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The McGill Daily | Monday, October 4, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

3

SSMU endorses Food Services boycott Council passes a motion after hair’s breadth vote Queen Arsem-O'Malley and Maya Shoukri The McGill Daily

S

SMU has joined AUS and Midnight Kitchen in officially endorsing a boycott of McGill Food and Dining Service (MFDS), in the latest development in the ongoing dispute over who serves food at McGill. The boycott comes in response to the administration’s closure of the student-run Architecture Café.

Boycott of McGill Food and Dining Services The motion, presented at last Thursday’s Legislative Council, passed with just over 50 per cent of council members in favor. The motion calls for an official boycott of all MFDS establishments on campus until the administration begins consultation with students on the matter of the Architecture Café’s closure, and financial trans-

parency with regards to the Café’s books becomes publicly available to students.

The resolution also mandates SSMU to make clear which dining establishments are and are not associated with MFDS, which operates the Redpath Oasis, the Subway in the Arts building and Sinfully Asian, among others. The resolution does not pertain to those students – mostly first-years – who have already purchased and rely on meal plans. Councillor Kallee Lins and Arts Senator Tyler Lawson, coauthors of the resolution, presented it to council.

Erin Hale, a U3 student and former Daily editor, spoke before the motion was presented, as a guest speaker from Mobilization McGill, a group facilitated by Midnight Kitchen that was instrumental in organizing the September 22 rally to save the café.

Hale described to council what she hoped the boycott will achieve: “I am fairly confident that the boy-

Council voted on committees and a boycott

cott could cause some financial loss,” she said.

“It might not mean much to McGill, since they have outsourced food services to a multi-million dollar corporation,” she continued, referring to Aramark, a U.S.-based company that runs most of MFDS’s outlets.

“At the very least, though, it would be great if this embarrassed [McGill].”

While no SSMU council members openly opposed the sentiment behind the motion, there was a substantial amount of debate about the efficacy of an official boycott in re-opening the Architecture Café, and on whether or not the gesture would actually impact the McGill administration.

Councillor Lauren Hudak said that despite supporting the Café’s reopening, she did not support the motion to boycott. “The resolution directly links the events surrounding the Architecture Café to McGill Food and Dining Services.

Is that ultimately who students are fighting against?” She went on to

Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily

“The target of student frustrations has been and should continue to be on certain departments of the McGill administration for a complete lack of transparency surrounding the financial stability of the Arch Café .”

Lauren Hudak SSMU Councillor state that a general boycott had the potential to detract attention from the Architecture Café itself.

“The target of student frustrations has been and should continue to be on certain departments of the McGill administration for a complete lack of transparency surrounding the financial stability of the Arch Café and for a complete lack of student consultation, especially with the senior managers of the Arch Café,” Hudak continued. “By supporting this boycott, this diverts the attention from the above problems and places it on another group, which is not necessarily the source of the problem for the Arch Café’s closure.”

Kirk Emery, the Law Faculty Student Representative, emphasized that the gesture’s symbolic importance would be reason enough to pass the motion solidifying the boycott. He argued that the financial impact the boycott would have on the administration does not need to be quantifiable, and that a statement clarifying the students’ general dissatisfaction with the administration would provide a clear message to the University. He went on to stress that the motion would take a stance on a larger issue: the administration’s continuing disregard for students’ desires and the lack of student consultation in the administration.

“The administration just gave you [the undergraduate student body] a big ‘F you’ by completely ignoring what you want,” Emery said. “Don’t cooperate with them.

They’re motivated by purely financial reasons. It’s important to make a statement back to them.”

Lawson emphasized the motion’s origins as a grassroots movement with palpable student support.

“This is an act of solidarity with sentiments on campus, and can further the agenda of student centrality,” he told council. “It pertains to a much larger issue with the administration, so it’s really important that we follow through with the boycott.”

Lins said the passage of the motion was a victory for students.

“I’m really happy the motion passed,

because it shows our commitment to showing solidarity with students on campus who have already taken up this issue,” she said after council.

“The debate tonight really focused on linking the Architecture Café to the larger issue of students’ ability to run student-run food services on campus, so I think we did a really good job of amending the motion to reflect that.”

Exec Reports In his executive report, SSMU VP University Affairs Joshua Abaki referred to the last Senate meeting, in which SSMU President Zach Newburgh attempted to present a motion for reconsideration of the Architecture Café’s closing. “The Principal considered the motion out of order, which really was out of order because the motion was in order,” Abaki told Council. The motion is scheduled to appear before the Steering Committee of Senate, which will decide whether it can be presented at the next Senate meeting.

In the wake of issues surrounding SSMU councillors involved in the QPIRG Opt-Out Campaign, VP Clubs & Services Anushay Khan explained that she is looking to clarify the role of councillors. “If they are considered administrators [of SSMU], then they are bound legally [to disclose student group affiliation]. In the case that they are not considered administrators, then they are not bound because they are considered representatives. It is a grey area right now, but definitely something that I’m looking into.”

Spencer Burger, an Arts representative and member of the OptOut campaign, lost an election for the External Affairs committee, and dropped out of the running for the Funding committee, anouncing that he nevertheless thought he would have done a good job.

Maggie Knight and Max Zidel were elected to the Funding committee, while Lawson, Amara Possian and Zach Margolis won the External committee election. Zidel, Knight and Katie Larson will sit on the Interest Groups committee.

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The McGill Daily | Monday, October 4, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

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Plateau property values skyrocket Taxes and rent expected to follow suit Laura Pellicer The McGill Daily

M

ontreal’s 2011 property evaluations are in, and the results are likely to leave a lump in the throat of some students. For residents of the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough, the average property value predictions tabled by the City of Montreal’s Assessment Office increased by 34.7 per cent. This is the highest increase among Montreal’s 19 boroughs.

Patricia Lowe, a representative for the Assessment Office, explained that the evaluations are based on a number of factors. Assessors examine deeds of sale and track renovation permits and major development projects in order to determine the market value of the properties. In all 23,778 commercial, residential, institutional properties were considered in the Plateau-Mont-Royal, adding up to a total value of $13.2 billion. The new assessment roll is based on 2009 tallies.

Montreal’s property value increases should not come as a surprise, according to Lowe. The city’s last assessment roll, which was released in 2007, “went up much more for residential properties compared to the 2004 roll.”

“The reason for that was because Montreal property values

had fallen behind those in other cities. The prosperity started to come back to Montreal [and] the property value started to rise,” she added.

Lowe says even if tax hikes don’t accompany the leap in property values, Plateau residents and landlords will be paying more in the near future.

“The budget determines the tax rate,” Lowe said, “and the budget won’t be presented until the end of November.” But she specified that “if the value of your property goes up, then even if the tax rate stays exactly the same you will have some increase to absorb.”

Based on the property value increase, and taking into account normal inflation, residents of the Plateau will most likely witness an increase in rent and property taxes.

In the residential sectors of the Plateau, values are up by 35.6 per cent compared with a 32.3 per cent increase in non-residential markets.

The spike does not put Montreal on par with other big Canadian cities just yet though, Lowe emphasized. “Property values are still lower in comparison than Toronto, Vancouver, other large metropolitan centers,” she said.

Ali Farasat owns and operates a number of residential properties in the Plateau-Mont-Royal and his principal tenants are students.

“Taxes are going to go higher

Apartments like this one will see their taxes go up. so owners are going to share part of the cost,” Farasat explained. The remaining share of the burden will of course fall on the tenants of the properties.

“I don’t expect the rent to go up by exorbitant amounts,” said Farasat, “but I do expect the rent to maybe go up more than previous years. If [property tax] increases by anything more than 10-15 per cent then definitely you’re going to see an impact on the tenants and on the landlords.”

When asked whether City Hall had any concerns over forcing low-income families and students from the neighbourhood, Lowe responded, “The city worries about that yes, and that’s why they try to be as fair as they can with taxes

and with programs to help people buy affordable housing and to stay in the city.”

Farasat doesn’t find the efforts by the city to be self-evident. When asked if he felt a tax increase would be justified, he replied, “I don’t think so, especially looking at the Plateau over the past three years.

You see that [on] St. Laurent there is a lot less business, the streets are less clean. The Plateau is still happening, it’s probably one of the best neighbourhoods of Montreal, but you just don’t see where all this money goes.”

