a time,” she says.

The most significant part of Nina’s recovery has been her membership in 12 Step Groups (groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, and Narcotics Anonymous). She is also involved with these programs professionally, and tells me that the sense of community healing and support is life-changing for her clients. It helps them make new friends, learn coping skills for life, and understand their addiction in order to overcome it.

Anna has found abstinence approaches to be less useful; the all-or-nothing approach of abstinence groups feels unremitting to her. Being mentally ill, queer, and a survivor of sexual assault, she voices a constant sense of ostracization throughout her life. Adding sobriety to that equation would be too socially isolating for her at this point in her life, she told me. Instead, she is focusing on harm reduction – how to use safely – rather than abstinence.

“At McGill, there’s a disturbing culture that normalizes substance abuse.”

Similarly, because of the substance’s ubiquity in her work environment, Hélena’s strategy for recovery can’t involve demonizing alcohol. Alcohol “is our culture,” she tells me – she often even works behind the bar. She still quality checks drinks that she sends out, and is willing to try wines that she hasn’t tasted yet. It’s important that she works towards developing a healthy relationship to alcohol with the hope that one day she can reintroduce it into her life in moderation. Her strategy from the beginning was not to “never have a drink

again.” She says, “I don’t tell myself, Don’t touch that, it’s evil, but rather, You’re not in a good place for that right now. You need to learn how to live independently from it.” For the past four months, Hélena has had extreme self-discipline in convincing herself not to have “that first drink,” because if she does, the rest of it is easy.

As she has begun to feel physically healthier, her commitment to sobriety has strengthened.

Hélena isn’t entirely drug-free. “It feels terrible to say but replacing one addiction for another has really helped,” she tells me.

She still smokes weed to calm down and increase her sociability. She realizes that her dependence on weed (she smokes a small joint every night) is a substitution for alcohol, but at least it is less harmful to her mind and body than drinking was. She doesn’t believe in complete abstinence, and for her “at the bottom of [Alcoholics Anonymous] you’re replacing your addiction with faith. [...]

Some addictions are abusive, and some are not as abusive.”

Finding solutions I have used several times since I first decided to quit, but for me that’s huge.

Learning how to drink without using coke was my first step, and I’ve done that. I’m content to go out and not drink, or have a couple of drinks and go home. My process of recovery is slow; I only take a step forward in that process when I know that my legs won’t buckle beneath me. I want to actually believe that I don’t need cocaine in my life, rather than simply pretending that I don’t need it – and I’m almost there.

A big part of my recovery has been connection. The reason I was so drawn to cocaine is because it allowed me to connect with people that I would normally be unable to connect with. I loved staying up until six a.m. talking to someone about their most unmasked selves. I am a theatre practitioner, and this connection and unmasking is at the heart of performance art too. In performance you are taught to care, listen and support one another as a matter of necessity, of improving your skill as a performer.

These temporary communities, and moments of connection, have allowed me to move on from those false drugfuelled relations and replace them with less damaging, and often more powerful moments. Whether it be abstinence groups, or other activities such as fitness or creative outlets, addicts need to re-introduce social connection and bonding in a non-harmful way. And that type of connection usually needs to not be associated to nightlife or peers that use, which is the hard part.

Recovering from an addiction forces you to re-examine the people, spaces, and objects that you believed made you feel good. It felt a bit like going through a bad breakup: sorting through my life and chucking a bunch out; holding onto the things that I thought I would throw out; repurposing them, re-centering them. Addiction makes you cling to something that keeps you stuck.

It whispers in your ear to keep going. It tells you that you’re okay – that you don’t have a problem. It’s hard to tell someone that you’ve been living with for years to get out. It’s hard to think of what will happen if you’re alone without your addiction. It took me a long time to find my voice to shout back at it. *Names have been changed.

Sports

March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Sitting down with Shireen Ahmed Battling the misconceptions about Muslim women in sports

Paniz Khosroshahy The McGill Daily

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fter having brunch at Bagel Etc during her visit to Montreal last February, Shireen Ahmed sat down with The Daily to discuss the experiences of Muslim women in sports and sports writing. Hailing from Halifax, Ahmed is a Torontobased freelance writer, sports activist and lifelong soccer player.

Many began to follow her work during the 2016 Olympics, where her Tweets and articles offered a critical analysis of the politics behind the games.

Stroking her green neon socks, Ahmed said, “I actually tried to go on vacation to PEI [Prince Edward Island] with my children [last summer]. I thought, nobody is gonna want to talk to me. But I’ve been nonstop busy since August.”

Ahmed has also worked in social services, using sports as a vehicle to support women and youth who have dealt with trauma and violence. Her work has been featured and discussed in The Guardian, The National Post, The Globe and Mail, VICE Sports, Jezebel, espnW, Media Diversified, Muslimah Media Watch and more.

McGill Daily (MD): You call yourself a sports activist. What does that mean to you?

Shireen Ahmed (SA): Advocating for equality and social justice by means of sports and advocating for the inclusion of Muslim and athletes of colour in sport. Sertaç Sehlikoglu, curator of the Muslim women in Sports blog, coined the term.

Quebec was the last province and soccer federation to [accept the end of FIFA hijab ban].

—Shireen Ahmed Writer and activist MD: How long have you been playing soccer for?

SA: I’ve been a soccer player since I was five. I’ve always played, I play in gramma league now to be honest. But my experience was significantly altered when I chose to wear a headscarf when I was 20 and playing for the University of Toronto [...]. At the time, there was no formal hijab ban, but there

was nothing in the rules to allow me to play either. So I was left up unofficially to the referees. I suited up for a summer season in ‘98 and paid for twenty games and I was allowed to play three. I found that demoralizing, humiliating and frustrating so I moved on to rowing [which] didn’t have restrictions on what you could wear.

