News
The McGill Daily
Monday, September 23, 2013
03 NEWS
$20 registration fee for Mental Health and Counselling Services cancelled
Fee for mental health and counselling cancelled The ties between hope and anarchy Electoral politics go green Romanians protest mining project A closer look at gentrification in Montreal Photo essay: Moreau Lofts Post-grads hold year’s first general assembly Admin talks Leacock restructuring First Senate meeting of the year
10 COMMENTARY
Student workers need a paradigm shift The need for high school consent education Letter to the editor
12 FEATURES Going up north
14
SCI+TECH
The missing link to Mars On neural regeneration The overabundance of mobile apps
16 HEALTH & ED
Student Services will find creative solution to budget cuts
McGill sports scoreboard Meaningful meaninglessness in baseball
19 CULTURE
Indie gaming at Comiccon A material world Speedy Ortiz’s poetic indie rock 21st century burlesque
22 COMPENDIUM!
McGall set to drag everyone down with it The Weekly talks hot girls
23 EDITORIAL
The PQ’s charter and Canada’s ‘us vs. them’ mentality
Dana Wray | The McGill Daily
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s of September 20, the $20 registration fee instituted earlier this year to access Mental Health or Counselling Services is no longer in effect. Students who have already paid the fee will be reimbursed. The fee was officially announced on September 1, but after being brought to the attention of the Fee Advisory Committee, it was determined that the $20 would constitute a mandatory fee and therefore have to be subject for a student referendum before it could be approved. Jana Luker, Executive Director of Student Services, told The Daily in an interview that this was a best case scenario. “It’s something we didn’t want to do in the first place [... so] in the end, it kind of worked out well.” According to the press release, despite the loss of revenue that the fee would have brought in, there will be no reductions in service. Luker also pointed out that the staff hired in anticipation of the income generated by the fee are already on contract, and so waiting times should not be affected by the cancellation of this fee. The $20 registration fee was implemented in May for Mental Health Services, and in the beginning of September for Counselling Services. Although the direct fee was thought up years ago to increase accessibility to Mental Health and Counselling services, Luker told The Daily, it was because of deep budget cuts that the fee was implemented. Mental Health and Counselling Services both fall under the funding of Student Services,
which lost almost $500,000 after universitywide budget cuts. Although 70 per cent of Student Services’ funding comes from student fees, 30 per cent comes from the University’s operating budget. SSMU VP University Affairs Joey Shea expressed her support for the cancellation of the fee, but cautioned against taking it too positively. “I definitely think it’s a good thing [for students]. I also think we have to be careful about thinking it’s too much of a good thing, because it should never [have been] there in the first place,” said Shea. Dr. Vera Romano, Director of Counselling Services, said that Counselling Services welcomed the cancellation “since Counselling Services is deeply rooted in the social justice model” with respect to the services offered. Romano also added that Counselling Services places “paramount importance” on accessibility to students. According to Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens in the press release announcing the fee change, there was a significant amount of support from students for the fee. Luker echoed this statement: “We never had any pushback from the students, they were so supportive,” she said. Now, it is up to Student Services and the administration, along with a variety of working groups, to come up with new ways to find more money for Mental Health and Counselling Services.
“Given the pressing and growing need for these services, we will take steps to reallocate resources within Student Life and Learning and we will actually try to improve the service, even without the fee,” Dyens said in the press release. “We are hoping to keep the service open longer, in fact, and once we get the new details in place, we will make them widely known.” However, the reallocation of resources will be through “nickel-and-diming” or innovative initiatives, Luker said. “I just want to stress that this is not going to be at the expense of something else, because that’s not an option. And we aren’t going to go to referendum, so we’re not going to find another way to make students pay more, because that’s the whole point, is getting away from that. I think it’s really about more creative ideas.” The 15 or 16 session cap for Counselling and Mental Health Services, respectively, will remain in place. “Obviously it’s the same thing: no one would be denied further treatment [... but] we’re going to try and maintain a sort of short-term therapy model without being limiting,” Luker said, adding that the average person usually only had around six sessions. “We think that if there’s the goal and people know that, they’ll be working with the clinicians towards that goal,” Luker added. According to the press release, the future of additional funding for Mental Health and Counselling Services will be discussed at the joint meeting of Senate and Board of Governors on November 12.
Anarchism and Hope
Accessibility is not universal
17 SPORTS
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Local anarchists shine light on misrepresented philosophy
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William Mazurek and Jahanara Rajwani | News Writers
ocal anarchists gathered Thursday night to discuss the need for hope in their community. The event, which took place at Bar Populaire on St. Laurent, was held to promote the launch of the zine Anarchism and Hope written by local anarchist, journalist, and activist Aaron Lakoff. Lakoff ’s zine is the second zine to be published by the two-year-old Montreal-based Howl! Arts Collective, which describes itself on its website as a collective of artists and activists working for social justice issues through artistic expression. Over 50 people from the anarchist community attended the event. The engaged and supportive group was quick to dispel the myth of anarchism as a force of violence. “Anarchism has often been perceived as violent [and] inherently chaotic,” said Lakoff in an interview with The Daily. “My response to that is nothing can be actually more chaotic than the current state of the world. There is nothing sane about living under capitalism, about people having to sell their labour for shitty wages, for people to have to breathe in all the toxins that are in our environment, for oil pipelines to be built
across the country. That, to me, is insanity, and I think what anarchists are actually proposing is a world based on sentiments of mutual aid and on love and passion.” This sentiment was the basis of Lakoff’s zine, which he first conceived of three years ago. “Amongst anarchists, there is this really unfortunate sense of cynicism,” said Lakoff. “I started writing the zine after the G20 protests in Toronto a few years ago where some of my really good friends were in jail [...] and people just kind of lost hope.” Migrant justice activist Mostafa Henaway explained the concept of hope in an anarchist community at the event. “When we talk about hope, it’s that people [are] able to regain a sense of agency over their lives.” “You see anarchism every day,” remarked Henaway. “You see people making decisions collectively through consensus, you see people reject unjust authority [...] it’s not a very radical idea. What may seem radical is the way in which people perceive anarchism is trying to get there.” While to some, anarchism and hope may not seem connected, to Henaway, “They’re intertwined. [...] Especially working with
people who are precarious workers [...] it’s either they have hope, or capitalism breaks them down.” “Bureaucracies are this way to keep us oppressed,” Lakoff stated. “They’re cold, they’re faceless, they’re hard to navigate, and they’re essentially made to disorient people. The beautiful thing about anarchists and what anarchism is trying to do is break through those bureaucracies by trying to put forth a more human way of interacting with each other.” Howl! Arts Collective member Stefan Christoff highlighted the need to spread ideas and create discussion on the subject of social activism. “We wanted to publish Aaron’s text on anarchism [...] because we felt it was important to create a publication that could be shared with others [and] that’s rooted in reflection,” he told The Daily. “Hope is like bread,” Lakoff said at the event. “It’s something that we need to nourish us.” The Anarchism and Hope zine is available at independent bookstores around Montreal or online at howlarts.net.