Farasat said students and other residents are more likely to bear the burden of rent and tax increases than abandon the neighbourhood.

“I don’t know, because it’s so

Flora Dunster | The McGill Daily

close to McGill,” said Farasat. “I don’t think you find this type of atmosphere in any other area. I feel like the city knows that and they’re using it to their advantage.

The city needs to do their part – if they’re going to increase taxes there has to be some benefit for the residents.”

“There’s no parks being built, there’s no [additional] parking,” he continued. “I don’t see any improvements in the Plateau.”

Lily Hassall, a U1 McGill student who lives on DuBullion near Duluth, said she would move out of the Plateau if rent went up significantly. “I love living in the Plateau,” she said. “It’s a great neighbourhood. But part of its charm is that it’s affordable.”

6 News

The McGill Daily | Monday, October 4, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

The long road to solidarity The Daily talks to Plateau MNA Amir Khadir of Québec Solidaire

A

mir Khadir is many things to many people – a Member of the National Assembly for the Mercier riding, which covers a large swath of the Plateau and Mile End; the only MNA and most prominent member of the leftist party Québec Solidaire; a practicing physician who has been to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Palestinian territories with Médecins du Monde; and a McGill alumnus.

Khadir was born in Iran in 1961, where his parents were active in opposing the Shah’s regime. Moving to Canada when he was ten, Khadir received his Bachelor’s degree from l’Université de Montréal, mastered in physics at McGill, then obtained a medical degree from Laval. He became a well-known activist in Montreal, and still practises medicine once a week since he became a MNA (he specializes in infectious microbiology). He was a candidate for the Bloc Québécois in the 2000 federal election, but ran against the provincial Parti Québécois in Mercier in 2003 for the Union des forces progressistes and in 2007 for Québec Solidaire. He did not win an election until the 2008 upset that took him and his young party to the National Assembly. The Daily spoke by phone in French with Khadir, who was en route to Chicoutimi at the time of the interview.

The McGill Daily: You’re a doctor, and you practice in a country with free health care. Do you think post-secondary education should also be free?

Amir Khadir: Yes, in the sense that it’s a question of priorities. If you consider education a cost instead of an investment, you fall into a costbenefit analysis. At the moment, priorities being what they are…it’s a system that systematically advantages capital over work or knowledge. [The argument goes] “No, this can’t be free, just like any other consumer product. There has to be a price attached to practicality.” But for us, on our little raft, education is not just spending. It’s an investment, first, and more fundamentally, it’s a right. Québec Solidaire is proposing to massively reinvest in education and make it free.

MD: How will you pay for your reinvestment in education?

AK: We have proposed, since the [Finance Minister Raymond] Bachand budget, legitimate ways for the government to find extra revenue. We’ve talked about imposing taxes on those whose individual incomes surpass $115,000. Abolish the many fiscal exemptions the government accords to the financial sector. Not across all private enterprise…but reintroducing a capital tax on financial companies.

We give too much freedom to companies that are still very, very lucrative to Canada. It’s a useless waste of money for the government. We

absolutely have to control our natural resources better…over water, over mines, on all of our resources, to increase revenue. So we’ve made calculations based on a series of concrete, immediately applicable measures...that would allow the government of Quebec to collect between $5 billion and $6.5 billion in added revenue every year. In other words, it’s not that we don’t have the means, it’s that we’ve voluntarily deprived ourselves of legitimate revenue.

MD: There are student groups, like FEUQ, that say universities don’t know how to manage their finances. Do you think the government should have a role in managing universities to this effect?

AK: If you begin to question universities’ independence, you run into a lot of problems. I think students need to closely scrutinize the way public money is being spent, and level criticisms. But that does not mean we have to put universities under guardianship or demand that the government intervene in them. The problem is our funding model, first of all, a model that encourages bureaucracy, with…a “bonus” mindset. And all of this has corrupted universities with sometimes opulent spending for the administration, which authorizes all kinds of largesse, while at the same time cutting into student services and increasing tuition fees.

Certainly, I understand that student associations would be angry with that. It could be a political or governmental decision to attach certain criteria – like good and transparent management, making sure they’re ethical – to university financing. But I don’t think the government should meddle in university financing.

MD: Education Minister Line Beauchamp promised “action” against McGill for its massive increase in MBA tuition this September, as did former minister Michelle Courchesne. Do you think these threats are sincere?

AK: I don’t know if they are sincere. I have reason to believe Ms. Courchesne was without a doubt sincere about it. I don’t know about Ms. Beauchamp – time will tell. We are still pleased to have two ministers speak out like that, but it’s up to them to prove their sincerity. It’s plain to see that elsewhere in this government – whether it’s with health care, the financing of public institutions – there’s a tendency to privatize and hike fees. So I understand the meaning of your question – it’s a legitimate question to ask.

MD: Would you punish McGill for the tuition increase if you could?

AK: Of course, yes. This accentuates the erosion of the idea of accessibility, of equity, and of free education.

MD: You know Premier Jean Charest’s political thinking well; you’re well-known as a critic of his.

Courtesy of Amir Khadir

“Québec Solidaire is proposing to massively reinvest in education and make it free.”

Do you think he is ready to deregulate tuition completely after 2012?

AK: [The Liberals] have used a very consistent logic since the beginning of their mandate in 2003, their first mandate. Everything we’ve seen has been privatization, from Mont Orford [a public park slated for condominium development] to the subtle, sneaky privatization in the health care system. Using this same logic…[the Liberals] are absolutely trying to finance education as a pay-as-you-go system. So if they have the political opportunity, I’m convinced that if the government maintains power after 2012 [when the next provincial elections are scheduled] they will use it. It has been exclusively because of society’s resistance that they have not had the political power to [deregulate tuition] yet.

MD: When you were at univer-

sity, what aspects of the experience most strongly influenced you? How do those experiences affect your thinking on post-secondary education today?

AK: My parents both attended university, but once we were in Canada, our financial means were certainly not very comfortable. So I come from a family who, thanks to public education and the financing of post-secondary education – the support I received throughout my years of studying – I was able to become a doctor, a specialist, with scientific training. It’s an incredible investment and that’s why companies should contribute directly to the task of financing universities – because they’re the first ones to profit from it.

MD: Won’t private sector financing of universities lead post-secondary education in the direction businesses want?

AK: They are already doing that, directly, through foundations with financing attached. We are against that. They have to contribute to the financing of education in the form of a tax. A dedicated tax…a fee for knowledge. They’re extractingthe knowledge of our people, which is our most important natural resource.

They exploit it, so they should pay a fee on it. When you exploit a resource that belongs to the public you have to be responsible; you have to pay something for it.

Whether it’s mines, or shale gas, or water. And now, we’re seeing [that logic] extended to knowledge - they’re exploiting all the natural resources that we produce in public, without paying any fees, without assuming part of the costs.

—compiled and translated by Eric Andrew-Gee

News

The McGill Daily | Monday, October 4, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

7

Concordia fights tuition hike International student tuition set to jump 50 per cent Michael Lee-Murphy The McGill Daily

C

oncordia’s Board of Governors (BoG) has voted to sustain a tuition increase for international students and to keep a new billing structure for graduate students which student groups have said amounts to a fee increase in and of itself.

Of the BoG’s 40 members, an unknown number attended the meeting on September 30. Of those, only 12 voted on the motions to repeal the increases, with nine supporting a repeal and three opposing. Due to an unknown number of abstentions, however, the motion did not achieve the required two-thirds majority.

Adnan Abueid, President of Concordia’s Graduate Student Association (GSA), submitted the two motions to the University’s highest governing body. The first motion called for the immediate recall of the tuition increases, and to “respect the demands” of a petition to the same effect, which organizers said gathered over 2,500 signatures.

Tuition for international students at Concordia has increased by 50 per cent for business graduate students, and 28 per cent for business undergraduates.

Students have decried the suddenness of the increases. Erik Chevier, of the not-for-profit Free Education Montreal, pointed out that, “Concordia has a very rigorous project to recruit international students,” adding that “if they do recruit them under [certain] conditions, they shouldn’t change those conditions at the last minute.”

According to Chevrier, the

Courtesy of the Link

Students stand in support of the Graduate Students Association. fee increases only represent a 1.5 per cent increase in revenue for Concordia’s operating budget.