MD: And you’ve been playing ever since?

SA: I have. I went back formally a few years ago. [Before that] for a while I was playing pickup on an unofficial league called Muslim Youth Soccer League which actually gave women a place to play. It wasn’t affiliated with Ontario Soccer or Canada Soccer, because [those federations] followed the FIFA rules, and FIFA had until 2012 banned the hijab. But in July 2012, FIFA sent a memo to [its affiliates] about a temporary lifting [of the ban]. And then I joined a league and the they let me play. [FIFA] formally lifted the ban in 2014.

I’m not pretending that I could’ve gone pro, but I’m saying that I didn’t have the choice.

—Shireen Ahmed Writer and activist MD: How did these experiences impact the work you do today?

SA: I started reflecting on those experiences [as a social worker and a soccer player], got myself writing [...].I started researching a lot about Muslim women in sport, politics, histories and misconceptions. I wasn’t really happy with the way [this writing] was being done because the landscape of Canadian sports media is very, very male and white… and let’s just say they lack a little bit of nuance. And I decided to do it myself and here I am.

MD: We are in the province of Charter of Values… What are these bans like in Quebec?

SA: In 2007, Asmahan Mansour, an 11-year-old soccer player from Ottawa, was rejected from a tournament in Quebec because she wears hijab. [...] Her case went up to FIFA and this was the year that [hijab was officially outlawed]. How did they come to the conclusion?

Because a bunch of guys just

photo courtesy of Shireen Ahmed decided it wasn’t allowed. [In 2012,] with the temporary lifting of the ban, Ontario and BC were like, okay, wear hijab, it’s fine. The ban was lifted in March 1, 2014, and Soccer Canada and Soccer Ontario were very supportive. Quebec was the last province and soccer federation [to accept the ruling] and [...] waited until [the ban] was formally lifted. Why? Because in the entire world, there’s only one other federation that doesn’t allow headcovers: [the soccer federation in] France.

MD: What are the reasons given for these bans?

SA: To this day there’s not one piece of empirical data that shows that hijab has been to the detriment of a player or the opponent. There’s none. I’ve looked for it everywhere!

Same with basketball. There isn’t

one piece of shred of evidence that a hijab that’s tucked into a kit has hurt anyone. People have been hurt by jewelry or long braids being whipped into the face, but not a hijab.

When I was told I couldn’t play because of my hijab, it was taking a piece away from me.

—Shireen Ahmed Writer and activist MD: What do these bans look like for university athletes?

SA: CCAA [Canadian Collegiate

Athletic Association, the national governing body of sports in Canadian colleges] doesn’t adhere to the international federation rules, because [university athletes] are amateur level. For example, NCAA [National Collegiate Athletic Association, governing sports in colleges and universities in the U.S.] allows hijab. So FIBA [which has banned players from wearing the hijab] doesn’t govern NCAA so hijab is allowed, which is really bizarre because you had Division I NCAA basketball players like Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir not being able to go pro because of her hijab, so that was terrible. In a new movie [titled FIBA Allow Hijab] she’s very vocal about how stressed she was, how painful it was to not be able to play because basketball means so much to her [...]

I know this feeling because when

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March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

I was told I couldn’t play because of my hijab, it was taking a piece away from me. I played soccer most of my life and I’m not as good at soccer as she is in basketball and I’m not pretending that I could’ve gone pro, but I’m saying that I didn’t have the choice. My daughter [who wears the hijab] works hard and will continue to work hard because she has an opportunity to play soccer professionally, she’s seen it be done.

She’s seen in the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup in Jordan just this past year, she’s seen them play.

The reason I looked to Jan Wong is because she’s smart but also because everyone else looked like Margaret Wente.

—Shireen Ahmed Writer and activist MD: So how do you think universities like McGill better support Muslim athletes?

SA: By better understanding the needs and requirements of students and not just for the athletes, for everyone who wants to be involved in sports. [...] How are we going to elevate sports for people? What can we do to reach out to more folks? You need to make your facilities accessible for people with disabilities. For student athletes [inclusion is] everything from dietary requirements to training in Ramadan. A good model, a high

school football team in Dearborn, Michigan, majority of players are Muslim-Lebanese, so they had their training after dark. And it’s not just nutritional support, athletes of all intersections need the support they need to handle the culture of sports, which in this country is still very white. [Universities could ensure] athletes of colour have they need to navigate those systems.

MD: What are the biggest barriers to Muslim women’s participation in sports?

SA: For muslim women and women from ethnic communities in this country, from my research, the biggest barriers are access to equipment, financial support, a sports culture they’re not familiar with [...] general toxic culture of masculinity in sports. [Muslim women] have to battle gendered islamophobia [...] in sports. It can be a lot to handle. As far as Muslim girls go, [barriers] can be anything from body image, doubt. Young Muslim women suffer the same trials and tribulations as any other young woman, like lack of support from society to mixed messages to identifying what an athlete looks like.

MD: And that brings us to role models and epresentation!

SA: Representation is crucial and that’s why Ibtihaj Muhammad [Black, hijab-wearing Muslim woman fencer on Team USA] is important to so many people [...]

Serena Williams is playing in a very white dominated field and conquering that field. I did a piece on Jeanne d’Arc Girubuntu who is not a Muslim woman but she’s from Rwanda. She’s the first female Black cyclist from the entire continent of Africa. All the other cyclists are wealthy white women. These representation open up doors and inspire people. They really make young women reflect and think, I

think I can have this, I love this, why not. I would love to see young muslim women break it into hockey.