“For one student to get a 50 per cent increase obviously has a negative effect on their economic well being, while a 1.5 per cent increase really isn’t doing that much for the University,” he said.

A response to the motion issued by the administration argued that the tuition increases are permitted by the provincial government’s defreeze of Quebec’s international tuitions.

The official response, inserted in the meeting’s official agenda, also emphasized that the University only

retains 24 per cent of undergraduate international tuition and 35 per cent of graduate international tuition. The rest goes to the province and back to students in the form of financial aid, the response contested.

According to Chevrier, these figures neglect to incorporate rebates Concordia gets from the province after the initial forfaitaire, or fee.

Concordia has pledged to contribute 25 per cent of the increases to student bursaries and other aid, something both Abueid and Chevrier would like to see transparently documented. “We need some kind of report about where this money is

going to go. How is this going back to the students?” Abueid asked.

Abueid is planning to bring forward a motion to reconsider the BoG’s decision, based on the fact that, of those who did vote, more board members approved than disapproved of the motion.

Concordia’s new graduate billing structure has also come under fire from the GSA. The new system compresses six tuition installments into four larger ones for master’s students, and from 12 to eight for PhDs. The University’s response says that the new structure brings Concordia in line with other

Quebec universities and helps to close a $600,000 annual loss.

The new billing structure also requires that full-time students complete their Master’s degrees in four terms, and PhDs in eight terms, lest they receive a “continuation fee” of $400 per student per extra term.

Concordia’s administration response stated that “there was continuous inter-action [sic] with the Graduate Students’ Association and with all graduate students directly on this matter. The University has no intention of agreeing to the demands of some students that the fee billing structure be rescinded.”

Ontario Superior Court lifts restrictions on sex trade Laws violated “security of the person,“ Conservative government plans to appeal Whitney Mallet News Writer

O

n Tuesday, September 28, an Ontario Superior Justice struck down three federal laws which it ruled placed sex workers at risk. The laws, which restricted communicating to solicit sex, running a bawdy house, and living off an income procured by sex work, were successfully challenged by Terri-Jean Bedford, a dominatrix, and Valerie Scott and Amy Lebovitch, both former sex workers. Justice Susan Himel ruled that these laws violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Conservative government has announced they will appeal the Ontario Superior Court’s decision, which would otherwise take effect in 30 days. The ruling only

applies in Ontario, but if the ruling survives appeal, the government will almost certainly take the case to the Supreme Court. If Himel’s decision is upheld at the national level, the criminal prohibitions restricting sex work will be abolished across the country.

Hedy Fry, Liberal VancouverCentre MP and Chair of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, applauded the landmark ruling. “This is an important step in recognizing the constitutional rights of adult sex-trade workers to security of the person and acknowledges the difference between the rights of consenting adults and the exploitation of vulnerable persons,” she said. “[The ruling] means that the safety of sex workers is a new criteria to analyze prostitution. ... Now, saving the lives of sex workers will

be taken into account,” explained Pascale Robitaille, Outreach Team Coordinator for Stella, a Montreal community group run by and for sex workers. Stella is applying for intervener status in the appeal case.

Fry explained why transparency means increased safety. “There are sex trade workers, especially street workers, who face greater risks daily, because they cannot call the police for protection or report a ‘bad trick,’” she said.

Minister of Justice and Attorney General Rob Nicholson provided no explanation when he announced the Conservatives’ decision to appeal.

Fry suggested that disapproval can tacitly condone violence against sex workers. “There are still those who say that street sex workers are ‘not respectable’ and

the work they do is ‘shameful and indecent’; ergo these are throwaway humans who ‘deserve what they get,’” she said.

“The state above all cannot be devoid of compassion and care for all of its citizens. The responsibility to do so is not limited to the ‘decent’ nor can it subjectively and ideologically measure that ‘virtue.’”

Robitaille and Susan Davis, a Vancouver sex worker and coordinator of the BC Coalition of Experimental Communities (BCCEC) both say they are unsurprised by the government’s decision to appeal. Davis’s testimony was used in the trial, along with research submitted by the BCCEC. “The plan all along was to win this one and then win at Supreme Court level,” explained Robitaille.

“It’s good for [the case] to go through to the highest court of the land. ... We just want to see [these laws] come down all over the country,” said Davis.

Davis is optimistic that the ruling will be upheld.

The laws struck down by Himel’s ruling were adopted in 1985 in response to complaints of sex work being a nuisance and an eyesore.

A 2006 report the Standing Committee on the Status of Women urged the decriminalization of sex work in combination with strategies to deal with intersecting social problems. Fry explained that these included “dealing with issues of poverty, addiction, the plight of urban aboriginals, prevention, education and helping women in the sex-trade with exit strategies when they wish to do so.”

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Commentary

The McGill Daily | Monday, October 4, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

9

Charge it to the people Davide Mastracci Hyde Park

D

arkness rolls into the deserted streets of Toronto. The provincial capital resembles a war zone. A $4.4-million, 3-metrehigh fence, stretching 10 kilometers, encircles the downtown district. No one will make it through this carefully constructed barricade of capital. No, not even minor insects will make it through. Their presence might make those on the inside uncomfortable. If they are to make it past the outer level of security, $26,000 worth of traps have been established to squash out their lives.

No chances can be taken. Jesus, they could be carrying the plague!

At the heart of the kingdom lies the castle. Ripping into the sky, this building, normally known as the Royal York Hotel, has been transformed into something else, something quite... different. An exclusive resort for the high rollers of the world. Fully lavished.

No expenses spared. Advantage of the few paid for by the funds of the many. How could this happen?

Some attempt to protest. Their efforts are futile. Nearly eight million dollars have been raised to

sponsor a band of hired toughs.

Stop the beasts from entering paradise. Demean them. Terrorize them. Belittle them. And if they remain in your way, crush them.

While orgies of violence erupt outside the kingdom, in the castle the scene is being set for the main event. The hotel is transformed into the greatest rave known to mankind. VIP booths crafted out of over $300,000 worth of furniture adorn the dance hall. A fleet of luxury vehicles, valued at $2.2 million, waits at the beck and call of those on the inside. Late night McDonald’s runs must be made in style.

From anywhere within and around the Royal York, the thudding bass can be heard, pulling in the ravers. As they push through the entrance, blasts of exotic $200,000 lights beam out, temporarily blinding anyone in sight. On the lower level of the room, the similarly lowerranked ravers frolic. The floor literally glows. The glow sticks once incorporated into the wild dancing have been discarded to create this mind wrenching spectacle. In the morning, $14,000 worth of liquid lights will be swept up and discarded.

On the highest level, suspended above the abyss of lights, only the highest ranking are permitted. Two

Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

A saga of corruption and economic penetration

men make their way up to the level, and are immediately recognized by security. The two pass through the 18 others. They stand out. The others have got rid of their suit jackets and heels. Sweat drips down their faces. The music controls them.

The world elite, on one dancefloor.

Locked into a temple-pounding, head-spinning trance. The beasts would froth at the mouth with rage

if these twisted images were ever to be made public...

Finally, the two men reach their destination, a small outdoor patio on the edge of the roof. As they enjoy a smoke, small talk ensues.

Finally, the question is asked. “This is incredible...but...how did you pay for this?” The man in question smiles while tapping off the ashes of his cigarette and states, “I didn’t...” As the

Don’t choose news for dummies Infotainment is reducing print journalism’s quality Adrian Kaats Hyde Park

S

omebody told me recently that the National Post intentionally writes at a grade-nine reading level (that is, for 14 year-olds). The object, I presume, is to make their product accessible to the widest possible audience. Ignoring what this says about the state of literacy in the Great White North, it seems likely that this policy is ill-informed, and probably derived from the success of the “news show,” which is not to be confused with “the news.”

In recent years, we have seen a freakish growth in the popularity of “news shows.” The news show is to the news what drink is to juice. The latter is full of content and nutrients, the former is soul-sucking and leaves you empty. As a form of entertainment, Anderson Cooper 360º, or Dumont 360, can be a fun way to fill

Errata In the story “Student movement splintered over underfunding from

the space between commercials. For their entertainment value, it’s no surprise that these shows have grabbed market share from their entertainment competitors. News shows are a form of the reality TV that originally robbed market share from traditional fictional comedies and dramas.