But even before we get to Muslim women, Canadian Women’s Hockey League players aren’t paid. So let’s be clear, it’s not as if the North American model is a bastion of freedom for women in sports and exemplary in equality and feminism.

Because it’s not. The strongest soccer team in the world, the American women, are not paid as well as the American men are for doing oneeighth as well. [...] People new to this society may not want to throw their daughters into something that isn’t fair to begin with. Like how much of an uphill climb?

I had a friend tell me, I’ve never been given a seat at the table. And my advice is, build your own fucking chair.

—Shireen Ahmed Writer and activist MD: How about representation in sports writing?

SA: When I was growing up in this country, the one writer I looked to was Jan Wong, she is a former writer for The Globe and Mail and is from Montreal, she is actually Chinese. I’m of Pakistani descent, we don’t look anything alike! The reason I looked to her is because she’s smart but also because everyone else looked like Margaret Wente. Now you have people like [The Globe’s] Denise Balkissoon,

Courtesy of Shireen Ahmed Hannah Sung who are brilliant, VICE’s Manisha Krishnan, but still the sports side is not as diverse.

There’s one person at the Toronto Star’s sport desk who is a person of colour, Morgan Campbell, he’s great, I know him, and yes we’ve had coffee. There’s so few of us doing this and we all know each other.

MD: I find that as a writer of colour, it’s often very hard to have my voice heard. What are your thoughts on that?

SA: In a lot of circles in this country, white people are the gatekeepers. And how does [resisting] that work in sports? You make your own space.

I had a friend tell me, I’ve never been given a seat at the table. And my advice is, build your own chair.

Bypass that, get your work done [...]. You’re not gonna get invited.

The way it stands particularly in Canadian sports media, you’re not gonna get invited unless you make noise and to make that noise you have to work hard, you have to stand by your stuff, have diligent editors and publications that have your back.

Ahmed blogs at footybedsheets. tumblr.com. Follow her on Twitter @_shireenahmed_.

Homa Hoodfar launches new book

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Former Concordia professor talks about women athletes in Muslim contexts

n March 22, Homa Hoodfar, a former Professor of Anthropology at Concordia, celebrated the longoverdue launch of her book, Women’s Sport as Politics in Muslim Contexts. Featuring case studies that examine the politics of sports from Saudi Arabia to Senegal and to North America, the book explores the role of sports in women’s struggle to achieve equality. According to its cover, Women’s Sports “provides an [...] analysis of the bravery and creativity exhibited by Muslim women in the realm of sports, which has emerged as a major realm of contestation

between proponents of women’s rights and political Islamist forces in Muslim contexts.”

A collection of essays edited and selected

by Hoodfar, the book was initially released in the U.K. in December 2015, but the April 2016 launch in Canada was postponed due to Hoodfar’s incarceration in Iran. In early 2016, Hoodfar was held for 112 days in Tehran’s Evin prison on reported charges of “dabbling in feminism.” Thanks to international mobilization, she was released and returned to Montreal in September 2016.

At the launch, Hoodfar discussed the

participation and inclusion of Muslim women in sports by giving the example of the prevalence of hijab restrictions in many sport federations, such as the IOC or FIFA. The act of playing sports then, either veiled or not, becomes a quietly political act for Muslim women. “Quiet politics” are something that Hoodfar expressed deeper appreciation for now, citing her experience of incarceration as proof that “the cost of actively being politicized is quite high.”

Moreover, Hoodfar said that Muslim women are using sports to demand recognition from the society and the

state. She gave an example: after the 2016 Olympics, Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, was obligated to congratulate Kimia Alizadeh, female Taekwondo medalist, alongside her male colleagues.

At the launch, Hoodfar spoke for 30 minutes before taking questions from a small but fascinated crowd in Concordia’s J.W. McConnell Library Building.

—By Louis Sanger The book is available for free as on online e-book at www.wluml.org.

Sci+Tech

March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Threatening the future of science From flat earth theories to climate change denial

Cédric Parages Sci+Tech Columnist

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any scientific and technological breakthroughs which altered our perception of the world have had to go through obstacles and time to be commonly accepted. Nicolas Copernicus published his heliocentric model of the Earth orbiting the Sun in 1543 and this theory was supported by Galileo, the inventor of the telescope, and later Isaac Newton amongst many others, yet it wasn’t until 1758 that the Catholic Church removed their publishing ban on the idea. Greek mathematicians such as Pythagoras in 600 B.C. discovered evidence that the Earth was round, and it became widely accepted for much of human history including through the middle-ages, yet from the late 19th century to the late 20th century organizations such as the International Flat Earth Research Society and publications such as the Earth Not A Globe Review sprang up to deny scientific consensus with religious rhetoric.

Apparently not everyone evolved The theory of human evolution though widely accepted today, illustrated the modern conflict between science and religion, or theory versus belief. While On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin was published in 1859, southern states of the U.S. such as Tennessee and Arkansas passed state legislature to forbid teaching the theory of evolution until a Supreme Court decision in 1968 which held that states could not require curricula to align with a specific religion. Religious leaders tried to combat this supreme court ruling by changing their tactic and advancing creationism as a viable scientific theory of origin, and states such as Louisiana passed legislature that any textbook which includes the theory of evolution must also teach the alternative theory of creationism along with it. Another court case in 1987 attempted to prevent states from requiring the teaching of creationism, with lawyers being successful in proving that creationism was in fact, not a scientific theory, and had no place in a textbook.

Even in 2005, school districts, such as the Dover Area district of Pennsylvania are sued because they required teaching “Intelligent Design” in their schools, which is another pseudonym of creationism. In 2006 public school biology textbooks in Cobb County, Georgia, were being distributed with a sticker included

which read “Evolution is a theory, not a fact, concerning the origin of living things.” According to a poll from the Pew Research Center in 2013 with 2,000 participants, sixty per cent of Americans believe in evolution while thirty per cent reject the idea. The study also included political party in their responses, and Republicans only had 43 per cent who accepted the theory compared to 67 per cent from Democrats.