It seems that newspapers have taken on the model of news shows.

The consequences are devastating because the analogy of the newspaper and television news is fundamentally wrong-headed. Those who are disposed to reading are not disposed to reading crap. Reading is an active endeavour, whereas watching TV is passive. Think back to when you were 14. How many of your friends would you find voluntarily reading a book? If you then became an adult, and you were still reading at the level of a 14 year-old, chances are that you were never particularly inclined to reading, and that you don’t read very much.

Like most things, it’s hard not to get good at reading if you do it fairly regularly. Usually when you get good at something, you aren’t satisfied with doing whatever it is that you’re good at at a level inferior to your skill for any length of time. This is not the case with TV, where you aren’t actively doing anything: you’re just sitting there, passively absorbing. That is, your skill level doesn’t improve; you don’t get good at watching TV. Therefore, the analogy between TV and print is a bad one. The audience for newspapers – those that are willing to buy them – are already fairly good at reading. You loose your audience if you dumb the text down to a level where the skilled become bored, or worse, disgusted.

Blaming the Internet for the slow death of the print newspaper is a cop-out. I don’t read the Gazette because it’s become total crap. In fact, so are all the com-

mercial papers. It’s actually painful to read them: they’re daily books of sensational fluff and barelyentertaining commentary. If I’m going to trouble myself to read something, I’m going to hunt for something stimulating. The state of commercial print media has left me with little choice but independent print journalism, high-priced monthlies and quarterlies, and the wide world of free Internet content, where I’ve found some brilliant minds. So if you find The Daily a bit heady lately, thank the editors for having some respect for you and understanding that you want something smart, creative, and with journalistic integrity.

the province,” it was stated that QSR and FEUQ met on June 27. In fact, they met on July 27. In “Student concerns dismissed at first Senate,” Amara Possian was quoted as say-

ing, “80 per cent of the architecture students want the café to remain open.” In fact, she said 80 per cent of undergraduate architecture students signed the petition to keep

the café open. In “Hundreds rally to save Arch Café,” Michael Lifshitz was incorrectly identified as Michael Lipsitz. In the same story Alex Briggs was quoted as saying, “I’m sure if the

Adrian Kaats is a PhD II engineering student, and he is a member of several PGSS committees. The views expressed here are his own.

Write him at adrian.kaats@mail. mcgill.ca.

two men watch the ashes fall toward the deserted streets below, the first laughs and explains, “They did.”

(Note: While the story at hand is utter fiction, all costs and their purposes are fact. Both however, are bullshit.)

Davide Mastracci is a U0 Arts student. You can reach him at davide. mastracci@mail.mcgill.ca.

Fellow Citizens, The McGill Daily is looking for a

READERS’ ADVOCATE Send an email to

commentary @mcgilldaily.com for more information.

The Reader Forever!

admin wanted to shut us down, they would.” In fact, he said, “I’m sure if the admin could shut us down, they would.”

The Daily regrets the errors.

Sports

The McGill Daily | Monday, October 4, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

10

Derby rolls out for new season Montreal Roller Derby hosts bootcamp for upcoming year Laura Pellicer Sports Writer

T

wice a week at La Taz Roulodôme in Mile End, helmet and hot-pant-clad women jostle their way around a rink in a pack of raw, sexy athleticism. This is Montreal Roller Derby, and bootcamp season is underway.

Hopeful newbies are on the rink looking to block, jam, and pivot their way to Montreal Roller Derby (MTLRD) superstardom.

Ewan Wotarmy (her alter ego – “You and what army”), the Media & Promotions head of MTLRD, captain of the Contrabanditas, and player for the MTLRD travel team New Skids on the Block, explained that when the league was born in 2006, the players “didn’t know what the heck they were doing.”

They “just basically, like, ran into walls,” said Wotarmy. The team, however, has come a long way from their wall-smacking origins. In 2009 MTLRD became the first international league to be part of the U.S.based Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA). “It’s become a lot more professional and we’re traveling quite a bit further this year,” said Wotarmy. Their fan base has also skyrocketed: “We’ve sold out every bout this year,” she said.

Roller derby is an offshoot of 1930s long-distance roller skating, though Wotarmy explained that they “realized the fans just like watching people bump into each other,” more than other elements of the sport, and so roller derby was born.

In contemporary roller derby, there are two teams on the track at once. The teams are composed of a jammer and four blockers, one of whom is also a pivot. The pivot controls the speed of the game and calls the plays. The jammer’s role is to score points by passing opposing blockers. As the two packs go slowly around the track, the jammers weave through the pack as quickly as possible to score points.

The blockers meanwhile play both offence and defence. They help the jammer get through the pack while blocking the opposing team.

Grace Brooks for The McGill Daily

What this translates to on the rink is a hypnotic circle of aggression and stealth. “It looks like organized chaos, but we do know what we’re doing,” insisted Wotarmy.

When watching a roller derby game, one thing that stands out from other sports is its ruthlessness. Although only limited types of hits are legal, players still manage to receive a significant number of battle wounds. Wotarmy nonchalantly listed off a cornucopia of injuries she’s sustained: “I’ve broken a couple fingers, displaced some ribs, those kinds of things.” You really have to have balls to go out there, or, as Wotarmy corrected me, “You have to have tits.”

Although roller derby is recognized for its subcultural appeal, the 2009 release of the Hollywood film Whip It, starring Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore, and based on the story of a young roller derby player, garnered mainstream attention. Possibly as a result, about 90

girls showed up for MTLRD recruitment this year compared to the 30 last year. A major draw of the league is the community atmosphere that the sport provides. The league is run from the ground up by the skaters. Everything from the league’s budget, fundraising, and sponsorship contracts are the work of its dedicated players.

A large part of the appeal of roller derby for both players and fans is this distinct culture that surrounds the sport. Athlete and team names, such as New Skids on the Block and the Montreal Sexpos, are perversions of pop culture or conjure up violent or sexual imagery. Although there isn’t a strict uniform to adhere to, players generally don playfully unconventional sports gear such as fishnets and knee pads.

Roller derby is a female dominated sport, but there are a few men’s leagues popping up in the United States. Participation in

the Montreal league is limited to women as the team has joined up with the female-only association, the WFTDA. Wotarmy, however, was pleased to witness some men in skirts and cheeky shorts playing in a men’s league competition. She feels that they are missing out in their inability to participate in the overt sexuality and playfulness of Derby. “Sports are really homophobic and really sexist, unfortunately,” said Wotarmy. “That diversity that works really well with derby often works better with women and gets a bit lost somehow with men. I think there’s just a lot a pressure for [men] to look a certain way. I’d love to see them show me wrong.”

Despite the strict female orientation of the league, the teams within the MTLRD still display a startling range of diversity. “Women doing sport are not all one kind of person and our audience seems to recognize that and they like it,” said Wotarmy. “They [can] reconcile ath-

letic women who are queer, athletic women who are sexy.” The age of the players varies from 19 to about 45 years old, and there is a range of sexual orientations represented on the team including lesbian, straight, and transsexual athletes. The players encompass a variety of societal roles: “There are moms, students, professors, doctors, nurses, and engineers,” said Wotarmy. “It’s a pretty amazing cross-section of humanity.”

When I jokingly commented that I would love to know who the professors in the league are, I was in for a surprise. “I am,” said Wotarmy, “I teach at McGill.” Gulp. So next time you jostle in front of someone in the lunch line, be forewarned: They might hit back.

With their new recruits in hand, the teams of the Montreal Roller Derby League return to the rink in November to train hard for the upcoming season. Keep your eyes peeled for games, they’ll be worth the wait.

The McGill Daily is (still) looking for Sports columnists!

The Daily’s sports editor dropped the ball last week (mark that E6 if your keeping score) – the columnist deadlines are going into extra innings.

By October 8 at 11:59 p.m., send a one page candidate statement detailing your intentions to run and what your column will be about, and three writing samples: one sample column and two general samples.

Send applications and questions to sports@mcgilldaily.com.

Be a champ – write for Sports.

Monday, October 4th 12pm

Thursday Oct 7th 1pm

On the question of expertise: A critical reflection on “civil society” processes

Film Screening and discussion: TBA Facilitated by: G-CARE

Rm 233, Faculty of Education, 3700 McTavish

Lev Bukhman, 2nd floor Shatner Building (3480 McTavish), McGill University

Monday, October 4th 6pm

Tuesday Oct 12th 1:30pm

From Arizona to Montreal: Migrants fight back!

Workshop: Landed Resistance: How Land Rights Struggles Fight Climate Change

A guest seminar on Globalization, Education and Change with Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez.

Panel Discussion with Professor and activist Robyn Rodriguez

Leacock Building, McGill Campus, 655 Sherbrooke St. W. Rm. 232

Presented by: Climate Justice Montreal

Lev Bukhman, 2nd floor Shatner Building (3480 McTavish), McGill University

Tuesday Oct 5th 1pm

Film Screening: Food Inc. Hosted by: The Midnight Kitchen - Food provided!

Tuesday, October 12th 6:30pm

Shatner Building (3480 McTavish), Room 302, McGill University

Film Screening of “Injustice”

Tuesday, October 5th 6pm

Wednesday, October 13th 1pm

Community and Resistance: Katrina, Jena Six and Prisoner Justice A panel discussion with journalists and community organizers Jordan Flaherty, Jesse Muhammad, and Victoria Law

Chancellor Day Hall, 3644 Peel Street, Moot Court Wednesday Oct 6th 1:30pm

Workshop: A Radical Look at Jewish History and Identity Facilitated by: A founder of Young Jews for Social Justice

Lev Bukhman, 2nd floor Shatner Building (3480 McTavish), McGill University

Cultural Studies Screening Room, 3475 Peel

Voices Against 377: Decriminalizing same-sex activity in India Featuring Delhi-based legal rights activist Ponni Arasu

Chancellor Day Hall, 3644 Peel Street Wednesday, October 13th 6pm

Friday Oct 15th 3pm

Resisting the Neoliberal Gay Agenda

Workshop: Say Your Piece: creating culture that speaks to you

KEYNOTE PANEL with Ponni Arasu, Joshua Pavan, and Natalie Kouri-Towe

Chancellor Day Hall, 3644 Peel Street, Moot Court

Fundraiser concert Featuring the Fat Tuesday Jazz Band and members of Kalmunity Vibe Collective. Booklaunch of Floodlines: Community and Resistance, from Katrina to the Jena Six by Jordan Flaherty

Lev Bukhman, 2nd floor Shatner Building (3480 McTavish), McGill University

Thursday Oct 14th 1:30pm

Workshop: Racism in Canada: From Colonialism to Border Control

Wednesday, October 5th 7:30pm

Presented by: Ste-Emilie Skillshare

Facilitated by: Robyn Maynard, member of No One Is Illegal Montreal

Lev Bukhman, 2nd floor Shatner Building (3480 McTavish), McGill University

Il Motore, 179 Jean Talon West

Friday, October 15th 10:30 pm

Q-Team presents Dance Party Il Motore, 179 Jean Talon West All venues are wheelchair accessible EXCEPT the Cultural Studies Screening Room. For full schedule, including workshops and daytime events, visit www.qpirgmcgill.org/event/culture-shock Brought to you by QPIRG-McGill and the SSMU.

REGISTER STARTING OCT 7 www.tedxmcgill.com/apply

Science+Technology

The McGill Daily | Monday, October 4, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

13

Minus pretentious jargon Shannon Palus The McGill Daily

Have you heard of Paul’s?

It was halfway through the Fall 2009 semester – I was working on a linear algebra problem set with a few classmates and no, I hadn’t heard of Paul’s Online Math notes.

By the time finals rolled around, the $70 paperback textbook I had purchased for the course had taken up permanent residence under a pile of dirty laundry. I was whipping through problems involving the likes of eigenvalues with the website open in upwards of ten tabs on my Firefox browser.

Paul Dawkins is an associate math professor at Lamar University, in Beaumont, Texas. He has undergraduate and masters degrees in Mechanical Engineering. When he finished grad school, he was offered a job as a math professor, and he’s been teaching ever since.

He explained that he started the website in 2003 as a place to post notes for his differential equations class when the price of the textbook that he was planning on assigning increased by $50 with no notable improvement in content. The site has since expanded to include math notes from linear algebra to multivariable calculus.

The site has gotten 3.3 million unique hits already this year, which, as the website wraps up its seventh year of existence, have been unexpected. “I thought I would be lucky if even a couple of my students accessed it, to be honest,” said Dawkins.

Despite his modesty, Dawkins’s

profile on ratemyprofessors.com includes pages of comments from students that he’s never taught.

“His online notes are better and more useful than the actual class with an actual professor that I am taking at a different school,” said one commenter in July 2010.

The prose on the website is

clean, there are as many example problems as there are words, and the first person plural is ubiquitous. “Let’s” try this, and “we” do that. We’re a team, we are looking at these triple integrals, working through these Jacobean determinants together.

Though Dawkins is aware of this quality, like everything else about the website – its success, its simple design, and even the teaching career that launched it into being – it isn’t exactly intentional. He said he’s got theories about the appeal of his writing style, and why students seem to like it: mostly that it departs from the traditional, rigorous style of math pedagogy.

The website is free of gratuitously fancy vocabulary. As Will Liu, a U3 Electrical Engineering student, put it, “He doesn’t phrase his shit in that pretentious math jargon.”

Dawkins said that he’ll never write a textbook. “That means dealing with the very people I set out to avoid,” he explained.

There are also no ads

on the site. “I have no interest in making money off it, which I suppose sounds weird, but I don’t,” Dawkins insisted.

But one can make a living from running a successful math website. Elizabeth Stapel’s Purple Math offers math lessons in pre-algebra through basic calculus; the small side bar ads for math books from Amazon, widgets that advertise for a software called Mathway, and an online tutoring service offered through the site serve as Stapel’s primary form of income. Stapel hosts the site herself, while Dawkins runs his off of Lamar’s server, and unlike Dawkins, she doesn’t currently have a paycheck coming in from a university.

I asked Stapel if she’d ever consider publishing a textbook. She emailed me an animation showing how to multiply two matrices: a hand pointing to each pair of numbers on the left side of the equal sign, and then the product in the appropriate spot on the right. “How would this be presented in a static textbook?” she wrote, also citing the ability to hyperlink pages as a reason she favours web over text.

But the problem with transferring one’s vision to a hard-copy educational material goes deeper than widgets and linking abilities – neither of which Dawkins uses much on his site (in fact, he actually offers free ebook PDFs of the web

Olivia Messer |The McGill Daily

Paul Dawkins and his online math notes text).

Stapel explained that

it would be difficult to approach a textbook publishing company with a website, and be received with enthusiasm for preserving the style. According to Stapel, the process works the other way around: “[Publishers] write up proposals and outlines, and then they hire the writers.”

Editing web content offers another advantage over textbooks, which remain static until they’re re-released as a new, more expensive, edition.

“The material is under continual review and improvement,” explained Stapel. Neither Dawkins nor Stapel has an official proof reader.

“So you follow more of an open source mentality, that you have so

many readers and if there’s a mistake –,” I began to ask Dawkins.

“Somebody will let me know, and somebody does,” he finished.

This model of free internet material departs from the traditional rigour that goes into material

put out by universities.

It isn’t factchecked, copyedited, or formally cleaned up. The notes aren’t peer reviewed.

The notes aren’t bringing in grant dollars. The notes are an organized explanation of university- level math, not original research that can be printed in a journal.

“I don’t know how familiar you are with the politics up there [at McGill], but I’m sure they’re the same as down here. It’s really a situation of publish or perish,” explained Dawkins.

Nonetheless, he doesn’t spend time doing research – search his name in Google Scholar and the sole hit is a paper on eigenvalues from 1998. “I suspect some look at it like, ‘it’s just some idiot trying to avoid publishing,’” he mused.

The accessibility of the notes, the small handful of emails he gets every day, the barrage of thank yous that roll into his inbox around finals season, aren’t a currency that the university can necessarily value.

“I will admit I’ve not gotten too far up the chain,” he explained. “[Tenure] is part of how I can get away with working on this, to be honest with you. I’ve got tenure, so they can’t tell me I should be doing other things,” he noted.