The climate is in fact changing In recent years, the public skepticism and denial of science has advanced beyond religion and into identity politics. While the U.S. federal space agency NASA has been recording satellite data to support the validity of climate change and itself agrees it is anthropological, which means affected by human activity and behaviour, the country is split in their acceptance of the scientific consensus. A 2016 study from the Pew Research Center finds that only 48 per cent of American adults believe that climate change is caused by human related activities, 31 per cent believe it is due to natural causes and twenty per cent think there is no evidence for climate change. The skepticism seems to stem from a lack of faith in the scientists and science themselves, as only 33 per cent of all participants agreed with the statement ‘Climate change scientists understand very well whether climate change is occurring.’

Many scientific and technological breakthroughs which altered our perception of the world have had to go through obstacles and time to be commonly accepted.

The American public also seems to think there is no consensus among scientists on the topic, as only 27 per cent agreed that there is a complete scientific consensus that climate change is human caused. These beliefs are quite concerning, because if we

Marc Cataford | The McGill Daily are to have a lack of trust in science or think our scientists are incompetent, then who exactly is competent on the subject and where should we receive our information from? There is a sort of contradiction going on here as from the same study, 39 per cent of participants of the survey say they trust climate scientists ‘a lot’ to give full and accurate information about the causes of climate change yet the news media, energy industry leaders and elected officials are down at seven, seven and four per cent respectively for the same category. Similarly to the case of evolution, there is also a political identity issue going on here, as 69 per cent of Democrats agree that climate change is human based while only 23 per cent of Republicans agree, per the same study. A similar trend is also present in factoring in scientific consensus, as more than half the Republican correspondents believe there is no consensus whatsoever among scientists.

In Canada, a 2016 study from Université de Montreal polled over 5,000 Canadians from across the country on climate change, and 61 per cent of the participants believe the Earth is getting warmer partly or mostly due to human causes. A 2016 study from the Pew Research Center compared carbon emissions to concern over climate change, and concluded that the highest countries as measured by emissions per capita such as the U.S., Canada and Australia were the

least concerned with effects from climate change. Latin America, Europe and Africa were the regions most concerned with the effects of climate change.

In recent years, the public skepticism and denial of science has advanced beyond religion and into identity politics.

The most astonishing part of all this data is the suggestion that there is no scientific consensus on climate change from climate scientists. All polls conducted on climate scientists show the complete opposite. A 2014 study from Verheggen et al. surveyed 1,850 climate scientists, of which ninety per cent of them with at least ten peer reviewed studies published agreed that greenhouse gas emissions are the main cause of global warming. A 2013 study from Power et al. conducted a meta-analysis of 13,950 articles published on global warming from 1991 to 2012 and found that only 24 of these rejected that climate change is caused by human activities. All other studies and polls among climate research-

ers demonstrate the same general result, which makes you wonder where people are getting their information from that there is no scientific consensus.

Politics and belief are intertwined The main reason one would think that there is such a wide gap between perception and reality, especially among Americans, would be a lack of scientific literacy or knowledge. However, a 2012 Yale study by Dan Kahan attempted to find such a correlation between lack of scientific literacy and perception on climate change risks, and could not find one. The more scientifically literate their participants of the survey were, the more polarized they were in their concern over climate change, demonstrating that lack of scientific literacy did not result in less concern.

Instead, the researchers attributed the polarization in public opinion to a much deeper distinction: whether or not participants followed a more egalitarian set of ethics, asking questions about concern over income, sexual and racial inequality, or a more individualistic and hierarchical approach, such as desiring less government regulation. The results were clear – those aligning as an egalitarian had more concern for climate change, while those that care more for their personal interest had less concern. The same research group conducted a similar study in 2010 in an attempt

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to answer the following question: why do people say they believe in science but simultaneously refute scientific consensus and facts? In order to understand why, the study showed participants images of various experts and researchers on gun control, nuclear waste and climate change and polled people on their responses based on their political party. For the gun control example, Republicans were more likely to believe research which indicated a state with a concealed carry license for guns would have less violence, while Democrats were more likely to believe the opposite.

When research is presented that points the opposite of their views, participants from both parties viewed the research as ‘untrustworthy,’ showing the real reason why

On

people simultaneously claim they believe in science but deny the reality of climate change cause. The researchers attributed this to a cultural cognition and identity protection risk, where people process new information based on its consistency with their prior knowledge.

Climate change, and whether its cause is anthropological or not, has become a political identity issue to most people, not a scientific one. When a political candidate tweets statements such as ‘The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese to make the U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,’ as per Donald Trump, it’s difficult to tell yourself he may be right, or he may be wrong, depending on whichever position you agree with.

April 5 and 6, 2017 will elect

the staff of

The McGill Daily

the 2017-18 editorial board.

the basics:

Unlike many student newspapers, our editors are elected by Daily staffers rather than hired by a committee. To run for an editorial position or to vote in the election, you must be Daily staff.

separate their political party from who they are, and holding their party to a standard of absolute truth.

The belief of an individual should not carry more weight than the scientific consensus of the entire world, yet with political agendas we have ended up with half of partisan Western countries discrediting science. The transition from religious identity to political identity as a source of rejection to science is deeply troubling for the future. We must each eventually hold ourselves accountable to place science on a higher pedestal than belief, especially when the room for error could very well mean dire consequences on the lives and wellbeing of millions of people around the globe.