Dawkins nonetheless loves teaching, although he can’t say quite why. At Lamar, he spends his time holding open office hours, dealing with the recent increase in class sizes, and keeping up his online math notes.

Breaker illustrations by Alex Mckenzie | The McGill Daily

Hey you!

We’ll be in the Daily ofice(B-24 SSMU building) at 5:30 p.m. every Thursday. Come to talk about writing, take pitches and hang out!

Love, sci+tech/health&ed

14Science+Technology

SCI-NOTES: EVENTS Earth’s earliest life – where did it come from?

October 8, 5 p.m.

Redpath Museum Part of the Freaky Fridays series, Boswell Wing of McGill Earth and Planetary Sciences will talk about rocks and the beginnings of life on earth. A screening of Day of the Triffids will follow.

Science & Policy Exchange October 7, 1-8 p.m.

SSMU Ballroom (4th floor of Shatner) Interested in learning more about renewable energy technologies? On Thursday, McGill will be hosting the Science & Policy Exchange, a mini-conference sponsored by McGill’s undergraduate and graduate student societies, SSMU and PGSS. The exchange will feature several keynote speak-

The McGill Daily | Monday, October 4, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

ers, including Elizabeth May, leader of the Green party, Marc Garneau, MP former engineer and astronaut, Richard Bruno, technology entrepreneur and former director of the McGill Office of Technology Transfer, and Philippe Couillard, former Quebec Health Minister.

An Ngo, a McGill chemistry PhD candidate and the main organizer of the exchange, hopes that it will give students and post-doctorate fellows “the chance to exchange ideas with leaders in industry, science, government, and academia.”

She explains that students and post-doctorate fellows make up a large part of the research staff at universities. “I think it’s important to include their perspectives and educate them about what goes on in the policy development world.” The exchange is open to all of the Montreal community.

Register online at ssmu.mcgill.ca/ sciencepolicyexchange/.

Cutting Edge lecture series: Inflammation – the fuel of cancer: extinguishing the fire to stop the disease October 14, 6 p.m.

Redpath Museum, Auditorium Maya Saleh, assistant professor in the McGill Faculty of Medicine, will discuss her research on the role of inflammation in cancer in the October instalment of the Cutting Edge Lecture Series.

Lectures in the series are typically interesting and engaging, whether you’re a science student or not.

The free wine and cheese afterwards is a plus.

Confronting Pseudoscience October 18, 5 p.m.

Centre Mont-Royal, 2200 Mansfield October 19, 6 p.m.

Leacock building, Room 132 “Quackery is extensive,” explains Joe Schwarz, director of the McGill Office for Science and Society. Schwarz, a Chemistry professor, has a passion for fighting pseudoscience. “[It’s often] cloaked in the garb of science,” he says.

Schwarz is moderating both evenings of the event. The first features Ben Goldacre, the author of Bad Science, David Gorski, managing editor of the blog Exploring Issues in Science-Based Medicine, and Michael Shermer, Scientific

sci+tech, printed on mondays

American columnist and Editor in Chief of Skeptic Magazine. The second evening will spotlight James “The Amazing” Randi, skeptic and former magician whose James Randi Educational Foundation sponsors a million-dollar prize for anyone who can demonstrate paranormal powers in a controlled setting.

Why spend time dwelling on the paranormal and investigating pseudoscience? The problem of bad science is deep, the desire to see things where none exists is great. “Hope is very powerful for people,” explains Schwarz.

Charlatans are good at selling faulty ideas and fake cures.

Come to get in tune with how science functions, to get a new perspective or two, and to have fun. The all-star guests won’t disappoint.

Free admission– but the organizers expect the venue to fill up fast. Visit mcgill.ca/science/trottiersymposium/ for more information.

The Roles for Diverse Physical Phenomena during The Origin of Life October 13, 6 p.m.

McIntyre Medical Building, Room 522 McGill graduate and 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine winner Jack Szostak does research with his lab at Harvard on the synthesis of self-replicating systems, which could shed light

on how the first components of life formed in Earth’s primordial soup. This lecture is part of the Anna I. McPherson Lectures in Physics, and it’s a lecture aimed at the public.

Learning About the Origin of Life from Efforts to Design an Artificial Cell

October 14, 4:15 p.m.

McIntyre Medical Building, Room 504 This Jack Szostak talk is part of the The Boehringer Ingelheim lectures in Biochemistry. Like the lecture on October 13, it’s on the origin of life – but it promises to be on the technical side.

Go to this lecture if you have a solid understanding of biochemistry, or if you’re feeling adventurous.

—compiled by Alyssa Favreau and Shannon Palus Illustrations by Alex McKenzie | The McGill Daily

scitech@mcgilldaily.com

Culture

The McGill Daily | Monday, October 4, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

15

Canadian flavour Does Canada have a national food identity?

Zoë Robertson The McGill Daily

I

n the mind of a reasonable person, the words “Canadian” and “cuisine” don’t go together. Like putting milk in a plastic bag, to most people it just doesn’t make sense.

Other countries, like France and Italy, have internationally recognized menus whose popularity has crossed borders. Even Quebec has developed its own hearty cuisine, with poutine beginning to appear across the U.S. The closest thing to a distinctly Canadian culinary staple comes in a large paper cup filled with a dubious concoction a friend of mine fondly calls “Tim Horton’s drink,” because as long as you don’t think of it as coffee, it tastes alright.

Nathalie Cooke, associate provost and professor of English at McGill, has some background in the matter. She is the founding editor of CuiZine: the Journal of Canadian Food Cultures, and, most recently, editor of What’s to Eat: Entrées in Canadian Food History, shortlisted for the 2010 Cuisine Canada book awards. In an email, she explained the problem with trying to determine Canadian food identity.

“Certainly, the notion of a singular Canadian culture is problematic. ... With a multicultural population that includes successive waves of immigrants from around the world, in addition to descendants of the land’s First Nations, scepticism about a singular culinary culture is understandable.”

Margaret Webb, a writer, and teacher at Toronto’s Ryerson University, echoed Cooke’s explanation that a particular food identity in Canada is difficult to pinpoint. “Because Canada is so large, it’s very difficult to have a national food identity.” She is hopeful, however, that this will change, mention-

Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

Apples to Oysters: A Food Lover’s Tour of Canadian Farms, which raises awareness of the benefits of local and sustainable farming in Canada.

The book profiles one farmer from each province (and the Yukon) who grows an iconic Canadian food in a sustainable setting. In a phone interview, Webb described the book’s criteria as farmers that “had to be producing a food for quality and taste,

“Regional food identity all depends on sustainability.”

Margaret Webb Canadian food writer ing that apart from an initial step to produce tastier food regionally, “the other thing that’s special about Canada...[is that] we have...incredible ethnic diversity. When you bring people from all over the world and... when these folks bring their food inclinations to Canada, and you marry that with great, local, diverse food, then you get this food culture that starts to be pretty uniquely Canadian.”

Webb is author of the recent

not just...a big production farm,...and environmental sustainability.”

Actually, Canadian food identity is mired in stereotypes, not all of which are unjustified, claims Cooke, saying that indeed, “maple syrup is synonymous with Canadian foodways, in part because Canada is one of the only places, besides the Northeast United States, with climatic conditions conducive to its production.

Quebec remains the world’s primary maple syrup producer.”

What Webb seeks to do in her new book is raise awareness for Canadians to create a lasting food identity for themselves. “Canadians have grown too disconnected from our food systems, so I wanted to give them a sense of...where does our food come from, how is it grown, and what are the challenges these farmers are facing?

Why is environmentally sustainable food better tasting and better for the environment than all this industrial crap that we’re getting?”

When food is produced locally, organically, and sustainably, it starts to take on a flavour of it’s own. To Webb, this means that local food is a necessary foundation for a distinct national cuisine. “You’re raising animals, livestock properly, you know, on pasture, grass,” Webb explains.

“If you’re growing food organically, you’re really working with the soil that’s in your particular region to create food that tastes of that soil and of that region, and you start to work with the natural advantages of that region. ... Regional food identity all depends on sustainability.”

Despite the nation’s abundant natural resources, most of it is not being used in a sustainable or profitable way. The discrepancy lies partly in a lack of motivation, Webb

explains. “The one thing we lack, of course, is strong support and appreciation for good farming in this country, and a strong appreciation and support for quality ingredients. ... We have incredible opportunity but we...don’t have a deep enough food culture.” Another problem is the uninformed market. “Half of the best farmland in Canada, which is in Ontario, is devoted to corn and soybeans. It makes no sense.” If you’re confused, be aware: “Most of us didn’t eat corn and soybeans for dinner last night, did we? ... Yet we did.

It’s in all our food. It’s in our cattle, it feeds all of our livestock. It’s in all of our processed food. Essentially, if you have an industrial farm system, you have no food identity.”

Not only is Canada’s current agricultural system nutritionally detrimental, it is economically illogical, too. “We’re producing these really, really cheap crops and farmers don’t make a lot of money from it, and then we export them and we’re not getting value out of them. ...Ontario...is importing half of its food and it’s the food we’re actually eating. ... We really have to get back to feeding ourselves.”

She claims that a growing movement toward local and sustainable agriculture is trumped by a

lofty proportion of agriculture.

Ultimately, “Canada kind of has to make a decision which way we’re going to go with this ‘cause the five per cent [of sustainable, organic food production] could be crushed like a bug tomorrow.”

It’s the mixture of materials and preparation methods that will shape a Canadian food identity. “In Canada we have these fantastic ingredients.

We’ve got three ocean coasts...plus farming...Canada has an abundance of food regions. ... There are few countries in the world that have more potential than Canada to produce amazing food. And then you marry that with all the incredible...ethnic diversity coming into our country, who are [sic] going to bring all these food styles with them.” Webb mentions Ukrainian immigration to the prairies as an influence on the region’s cuisine; “Ukrainian meets prairie buffalo equals bison pierogies.”

Although fusion cuisine is not a uniquely Canadian concept, it can be a good starting point for the development of a national food identity. We’ve got all the elements for a national cuisine – unique ingredients, local produce, and the influx of many other national influences – but nobody really knows what it will look like yet.

16Culture

The McGill Daily | Monday, October 4, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Queer at a crossroads How Queer McGill struggles to bridge the gap between community and political needs Abby Plener Culture Writer

Q

ueer McGill is faced with the challenging mandate of providing “a space for queer people...that includes queer students of all stripes,” according to the organization’s Co-Administrator Ryan Thom. The student group has big shoes to fill; as former Queer McGill Co-Administrator Samantha Cook noted, “Queer is such a huge word, it can mean so many things to so many different people.”

Queer McGill (QM) started in 1972, as Gay McGill, when there was a strong need for a radical queer voice on campus, but as the queer community in Montreal has diversified and become more accepted, QM has shifted its focus toward providing community support for students.

In its efforts to be as inclusive as possible, however, the group seems to have alienated students who would like to see the organization take more radical political action.

“They don’t have as much of a radical take as some members of the queer community would hope,” noted U3 Women’s Studies student Sam Chrisanthus. “They see Queer McGill as a space that shouldn’t get too political for fear of alienating some members who shouldn’t be forced to leave the group because their own beliefs don’t match those which might be ascribed to Queer McGill.”

Current QM Resource Coordinator Grace Khare sees things differently. “The more radical we are, the more polarizing we are to our community,” she explained. Thom insists that this issue is not just a philosophical one, but a matter of QM’s responsibility to the students who fund this service through their student fees, “to serve as wide a constituency as possible.” He contended that, “If being radical means taking a stance that alienates and offends newcomers, if it means compromising the safer space that we worked hard to create, then no, we will probably never be radi-

CULTURE BRIEF Half Moon howl Half Moon Run’s Facebook page states that the band was “born tied to walls of a sweaty room in Montreal’s Mile End district.” When asked about their true origins, the band joked that they found each other through online dating.

cal enough.” His Co-Administrator Parker Villalpando clarified that QM is open to funding projects, “from all different stripes...as long as we’re in our mandate.”

According to Cook, there are critics who believe that “Queer McGill is useless and not political at all.”

Cook still believes, though, that if a situation arose in which the organization needed to function as a strong political voice, it has the ability to do so. “Queer McGill is really important because it has the possibility to mobilize. It’s not Stonewall, we don’t need people to fight [revolutionary] battles for us, but I think it’s still important to be visible,” she said.

Current QM executive members see the organization’s primary role as

a source of support for its constituency. Thom believes the organization is a place for queer students, to “come and be safe in, to have fun in...in a manner that’s nonjudgmental and that’s inclusive as possible,” adding that QM “creates a greater awareness on campus... that McGill is a place where queer

Homo Hop, Queer Prom, along with smaller monthly social events are not “trivial,” but rather “send a message that being queer does not have to be a burden, a curse, or radical political stance. Sometimes being queer can just be fun.”

Cook also pointed out that many of QM’s subgroups fulfill vital roles

Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

Whatever the circumstances surrounding their initial union, the members of Half Moon Run – Devon Dunn, Conner Molander, and Dylan Phillips – have been making music together since October 2009, and they’re serious about it.

If you haven’t heard of them yet, it’s not for lack talent or artistic drive. On the topic of their attitudes regarding self-promotion, the band says they “hope to generate interest mostly through performance.”

“Perhaps it’s a romantic notion,”

students and non-queer students alike can come and learn.” Khare also believes that one of the most siginificant aspects of QM is “the pride we show in our queer community, the parties we throw, [and] the events we fund are important.”

Thom argued that parties like

on campus; “The fact they fund groups like Queerline, Allies, Rez Project...they help so many people.”

However, QM also recognizes that it does need to reach out to groups within the queer community who have previously been overlooked. Khare acknowledges that

the band confessed, “but we think that music can become successful because of its quality rather than some kind of image.” Granted, using this approach to gain a fan-base may take some time, but it seems to be working. A small tour of Ontario in early September and a recent show in Montreal yielded overwhelmingly positive responses, marked by robust sales of Half Moon Run’s selftitled EP. The trio characterizes their sound as “fusing restless elements

of indie with the honest part of warm electronica.” Each of the multi-instrumentalist members has had a lifelong interest in music, but the group insists that while their diverse musical backgrounds factor heavily into who they are as individuals, when they come together they can transcend their personal histories and create something truly original. In fact, it is this idea – the notion of a unique whole emerging as something greater than its constituent parts – from which

QM could display, “more sensitivity to trans issues, [and] to asexuality.”

Villalpando emphasized that reaching out to the asexual community is “one of our goals this semester,” pointing to the fact that, “in society, the asexual community remains marginalized.”

Thom would also like to see his organization reach out more to the francophone community, especially in high schools and CEGEP. Additionally, he explained that QM plans to hold weekly discussion groups in a closed, confidential space, in order to “reach out to students who may not be fully out, or questioning themselves, because these students are often the most marginalized and under-represented.”

Though Cook would like to see Queer McGill “reach out to minority communities,” she stressed that, “you also don’t want to tokenize anyone, so it’s tough.”

However, there are still great strides to be taken on McGill’s part to make the University more inclusive to queer students. A student who formerly served on the McGill Equity Subcommittee on Queer People explained that, “The most homophobia [and] transphobia students will experience is in the classroom. Sometimes the material you’re being taught isn’t sensitive to reality...I think a lot of professors don’t think they need to be sensitive to [students’ lived experiences].”

Villalpando agrees: “It’s definitely something I’ve experienced myself, that the vast majority of queer students have experienced.”

Thom added that because institutions like McGill have a rigid, topdown structure, “many professors don’t want to hear from their students about these issues.”

Though the executives are sincere in their mission, students’ perception of the group remains divided.

As Cook put it, “students that aren’t involved in Queer McGill see Queer McGill as extremly political; people who have been involved in the organization tell you it’s not political at all. I would like to think that Queer McGill can be both political and a community-building organization.”

the group derives its name: “It refers to a salmon run on Canada’s northwest coast. When they swim upriver to lay eggs they are drawn to that location by the moon...there seemed to be something relevant to us in the way all these pieces mysteriously come together for a common purpose.”

—Nicholas Jeffers Half Moon Run will be playing at Divan Orange on October 8.