The problem here is this is not a social issue, whatever you believe has no relevance on the matter, it is not an “I believe” issue, there is only one position which is correct and which matters: the scientific consensus.

It can be difficult to understand this, especially considering that newly appointed Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt denies that carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to climate change. Yet a series of publicly released emails show that indeed he had a lengthy relationship with fossil fuel companies and lobbying groups such as Devon Energy as Oklahoma’s Attorney General, objecting to regulations on fracking and methane gas emissions.

There is a form of cognitive dissonance at play here where many people are unable to

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For more information on individual positions, contact specific section editors (emails can be found on page 19 of this issue). You can also stop by The Daily’s office in Shatner B-24.

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Elections

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All staffers who want to vote in the election must attend rundowns in Shatner B-24.

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Submit a one-page letter of intent to coordinating@mcgilldaily.com.

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CUlture

March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

We all saw this coming

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Art, maps, and media subvert perceptions of Canada’s landscape Sevrenne Sheppard Culture Writer

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hen we think about the Canadian landscape, we might picture a postcard image of sparkling, clear blue lakes, or the moss-cloaked wildness of a temperate rainforest. The reality, however, is something all too different. “It’s All Happening So Fast: A Counter-History of the Modern Canadian Environment,” at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, seeks to complicate these romanticized images.

The exhibit features a diverse collection of visual work, installations, and materials from numerous artists, archives, museums, and galleries. In an attempt to uproot common assumptions about the natural environment, this exhibit explores the effects of widespread pollution, nuclear contamination, overstressed fisheries and forests, and the exploitation of Indigenous lands, over the past five decades. “It’s All Happening So Fast” questions the gap between the ‘real’ and ‘imagined’ versions of Canada’s environmental history, and demonstrates that a more balanced view lies in the space between.

The exhibit opens with Vancouver-based artist Douglas Coupland’s Slogans for the 21st Century, a wall of over a dozen vividly colourful but disquieting messages: “Lonely Isolated People Consume More,” one picture declares. “The Internet Makes Environmental Degradation Tolerable,” states another. Unlike the rest of the exhibit, Coupland’s statements are not part of a specific historical tradition – they feel current, or at least from a not-sofar-off future. Slogans is unsettling because it foreshadows the near and unavoidable consequences of environmental recklessness, and contextualizes the exhibit’s exploration of

Complicating our understanding of Canadian maps. the rift between ecological conservation and economic development in a bold and visceral way.

Working through the exhibit, the viewer gets the persistent sense that, over the past five decades, both everything and nothing has changed.

One area invites visitors to sit in a room surrounded by photographs and ephemera from Deep River, a planned community near the nuclear industry of Chalk River in Southern Ontario. A friend and I flipped through a sixty-year-old issue of MacLean’s, marvelling over ads acclaiming the use of industrial products like nickel and synthetic petrochemicals.

The ads and articles highlighted the stark contrast between daily life then and now. At the same time, we were surrounded by dozens of CBC media clips that could just as well have been broadcast today. These were images of environmentalists opposing pollution, Indigenous peoples resisting the degradation of their sovereign

lands, and experts warning about the effects of the industry on the health and well-being of human and animal communities.

The ongoing history of Canada’s environmental destruction in the name of economic development has always been at odds with nationalist images of pristine wilderness: from the glorious Rocky Mountains to the windswept Atlantic coast. The exhibition illuminates the discrepancy between this imaginary of Canada and the reality of our environmental record. The story of such a polar relationship, told here through diverse and overlapping multiple, intersecting voices and media mediums, evokes questions of competing economic and political interests, legal frameworks, cultural ideals, the resurgence of Indigenous communities, and environmentalisms.

Nevertheless, the exhibition could have further emphasized the story of how this land and its resources

Courtesy of Canadian Centre for Architecture were violently appropriated from Indigenous peoples in order to form Canada in the first place.

Despite this lack of acknowledgement, the exhibit successfully accomplishes the ambitious goal of engaging visitors in a broad consideration of our common assumptions and the dominant narratives. It further highlights the fact that these assumptions are woven into the ways we collectively live on this land, and invites us to imagine a sustainable and ethical way forward. As a call to action, “It All Happened So Fast” catches visitors between the wryness of Coupland’s technological truisms and the somber familiarity of fifty years’ worth of environmental calamity. Exposing the gap between an imaginary pristine nature and a depleted environment, the exhibit calls for immediate collective action. It suggests that climate crisis requires solutions catalyzed by cultural shifts and nation-wide self-reflection.

“It’s All Happening So Fast” asks us the weighty questions. Whom is the environment for? Are we a part of our environment, or do land and resources exist specifically for our consumption?

The exhibit provides the counter-hegemonic context we need to answer these questions as informed, engaged citizens. The way forward might not be as short and quick as the way here, but this exhibit demonstrates that we are starting to move in the right direction. Through multiple media, perspectives, and stories, visitors are inspired to challenge assumptions and see our diverse landscapes in a way that is seldom portrayed, and ultimately, to take part in transforming the current narrative.

The exhibit runs until April 9, with free admission for students.

Visit the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s website for more information: www.cca.qc.ca/en/ calendar?event=39571.

The Daily reviews: Alexandre Navarro’s Anti-Matière Mariam Salaymeh Culture Writer

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n his new album Anti-Matière, Alexandre Navarro pieces together sound design, sampling, and delay, in a constant search for what he calls a “sensitive minimalism.” His compositions drift between electronica, ambient music, and post-rock – a seemingly inharmonious mix. Surprisingly, Navarro manages to smooth over any inconsistencies through a spacious use of musical poetry; he manipulates the rhythm to strategically evoke emotion, leading each song to encapsulate its own narrative.