Culture

The McGill Daily | Monday, October 4, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

17

Dark world Joseph Henry The McGill Daily

T

he first museum exhibition of its kind to be shown in North America, Rouge Cabaret: The Terrifying and Beautiful World of Otto Dix, presented in conjunction with the Neue Galerie in New York, seems like a retrospective on an entire school of painters. The artworks on display at the Musée des Beaux Arts feature not only the breadth of German expressionism, from highly subjective emotional paintings to precise social satire, but also German art since 1400. All these artists fall under the moniker “Otto Dix,” an artist who worked within the paradigm of German art but with a distinctly grotesque yet comic style, covering the worst of trench warfare, sexual violence, and the awkwardness of fatherhood. As Dix himself said, “I am neither political nor tendentious nor pacifistic nor moralizing nor anything else.”

Dix found himself swept up in the nationalistic Nietzschean fervour entering World War I, and like most other German soldiers, had that fantasy quickly shattered in trench warfare. He fought actively throughout the war, and drew all the while, but wouldn’t publish a definitive representation of his war years until 1924.

The series of prints titled Der Krieg (German for “War”) justify admission on their own. They skillfully present the atrocities of war

within Dix’s spectrum of pitchblack humour – caricaturist soldiers trudge through mud and flesh under the watch of jeering skeletons. “Lens Being Bombed” depicts what would happen if Ernst Kirchner’s detached Dresden street denizens were about to be blown to pieces. Typical of Dix and the show itself, Der Krieg encompasses a variety of historical visualizations of German art.

The vaguely disturbing “Sailors in Antwerp” turns the sexual promiscuity hinted at in early modern genre scenes into desperate and realized sexuality.

In 1925, Dix settled in Berlin and began a career as a portrait painter, both as a commissioned artist and unofficial street observer. But whereas earlier expressionist movements presented the artist as a flaneur recording a mechanized, disconnected citizenry, this post-war citizenry was now mutilated and broke. “The War Cripples” focuses on the gruesome exposed anatomies of cardplaying veterans. Fittingly with the Neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity) he is attached with, Dix’s more official portraits combine a rigid formality with self-expression. “Dr. Heinrich Stadleman” depicts the trappings of a successful bourgeois doctor’s office surrounding a green, ghoulish version of the doctor himself.

Dix’ portraits of prostitutes combine depictions of Mary Wigmanesque prowling women and, more interestingly, a sensitivity towards de-sexualized female nudes such as pregnant and older women rarely

seen in early German modernism.

Sex and prostitution are given the same dark humour as the war images. “Still Life with Widow’s Veil” satirizes both early modern vanitas still-lifes and Berlin brothel society with a human spine and mask. The painting at once mocks vanitas’s emphasis on subtle reminders of death and shows the connected nature of sex, death, and social performance in a shocked post-war society.

In the weaker end of the exhibit, Dix’s work mellows into landscapes.

Works like “Saint Christophorus IV” almost have a Biedermeier sensibility in their light tones and classical forms. Dix’s work moves from the critical to the allegorical, such as implementing iconography from Renaissance battle paintings.

Der Krieg uses a monochrome pallet from the prints of Albrecht Dürer, the most famous Northern Renaissance artist and one highly valourized by the Nazi Party.

Dix tapped into a modernist aesthetic but in the context of a highly classical sense of German art history, to the extent that he could, according to guest curator Olaf Peters, even sell paintings to Nazi officials. Interestingly, his art was also featured prominently in Entarte Kunst (Degenerate Art), a travelling exhibition used by the Nazi Party to showcase and condemn obscene art.

Dix poses the contradiction of placing himself in “the line of the old great German masters,” as

Copyright the estate of Otto Dix/SODRAC 2010

The Musée des Beaux-Arts launches a retrospective on the disturbing work of Otto Dix

Dix drew on his own experiences in the First World War. Peters stated, but with a highly subjective style that avoids the classification art history loves to canonize.

Indeed, it seems natural to have taken so long to present a Dix exhibition, for an artist who so willingly

revelled in the margins.

Rouge Cabaret: The Terrifying and Beautiful World of Otto Dix is showing at the Musée des Beaux-Arts (1380 Sherbrooke O.) until January 2.

Culture shock returns QPIRG and SSMU team up for 12 day event on the dynamics of multiculturalism Kayan Hui The McGill Daily

Q

PIRG and SSMU are bringing Culture Shock back to McGill and the Montreal community between October 3 and 15. Now in its fifth year, Culture Shock is an event series that aims at deconstructing myths surrounding immigrants, refugees, and communities of colour through workshops, film screenings, and panel discussions.

What started back in 2006 as a “radical” offshoot of SSMU’s Culture Fest has grown into a 12-day forum for critical analysis and discussion on issues of ethnicity and race.

Don’t be mistaken though – Culture Shock is far from being an invite-only, elitist affair. Forget abstracting narratives into intellectualized discourse. And forget all the policy-centered brouhaha.

Culture Shock is about the people, the problems they’ve had to face, and their solutions to them. Anna

Malla, one of the event organizers at QPIRG, said, “We want to bring out the voices that normally aren’t heard, and we welcome the grassroots community and resistance.”

There’s a renewed sense of spirit to this year’s event, as Malla and her co-organizer Andrea Figueroa remain committed to the principles that inspired the series from the get-go.

“Where there was a food fair and cultural performances, we didn’t find an analysis behind questions, like ‘Why are there migrant communities in Canada?’ We wanted to do both,” said Malla. And while in previous years the focus of Culture Shock has been steered mostly toward the analysis side, the organizers want to bring culture back into the picture. “We’re here to celebrate cultures but recognize realities,” said Malla.

With a full line-up of speakers and panel discussions this year, they’re tackling issues that speak to the community within Montreal and beyond.

Take the incident in late August, when 492 Tamil refugees showed up off the BC coast, welcomed by angry Canadians accusing them of links with terrorism on one end, and support rallies mobilizing across the country on the other. The discussion panel on

another international context, inviting Ponni Arasu to talk about her work towards decriminalizing gay sex in India through organizing within queer collectives in Delhi.

“What we’ve wanted to do is look at how people’s movements and struggles bring success stories, and

“We’re here to celebrate cultures but recognize realities.”

Anna Malla Culture Shock organizer October 4, titled “From Arizona to Montreal: Migrants Fight Back!” may have a lot to offer with respect to the incident. “The panel will have someone from the Tamil support community who’s working on creating awareness outside of media influences. If we look at the history of racist immigration, or race riots at the turn of the century, we know that this is not the first time this has happened,” said Figueroa.

The keynote panel takes on

bring those legal challenges that should say gay sex should be legal to the forefront,” said Figueroa.

The issues that are presented at Culture Shock are important for both students and Montrealers.

Immigrants make up 31 per cent of Montreal’s population, and 26 per cent of our population is composed of visible minorities. For these communities, experiences of marginalization take place at the workplace, in immigration services, and in their neighbourhoods – which are

often racialized and segregated.

Racial profiling, immigration laws, and state security laws are just some of the institutional mechanisms that put these communities under increased pressure, said Figueroa. These problems occur on an everyday basis, but media coverage for their cause is infrequent.

The Canadian government championed itself as a multicultural society in 1971, now we ought to ask: for whom? We need to look around and observe how Canada measures up. “The state tries to sell the idea that we integrate communities from all sorts of places and it happens flawlessly,” Malla said.

“What the government does in reality is that they’re happy to bring migrants to be temporary workers but won’t want to give them status.

There’s constant deportation.”

But the event sings a hopeful tune. “In spite of all of this, Culture Shock takes a positive outlook,” Malla mused, “because in this place of adversity, these people continue to live their lives.”

Calling all resolutions for the

SSMU Fall General Assembly scheduled for Thursday, October 21 from 6pm-9pm in the James Square (amphitheatre next to the McConnell Engineering Building)!

The deadline for all resolutions is quickly approaching.

Be sure to send them in to the

Speakers of Council (speaker@ssmu.mcgill.ca) by

Monday, October 11 at 5pm.

Be heard, raise your voice, make a change!

For information relating to the submission of resolutions, please view Bylaw Book 1-5 (http://ssmu.mcgill.ca/about/consititution-and-bylaws/).

FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS HAVE A VOICE IN SSMU COUNCIL! CHANGE YOUR SCHOOL!

VOTE FOR YOUR 2010-2011 FIRST-YEAR COUNCIL

October 6th 12 pm — October 8th 5 pm

ovs.ssmu.mcgill.ca log in with your McGill email and password