The Montreal-based record label Archipel Musique released Navarro’s album on March 20.

Anti-Matière, meaning ‘antimatter’ in English, proves to be an apt description of his nine track collection as he explores the liminal spaces between beats. “Sextant” displays traces of constancy through repetitious tapping, but then subverts the listener’s expectations with the introduction of new sounds. Midway through, the song pauses for an uncomfortably long period of time before returning to the rhythm of soft thuds.

Alexandre Navarro was born in France in 1974 and currently resides in Paris. Known as a “French master minimalist composer,” he is a self-taught guitarist, composer, and independent producer.

In the early 2000s, he studied electroacoustics and concrete music at the Conservatoire de Bordeaux. He also pursued anthropology at the

same time, in which he specialised in history of ideas and religions. Today, Navarro is the founder of numerous labels: Sem label, Eko netlabel, and DISQ AN. He is also an experimental ambient guitarist as well as a sound artist, and had decided to focus more on his own music as of recently.

The album closes off with with its ninth track “La Seconde Porte,” where the sound of fireworks create an electrifying spark in the otherwise hauntingly empty piece. As the fireworks fade off into the distance, the listener feels simultaneously calm and apprehensive – lulled by the decrescendo yet waiting for something to happen.

Check out Anti-Matière at archipelmusique. bandcamp.com/album/anti-mati-re

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March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

“Everyone knows an Avi”

Speaking to Aviva Zimmerman, creator of Avi Does The Holy Land Coco Zhou The McGill Daily Content warning: mention of Zionism

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pisode six of Avi Does the Holy Land, titled “Self-hating Jews,” begins with a factually dubious claim. “As a Jew, you need to support Israel,” declares Avi. “That’s like, what it says in the Bible.” This is a mild statement compared to most other things she says. In a discussion on pinkwashing with Palestinian activist Rami Younis, Avi proposes that Palestinians would be treated better “if they all became gay” before draping a big Pride flag over Younis.

Avi is not a real person. The “Canadian Jewess” and video blogger who has fallen in love with Israel after a Birthright trip, who twirls in a bikini made out of an Israeli flag, is a character created by Aviva Zimmerman. Her YouTube series pokes fun at the uncritical celebration of Israel among Jewish communities and aims to unsettle the traditional Zionist narrative in North America.

Avi Does the Holy Land is currently in production for a second season. The Daily spoke to Zimmerman about the ideas behind the project, the political potential of satire, and the difficulties of rejecting Zionism as a Diasporic Jewish person.

The McGill Daily (MD): Whose idea was it to start this project?

What are your goals, and what brings your team together?

Aviva Zimmerman (AZ): The project began as the brainchild of myself and one of my best friends – Danielle Angel, a Turkish-Israeli – as a way of lampooning all of the day-to-day absurdities we saw as foreigners who moved to Israel. With time, it took on more of a political edge and we began to narrow our focus to make the show a direct critique of Israeli politics [...] The core driver behind the project [has] been to address the political situation in Israel, and to create a space for Jews in the Diaspora to wrestle with their opinions on Israel. Many Jews in the Diaspora are raised to maintain unwavering support of Israel, regardless of Israel’s actual policies on the ground. This show aims to question that unwavering support, and show people, especially North American Jews, what is going on in Israel in their name.

MD: What do you think makes Avi an effective character?

AZ: Avi is based on a caricature of a Jew that over-zealously supports Israel. Everyone knows an “Avi.” Especially now with extremism of all kinds spreading through-

out the globe, the audience recognizes her as a caricature of that phenomenon [...] We were tired of the dry and stale ways in which [the Israeli occupation] has traditionally been portrayed and wanted to change things up. The mockumentary/satirical format is a commentary on the absurdity of what’s going on – that we’re trying to remain objective and unmoved by such incredible suffering and absurd politics [...]

The use of humour allows you to get in with people who would otherwise be turned off by your message. People can only be hit over the head so many times by a given message.

“[We want] to address the political situation in Israel, and to create a space for Jews in the Diaspora to wrestle with their opinions on Israel.”

—Aviva Zimmerman Creator and producer of Avi Does the Holy Land

MD: The show has tackled a variety of human rights injustices in Israel, from pinkwashing to the treatment of African refugees. How might the Diaspora relate to these issues?

AZ: The subject of Israel’s internal issues is often brushed over by the desire to paint the conversation in black and white: you are either for Israel or against Israel. When criticism of Israeli internal policy arises, it is often brushed aside as “all democracies have flaws” and “why not criticize another country doing the same thing?” These are just different attempts to stifle conversation and delegitimize criticism of Israeli policy. Mainstream organizations, such as the ones that organize Birthright trips, often brush over the “bad” parts of Israel or the parts they don’t want people to see.

That is where we come in. Our series is an attempt to satirize these efforts to sweep under the rug the very problematic [...] policies that we feel are pushing Israel closer and closer to extremism.

MD: How have North American Jewish communities reacted?

AZ: The response has been mixed.

Many young Jews have reached out saying, “thank you so much for making me laugh, and for making me feel

Vaishnavi Kapil | The McGill Daily okay for criticizing Israeli policy.” But we have also received a lot of negative feedback, mostly from right-wing groups who do not appreciate our humour or our message.

MD: Do you think social media plays a role in the show’s reception?

AZ: When the show first dropped, the whole crew was watching the online comments roll in [...]

After working for so long on the show, there was an immediate satisfaction to reading the comments, especially the people who were hate-watching it. Those are still my favourite. Of course, we’re not the only ones seeing those comments.

Social media allows our followers to interact with one another and for us to jump in and join the conversation, too. It makes for a show that’s living and breathing and constantly changing, which is more of the model we’re after: an interactive experience that goes both ways, between fans and creators.

MD: Does viewer input affect your production process?

AZ: We’ve definitely been listening to our viewers when it comes to planning new episodes, shorts and one-offs. [We’re] especially attuned to feedback from the people who are most pissed off by the show’s content.

When we really get under someone’s skin, then we see how we can push even further in those directions.

MD: What advice can you give to Diasporic Jewish people who may

have doubts about supporting Israel?

AZ: I fully understand the quagmire that many young Jews of the Diaspora face. Often, they grow up in communities that offer unwavering support [for Israel], and most mainstream Jewish education presents a totally one-sided approach to the [occupation] without presenting any other side [...] For me, I felt I was raised with a definite right versus wrong. Israel was always right. And anyone who doesn’t think that way has a problem [...] So I was raised a staunch supporter of Israel.

When I got to university in Toronto, I was shocked to first learn of so much anti-Israel vitriol out there in the world, and I was totally unequipped to deal with it. At that point, though I was interested in learning [...] the Palestinian narrative, I definitely did not feel welcome in [relevant] student groups on campus. Their rhetoric frightened me, and I didn’t have the tools to understand it at that time. But then when I went to Hillel, their right-wing rhetoric totally isolated me as well. So in university, I had no place to connect with [...] It took a few more years, and actual trips to Israel to ‘see’ the other side and to begin to form an opinion.

Now I think the arena has changed, and there are lots of Jewish groups emerging that are critical of Israel, or at least, invite the space for Jews to be critical (Jstreet U, If Not Now, Jewish Voices for Peace, Centre

for Non-Jewish Violence, All that’s Left, Open Hillel). So I hope there is more space for young Jews to still be connected to a community [while voicing] their criticism of Israel.

“Mainstream Jewish education presents a totally one-sided approach to the [occupation].”

—Aviva Zimmerman MD: What’s next for Avi? AZ: We’re hard at work on our second season, which we’re aiming to release around the 50th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank [...] We are really excited to tackle Israel’s PR machine, Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and the Israeli government attempts to suppress criticism, such as the recent travel ban on visitors who support of [the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement]. We are also trying to find a way to bring the show to a Canadian audience, and are developing a new project in that vein.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Check out Avi Does the Holy Land at www.avidoestheholyland.com.

EDITORIAL

Volume 106 Issue 22

March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

19

editorial board

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The McGill Daily is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory. coordinating editor

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managing editor

Show up for Black and Indigenous trans women

Ralph Haddad coordinating news editor

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news editor

Marina Cupido commentary & compendium! editors

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Conor Nickerson contributors Laura Brennan, Ellen Cools, Vaishnavi Kapil, Lizzie Grieco, Jennifer Guan, Molly Lu, Cedric Parages, Jay Van Put, Hannah Rapaglia, Mariam Salaymeh, Sevrenne Sheppard, Xavier Richer Vis, James Ward

Content Warning: Mentions of violence, murder and discrimination based on race, gender and sexuality

S

ix Black trans women – Mesha Caldwell, Ciara McElveen, Chyna Gibson, Jacquarius Holland, Keke Collier, and Jojo Striker – and one Indigenous trans woman – Jamie Lee Wounded Arrow – were murdered in the United States within the first two months of 2017.

This sparked outrage from trans communities, followed by conversations on Black Twitter and under the hashtag #BlackTransLivesMatter. However, these murders have been under-reported in mainstream media; in addition to facing physical violence, Black and Indigenous trans women’s experiences are made invisible, and they are disproportionately affected by homelessness and poverty.

As queerness and LGBTQ rights have become increasingly trendy and mainstream in North America, it’s clear that Black and Indigenous trans women are being excluded from the protection afforded to other queer people.

Queer solidarity means protecting the community’s most vulnerable, by supporting Black trans women.

Relatively privileged queer groups – mainly gay white cis men – control the discourse around queerness and shape its mainstream image. This mechanism limits the inclusion of those who face other oppressions that intersect with queerness: those who are poor, racialized, disabled, and gender nonconforming. The illusion of trans inclusivity within the broader mainstream LGBTQ pride narrative is often disingenuous. The tokenistic, cursory inclusion of Black and trans people in otherwise white and cis-

led activism fails to substantially challenge systems of power within queer communities.

It is important to be critical of queer movements and to question the ways in which they are communicated, represented, and perceived. Those allowed space in mainstream discourse must recognize that they are complicit in determining which bodies are valuable, which deaths must be mourned, and which deaths are ignored. Indifference toward violence against Black trans women is endemic within movements that centre white cis women.

Relatively privileged queer people, as well as nonBlack and cis people, must make a conscious effort to support Black and Indigenous trans women. This means providing financial support to trans artists and people, showing up for protests, vigils, and strikes, and demanding media representation for Black trans women.

Trans Trenderz is a New York-based non-profit record label for trans people – profits from their show last week in Montreal went towards financing the careers of trans hip hop artists. The Prisoner Correspondence Project, based in Montreal, connects queer and trans people in prisons with pen-pals outside prisons. Here on campus, we can support organisation like the Union for Gender Empowerment, which leads campus-based initiatives, and provides support and resources to trans and nonbinary students. It’s our responsibility to contribute to, show up for, and amplify these initiatives while respecting and centering the voices and experiences of trans organizers.

—The McGill Daily editorial board

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Zapaer Alip, Janna Bryson (Chair), Marc Cataford, Julia Denis, Cem Ertekin, Sonia Ionescu, Ikram Mecheri, Boris Shedov, Alice Shen, Théophile Vareille All contents © 2017 Daily Publications Society. All rights reserved. The content of this newspaper is the responsibility of The McGill Daily and does not necessarily represent the views of McGill University. Products or companies advertised in this newspaper are not necessarily endorsed by Daily staff.

Printed by Imprimerie Transcontinental Transmag. Anjou, Quebec.

ISSN 1192-4608.

“Classroom colonialisms,” March 20, Features, p.11: An earlier version of this piece stated that there is no equity office in the McGill administration and no equity training for search committees. In fact, McGill has both. The Daily regrets the error.

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Compendium!

March 27, 2017 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Lies, half-truths, and nipples are the knees of the chest.

Crossword

“Songs and elements”

Jay van Put Official Crossword Wizard

Across 1. CEO of SpaceX 5. Ales 1o. “Dying from laughter” in textese (English) 14. Prefix with suction 15. UdeM’s faculty of law 16. Online auction site 17. Pieces of dirt 18. What love is to Johnny Cash 20. Lessens, as a pain 22. Paris divider 23. __ Leppard 25. Golf ball holder 26. Batteries for most remotes 29. __ Louis, chocolate sponge cake 32. Captures 35. Watch a whole season on Netflix 37. Black-and-white cookie 39. Cousin of an ostrich 40. Split in half, typically with a knife 41. Famous Elton John tribute song (1973) 44. 1950’s music genre 45. 50-50, e.g.

46. High: Prefix 47. Winter driving hazard 48. Test an ore 50. Common ID, in the states 51. What a pirate might be missing 52. Egg maker 54. Prof.’s helpers 56. Venomous snake 59. Lists of food at a restaurant 63. Title track to a 1984 Prince album 68. In ___ straits 69. Away from port 70 .___ Circus (where St. Peter was crucified) 71. Pitch Perfect actress, Kendrick 72. Bright lights 73. Seasonal visitor 74. Hatchling’s home

Alt-right discover alt-reality where alt-Asian show is good

K

Overly Opinionated Ed The McGall Weekly

ellyanne Conway, announced the discovery of an entirely new reality recently.

Conway, or Con for short, was browsing her Webflix when she came to the “because you watched Family Guy” section, and was promptly transported to an “alt-reality.” In a press release, Con described this new reality as one where “Paul Ryan wiped his brown nose, Donald Drumpf was People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, and the silent majority was actually silent.” Most notable of all, though, was that liberals finally saw the white light, and enjoyed the Alt-Asian show Iron Fist.

Iron Fist has gotten a lot of flack from progressive types since its release, who claim all sorts of things like “cultural appropriation,” “Orientalism,” and, “Wing isn’t even a last name—it’s just an order at your local Chi-

nese place.” The last statement is a reference to the Asian love interest in Iron Fist, Colleen Wing; these critics, however, fail to address the reality that Alt-Asian identity is constructed in the local Chinese restaurant. Rather, these are the same people who have been recorded openly discriminating against Alt-Asian icons like General Tao, claiming the esteemed war hero is “not really Asian.” Who should be defining the Asian experience in North America, though—Asians, or white dudes, like Roy Thomas, the creator of the Iron Fist character?

Thomas responded to criticism by wondering, “Don’t these people have something better to do than to worry about the fact that [Iron Fist] isn’t Oriental, or whatever word?” (That quote wasn’t even satire, this article is writing itself—thanks Roy!) Roy Thomas is right, though, that those nerds don’t have anything better to do than fight for representation in media, and that Danny Rand, or the Iron Fist, isn’t “Oriental;” he is, proudly, Alt-Asian.

Certainly, Iron Fist/Danny Rand is not Asian-Asian: his creator was white (most Asians are created by Asian parents) and he is not ethnically Asian. Instead, he displays all the characteristics of alt-Asianness: he does kung fu, he has yellow fever (prognosis: threatening), and he takes up more space than any [more buff, more qualified, goes by the name Lewis Tan] Asian-Asian dude ever could.

But the Iron Fist does uphold one long, extremely important, cultural heritage: white people’s faithfulness to racism. Indeed, many white commenters have voiced that because the original Iron Fist was Orientalist, the remake is rightfully adhering to those roots. These advocates are finding allies in other movements as well: one of these groups is the “Make Vehicular Death Great Again” movement, which argues that because passenger vehicles did not have air bags at their inception, they should be

20

Down 1. “If all ___ fails ...”

2. Peru’s capital 3. Numbered composition 4. “Duly ___” 5. “Dying from laughter” in textese (French) 6. Greek goddess of strife 7. Top-notch 8. Numbers 0-9 9. Imperial unit of 14 pounds 10. Ump 11___-Wan Kenobi 12. In the distance 13. Alkaline liquid 19. Weak 21. “__ in stone” 24. Rescues 26 .Common falling objects in cartoons 27. Operatives 28. Submit (2 words) 29 .Playful or humorous 30. Transmitted by word of mouth 31. Recipient 33. Quebecois friend 34. Starts a game of american football 36. Important swing state during U.S. elections 38. Garfield’s friend 40. Swindle 42. Deadly 43. “___ the season to be jolly” 48. Famous italian singer, Bocelli 49. Sweet potato 53. Idyllic places 55. Typical car 57. Get what you deserve 58. What a violent protest might become 60. When most people start working 61. Coffee holders 62. Place for your bott 63. Buddy 64. Consume 65. Morgan Freeman’s character in Shawshank Redemption (3) 66. ___ de deux (3) 67. Eavesdropping org. (3)

Dr. Andreja Vijumic removed from modern vehicles as well. Another is the “Put Diapers on Again” movement, which stipulates that because we can’t control our bowels in infancy, we should all wade through a quagmire of our own shit in adulthood. And indeed, watching Iron Fist is very closely aligned with wading through a quagmire of one’s own shit. As such, this writer is giving Iron Fist one iron finger up!